Lords Sitting of 6 August 1913

EXPIRING LAWS CONTINUANCE BILL.
FOREIGN JURISDICTION BILL.
Brought from the Commons.
LANARKSHIRE (MIDDLE WARD DISTRICT) WATER ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL.
Brought from the Commons; read 1a; to be printed; and (pursuant to the Private Legislation Procedure (Scotland) Act, 1899), deemed to have been read 2a (The Earl of Craven), and reported from the Committee. (No. 160.)

McBRIDE'S DIVORCE BILL. [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons, agreed to, with an Amendment: The said Amendment to be considered To-morrow.

WATNEY, COMBE, REID AND COMPANY BILL. [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons, agreed to, with an Amendment: The said Amendment considered, and agreed to.
GAS AND WATER ORDERS CONFIRMATION (No. 1) BILL. [H.L.]
PIER AND HARBOUR PROVISIONAL ORDERS (NO. 3) BILL. [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons, agreed to, with Amendments: The said Amendments to be considered To-morrow.
ASCOT AUTHORITY BILL. [H.L.]
EBBW VALE WATER BILL. [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons, agreed to, with Amendments: The said Amendments considered, and agreed to.
IPSWICH DOCK BILL. [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons, agreed to, with Amendments.
LEICESTER CORPORATION BILL. [H.L.]
LEITH HARBOUR AND DOCKS BILL. [H.L.]
LONDON AND SOUTH WESTERN RAILWAY BILL. [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons, agreed to, with Amendments: The said Amendments considered, and agreed to.

LONDON ELECTRIC RAILWAY BILL. [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons agreed to, with Amendments.
NORTH BRITISH RAILWAY BILL. [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons, agreed to, with Amendments: The said Amendments considered, and agreed to.
READING CORPORATION BILL. [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons, agreed to, with Amendments.
ROCHFORD RURAL DISTRICT COUNCIL BILL. [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons, agreed to, with Amendments: The said Amendments considered, and agreed to.
SOUTHEND-ON-SEA CORPORATION BILL. [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons, agreed to, with Amendments.

DOVER HARBOUR BILL.
Returned from the Commons, with the Amendment, agreed to.
DERBY CORPORATION BILL.
SOUTHPORT CORPORATION BILL.
Returned from the Commons, with the Amendments, agreed to.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 13) BILL.
(Stockport Order.)
Reported from the Select Committee, without amendment.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 13) BILL.
(Manchester Order.)
Reported, without amendment.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 13) BILL.
Re-committed to a Committee of the Whole House To-morrow.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDER (No. 18) BILL.
Committed for Monday next.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDER (No. 15) BILL.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDER (No. 12) BILL.
Reported, with amendments, and re-committed to a Committee of the Whole House To-marrow.
RIBBLE FISHERIES PROVISIONAL ORDER BILL.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT PROVISIONAL ORDER (No. 22) BILL.
TRADE BOARDS ACT PROVISIONAL ORDER BILL.
Reported, without amendment, and re-committed to a Committee of the Whole House To-morrow.
WESTERN VALLEYS (MONMOUTHSHIRE) RAILLESS ELECTRIC TRACTION BILL.
Reported, with amendments.

