Lords Sitting of 22 June 1910

ABERTILLERY AND DISTRICT WATER BOARD BILL. [H.L.]
Reported from the Select Committee, with Amendments.
EDUCATION BOARD PROVISIONAL ORDERS CONFIRMATION (BERKS, &c.) BILL. [H.L.]
Committed: The Committee to be proposed by the Committee of Selection in regard to the Leatherhead Order.
WATER ORDERS CONFIRMATION BILL. [H.L.]
Committed: The Committee to be proposed by the Committee of Selection in regard to the Chelsham and Woldingham Water Order.
GAS ORDERS CONFIRMATION (No. 1) BILL. [H.L.]
Committed: The Committee to be proposed by the Committee of Selection in regard to the Brownhills and District Gas Order.
GAS ORDERS CONFIRMATION (No. 3) BILL. [H.L.]
Committed: The Committee to be proposed by the Committee of Selection in regard to the Ripley Gas Order, the Rowley Regis and Blackheath Gas Order, and the Swansea Gas Order.
EGREMONT URBAN DISTRICT COUNCIL (GAS) BILL.
Read 2a and committed for Tuesday next.
EXMOUTH GAS BILL.
Read 2a, and committed.
MOUNTAIN ASH WATER BILL.
Read 2a, and committed: The Committees to be proposed by the Committee of Selection.
BRADFORD CORPORATION BILL.
Brought from the Commons; read 1a; and referred to the Examiners.
ST. MUNGO'S COLLEGE ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL. [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons, agreed to.
BISHOP'S STORTFORD, HARLOW, AND EPPING GAS AND ELECTRICITY BILL. [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons, agreed to, with Amendments: The said Amendments considered and agreed to.
WARDEN'S DIVORCE BILL. [H.L.]
Minutes of Evidence and Proceedings before this House on the Second Reading, together with the documents deposited in the case, returned from the Commons.

THE MEDITERRANEAN COMMAND.
1. "Memorandum defining the duties of the Field-Marshal Commanding-in-Chief in the Mediterranean," dated 6th August, 1907;
2. "Memorandum defining the duties of the Field-Marshal Commanding-in-Chief in the Mediterranean" (revised), dated 15th September, 1908;
3 "The duties and responsibilities of the Inspector-General of the Forces," dated 18th December, 1907;
4. "Memorandum defining the duties of the appointment of General Officer Commanding-in-Chief in the Mediterranean, combined with that of Inspector-General of the Oversea Forces," dated 20th June, 1910:
Presented (by command), and ordered to lie on the Table.

MIDWIVES BILL. [H.L.]
THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL (EARL BEAUCHAMP): My Lords, there has been a Bill for some time on the Paper of your Lordships' House dealing with the question of midwives. With your Lordships' permission I should like to ask leave to withdraw the Bill, probably with the idea of introducing it again with certain Amendments which have been suggested, and I shall hope that if I do that it may be possible for the Bill to get through both Houses of Parliament in the present session.
Bill (on Motion), by leave of the House, withdrawn.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT (IRELAND) PROVISIONAL ORDER (No. 6) BILL. [H.L.]
A Bill to confirm a Provisional Order of the Local Government Board for Ireland relating to King's County and the County of Tipperary (North Riding)—Was presented by the Lord Hamilton of Dalzell (for the Lord Denman); read 1a; to be printed; and referred to the Examiners. (No. 60.)
ELECTRIC LIGHTING PROVISIONAL ORDER (No. 4) BILL. [H.L.]
Read 2a (according to order).

