MILITARY MANŒUVRES BILL. [H.L.] (Hansard, 20 November 1911)

§ VISCOUNT HALDANE
My Lords, this Bill introduces no new subject. In the year 1905 a Bill similar in most material respects passed through your Lordships' House and was a good deal discussed. The Military Manœuvres Act which was passed in 1897 was a very useful measure, but those who promoted it felt themselves bound to go in a very careful and gingerly fashion, with the result that they tied themselves up a good deal. It has proved a very valuable Act, and the only reason for now wishing to amend it is that experience has shown certain points on which it is thought that, without initiating hardship on anybody, indeed with general goodwill, improvements can be made. This Bill is not in all respects the same as the Bill of 1905, but it is in the main the same.
The purpose of the Bill is this. I will take the case of what happened last year. We scheduled certain districts in the eastern counties and meant to have manœuvres there, but the drought made it undesirable to hold the manœuvres. The result was that, having surveyed the ground and everybody being really anxious that we should go there, we found ourselves unable to go there next year, as under the law as it stands the same area cannot be scheduled for manœuvres more 271 than once in five years. It does seem right that in a case of that kind you should be entitled to go there notwithstanding that the period of five years prescribed in the Act of 1897 has not elapsed. Further, it seems right that if you have been to a particular area and the people there, the county council, for instance, say they would like to see you back again two years or three years afterwards, that you should be able to go. This Bill on this point proposes to do two things. If you actually have not gone to the place, then it is as if it had never been scheduled and you can schedule it again. If, on the other hand, you have gone and the county council asks you to come back two or three years afterwards, it may be, then, if everybody desires it, you can schedule the area again and go back. That is the first change which it is proposed to make.
Another change is this. Subsection (2) of Section 1 of the existing Act requires a draft of the Order in Council authorising manœuvres to be sent to the county, borough, district, and parish councils of the area affected not less than six months before the Order is to come into force. Under subsection (3) of Clause I of this Bill, this period of six months is reduced to four, in cases where the draft is sent out before the 30th of April in any year.
There is another provision which really causes enormous embarrassment. As your Lordships know, under the Military Manœuvres Act, 1897, there is a Military Manœuvres Commission, which is not military but is appointed by the local bodies, and to which the Secretary of State appoints a certain number of civilians, always less in number than those elected by the representative bodies. That Commission says where within the scheduled area the troops are not to go. As the law at present stands, it says that you are not to go upon certain ground which might cause inconvenience to the public. That is quite Tight. But there are certain places where the Military Manœuvres Commission cannot allow the troops to go even where no harm is done. These places include all plantations and woods. The result is sometimes disastrous. Nobody wishes the Commission to schedule a plantation where damage would be done, but I remember at three o'clock one morning watching manœvres at sunrise, and I saw a brigade come up and attack an entrenched position, and even with my lay eyes and inexperience 272 I saw that the attack which had been ordered was an attack which could only end in the utter destruction of the attacking force. I asked the Inspector-General who was with me why this was. Had I judged wrongly "No," he said, "my language about it would be very much stronger than yours." These troops could have come up protected by fire from the woods on each side, and it would have been a perfectly legitimate military operation, but the Military Manœuvres Act does not allow anybody to go into woods under any circumstances. The result is we never can carry out effective military manœeuvres. What we suggest is that, subject to the careful control of the Military Manœuvres Commission—and I again remind your Lordships that this is a civilian Commission—permission may be given to operate in certain woods and parks which are at present shut to the military.
I come now to a point in which my noble friend Lord Montagu of Beaulieu is interested. The existing Act gives power to two justices to order roads in the manœuvre areas to be closed for not more than twenty-four hours, or, in the case of main roads, not more than twelve hours, but the procedure for obtaining such an order is very cumbrous. It requires seven days to get such an order. What we are anxious for is that we should be at liberty to apply to the justices for authority without the seven days elapsing, and the provisions as to notice are in this Bill made more elastic. The time during which the use of main roads may be suspended is not to exceed six hours in any one day; and in the case of main roads where there would be inconvenience to the public we should not be likely under any circumstances to apply to the justices to make an order. But we are tied up unduly by the provisions of the Military Manœuvres Act as they already stand, and we ask to be freed from them.
There is another clause which is new. On various occasions attempts have been made by persons whose lands or water supplies had been made "authorised" lands or supplies to escape from their liability to have them actually used during the manœuvres by putting up notices suggesting that entry on the lands or use of the supplies was unlawful. Clause 4 imposes on persons who act in this manner liability to a fine not exceeding £5, which. 273 is the penalty for certain offences under the existing Act.
Then there is a Scottish clause. On the Manœuvres Commission in England you have to have representatives of the county and other large boroughs in the area over which the Commission operates. When the Bill was passing through Parliament a clause was put in for Scotland, by which every royal burgh, parliamentary burgh, or police burgh, was put in the same position as an English county borough. The result is that in Scotland the Manœuvres Commissions have become quite unwieldy. Nobody wants this, and we propose to alter it. These are the main provisions of the Bill. I think they are not very onerous; they certainly would enormously arid to the value of the machinery of the Military Manœvres Act of 1897, which I think was a child of the noble Marquess's opposite. That Act has worked extraordinarily well, but we have outgrown it, and what we want is to adapt the Act to the circumstances which experience has shown us we ought to deal with.

