ROYAL COMMISSION ON VACCINATION. (Hansard, 31 May 1892)

§ LORD HERSCHELL
My Lords, your Lordships may probably be aware that the Royal Commission which was appointed to inquire into the subject of vaccination, over which I have the honour to preside, made, a short time ago, an Interim Report, although their labours are, I am sorry to say, very far from a close. In that Interim Report two recommendations were made: one that cumulative penalties should cease to be inflicted in respect of the non-vaccination of the same child; and the other that with regard to the persons committed to prison for a breach of the Vaccination Laws power should exist similar to that which is contained in the Prisons Act to deal with those persons otherwise than by subjecting them to the ordinary treatment of criminal prisoners. My Lords, these recommendations were unanimously passed by the Commission, although it contains amongst its members those who are certainly inclined to take very different views upon the question of compulsory vaccination. A question was put the other day to the Secretary 329 of State for the Home Department with regard to the intentions of Her Majesty's Government as to legislating upon the lines of these recommendations. My Lords, of course it would be out of the question to take any exception to the claim of the Home Secretary on behalf of the Government that they should have time to consider whether they would propose legislation such as had been suggested by the Commission; no exception therefore could be taken to the answer of the Home Secretary that the Government required time to consider, and were taking time to consider the matter, and that it was necessary for them to examine the evidence and see upon what evidence these recommendations were founded. But undoubtedly there was something in the tone of the remarks of the Home Secretary, and the collocation in which those words were to be found, which created an impresion that the Report of the Commission itself was treated as of little weight, and that the only matter to be considered was the evidence. I am quite sure the right hon. Gentleman did not mean to make any such reflection upon the Commission, or for a moment to treat their recommendations as being otherwise than deserving of weight as well as the evidence which would have to be considered. And, my Lords, I should not of course for a moment have thought of troubling your Lordships with the matter if that had been all; but the right hon. Gentleman proceeded to say that to carry out the recommendations of the Royal Commission amounted to a repeal of the Vaccination Acts, and that the Government were anxious to hear upon what evidence the recommendations had been founded. Now, my Lords, I cannot help thinking, and that indeed is the view of the Commission generally, that it would be likely to be mischievous if the impression were to go abroad that the recommendations of the Commission were so regarded by themselves, or were intended to be regarded in the least as pre-judging the question of a continuance of compulsory vaccination, and if they were to be regarded as, in any sense, a repeal of the Vaccination Laws. No doubt, it may be said that every diminution of the penalties that are imposed 330 for a breach of the law may afford some additional facilities to those who are not desirous of obeying it. And, speaking generally, and without regard to any other considerations, it of course is perfectly legitimate that to take the view that to content yourself with a single penalty is relieving those who will not obey the law of a certain amount of the pressure which the law now puts upon them. But, my Lords, when it is said that the recommendation would amount to a repeal of the Vaccination Laws, I must call your Lordships' attention to the way in which this question stands. In 1871 the matter was considered by a Committee of the House of Commons, consisting of fifteen Members; the Chairman was the late Mr. Forster. It contained such Members as Mr. Stephen Cave, Mr. William Henry Smith, Sir Lyon Playfair, Mr. Hibbert, Dr. Brewer, Sir Dominick Corrigan, and others; and the Committee, so constituted, unanimously recommended that where one full penalty—that is, twenty shillings—had been imposed upon a parent, the magistrate should not impose any further penalty in respect of the same child, that is to say, the same recommendations that are now made by the Royal Commission. That Committee was not a Committee of anti-vaccinationists; it was a Committee of those strongly in favour, as may be seen by the Report, of enforcing as fully as possible compulsory vaccination; but they pointed out that the reason why they came to that conclusion was that, upon the whole, these repeated prosecutions in respect of the same child caused an amount of irritation and opposition to the Act, which was detrimental to the working and enforcing of the Vaccination Acts to a greater extent than any advantage gained by securing vaccination in individual instances. Your Lordships are aware, we are certainly aware as members of the Commission, that in a great number of cases imposing repeated penalties has had no effect in promoting the vaccination of the children. In 1871 a clause was introduced into the then Vaccination Act to carry out this recommendation of the Committee. There was a division upon it in the House of Commons, but it was carried by 331 fifty-seven to twelve, and as the Bill came to this House it contained a clause providing that there should be no cumulative penalties. In this House unfortunately it met with an adverse fate. The late Lord Redesdale proposed that the clause should be omitted from the Bill, and carried his proposal by a majority of eight to seven; so that, even in your Lordships' House, it can hardly be said to have had any very great moral weight. And when Lord Redesdale had proposed that Amendment, Lord Halifax, on behalf of the Government, who had the Bill in charge, said— It is the opinion of Mr. Simon, the medical officer to the Privy Council, that it is unwise to insist upon anything which is not indispensable, and further the penalty now proposed will answer all the practical purposes of the Act. It is desirable that public feeling should go with the Act, which will be the case, since the exceptions will be very few, whereas an adverse feeling may be excited to the prejudice of the Act, even if a few prosecutions are persisted in. The strongest advocates of vaccination deprecate repeated fines and imprisonments, which leave the defendants' children unvaccinated. Notwithstanding that, however, the clause was struck out, and the Bill went to the Lower House, and Mr. Forster advised the House not to disagree with the Amendment, because if so, as it was late in the Session, the 19th August, the Bill would inevitably be lost, and it contained certain provisions which in the presence of a then very prevalent outbreak of smallpox, it was exceedingly desirable to pass at once; but he used this language about these penalties:— That clause was passed in the House by a majority of fifty-seven to twelve, and expunged in the other House by a majority of eight to seven, the total number of peers voting being just equal to the number of the Members on the Select Committee, which, after long and careful consideration, came to a unanimous conclusion in favour of the clause. Then he said that he would have asked them to disagree with the Lords but for the causes to which I have called your Lordships' attention; and he adds these words:— I regret the omission of the clause, because in my opinion it strikes a heavy blow at the principle of compulsory vaccination, which their Lordships, as well as I, think necessary for the health of the country. 332 Now that was twenty years ago. The Royal Commission over which I preside, after considering the matter now for three years have arrived at the conclusion that the predictions which were uttered at that time have been fully verified, and that whatever advantages may have arisen from these cumulative penalties, on the whole the disadvantages have preponderated. So that although our Commission contains certainly some who are inclined—I speak of them still as dealing with the matter sub judice—to a view favourable to compulsory vaccination, yet they were unanimous in making this recommendation; and when I remind your Lordships that amongst the Members of the Commission are such men as Sir James Paget, Sir William Savory, Mr. Jonathan Hutchinson, Professor Michael Foster, Sir Edwin Galsworthy, who has done such good work on the Metropolitan Asylums Board, and others, I think your Lordships will feel that the recommendation concurring as it does with that recommendation made twenty years ago by the Select Committee is entitled to great weight. But as I say, I do not call attention to this matter for the purpose of pressing the Secretary of State or Her Majesty's Government at all, or for the purpose of urging them to act with any unreasonable haste; but I am anxious to show that the recommendations could not properly be regarded as amounting to a practical repeal of the Vaccination Laws; because I have pointed out that twenty years ago that was urged as the best thing to be done in the view of those who were favourable to compulsory vaccination; and twenty years' experience has led the Royal Commission subsequently, seeing what has passed in the meantime, to the same conclusion. My Lords, there is a fact which may not be within your Lordships' knowledge as bearing upon this, which is that where you have these repeated prosecutions it has not unfrequently happened that it has stirred up so much feeling by the resistance which has been engendered through persons going to prison rather than pay, or paying time after time by allowing their goods to be sold, that the end has been frequently that the Guardians elected have been Guardians 333 who would not prosecute at all; and therefore in the endeavour to enforce the law with great stringency the end arrived at has often been to leave the law absolutely unenforced over a considerable district. All these of course are matters well deserving consideration; and I am not saying a word, and do not desire to say a word to press the Government upon this, or to ask for any decision upon it now. But the Members of the Commission (and I confess I share their feeling) did think that it might be detrimental if it were supposed that we shared at all in the view that the recommendations which we have made amount, or would amount practically to a repeal of the Vaccination Laws. My Lords, I beg to ask Her Majesty's Government whether the Home Secretary is correctly reported as having said, in answer to a question in the other House, that to carry out the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Vaccination amounted to a repeal of the Vaccination Acts, and that the Government were anxious to hear upon what evidence the recommendations had been founded; and that if the House decided that offences against the Acts were of sufficient social importance to be dealt with, the treatment of persons convicted of those offences must naturally be decided by that consideration.

