HL Deb 27 February 1899 vol 67 cc584-6
LORD MONKSWELL

My Lords, I beg to move the Second Reading of this Bill. It is a short Bill to enable the London County Council to make bylaws requiring persons about to construct, reconstruct, or alter drains in connection with buildings, to deposit with the sanitary authority of the district such plans, sections, and particulars as may be necessary for the purpose of ascertaining whether such construction, reconstruction, or alteration is in accor- dance with the statutory provisions relative thereto, and with any by-laws made under the said section. This Bill was passed by your Lordships' House last year. It was to some extent discussed in this House and before the Standing Committee. An Amendment was made at the instance, I think, of the noble Marquess, the Prime Minister, and a further Amendment was introduced on behalf of the Government. By inadvertence, my Lords, I have had this Bill printed in the form in which I introduced it last year, but if your Lordships will give it a Second Reading, I will undertake, on the Third Reading, to make the Bill precisely similar to the one your Lordships passed last year. I am sure that under the circumstances your Lordships will hardly think it necessary that the Bill should again go before the Standing Committee, or that it should go through the Report stage. I beg to move that the Bill be read a second time.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR (The Earl of HALSBURY)

My Lords, I do not desire to say anything in opposition to this Bill until I know more about it, but I am a little jealous of giving the County Council power to compel persons to deposit plans when only slight alterations are proposed to be made. I have had a complaint, made to me that in one case, where the mere reconstruction of one of the necessary articles of the household connected with the drain was involved, the cost, which need not have been more than 5s. was run up to £450 by reason of the requirements which were placed on the individual who owned the necessary article in question. Under these circumstances I should like to have some knowledge of the powers which are intended to be given under this Bill.

LORD MONKSWELL

My Lords, I should like to call the attention of the House to the fact that it is not proposed that these plans shall be laid before the County Council, but that they shall be laid before the local authorities, and I imagine that the local authorities will exercise this by-law with discrimination. I quite admit that as the Bill now stands it will require amendment in the direction pointed out last year by the noble Marquess at the head of the Government. The noble Marquess said it might possibly be necessary to make some small alterations in drains as matters of emergency, and he held that no such by-law ought to apply in a case of that kind. I propose to insert a provision that in all cases of emergency the by-law should not apply. I think that, subject to that amendment, the Bill will be found to be workable.

Question put.

Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the whole House tomorrow.