§ Order of the Day for the Second Reading, read.
1282§ *LORD PLAYFAIR, in moving the Second Reading of the Bill, said he was afraid it would be difficult to make it intelligible to their Lordships, but he would try his best in a few words to do so. The Scotch Act of 1891 was passed for the same purpose as the well-known English Act, by which Local Authorities were permitted to issue Stock for carrying out public improvements and for public purposes. When the Local Authorities Loans Act was passed for Scotland in 1891, it was found to be very useful, and a number of burghs immediately proposed to issue Stock; but when they tried to do so, they experienced great difficulties. The Scotch Act differed from the English Act chiefly in one respect: that while the latter allowed all the regulations for borrowing money to be made by the Local Government Board subject to the approval of the Privy Council, and to be laid on the Table in both Houses of Parliament for 30 days, the Scotch Act tried to put all those regulations in one Operative Clause, the 5th, of the Act. That 5th clause, which was the Operative Clause of the Act, was found to be perfectly unintelligible. In the opinion of a distinguished Law Officer, its provisions were contradictory and subversive of one another; and, in fact, nobody could understand it. The Scotch Law Officers of the late Government did their best to explain it, but found they could not. They called in legal experts, but they were unable to interpret its meaning; and the present Law Officers for Scotland were equally unable to explain the meaning of the 1st sub-section of the Operative Clause of the Act. The object of this Bill was to amend that clause by repealing the 1st sub-section, and giving to it an intelligible explanation; and then it assimilated the Act to the English Act, which would allow the Secretary of State for Scotland to issue regulations, as was done by the President of the Local Government Board, in order to prevent all the details being put into the Act. The Bill had passed in the House of Commons without opposition, and he hoped their Lordships would give it a Second Reading.
§ Moved, "That the Bill be now read 2a." —(The Lord Playfair.)
1283§ Motion agreed to; Bill read 2a accordingly, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House on Monday next.