HC Deb 29 November 1920 vol 135 cc1036-42

Any decree made against a county council whether before or after the passing of this Act for compensation for criminal injuries may, irrespective of the amount recovered, be removed to the High Court on certiorari under Section nine of the Civil Bill Courts Procedure Amendment Act (Ireland), 1864, and any rates payable by any ratepayer to the council may, as well as any other debts due to the council, lie attached to answer the amount recovered by the decree when so removed, together with the costs of or incidental to the proceedings in the High Court, including the costs of the removal.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY

I beg to move to leave out the Clause.

This is a highly objectionable Clause. Hon. Members will observe that where compensation has been passed the rates can be attached for the amount of the injury, and the property of any ratepayer can, I believe, be levied on, and those ratepayers compelled to pay their rates to the High Court. Even for Ireland, as things are now, I put it that this is an altogether uncivilised proposal. We are going to pick out one or two wealthy ratepayers, and to say that they are to pay the rates direct to the High Court. That seems to be contrary to what I consider fair judicial practice. When the Second Reading of this Bill was under consideration, some of us on this side objected on the ground that destruction of property in Ireland was taking place by action of the servants of the Crown. The Government hotly disputed that until about a fortnight ago, when the Chief Secretary for Ireland admitted that his servants had destroyed certain property in the shape of creameries, factories, and private houses. During the Second Reading we tried hard to secure from the Government some statement as to how claims for those creameries, factories, and private houses actually destroyed by servants of the Crown not in pursuit of their lawful occupations and as a sort of reprisal were going to be met and who was to pay them. We got nothing definite from the Government. Their principal line of defence apparently was that it was quite impossible for servants of the Crown under any circumstances to set fire to private property except in shooting rebels. The admission which has been made alters, I submit, the whole justification for this Bill.

I do not want at this stage to go into the whys and wherefores and pros and cons of such destruction as that has been debated at length on one or two occasions. I simply deal now with the purely legal question of financial claims due to such destruction. In a Debate last week the Chief Secretary told us that he would be the judge on reparation to decide who should pay these claims. That is very unsatisfactory. The Chief Secretary is necessarily more on this side of St. George's Channel than the other. These claims have to be adjudicated on daily by County Court judges in Ireland, and the Chief Secretary must rely on statements of his own servants in deciding whether reparation should be afforded or not. I think without some more definite statement we should not pass this Clause which enforces claims against ratepayers for damage in the neighbourhood, which is now admitted by the Government to have been committed without real provocation and without real excuse and without real justification by servants of the Crown. I hope the Government will see their way, at any rate, to withdraw this Clause, and in view of the conditions in Ireland to carefully reconsider the whole Bill.

Mr. MYERS

I beg to second the Amendment. It is distinctly unfair to impose a penalty on the same people upon whom the injury has been inflicted. After damage has been done in a given place, it may not be the whole of the ratepayers who have been affected, but a number of them, and when we impose a charge upon the rates for the injury done, we impose a charge on the Whole of the ratepayers, both those who have suffered and those who have not. A further injustice in the Clause is found in the fact that if an individual ratepayer owes rates to the council and the council has not sufficient in its coffers to meet the responsibility, the rates of the individual can be intercepted without them being handed over to the local authority, and there is also the provision that any debts due to the council can be intercepted.

From every point of view it appears there is an injustice, whether applied to the individual or the authority as a whole.

The ATTORNEY-GENERAL for IRELAND (Mr. Denis Henry)

Two points have been suggested against this Clause. The first is that there is some injustice to the ratepayer whose debt to the Council is attached for the purpose of meeting a decree for malicious injuries. There is absolutely no injustice. Suppose either of my hon. Friends was a ratepayer in the city of Belfast, and suppose the city of Belfast refused to pay the very heavy claims which are being made against it by persons who have suffered injury! A poor man who has his shop destroyed is entitled by the law to claim against the city, and he gets a decree for £500, say, but if the city say they will not pay, but that they will go on levying their rates and collecting them, where is the injustice in that man going to a court of law and saying, You, the city of Belfast, will not pay me, but another persons owes you a sum of money, and I will levy on that sum of money for the purpose of paying your debt. We have simply said that if a person has a decree against a public authority, and if the authority refuse to pay, and they have ratepayers who owe them money, that person can go and swear an affidavit in the High Court of Justice setting out these facts, and he gets an order to attach this debt. There is no injustice to the ratepayer, because he simply pays one person instead of another, and the fact that he pays under an order of the Court gives him a discharge as against the corporation or the county council for his rates.

Lieut. - Commander KENWORTHY

The right hon. and learned Gentleman will see that under this Clause it will be possible to pick out certain wealthy ratepayers and make them pay the whole of their rates in this way

Mr. HENRY

If my hon. and gallant Friend will think for a moment, he will see that, no matter whether you pick a man out or not, he is only paying once. If I pick out a wealthy ratepayer for this purpose, it is immaterial to him whether he pays the corporation or otherwise, so long as he only pays once. The hon. and gallant Member seems to suffer under a delusion which he had on the Second Reading of the Bill, and doubtless this is my fault, because I thought I had explained the matter then. All that will happen will be that the particular ratepayer will be served with an Order of the King's Bench Division in Ireland, and will pay the person who has got the decree and then be free from his liability to rates. If he did not get that Order, he would be sued or detrained for rates by the corporation. If an English corporation refused to pay its liabilities, you would not hesitate for a moment to put in such a provision. That is all we ask, and I do not think it is an unreasonable thing. This is not a one-sided Bill by any means; it is not a case where only the Unionists or Loyalists will reap the benefit of the Act. The amount of compensation claimed—I am speaking in the hearing of the hon. Member for the Falls Division (Mr. Devlin)—in Belfast is over £1,000,000, and I am sure his constituents are largely interested. They will have exactly the same remedies, and I do not think that he objects to having those remedies for his constituents in the way I have suggested.