ARIGNA VALLEY RAILWAY BILL. [H.L.]
THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES informed the House that the Promoters do not intend to proceed further with the Bill: Ordered, That the Bill be not further proceeded with.
METROPOLITAN ELECTRIC TRAMWAYS (RAILLESS TRACTION) BILL.
Read 3a, with the Amendments: Further Amendments made: Bill passed, and returned to the Commons.
LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL (GENERAL POWERS) BILL.
Read 3a, with the Amendments.
LORD LEIGH*LORD LEIGH moved to leave out Clause 15, which ran as follows—
Agreements as to ambulance services.
15. The Council on the one hand and the Managers of the Metropolitan Asylums District the Port of London Authority the Metropolitan Borough Councils and Boards of Guardians of Poor Law Unions within or adjoining the Administrative County of London or any of such authorities on the other hand may enter into and carry into effect agreements for the working and use by the Council or any of such authorities for the purposes of the ambulance service authorised by the Metropolitan Ambulances Act 1909 of ambulances lands premises and appliances used by the Council or any of such authorities in connection with ambulance services provided by them for purposes other than those of the said Act and for utilising for the purposes of the ambulance service authorised by the said Act the services of any persons employed by the Council or any of such authorities.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, venture to express the hope that Clause 15 of this Bill will not be sanctioned by your Lordships. The clause refers to ambulances for London. The whole question was thoroughly debated in your Lordships' House in the year 1909; but that is four years ago, and I would like to be allowed to recapitulate very briefly a few of the salient facts. At present in cases of accident cabs or hand litters have chiefly to be relied upon for removal to a hospital or to a home in place of proper horse-drawn, motor, or electric ambulances. This entails in many cases, like that of a broken leg, added torture to the torture inevitable in the case of such an accident. A service of rapid ambulances is established in many of the chief cities of Great Britain and Ireland and also in many of the principal cities abroad, such as Paris and Vienna, cities of far less size than London. The model ambulances which, perhaps, show the way to the whole world are those to be seen in all the principal cities of the United States of America; and of late years a most efficient electric ambulance service has been established in the City of London. Yet in the county of London these mediaeval methods still obtain.
In 1909 it was decided in your Lordships' House that the London County Council should be authorised to establish and maintain a rapid ambulance service for cases of accident or illness other than infectious disease within the county of London, exclusive of the City. No other local authority is authorised to expend money or to levy a rate for such a purpose. The London County Council have, however, neglected to provide such a service, which is notoriously required. The County Council have recently begun to exercise their statutory powers by maintaining at a cost of £300 a year a motor ambulance generously presented to the Hampstead and North-West London Hospital by the Grand Duke Michael of Russia. Last November a recommendation was made to the London County Council to seek for further legislation which should tend to enable the Council to pay in aid and use the various conveyances possessed by the sixty different local authorities—namely, the Metropolitan Asylums Board, the Port of London authority, the twenty-eight borough councils, and the thirty boards of guardians—and to claim these as constituting the ambulance service which

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Parliament had authorised the Council to provide.
The clause which I am moving to delete is very obscure. It is not an amendment of the Act of 1909, which was a Public Act, while this is a Private Bill. It does not, presumably, authorise any expenditure out of the rates by the authorities named for the purposes of the Act of 1909. It would enable the County Council to use the smallpox and fever ambulances of the Metropolitan Asylums Board, thereby destroying all confidence in the ambulances used in the case of street accidents; and it would permit old horse cabs provided by boards of guardians for the conveyance of paupers to be used to cope with work similar to that with which motor ambulances are dealing so efficiently in the City of London. It appears from a report made to the County Council in November last that of the thirty boards of guardians twenty stated that their conveyances were not available for public use, and of the twenty-eight borough councils only three possessed any conveyances at all, while the Port of London authority stated that they had no more conveyances than were adequate for their own purpose. Now that it seems probable that St. George's Hospital will be removed from its present site it is more essential still that there should be rapid ambulances to remove urgent cases to hospital. The County Council admitted that they had not consulted the various authorities in seeking these powers. I trust that I have said enough to show how totally inadequate the proposed scheme, if such it can be called, would prove if ever put into practice. It is most essential that there should be not more than one authority in this matter, and that authority should be the London County Council. In this case centralisation is essential. I trust that your Lordships will not allow Clause 15 to pass.
Amendment moved—
Leave out Clause l5.—(Lord Leigh.)
THE EARL OF MAYO: My Lords, I desire to support the noble Lord's Amendment to delete this clause. It comes as a shock to hear that if one is run over in the streets of London by a motor-'bus, one is not only likely to be smashed up, but may possibly be conveyed to hospital in an ambulance that had been used for a fever
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patient, so that during one's period of getting over the accident one might develop some dangerous fever. As the City of London possesses a service of motor ambulances, and they are a great success, I do not see that there is any reason why motor ambulances should not be provided throughout the whole of the county of London. It is much more desirable that there should be one authority providing a proper ambulance service than that the County Council should have to go to the numerous local authorities and arrange with them in regard to a matter which affects so seriously the millions of people in London. I hope that your Lordships will delete this clause, and that eventually the question may be settled for the county of London in the same way as it has been settled in the City of London, where things in this direction are running in a satisfactory manner.
LORD WELBY: My Lords, I am glad that the noble Lord opposite has moved the omission of this clause. One thing which has been established to the satisfaction of all persons acquainted with the administration of London is the absolute necessity of a good ambulance service, and I think that all parties are agreed that whoever is the authority to manage the ambulance service for London, it should be one authority. A committee was appointed by the Home Office some years ago to report on the subject, and they recommended that the Metropolitan Asylums Board should be the body entrusted with the management of the ambulance service. I am anxious to see one authority undertake this work, and I agree with the noble Lord opposite that the London County Council is the best body for the purpose. I am not maintaining that the London County Council alone has a claim to manage this service. I should be content if a good central body such as the Metropolitan Asylums Board, if the House thought proper, were made the authority to carry it out. There can be no question as to the urgent need of an improved ambulance service, for in two years the number of accidents in London has risen from 16,800 to something like 19,000. Those figures bring home the necessity of having an efficient ambulance service for the Metropolis, and all the information which has been put before the public on the subject shows and enforces that necessity. I see no reason whatever why one

