CLAUSE 8.—(Short Title, Extent, and Duration.) (Hansard, 25 July 1918)

§ Mr. MARTIN
I beg to move to leave out Sub-section (3).
I am very much in favour of this Bill, and that being so, I wish to make it a permanent one, instead of a temporary measure, as provided. It may be years hence before the question of juries will again get before a Committee of this House. We have had the whole question discussed here to-day, and the Committee have unanimously supported the Committee on each one of the Clauses of this Bill. The Bill has been accepted by this Committee without any vote against it. Why should it not be made the permanent law of the country? It is to last during the continuance of the present War and for six months afterwards. The reason for introducing the Bill is that during the War people have not the time to give their services as jurymen. But while that seems to be the reason for the Bill, I do not support it for that reason, but because I am very glad to have certain matters taken away from juries, and I should be glad to have them taken away to a far greater extent than is provided by this Bill. The effect of this Amendment would be that the Bill would become permanent on the Statute Book, and there is nothing to prevent the Government of the day, six months after the War is over, changing the law back again if they wish to do so. I do not see why we should not leave it a permanent measure, and if a change became necessary, then a Bill could be passed by this House.

§ Sir G. HEWART
It is now manifest, and, indeed, I have never doubted it, that my hon. Friend has a sense of justice. He has taken up a considerable part of the 2059 time of the Committee devoted to this Bill—I am not complaining—by pointing out what he said were the imperfections of the Bill. But now he makes a handsome reparation for those attacks, by proposing, contrary to our wishes, that this Bill, with all its imperfections, shall be permanent. I regard that as a handsome tribute, but I regret that I cannot accept it.

§ Sir J. D. REES
I rise only to say that during the time I lived within twelve miles of London, I was often approached by many of the inhabitants who wished to protest against the onerous nature of the jury service. Like the plague or cholera, it struck the same neighbourhood again and again, sometimes on one side of the street and not on the other, or sometimes the same individual repeatedly, and not others; and, in view of these facts, I am quite sure the action of the Government in passing this Bill will cause the liveliest satisfaction among business men, who have frequently been taken away from their work for the purpose of attending inquiries which could be very well done without juries at all. With this experience of the jury system, the change to be brought about by this excellent Bill will be extremely grateful.

§ Mr. MARTIN
I am rather surprised that the hon. Gentleman who has just spoken did not support me in moving that the Bill be made permanent, seeing that he thinks it is such a good one. I wish, however, to emphasise a point which was raised last night on another Bill, in, regard to which the Under-Secretary for War informed hon. Members that the reason he objected to all the Amendments which were moved was that he did not want this Bill, which has come from the House of Lords, to go back to that Assembly with Amendments. It would appear that the same thing is to happen in regard to this Bill. I am going to assume that the Amendments which I proposed were refused on their merits, but there were two Amendments which were so reasonable that the right hon. and learned Gen- 2060 tleman was unable to produce any arguments against them; yet he did not accept them. If this is going to be the policy of the Government, it will be a farce to bring a Bill from the other House to this for consideration in Committee and then for this House to be deprived of its privilege of passing Amendments to the measure. That is a very serious interference with the privileges of this House. We had the statement of the Under-Secretary of State for War last night, in regard to a Bill that was being passed through Committee, that the reason he accepted no Amendments was that he did not want to send the Bill back to the House of Lords in an amended form. It does seem to me that this House should not allow its privileges to be interfered with in that way.

§ Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER (Sir Donald Maclean)
The hon. Member cannot discuss the proceedings of the Committee on the Bill.

§ Mr. BOOTH
I think we have had very-patient treatment of all the points we have raised on this Bill, and in regard to the two Amendments to which reference has been made, they were thoroughly reasoned out by the Solicitor-General on very solid grounds, and he gave his answer to the proposals quite fairly.

§ Mr. MARTIN
The hon. Member is discussing the proceedings of the Committee, and I was told I could not do that.

§ Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER
The hon. Member has raised a point of Order which is perfectly right.

§ Mr. BOOTH
This is the Third Reading, and I may say that I think, on the whole, the conduct of this Bill by the Minister has been such as to entirely commend itself to the House.