SECOND READING. (Hansard, 22 June 1899)

* THE EARL OF JERSEY

My Lords, the object of this Bill is to assimilate the law in Scotland and Ireland to that prevailing in England and Wales. Up to January 1st, 1899, a prisoner committed to prison in default of payment of a fine, whether in England and Wales, Scotland, or Ireland, could only obtain release before the expiration of the period for which he was committed by payment of the full amount of the fine. The Departmental Committee of 1894 on Habitual Offenders, etc. (Scotland), strongly recommended that prisoners so committed should be allowed to work out their sen- 233 tences partly by imprisonment and partly by money payment—a remission of their term of imprisonment in default being made, proportionate to the part of the fine imposed which they were able and willing to pay—in other words, that a prisoner who had been sentenced, say, to a fine of twenty shillings or twenty days, and who could raise, say, ten shillings, should be liberated after ten days' imprisonment on payment of that ten shillings, instead of being kept in gaol till the very end unless he could pay the entire sum. This recommendation was adopted in the Prison Act, 1898, which came into effect on the first day of the present year. That Act, however, does not apply to Scotland or Ireland, and the object of this Bill is to extend to these countries the same reform in that respect which that measure enacted for England. The enacting clause of the Bill follows verbatim the wording of the Prison Act, and I beg to move that it be now read a second time.