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body should not be constituted for the purpose. But the suggestion contained in the clause which the noble Lord opposite has moved to delete appears to me to be absolutely unworkable and unmanageable. A scheme whereby the London County Council should agree with something like sixty bodies for the use of these ambulances seems to me a ridiculous scheme to put forward. Those of us who have served on the London County Council or on other municipal bodies know the extreme difficulty there is in getting local authorities to agree on any matter of administration of this kind, and it is on that ground, above all, that I trust your Lordships will agree with the Amendment and delete this clause in order that further consideration may be given to the subject. I am convinced that if this clause passes, instead of its ending in providing a decent ambulance service, it will only prove a further procrastination of this very important matter.
THE EARL OF DUNMORE: The noble Lord who has moved the deletion of this clause contends, I understand, that the London County Council should set up a separate and complete ambulance service of their own provided by the ratepayers of London. I am not at all sure that the ratepayers of London will be as grateful to the noble Lord as he appears to imagine. I would point out that there is nothing in this clause which will in any way remove any obligations which have been imposed on the London County Council under the Metropolitan Ambulances Act, 1909. The history of the matter is this. In 1906 the London County Council sought powers in their General Powers Bill to set up and maintain an experimental ambulance service for London. It was to consist of only two stations. The cost of those two stations was calculated to be in the first year £5,200, and in subsequent years it would involve an annual charge of £3,000, and each of those stations it was admitted would only serve an area within a radius of a mile or of between one mile and two miles, so that I think the House can judge what a very heavy expenditure would be entailed if the London County Council were to set up all the stations which would be required to meet the needs of London under the scheme advocated by Lord Leigh. The powers which were sought by the London County Council on that occasion were strongly objected to by the Home Office, who advocated at the time
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the extension of the existing service provided by the Police, and the proposal was subsequently thrown out by a Select Committee of your Lordships' House.
This question has not been, as Lord Welby rather suggested, hurried through. It has been fully considered for a long time by the London County Council, and this clause is the result of very careful thought and consideration. The proposal is supported by the Metropolitan Borough Councils of Bermondsey, Bethnal Green, Finsbury, Hammersmith, Hampstead, Lambeth, Paddington, Wandsworth, Woolwich, and by many other boroughs as well as by the local authority of the City of Westminster. Lord Mayo seemed to fear that persons meeting with accidents in the streets of London stood the risk of being conveyed to hospital in an ambulance in which there had previously been a smallpox or fever patient. He referred, I presume, to the ambulances of the Metropolitan Asylums Board. A great many of the ambulances belonging to the Asylums Board are reserved at the present moment for non-infectious cases. And as regards Lord Leigh's suggestion as to mediæval ambulance methods, I would remind him that the ambulances of the Metropolitan Asylums Board are all motor vehicles.
In 1912 there were 11,500 non-infectious cases dealt with by the Metropolitan Asylums Board. I think that disposes of the argument that there would be any danger to the public in the co-ordination of the different existing ambulance methods. This clause, as I said just now, does not remove any of the obligations which were imposed on the London County Council by the Act of 1909. All that it does is to enable the County Council to attempt to utilise, as far as may prove to be practicable, the existing ambulance services of London; and if experience shows that this co-ordinated service is inadequate to meet the needs of London, it will be open to the London County Council either to further supplement these services or to set up and maintain a separate and distinct ambulance service of their own as suggested by the noble Lord. They can do that under the Act of 1909. In fact this clause does not give increased power to the London County Council so much as it does to the other local authorities. The London County Council could enter into agreements without this Bill. Until this co-ordinated