DISCONTINUANCE OF STANDING COMMITTEE.
Order of the Day read for the consideration of the Report from the Select Committee.
THE EAEL OF CAMPERDOWN: My Lords, I ask your Lordships to give your approval to the Report which has been presented by the Select Committee whom your Lordships appointed to consider and report upon the Standing Orders relating to Standing Committees. This Committee met; the noble Earl who leads the House and the noble Marquess the Leader of the Opposition, together with other members,
† Earl Beanchamp was appointed Lord President of the Council on June 16 in the place of Viscount Wolverhampton, resigned.
948
were present; and we took into consideration the Standing Orders, ultimately arriving at the decision to advise your Lordships—
"That it is not expedient, under present circumstances, to continue the Standing Committee, and that Standing Orders Nos. XLV to LIII inclusive be repealed."
The Standing Orders in question are those under which the Standing Committee was appointed, and under which it conducts its procedure. I do not think that I need detain your Lordships at any great length, and therefore I will very briefly recapitulate the history of the Standing Committee and the circumstances in which the Select Committee ask your Lordships no longer to continue it.
The Standing Committee took its origin in the year 1889. It was the late Lord Herschell who moved that the Standing Orders relating to these matters be considered, and he himself took an active part in establishing the Standing Committee. He considered that it would be very advantageous that your Lordships, acting as a court of revision, should go more minutely into the details of all the Bills which are submitted to this House, and especially of the less important Bills; and he also considered that an additional stage in the passing of a Bill through the House was desirable as a means of looking into its contents. That was approved, and the Standing Orders were passed in, I think, the month of February, 1889. But under the Standing Orders that were then passed the Standing Committee took priority over the Committee of the Whole House, and became much more important than, I think, Lord Herschell had originally contemplated. I myself happen to have been a member of that Committee from the beginning. During the first two or three years it was very largely attended, and considerable deliberation took place on the Bills that were submitted to it. Amendments of importance and of substance were introduced in the Standing Committee, and after that Committee had considered the Bills they returned to the whole House. The result was that members of your Lordships' House who were not members of the Standing Committee took exception to this procedure. They pointed out that when they wished to raise matters in Committee of the Whole House the reply was not infrequently made that the matter bad been considered in the Standing

949
Committee, and that already an Amendment had been adopted or rejected with regard to the particular point in question.
Owing to that and to other matters another Committee was appointed, I believe on the motion of Lord Cadogan, who was Lord Privy Seal at the time, to look into these Standing Orders, and the late Lord Salisbury, in the debate that then took place, said he thought that one means of meeting the difficulty which had arisen was to postpone the Standing Committee stage until after that of the Committee of the Whole House, and he expressed the opinion that the Standing Committee would not be too modest or unwilling to deal with Bills after they had been through Committee of the Whole House. The Committee appointed to look into the matter reported in favour of that procedure, which was adopted, and the Standing Orders were passed in the form in which they now stand. But then it was found that what Lord Salisbury had expected would happen did not happen, and from the year 1891, when the new Standing Orders came into force, the proceedings of the Standing Committee excited less and less interest, the attendances became very much smaller, and then the practice arose of moving that the Standing Committee be negatived. Those of your Lordships who have been members of the House for the last few years know how much more common that Motion has become, until, indeed, it is the ordinary Motion to make. If a noble Lord who has a Bill does not make that Motion the only result is that his Bill is delayed for a week, or it may be for a fortnight, and I do not know that any commensurate public advantage is derived from that process; and with regard to Bills emanating from the Government and other important Bills, they would not be altered in Standing Committee unless it were a mere verbal alteration. Therefore from every point of view the Standing Committee, at all events in its present form, has ceased to be of any practical use to legislation.
The Select Committee considered the Standing Orders from this point of view, and, speaking generally, the conclusion they arrived at was that the Standing Orders in question should be repealed. Let me point out that if your Lordships should adopt this Report it does not preclude any noble Lord hereafter, if a
950
Bill comes up in which he takes especial interest or which, he thinks ought to be examined very minutely, from moving that it be referred to a Select Committee. Nor, again, is there anything to prevent any of your Lordships hereafter, if you think that some additional procedure is required, from submitting to the House any proposal which you may wish to make in this direction. I think that is all I need trouble the House with, at the present moment at all events, and I beg to move that your Lordships approve of this Report.
Moved, That the Report from the Select Committee be adopted.—(The Earl of Camperdown.)
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL AND SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (THE EARL OF CREWE): My Lords, my noble friend who has just sat down acted as Chairman of the Select Committee which was appointed to consider this subject, and he speaks with an authority we all recognise, from the deep interest which he has always taken in the business of the House and from his long experience of it. I merely rise to say that after giving such consideration as I could to the matter I concur in practically everything that has fallen from the noble Earl. He has given a history of how the Standing Committee came into being, of how it flourished for a time, and how it has since fallen into decay, and I think the facts as he has stated them go to show that it is useless, and indeed undesirable, to attempt to keep nominally alive an institution such as the Standing Committee, of which the real usefulness has departed. I think, perhaps, there may be one rather hopeful and pleasant side to this. I do not know whether other noble Lords, looking back, will concur with me, but I think there has been of late years a greater willingness in the full House to consider carefully and at length Bills in Committee than there used to be in former years, and, so far, that is a fact with which we should all be pleased, and it tends to indicate further that the functions of the Standing Committee as such are not so important as they were formerly supposed to be.
I think it is quite clear that the date of the decay of the Standing Committee was the change, which the noble Earl has described, when its proceedings succeeded instead of preceding consideration in

