HL Deb 25 May 1906 vol 157 cc1516-7

[SECOND READING.]

Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.

EARL BEAUCHAMP

My Lords, as this is the first Bill of the kind which has been introduced into this House, it would, perhaps, be proper on my part to say a few words of explanation. Under an Act which was passed in the last session of Parliament by the late Government, it was provided that the Secretary of State for the Home Department should be able to make certain marriages, about which there was any doubt, legal under a provisional order, and the Act provided that, a number of provisional orders might be made, that method being thought more convenient than passing a different Bill with regard to every set of marriages about which there might be doubt. Your Lordships will see in the Provisional Order Bill itself the churches to which it applies, and as the Bill has passed the other House without any Amendment, I venture to hope your Lordships will give it a Second Reading.

Moved, "That the Bill be now read a."—(Earl Beauchamp.)

On Question, Bill read a.