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THE EARL OF KIMBERLEY : My Lords, the question that I desire to ask Her Majesty's Government relates to the point whether a Clerk to the Petty Sessions is disqualified from being a member of the County Council? The point turns upon certain sections in the Municipal Corporations Act, which is incorporated with the Local Government Act, and a section in the Local Government Act
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itself, which I will read, as it is very short. The disqualifying section is to this effect:—
A person shall be disqualified who has, directly or indirectly, by himself or his partner, any share or interest in any contract or employment with, by, or on behalf of the Council.
My Lords, the clerk of the Petty Sessions is not appointed by the Council, but he is dependent upon the Council for his salary; because, by Section 84 of the Local Government Act, it is provided that the Joint Committee of the County Council should be substituted for Quarter Sessions as to all powers connected with the fixing of salaries or fees to be received by the clerk of Petty Sessions and the payment of such salaries. The question therefore arises whether, inasmuch as the Clerk to the Petty Sessions, if elected to the County Council, would be qualified to be a member of the Joint Committee as a member of the County Council, and might be appointed as such, he would not be so indirectly interested in this pecuniary question of the fixing of his salary that he would be disqualified? The point is not by any means an abstract one, for I understand that there are several candidates in different parts of the country who are clerks of Petty Sessions; and, if it is possible to clear up the doubt, it will be a great satisfaction to those who are interested in those elections. My own feeling is—while not attempting for a moment to say what is the right interpretation of the Act, which is a legal question—that it is desirable that such an officer should not be a member of the County Council, under all the circumstances.
§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I regret that the noble Lord who would properly respond for Her Majesty's Government is not in his place. Lord Henniker, I am sorry to say, is kept away by reason of suffering from the prevailing epidemic. I should be glad if he were here to answer the question for more reasons than one. In the first place, I think it is a very difficult question; and, in the next place, my noble Friend, who represents the Local Government Board in this House, would be able to answer it without the responsibility that attaches to a Judge who 1008 may have hereafter to discuss that very question when it comes before him in his judicial capacity. But the point, which is no doubt an important one, and, as I have said, a very difficult one, seems to me to turn very much upon the nature of the relations between the County Council and the officers in question. Those officers were appointed under certain provisions, and fulfil certain functions which do not directly place them under the County Council— that is quite true. On the other hand, the language of disqualification is very peculiar. I did not catch whether the noble Lord read the language of disqualification from the Statute.
§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR:If you put the language of disqualification in the Statute, and you see the relation that these officers bear to the County Council in respect of their remuneration and what they have to do, and ask whether they were to be under the County Council or not, that raises an extremely difficult question. In giving an opinion on the subject I hope your Lordships will understand that I have not had the point argued before me, and therefore it is an opinion which I am entirely at liberty to retract when the question is properly argued before me; and I say that the more impressively, because I understand that my hon. and learned Friend the Attorney General has given an answer to-day to that very question in the House of Commons with which (I speak always under the reserve that I have mentioned) I should not entirely concur. The impression that I should form, upon the whole, would be that the object, and meaning, and spirit of the Statute is that these officers should not be qualified as County Councillors—that the disqualifying section would apply to them. But, as I say, it is certainly not directly said; it is only said by reference, and reference in such a way as to make it extremely doubtful whether the words of disqualification apply to them in the character in which they would be members of the County Council. I am afraid, my Lords, that the proposition is not very clear as I put it; but that is not my fault; it is the fault of the Legislature in passing 1009 the Act in the form in which it was passed. The only thing I can say is that my own impression (and I do not give it as anything more) would be that they are disqualified, and that—inasmuch as they do receive their remuneration from the County Council, although that is not the word contained in the disqualifying section, yet, looking at the object, and purpose, and meaning of the Statute as a whole, considering what it was intended to prevent in the event of offices of that sort being held under a body who themselves had, in some sense, the control over them—the holders of those offices should not be members of that body. My impression, therefore, at present is that they are within the disqualifying section, and could not properly be elected to the County Council.