951
Committee of the Whole House. Before that time, as I very well remember, its proceedings were often interesting, and sometimes, indeed, even animated, but it had the vice for a Committee of being too strongly composed. A majority of the noble Lords who take, or took at that time, a very active part in the business of the House served upon it, and the result was, as the noble Earl has described, that when Bills came back to the House after being considered there any noble Lord who did not happen to be a member of the Standing Committee was certainly in a weak position if he desired to make any material alteration in a Bill. That was the cause of the change, and the change was the cause of the gradual decay of the Standing Committee. I therefore have merely to say that we on this side are prepared to support the suggestion of the noble Earl, agreeing also with him that such a decision would be reached without prejudice to any subsequent changes which any noble Lord may be able to persuade the House to make with regard to the consideration of Bills.
THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (THE EARL OF ONSLOW): My Lords, I only rise to express my satisfaction that the noble Earl, Lord Camperdown, concluded his remarks by saying that if your Lordships adopt this Report and go further and rescind the Standing Orders which have been passed by the House for the constitution and proceedings of the Standing Committee, that action will not in any way preclude a revival of the subject at a later date, and the constitution of some form of Committee, different and distinct from the present Standing Committee, for the consideration of Bills. It has always seemed to me that your Lordships as a House of revision have, perhaps, not devoted that careful attention to the drafting and the phraseology of measures which might be expected of a Second Chamber, and I therefore feel that if any Committee of the kind is to be set up at a future date its main object should be the consideration of the way in which a Bill would be regarded by learned Judges on the Bench, and the way in which they would interpret it. It is common knowledge among your Lordships that learned Judges have often said that they have the greatest difficulty in interpreting the intentions of the Legislature by the phraseology put into Acts of Parliament;
952
and for that reason I venture to hope that, if the Standing Committee is abolished in this session, an opportunity will arise before very long for a reconsideration of the subject, and for setting up some other body of the same kind to examine into the details of the legislation which is submitted to the consideration of your Lordships' House.
THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: My Lords, I have really nothing to add to what has been said by my noble friend behind me and by the noble Earl opposite. It seems to me to be clearly established that the moment has arrived for, if I may use the expression, decently interring the Standing Committee. It has not only ceased to be practically useful as an assistance to our deliberations, but the repeated habit of moving that the stage be dispensed with seems to me to be hardly a dignified addition to our manner of conducting business. My noble friend gave a correct account of the history of this question. I have no doubt it is the case that the Standing Committee began to lose importance from the moment when that stage of the Bill was taken after the stage of Committee of the Whole House. I therefore support the proposal of my noble friend, and I do so with the same reservation as the noble Earl the Chairman of Committees has made—the reservation, namely, that our decision this afternoon does not in the least preclude us hereafter from considering whether, perhaps in some other form, the proposal from which so much was originally expected may be usefully revived.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

STANDING ORDERS XLV. TO LIII. VACATED.
THE EARL OF CAMPERDOWN: My Lords, I now beg to move the consequential Motion, that Standing Orders Nos. XLV. to LIII. inclusive—the Standing Orders which refer to the constitution of the Standing Committee and its proceedings—be vacated, which I believe is the correct term.
Moved, That Standing Orders Nos. XLV. to LIII. be vacated.—(The Earl of Camperdown.)
On Question, Motion agreed to, and ordered accordingly.