The second point made by hon. Members is that there should be some Clause introduced into this Bill dealing with claims made by persons against servants of the Crown who have committed or who are alleged to have committed acts coming within the purview of the Act, but the entire Bill deals with the question of rates, and there is no suggestion of any kind for any Imperial charge of the kind suggested, because my hon. and gallant Friend's suggestion moans that a claim should be made against the Imperial Government. My right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary has already dealt with that, and it is quite impossible in this Bill to deal with that matter.

Amendment negatived.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY

I am not altogether satisfied with the last part of the statement of my right hon. and learned Friend. It is just what we do suggest that where it is brought home to the Crown, as it has been in at least two cases, that this property has been destroyed by servants of the Crown, the Imperial Exchequer should pay; I think that is only right and just, and even my hon. Friend from Belfast opposite (Mr. Moles) will admit that. This is a very big matter, and I think we might have some more considered declaration on that point before we give the Bill a Third Reading. I daresay we cannot at this stage of the Bill put anything in, but a statement from my right hon. and learned Friend would decide some of us how to vote on the Third Reading. On the Second Reading the right hon. and learned Gentleman made this declaration, that if soldiers and police have illegally, without orders, destroyed property, they come under the meaning of the Act that they are an unlawful assembly and can be proceeded against accordingly. But suppose they are acting under orders—that is the point. There have been cases where cottagers have been awakened at night by officers—

Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER (Mr. Whitley)

On the Third Reading the hon. and gallant Member can only deal with what is in the Bill. The hon. and gallant Member would have been quite right on Second Reading to have dealt with this point, but the Third Reading is more restricted, and he must confine himself to what is in the Bill.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY

I do not wish, of course, in any way to transgress your ruling, but Clause 7 of the Bill deals with assembly, and says that the criminal injuries provision shall be applied as in the original Act. I would beg for some more specific statement from my right hon. and learned Friend on that one point. I do not wish to delay the Third Reading.

Mr. DEVLIN

In view of your ruling, Sir, I do not like to occupy the time of the House, but I really think some consideration ought to be given to the suggestion made by my hon. and gallant Friend. It was in the intermittent stage between the Second Reading of the Bill and the present stage of the Bill that the Chief Secretary for Ireland gave, to my mind, a rather unsatisfactory assurance that this matter would be considered. In my opinion, we are entitled to a clear and an emphatic declaration from the Government as to what they propose to do in relation to that destroyed property, the destruction of which was due to the conduct of the representatives of the Crown in Ireland. It did seem to me an extraordinary thing that in a place like Fermoy, where—and it was admitted by the Government that the property was destroyed by the officers of the Crown—some of the largest ratepayers in the town were the owners of the property destroyed, that these people must go to the County Council for compensation, and that they must pay themselves for the damage that was done to their property. That seems to be an absolutely indefensible position for the Government to take up, and, in my judgment, it is nearly time that the Government ought to say what they propose to do with regard to this destroyed property, whether we are to depend merely upon the airy declaration of the Chief Secretary that he will consider special cases or whether—and this really touches the very root of the question—he will appoint a Committee of Reparations to go into the whole question of the destruction of property by, as is alleged, and which can be proved, his own servants in Ireland. We have never had such a declaration from the Government. No doubt what the right hon. and learned Gentleman States is perfectly true, that we are dealing now with the rates, but a Clause of this character ought to have been in the Bill itself dealing with the compensation to be paid to innocent victims of this policy of pogroms which has been carried on by the military, the Black and Tans, or whoever have been carrying on this policy in the name of the British Government in Ireland. I really think the Government have been guilty of a gross dereliction of duty in not taking advantage, which their own Bill offered to them, of dealing with this question, and not compel large ratepayers, whose property has been destroyed by the uniformed officers of the Crown, to compensate themselves for the destruction of their own property.

Mr. HENRY

My hon. and learned Friend who has just sat down has very accurately stated the scope of this Bill when he says it is a matter of the rates. The other matter he put forward is a matter dealing, not merely with the local ratepayers in Ireland, but also with the ratepayers in England and Scotland, and he can hardly expect me, on a Bill of this kind, to deal with the very much wider question of the Imperial liability in respect of raids which have been described as having been committed by servants of the Crown. My right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary has admitted that, in certain instances, the raids have been. made by forces of the Crown, and he has promised to have the matter very fully and carefully considered. It is obviously a very large matter, and a matter not dealing merely with local authorities in Ireland, but dealing also with England and Scotland, and it is not a matter on which I could, offhand, give the Government's decision on a Bill of this kind. I must refer my hon. and learned Friend to the Chief Secretary for Ireland in respect to that matter, because, even at the moment, it is not quite clear, in a great many of these instances, who are the guilty parties, and it is a matter for very careful investigation. This Bill deals with an entirely different matter, and makes amendments in the law; but the other matter involves quite a new principle, which, so far as I am aware, except in the case of the Dublin Reconstruction Act, where the Imperial Exchequer contributed to losses sustained by citizens, is quite a new subject matter, and is not a matter with which I can be expected to deal in this Third Reading Debate.