§ LORD MONTAGU OF BEAULIEU
My Lords, I do not wish to delay the House on the Second Reading of this Bill, with the general principles of which I am entirely in harmony, but there are two or three points about it which possibly in Committee may be arranged. One is with regard to main roads. I do not think the noble Viscount's advisers have quite realised how important main roads are. Take the Great North-road, the Bath-road, and about thirteen roads of that nature. These, I think, might very easily be exempted from the operation of the Bill by inserting a schedule to that effect at the end. It would be, I submit, almost as unfair to interrupt the traffic on the Great North-road as it would be to stop the traffic on the Great Northern Railway at some point between, say, York and London. There is another point, affecting the New Forest. In the case of the New Forest there have always been words inserted in Military Manœuvres Acts defining the Verderers Court as the authority to declare it a manœuvre area. Possibly between now and the Committee stage there may be something done by the noble Viscount on his side which may lead to a reassurance on these points.

§ THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE
My Lords, I have no doubt that this Bill contains points which may be conveniently examined when we arrive at the Committee stage, but I rise simply for the purpose of welcoming the Bill as a whole and expressing the opinion, which I think will be generally shared in the House, that the proposals of His Majesty's Government for strengthening the hands of the military authorities in connection with manœuvres are reasonable proposals. In fact, in our view this Bill is an overdue Bill, and some change of the law such as that now contemplated might well have been made before now. The proposal that leave should be given to use the same area in certain circumstances more than once in live years, with the consent of the county council; the proposal that the notice given to the local authorities should be shortened from six to four months; the proposal that the proceedings for closing roads should be rendered less cumbrous; and the proposal that the Military Manœuvres Commission should be given leave to include lands enclosed as woods and plantations within the manœuvring area—all these are, to my mind, distinctly legitimate amplifications of the powers now given to those, responsible for the conduct of these very valuable instructional proceedings.
In connection with the question of including woods and plantations within the manœuvring area, I am well aware that there has been a good deal of suspicion and heart-burning in the past. I am, perhaps, entitled to be heard as a witness, because I have filled the office which the noble Viscount opposite now fills; and not only that, but I happen to live in a part of the country which is within measurable distance of Salisbury Plain and therefore gets perhaps more than its share i of manœuvring. And if the House will not think me too egotistical, I will add that I was Lord Cardwell's Under-Secretary when the first manœuvres were instituted, and I have a lively recollection of the difficulties we then had to encounter in coming to terms with those controlling large areas within the districts which were to be used for the manœeuvres. But there has undoubtedly been a considerable movement I of public opinion in favour of giving greater opportunities to the troops to make use of the surface of the country without restriction and reservation, and I attribute 275 that change, which I think is a most fortunate one, to the fact that not only have the military authorities always shown themselves most courteous and considerate to those with whom they were brought into contact on these occasions, but that the conduct of the troops themselves has, so far as I am aware of these things, been beyond all praise and has really given hardly any occasion for public or private complaint. The general feeling, I think, in the part of England that I know best is that the people are glad to see the troops, and glad to have them back again when they have been in the country once.
I think the noble Viscount was also quite justified in dwelling upon the fact that this Bill places us in the hands of Commissioners, who are a body not by any means purely military in their complexion, but composed partly of a military and partly of a civilian element, and so composed that the civilian element preponderates in numerical strength. We have the less hesitation in supporting this Bill because, as the noble Viscount truly said, a great many of the proposals which it contains are to be found in the Bill which the late Government introduced and. were unable to proceed with, I presume owing to the difficulties anticipated by the then Secretary of State in another place. But I think, as I said just now, that there is a great support from public opinion, a support that seems to me to increase with every year that passes, and that the general feeling in the country now is that the efficiency of the troops must come before all other considerations, and that any sacrifices which individuals are called upon to make in order that their training may be satisfactory are, after all, a comparatively small matter, and not sacrifices which any of us need hesitate to make. I therefore gladly give my support to the noble Viscount's Bill.