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service has been proved to be insufficient for the needs of London I protest against a great waste of public money in setting up what would amount to a very costly scheme which would in all probability prove to be in no way required.
THE PAYMASTER-GENERAL (LORD STRACHIE): My Lords, I only intervene to state the view taken by the Local Government Board upon this question, and I think I can best do so by quoting from the Report of the Local Government Board made in the usual way to the House of Commons Committee when that Committee were considering this Bill. The Local Government Board then stated that the County Council had communicated with them on the question of utilising the ambulances of the Metropolitan Asylums Board, the Port of London Authority, and the other local authorities in London for the purpose of maintaining an ambulance service for London, and the Board had informed the Council that they approved of the principle of a united ambulance service for London but advised that legislation would be necessary for the purpose which the London County Council had in view. What the London County Council desire to do at the present moment is to see whether they cannot co-ordinate the services of the local authorities, including that of the Metropolitan Asylums Board, which authority has been able to deal in three years with 5,000 non-infectious cases in ambulances used only for non-infectious cases, showing that there is no risk, as Lord Mayo seemed to think, of a person who was knocked down by a motor-'bus being conveyed to hospital in an ambulance which had previously carried fever patients. It is clear that this is not at all the idea of the London County Council. The Local Government Board gather that the Council's desire is to save the rates, and I think the majority of your Lordships will agree that it is desirable, if the County Council can get an efficient service for £4,000 or £5,000 a year extra, not to go to the expense of £20,000 or £30,000 a year in order to have a separate ambulance service.
It seems to me rather late in the day to raise this objection to Clause 15. The Bill went through the House of Commons absolutely unopposed as regards Clause 15. As your Lordships know, there are many
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active members of the London County Council sitting on both sides in the House of Commons, and if there had been any serious objection to this clause surely objection would have been taken there. Again, this Bill has passed its Third Reading to-day in your Lordships' House without any objection being taken up to this moment. Therefore I think it would be rather unfortunate at this stage to omit this clause, which represents the views of the various local authorities concerned, and refuse the opportunity of seeing whether the clause will work. The clause would not prejudge any further action on the part of the London County Council if this scheme should prove unwise, but it will give an opportunity to the County Council to try this scheme, and if it is found to be unworkable there will be an opportunity during the next session of Parliament to deal with the question on a larger scale if desirable.
THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (THE EARL OF DONOUGHMORE): My Lords, I desire to add very little to what the noble Lord behind me (Lord Strachie) has said, because the circumstances are such that he and I look at this question from a similar point of view. The Parliamentary history of this clause is as the noble Lord has described it. This clause was unopposed in the House of Commons and it was unopposed in your Lordships' House, although the Bill did not lack opposition on other points. Going a little further back than the Parliamentary history of the matter, the noble Lord opposite (Lord Leigh) can congratulate himself that he has been consistent on this question for a number of years. I have this afternoon read the debate which took place in 1906, and I find that the noble Lord then advocated what he advocates to-day. Of course, he realises, as I realise, that the Act of 1909 largely arose out of the discussion in 1906. The Act of 1909 is so drafted that the London County Council could set up an ambulance service for the whole of London irrespective of any other authorities. I only refer to 1906 to remind your Lordships that the proposal of that year was thrown out by a Committee over which I think the noble Earl, Lord Camperdown, presided. I do not know why that Committee threw out that proposal, but I have been reminded of some of the estimates that were then formed. The proposal in 1906 was to set

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up two ambulance stations only, and they would have involved an initial expenditure of £5,000 and an annual expenditure of £3,000. Your Lordships will therefore realise that the setting up of a large chain of ambulance stations throughout London is a very large question financially, and I am sure we cannot blame the London County Council for proceeding with great caution in the matter. Surely it is important to notice that although Parliament did in 1909 give power to the London County Council to set up ambulances, the Act of 1909 will not be affected by this clause in any shape or form. On the other hand, the Act of 1909 is really largely amplified, if not improved, by this clause. Because what does the Act of 1909 say? It enacts that—
"It shall be lawful for the London County Council to establish and maintain—
that is the scheme, I understand, which the noble Lord who has moved this Amendment desires to see carried out—
"or to contribute towards the cost of or otherwise to aid in establishing or maintaining."
From that I read that everything that the London County Council desire to do under this clause they could do already under the Act of 1909. But the obstacle in their way is that the other authorities have no power to agree with them. It may at some time be necessary for the London County Council to organise a big ambulance scheme for the whole of London, but they have come to the conclusion that there is a certain amount of wasted effort now in London which they could make use of, which Parliament has given them the power to make use of in the Act of 1909, but which the other authorities are not at liberty to place at their disposal. Surely it is not unreasonable, knowing as we do that this is an expensive matter, to progress step by step, and to allow the London County Council to make use of any available effort, if they can find any such, in the hands of other authorities before they embark upon the provision of an ambulance station for every district all over Greater London. That is the position as it strikes me. It seems to me not an unreasonable power that the London County Council are asking for. Lord Welby referred to the difficulty of local authorities coming to an agreement upon such a matter, but surely it is not necessary to come to an agreement with every local authority. If the London County Council can agree with one
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authority, they can, so to speak, earmark the small area which that authority can serve and so provide the public with this accommodation. It is not, therefore, an unreasonable proposition that these local authorities, none of whom has opposed this clause either in the House of Commons or in your Lordships' House, should be given this power, and for that reason I should be sorry to see this enabling clause struck out of the Bill.
THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: My Lords, there is no doubt something extremely attractive in the idea of an extensive ambulance service maintained by the London County Council and covering the whole of the vast area with which that authority is concerned. But in these matters we must, I think, pay some heed to the question of expense, and in spite of the high authority of my noble friend Lord Welby I venture to think that in this case the argument of expense is deserving of consideration. We have been told this evening that to carry out the kind of scheme which my noble friend behind me has in his mind would cost £25,000 a year. It would be a very strong order to impose that expenditure upon the ratepayers of London except in case of proved necessity. Now is there proved necessity in this case? This clause, as the Lord Chairman has told the House, is an enabling clause. It enables, on the one hand, the London County Council to do what is proposed in the terms of the clause and in the Act of 1909; while on the other hand the County Council have power, if they find it necessary, to set up an ambulance system of their own. What we are asked to do is to allow the London County Council to see what can be done in co-operation with these other bodies, but without in any way impairing the discretion of the County Council eventually to resort to a system of their own. In these cases your Lordships should hesitate before you strike out a clause in a Private Bill which has passed the ordeal of both Houses, and in this particular instance I do not think that sufficient case has been made out for taking so strong a step.
LORD LEIGH: In the circumstances I beg to withdraw my Amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Bill passed, and returned to the Commons.

