§ Resolutions reported,
§ 1. "That a sum, not exceeding £148,709, 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, 1917, for the Salaries and Expenses of the National Health Insurance Joint Committee (including Sundry Grants-in-Aid)."
§ 2. "That a sum, not exceeding £3,167,239, 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, 1917, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Insurance Commission (England), and for sundry Contributions and Grants in respect of the Cost of Benefits and Expenses of Administration under the National Insurance Acts, 1911 to 1915 (including certain Grants-in-Aid)."
§ 3. "That a sum, not exceeding £204,923, 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, 1917, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Insurance Commission (Wales), and for sundry Contributions and Grants in respect of the Cost of Benefits and Expenses of Administration under the National Insurance Acts, 1911 to 1915 (including certain Grants-in-Aid)."
§ 4. "That a sum, not exceeding £426,902, 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, 1917. for the Salaries and Expenses of the Insurance Commission (Scotland), and for sundry Contributions and Grants in respect of the Cost of Benefits and Expenses of Administration 1610 under the National Insurance Acts, 1911 to 1915 (including certain Grants-in-Aid)."
§ Resolutions agreed to.
§ Resolution reported,
§ 5. "That a sum, not exceeding £273,475, 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, 1917, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Insurance Commission (Ireland), and for sundry Contributions and Grants in respect of the Cost of Benefits and Expenses of Administration under the National Insurance Acts, 1911 to 1915 (including certain Grants-in-Aid)."
§ Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House doth agree with the Committee in the said Resolution."
§ Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKERDoes the hon. Member wish to move an Amendment?
§ Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKERThen he must put a question.
Mr. HAZLETONI desire to put a question to the Government. The Irish Members had no notice that this matter in connection with the Irish Insurance Commissioners was going to be raised or passed by the Government this evening. I would like to ask the Patronage Secretary to the Treasury whether he gave any notice to the Whips of the Irish party that this Vote was to be taken to-night? I think it is correct to say that he did not, and in view of that fact I would ask the Government to postpone the taking of this Vote until another day.
§ Mr. GULLAND (Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury)This Vote was passed in Committee of Supply, I think, without any discussion at all. Last night I sent the Whips of the Irish party, as I always do, the business of the following day, and certainly on that list it was stated that the Report of Votes already granted would be taken. In the House this afternoon the Prime Minister distinctly said that we would take to-night the Reports of Supply, so that I think the fullest notice has been given in this matter.
§ 9.0 P.M.
1611§ Mr. LUNDONThere is one question we are anxious to discuss on this Vote, and that is the action of the Insurance Commissioners in Ireland in refusing to reinstate men who were employed by the Insurance Commissioners, and who were arrested on suspicion, and have been released by the Advisory Committee as being innocent men. The Insurance Commissioners have, in one or two cases, certainly in one case especially, refused to reinstate a man. Some of us are very anxious, therefore, for an opportunity of raising the question on this Vote.
§ Mr. KINGI hope that attention will be paid to what apparently is a grave matter. If there is any difficulty about furnishing a reply on this matter, may I appeal to the Government not to take this Vote, but to postpone it. They have plenty of other Votes to go on with. Plenty of money is being voted for them to carry on the Government.
§ Mr. CHARLES ROBERTS (Comptroller of the Household)I am afraid that I cannot give information as to the particular cases that the hon. Member has referred to. He has not given me any notice that this point was going to be raised.
Mr. HAZLETONWe did not know until the Prime Minister's statement today that this Vote was going to be taken.
§ Mr. P. MEEHANI suppose it is on the initiative of the Home Secretary that the men who were clerks in the employment of the Insurance Commissioners of Ireland and those in the employment of other Government Offices in Ireland have been suspended or dismissed because of the supposed part they took in the rebellion. The Home Secretary is here, and the chief officials who have to do with the Irish Insurance Commissioners are well aware that some officials have been suspended. So far as I am concerned, I will put this matter to the vote if those who are responsible for it do not see their way to postpone it, and to give us some definite explanation as to why these men are being suspended and dismissed, in spite of the fact that the officials who are over them know, and the Government know, that the men charged were innocent of the charge against them.
§ Mr. ROBERTSI should be glad if the hon. Member could tell me whether his complaint is in reference to the employés 1612 of the Commission itself, or to the secretaries of approved societies who may have been suspected of being implicated in the rebellion. Is it in reference to the officials of the Commission that he raised objection, or not?