§ LORD DE RAMSEY
My Lords, I have the authority of the Secretary of State to say that in any words that he may have uttered in the other House of Parliament he had not the smallest idea, or the slightest intention of in any way throwing the least doubt or aspersion on the weight of any recommendation of the Commission over which the noble and learned Lord presides—quite the reverse. Concerning the words which the noble Lord has brought to your Lordships' notice the Secretary of State at Question time in the other House, being pressed to immediately initiate legislation to give effect to the recommendations of the Royal Commission contained in the Interim Report—he was being pressed to say that vaccination prisoners should be treated as ordinary prisoners—in reply said that if the requirements as to vaccination were of such importance that the disregard of 334 them was to be treated as an offence, the treatment in prison of persons convicted of that offence must necessarily be governed by the same consideration; he also intimated his opinion that the proposal for vaccination prisoners to be treated as first-class misdemeanants was to be taken in conjunction with the proposal of the Royal Commission that there should be no more than one prosecution in each case, and that the two together would amount to a repeal of the Vaccination Acts. For, as the result of the penalty for the breach of the requirement to vaccinate would seem so slight as not to be a deterrent, vaccination would cease to be regarded as compulsory. Before taking action therefore the Government desired to consider the evidence upon which the recommendations of the Commissioners in their Interim Report were founded.

