Clause 32.—(Conditions of admission to final examination.) (Hansard, 30 June 1932)

§ The SOLICITOR-GENERAL

I beg to move, in page 13, line 33, to leave out the words "no person shall," and to insert instead thereof the words: a person articled to a solicitor after the thirty-first day of December, nineteen hundred and twenty-two, shall not. It might seem to be rather absurd to substitute the one form of words for the other but, as it happens, there is a point of substance. This, of course, is a consolidating Bill, and we have to be very careful not to amend the law in any way that would affect adversely any person who would not otherwise be affected. As a matter of fact, in the Statute which was intended to be reproduced by this Clause, the words originally framed provided that a person articled to a Solicitor after the 31st of December, 1922, shall not be admitted to the final examination without attending a Law School. It was thought, as a matter of draftsmanship, to be tidier to put the Clause into the form in which it appears on the Paper, and to put the provision with regard to the date of the articles in a Proviso which appears on the next page; but the result, unfortunately, has been to affect barristers of five years' standing who, under Clause 34, are entitled to become solicitors, after fulfilling the proper conditions, without being articled to a solicitor. If, therefore, the wording were left in its present form, a barrister of five years' standing would be liable to 2057 have to attend a solicitors' law school for a year before being admitted as a solicitor. [Interruption.] That definitely would be an amendment of the law which, monstrous or not as the hon. Member for East Bristol (Sir S. Cripps) says, would not be in order on this Bill.