§ Mr. MEEHANThe officials of the Commission. During the week there has been a question addressed to the Home Secretary by the hon. Member for College Green, who asked whether certain officials in Ireland were refused reinstatement on their being proved innocent. The case he had in mind was this particular case of an official employed by the Insurance Commissioners. He is an official of the Commission, and not a secretary of an approved society.
The SECRETARY of STATE for the HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. Samuel)I am not acquainted with the particular case to which the hon. Member refers, of an official of the Insurance Commission who has been dismissed as he suggests. So far as my information goes, no officials of the Irish Government have been dismissed. Some have been suspended pending investigation. Persons who were under suspicion in connection with the rebellion were suspended until investigation could be held. I have heard of no particular case of an Insurance Commission official. Taking the whole of Dublin—and indeed the whole of Ireland—I think there are altogether about twenty men who are in that position. A very small proportion, I am happy to think, of the whole body of Civil servants in Ireland. As hon. Members are aware, we intended that these cases should be investigated by the Committee presided over by Mr. Justice Sankey. That Committee contains an Irish judge and an Irish Member of Parliament, and other gentlemen who would give careful and exhaustive inquiry into the facts of these cases. It must be obvious to hon. Members that where there is suspicion and men have been arrested the matter must be investigated. It cannot be put aside as of no importance. It is of importance if members of the Civil Service have been engaged in a movement of this character. If they have not been, they will have the fullest opportunities of stating their case and having it investigated. The Committee of which I speak found that, owing to pressure of work and other circumstances, they were unable to undertake this task. Hence the delay, which I greatly regret. As I 1613 pointed out in the House on a previous occasion, two very distinguished Civil servants, Sir Guy Fleetwood Wilson and Sir William Byrne, have accepted the duty of investigating carefully these cases. They cross to Ireland to-morrow night for this purpose, and I hope that in a very few days the matter will be satisfactorily settled.
§ Mr. KILBRIDEI think that the best possible case which could be made for postponing this Vote has been made by the right hon. Gentleman. He has told the House that he knows nothing whatever about these cases. It is notorious in this House and notorious in Ireland that a good many of these Government officials who have been suspected have been suspected largely through the action of an hon. Member of this House, representing a South of England constituency, who, most valiant men would think, ought not to be in this House, but in another place defending his country. He has apparently diverted the attention and the energy that might be given to the defence of the country, owing to the fact that he is a military man, by parading about this House in military uniform—sometimes only—and devoting his time to putting questions about the rebellion in Ireland and getting officials in the employment of the Irish Government suspected. We all know that if the right hon. Gentleman gets this Vote, if there is any investigation afterwards and it is not satisfactory, we shall have no remedy whatever.
§ Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKERI must point out that no general consideration of this character can be raised on this Vote. The hon. Member who first rose asked questions about persons employed by the Irish Insurance Commissioners. Of course that is in order, but it might assist hon. Members if I point out that if this Vote is taken now it will be included in the Bill which comes on for Second Reading tomorrow, and they will have then the opportunity of presenting the precise details on which they require information, and that both on the Second and the Third Reading of that Bill there will be that opportunity.
§ Sir W. BYLESOn a point of Order. When you put a Vote to the House from the Chair is it not competent to an hon. Member to challenge that Vote?
§ Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKERI have just stated that it was in order with regard to 1614 the Insurance, Commissioners, but on the particular Vote you cannot raise the general question. You can only discuss here some act alleged to be done by those Insurance Commissioners in Ireland.
§ Mr. KILBRIDEThat is exactly the case that we make as to these officials of the Irish Insurance Commission who have been under suspicion and have lost their positions—so far, at any rate—and have lost their positions largely at the instigation of an hon. Member of this House. The right hon. Gentleman tells us that he knows nothing whatever about these cases. Surely it must be obvious to every Member that, if your suggestion is adopted and we raise this matter on the Second Reading or the Third Reading of a Bill which is coming on, that will not remedy our grievance. Everybody knows that once a Minister of this House gets the money our protests are absolutely futile. They will be wholly ineffective, and the only real remedy is to postpone the Vote. You know this very well. I remember former days when there was no better authority in this House on these matters than yourself, and with a great deal of pleasure and satisfaction I often supported you when you raised these very important points with regard to the inadvisability of allowing Ministers to get the money they wanted for their Departments. I assure you that I am only following your excellent programme when you were sitting on these benches. We do not intend to allow this Vote to pass. No doubt we may be in a minority in the Lobby, but we have a real grievance on this question, and until the Minister who wants this Vote is in a position, from knowledge, to give us a satisfactory answer we cannot allow it to pass without challenge.