THE EARL OF KIMBERLEY
I am afraid my noble and learned Friend will not feel much satisfaction at the answer which the noble Lord has given, because in point of fact he has confirmed entirely the objections which my noble and learned Friend raised to what the Home Secretary said; because it appears that he did say that the recommendations of the Royal Commission, taken together, would amount practically to a repeal of the Vaccination Laws. Now, my Lords, surely there was great force in what my noble and learned Friend said that the question here is not as to abandoning the Vaccination Laws, because the Commission have not reported at all upon that point; the question is as to the best mode of enforcing the Vaccination Laws, and it may be that upon consideration the Government and Parliament may think that the change proposed by my noble and learned Friend's Commission would not enable us to enforce the Vaccination Laws better, but would lead to the consequences that the Home Secretary seems to apprehend. But I still think that my noble and learned Friend has some reason to complain that the recommendations of the Royal Commission, which certainly were not intended by them to involve such consequences and are distinctly, as he says, based upon an entirely different principle, 335 should be represented as a recommendation to repeal the Vaccination Laws. And without for a moment expressing now an opinion upon a very difficult and thorny question, I certainly do hope that when the time comes that we have to consider the very difficult question how the Vaccination Laws are to be dealt with we should not hastily come to the conclusion that the whole of the compulsory system must be abolished; because it may be found that the present system of cumulative penalties does not assist us in enforcing the law. Prematurely to come to any such view would seem to me both to prejudice the question at issue, and also to be very imprudent, considering the extreme importance to the country of the Vaccination Acts being enforced and the great reluctance which many people would feel if the Vaccination Laws were proposed to be hastily abandoned, because it was found that the cumulative penalties produced the effects which my noble and learned Friend has mentioned. I must again say that I do not intend by what I have said to express any opinion upon the general question, but I merely say that I think my noble and learned Friend has, most unquestionably, some justification, and the noble Lord opposite has confirmed it, for the apprehension that he entertains of the views that the Home Secretary has taken of this question.

*THE PRIME MINISTER AND SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (The Marquess of SALISBURY)
My Lords, I should guard myself as the noble Earl has done, by saying that I do not desire to express any opinion upon the general question, for which I am not qualified. But I think that the noble Earl is hardly fair with regard to the expressions used by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary. The noble Earl says that he has represented the Commission as recommending an abandonment of the Vaccination Laws.

THE EARL OF KIMBERLEY
I beg the noble Marquess's pardon. I intended merely to repeat what the noble Lord said—namely, that the adoption of these recommendations, taken together, 336 would amount to a repeal of the Vaccination Laws.

§ *THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY
I do not think the noble Lord said that. It is perfectly fair for the Home Secretary to come to the conclusion, and there are very plausible grounds for coming to the conclusion, that although the Committee may have fully intended to maintain the Vaccination Laws and put them into operation in the manner in their judgment most calculated to be effective; yet that the recommendations were not founded upon a sound judgment, and that their practical effect would be that the Vaccination Laws would cease to be operative. Whether that is the case or not I do not know; but I think my right hon. Friend was quite right in asking to see the evidence before he formed his opinion. I do not see how a desire to see the evidence implies the slightest distrust of the Commission over which the noble and learned Lord presides. It is a question of very great difficulty, and it is necessary to know precisely all the grounds upon which the Commission are going in making recommendations which have an appearance certainly to many minds of making the Vaccination Law idle. If a penalty is always, as I think it would become, a money penalty, it is obvious that this permission to break the law as often as you liked, when you have once paid one fine, would amount to a privilege for a rich offender, and would in reality allow persons to buy a permit to make themselves centres of contagion. I do not know whether the Vaccination Laws will want alteration or not; until I have seen the evidence it is impossible for me to judge; but the principle of allowing people to get off with one penalty, and then to go on repeating the same offence as often as they like upon the same child does seem to me a perfectly novel principle in our legislation, and I can well understand my right hon. Friend hesitating before he hastily brings in a measure to adopt something so perfectly untried.

§ LORD HERSCHELL
My Lords, after the answer given by the Home Secretary and communicated to us I shall on an early day after Whitsuntide call the attention of the House to the question and move that, in the opinion 337 of this House, the recommendations of the Royal Commission ought to be carried out by legislation.