HC Deb 28 March 1927 vol 204 cc1008-10

Lords Amendment:

In page 2, line 21, after "by" insert "way of."

The LORD ADVOCATE (Mr. William Watson)

I beg to move, "That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said Amendment."

This Amendment makes the Clause read "by way of loans" instead of "by loans." It is a purely drafting Amendment.

Mr. STEPHEN

Perhaps the Lord Advocate will say a word about it.

The LORD ADVOCATE

I can only repeat what I have already said, namely, that this Amendment makes the Clause read "by way of loans" instead of "by loans."

Mr. MAXTON

Car the Lord Advocate explain why he, as responsible Minister of the Crown in this House, laid upon this House this indignity in grammatical matters from Noble Lords in another place? Surely if the change is desirable now, it was desirable when the Bill was here and should have been inserted.

Lords Amendment:

In page 2, line 31, at the end, insert Provided that nothing in this Section shall authorise relief under the said Act of 1P45, being provided by way of loan unless the person to or on account of whom the relief is provided or his dependants were immediately prior thereto in receipt of relief under the said Act of 1921, or Section one of this Act.

The LORD ADVOCATE

I beg to move "That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said Amendment."

I confess I cannot explain why I did not think of this Amendment before the Bill left this House, because it does carry out what I am sure was the wish of everybody in this House, that, in so far as it is administratively possible, we should exclude the ordinary cases under the Act of 1845. Immediately after the Third Reading it did occur to me and hence the Amendment. Its effect is to exclude all the ordinary cases under the 1845 Act and to limit the power of giving relief by way of loan in this manner.

Mr. STEWART

This proviso seems to me somewhat ambiguous. It says: Provided that nothing in this Section shall authorise relief under the said Act of 1845, being provided by way of loan"— Here comes what I think is the ambiguity— unless the person to or on account of whom the relief is provided or his dependants were immediately prior thereto in receipt of relief under the 6aid Act of 1921, or Section 1 of this Act. I should like the Lord Advocate or the Secretary of State to make it clear that? an able-bodied unemployed person, whose dependants were getting relief under this Act, if they happen to come under the 1845 Act, would be entitled to relief in the ordinary way. As framed it seems to me that, if a person, who is getting relief under the 1921 Act, and his dependants from any cause whatsoever fail to come under the 1845 Act, he or they could be given relief by way of loan. I may be mistaken, but, as it reads, it seems to me that interpretation could be fairly placed upon it, and I should like an explanation from someone of the -effect of this Clause.

The LORD ADVOCATE

Perhaps, by leave of the House, I may speak again. The very case the hon. Member has put is the case it is intended to cover. Perhaps by giving an illustration I can explain the necessity for it. This was the very case I referred to in the Debate on the Third Reading. A man's dependants get relief under this Bill. He is run over by a motor car, and goes into hospital, disabled. The relief will then be given to the dependants under the Act of 1845. He recovers and gets out of hospital. The relief will come back under this Bill. A week or two later, he is sent to prison for some offence, and the relief is under the Act of 1845. He gets out of prison and again it comes back under this Bill. There is the administrative difficulty of saying that the relief throughout a period is to be on loan, and for a short period not on loan, the next period back on loan again, and so on. The effect of this Amendment will be that it will only be in cases where you start under one of the Emergency Acts, and only incidentally come under the Act of 1845, that the option to give on loan will be legal, and that excludes all the ordinary 1846 cases.

Mr. STEPHEN

I would only like to say that the Government seem to have shown some small sign of grace. From this side we were very anxious that this sort of pawnbroking business the Government were undertaking should not be undertaken at all, and we are glad that the Government have shown a little consideration and sense in this matter.