This is not a question of obstruction on our part. It is a question of ignorance on the part of the Minister who wants the money. He has told us that he does not know one single thing about these questions which we have raised. I am perfectly sure that the right hon. Gentleman would be the last Gentleman in this House who would try to conceal anything. He is the Home Secretary, and we know the anomalous position in which he is placed. He has an enormous amount of work; he has to try as best he may to look after the Irish Office, and of course we all know that there is nobody else here who knows anything about Ireland. The hon. Gentleman (Mr. C. Roberts) need not shake his head. Of course it would be 1615 no reflection, and I do not mean it as a reflection, on him to say that so far as Ireland is concerned he is about as ignorant as the general Members of the House of Commons, or as the other members of the Front Bench I hope that the Home Secretary will not press this and that he will postpone the Vote until we have the information which we think we ought to have. If he does not do so, the right hon. Gentleman in his dual capacity as Home Secretary and looking after Irish affairs is opening up for himself a situation that will not facilitate the getting of Votes in this House. I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman must agree that the Minister who wants Votes for a Department ought to know something about the grievances which are raised in connection with that particular Department. He has just told us that he knows nothing whatever about them. We want to give him further time to know. He will not know to-morrow when the other Bill comes up for Second Reading. He will not then be in possession of the information. It is no satisfaction to us to know that the Minister in charge of the Bill to-morrow will be as ignorant to-morrow as he is to-night. Our object in having this Vote postponed is to give the right hon. Gentleman an opportunity of informing himself as to the facts. These people have a real grievance. They are under suspicion. We all know what reasonable suspicion means in Ireland—that somebody has a grudge against an official and goes to the Castle and gives information against him, and the man is immediately suspended. I do not think that I need say anything more to the right hon. Gentleman. I am sure that he will see the reason for postponing this Vote and for not wasting time in a Division.
§ Mr. ROBERTSAs I am the Chairman of the Committee on National Health Insurance I have to deal with the particular point raised by the criticism of the Irish Commission in connection with these gentlemen of whose cases the hon. Gentleman has been speaking, and, candidly, I, though I do not know the particular cases to which the hon. Member refers—I am afraid it is impossible for me to know every detail—I have made myself acquainted with the conditions of Ireland as the result of the rising. I am not without knowledge of the conditions of the work in Ireland, but I cannot give the hon. Member the information he 1616 requires, because he has not even given me the name of the man to whom he is referring. I cannot possibly know the actual details of the particular case he-has brought to my attention, but I can give him the details if he will furnish me the actual name. I can get a report, or can get it later on; there would be no difficulty whatever about that. The hon. Member is really, I think, not quite fair to me in not having given me the name.
§ Mr. KILBRIDEWe want the report before you get the money.
§ Mr. ROBERTSI think it is quite an extreme case to ask me to give information at a moment's notice when I have received no information from the hon. Member, and no warning that he intended to ask me to give him the particulars which he requires. I cannot be expected to give information about a gentleman whose name he does not mention, nor can he expect me to have all the facts at my fingers' ends without giving me even five minutes' notice.
§ Mr. LUNDONWe do not want to prevent the Vote from being carried through, but many of us on these benches have kept quiet while the Government have been suspending Government officials in Ireland; and for keeping quiet and supporting the Government, they have shown us by the attitude the Cabinet adopted towards us last night, and for that attitude we are going to adopt an attitude towards them——
§ Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKERI thought the hon. Member rose to ask a question. The hon. Gentleman can only make one speech, and he has already spoken.
§ Mr. LUNDONI only put a question.
Mr. HAZLETONI desire to ask the Home Secretary a question. We are anxious for information with regard to these cases which come before the Advisory Committee here in London, and the Home Secretary, in connection with Government officials in Ireland, has appointed a special Commission of two gentlemen to investigate each particular case. Is the Home Secretary in a position to tell us that there is no information from the Advisory Committee in London, or no report from that Committee which deals with such cases, that would enable him 1617 to say in answer to the hon. Member whether the papers show that the official charged with complicity in the rebellion is absolutely innocent? The Advisory Committee go into these matters very carefully, we are told, and surely they send papers and documents in connection with these cases to the Home Office, because we are informed that it is the Home Office that has to carry out the recommendations of this Advisory Committee.
§ Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKERI would point out to the hon. Member that we are only