PARSONAGES BILL. [H.L.]
[SECOND READING.]
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY: My Lords, I shall not detain your Lordships many moments in saying a word or two about a Bill which is extremely technical—so technical that if any one of your Lordships by reading it is able to know exactly what the changes are that it will effect I shall congratulate him on his knowledge of ecclesiastical procedure and ecclesiastical law. I think I can explain the Bill in a few sentences, and then trust your Lordships to find that the words which set out the meaning of it in necessarily extremely technical language correspond with my explanation. It is a small change that is desired to be effected, and a change which can by no possibility, as it seems to me, do harm to anybody.
The facts are simply these. At this moment, when property belonging to an ecclesiastical benefice is sold, through the medium of the Governors of Queen Anne's Bounty, whether it be the house, or land, or anything else belonging to the benefice, the money so received is placed in the hands of the Governors, who hold it as trustees. That, of course, is to prevent the incumbent for the time being from making use of the money so received instead of allowing it to be used for the benefit of the benefice. The Acts which allow the Governors of Queen Anne's Bounty to hold money in that way belong to different dates and deal with different kinds of property, and in consequence a certain irregularity or confusion has arisen. By the existing law or laws as they stand, if an incumbent sells a farm belonging to his benefice for, say, £100, that money is placed in the hands of the Governors of Queen Anne's Bounty, who hold it for the benefit of the living and pay the incumbent a proper interest on that money as part of their general property. If, however, he happens to sell the house of the benefice, by a curious accident in the Acts which provide for it that investment is not allowed to become part of the properties held in trust by the Governors as a whole, but must be separately invested, and by the present Order, dated many, many years ago, must be invested in Consols.
954
The result is that the incumbent takes the risk of a rise, or fall in Consols, and the Governors have the inconvenience of holding different investments. What we ask in the first part of this Bill is merely that the Governors may have power to add the money which is derived from the sale of a house to the money which is held for the benefit of that living and which is derived from any other source. That is the object of the first part of the Bill.
The second point is this. When a house is sold, as matters now stand even if for a time the incumbent be houseless, the interest on the capital sum received—which is sometimes very large, many of the houses disposed of being sold because they are too big—is not allowed to be used for housing him pending the provision of a new house, and the man is not only houseless but is unable to obtain the money to provide quarters elsewhere pending the provision of another house. I could give your Lordships many instances of the difficulties which have arisen in towns, and sometimes harm has come from a man's being unable to tide over that temporary time of inconvenience, and in many cases the sale of an inconvenient house has been prevented in consequence of this provision. Again we leave to the Governors discretion to allow the income of that money to be used, pending the provision of a new house, for the housing of the houseless man.
The third point in the Bill is a small technical one. If a vicarage house is sold upon which a loan exists—that is to say, upon which there is still money owing which has been borrowed for the improvement or for the repair of that house—the loan must, by the existing law, be allowed to run, and is not allowed to be paid off. Consequently there is great confusion of accounts, and great difficulty both to the Governors of Queen Anne's Bounty and to the incumbent. The points raised in this Bill have been at least once previously before your Lordships' House, and have passed without question. The matter has been most carefully considered by a committee of Queen Anne's Bounty who went into all the technicalities, and there is, so far as I am aware, no difference of opinion on the subject among those best informed. I ask your Lordships in these circumstances to give the Bill a Second Reading.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(The Lord Archbishop of Canterbury.)
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House on Monday next.

PERJURY BILL. [H.L.]
Referred to the Joint Committee on the Licensing (Consolidation) Bill.
House adjourned at five minutes before Five o'clock, till Tomorrow, a quarter before Eleven o'clock.