EXPIRING LAWS CONTINUANCE BILL.
Read 1a; to be printed; and to be read 2a To-morrow (The Lord Strachie). (No. 158.)
FOREIGN JURISDICTION BILL.
Read 1a; to be printed; and to be read 2a To-morrow (The Lord Privy Seal (M. Crewe)). (No. 159.)

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.
THE EARL OF CAMPERDOWN: My Lords, before your Lordships proceed to the Public Business which appears on the Paper I wish to call attention to some of the Bills which it is proposed to discuss. I do not refer to the first four Orders on the Paper which stand in the name of Lord Granard, the Lord Chancellor, and Lord Dunmore. But with regard to the six Bills which follow I desire to call your Lordships' attention to the circumstances under which they appear on the Paper. Those Bills came to this House, I believe, last night, and it was moved that they be printed. But not one of those six Bills had been circulated this morning, and at two o'clock this afternoon not one of them was in print. I submit to your Lordships that that is not treating this House with proper respect, because this House is, it has frequently been said, a House whose duty it is to revise Bills. In fact, that is supposed to be our main duty. I ask, How can we revise Bills which we have not seen? That we should be asked to read a second time to-day Bills which came to this House only last night is, I venture to think, rather a farce. One of these six Bills, the Local Government (Adjustments) Bill, is a Bill of some importance with regard to which something will be said. I do not know what is in the other five. But I venture to think that a Bill such as the one to which I have just referred cannot be said to be a Bill of no public importance; it is a Bill of considerable public importance. I am speaking not merely with regard to the six Bills which appear on the Paper. I cannot help anticipating that we are going to have a perfect avalanche of Bills, many of them important Bills, in the course of next week which it is expected that your Lordships will discuss and revise. In these circumstances it is impossible for your Lordships to do your duty as a revising House. And with regard to important Bills, how is it possible
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in this short time to amend them and properly consider them? Fault is frequently found with this House on the ground that it does not do its duty. My Lords, it is the Government that are to blame. They are to blame for this reason, that they appear to pay more regard to the quantity of legislation than to the quality of it. We have plenty of instances of that in the large number of Amendment Bills which are always found necessary. But it seems to me that to pursue this practice of asking the House to read Bills a second time which have not even been printed is placing this House in a very unfair position.
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL AND SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INDIA (THE MARQUESS OF CREWE): My Lords, I think we must all feel that the complaint of the noble Earl is not an altogether unfamiliar one at this period of the session. I can hardly remember the approach of the last week or two of a session when a similar complaint has not been made; and although I agree in the general proposition that it is not fair to submit to this House for consideration Bills which there has been no opportunity of studying, assuming those Bills to be of a kind which require any degree of study, yet the noble Earl's complaint has been of a somewhat wide and sweeping character. I think it will be found that the smaller activities of the House of Commons during the present session have been of a very useful and practical character. The small measures which are now coming up to us represent in each case a distinct, though not an ambitious, legislative improvement.. I am not altogether acquainted with the exact hour at which the six measures on which the noble Earl's complaint is based were obtainable by those who desired to obtain them. My impression is that at any rate some of them—the Bills of my noble and learned friend on the Woolsack, for instance—although not generally circulated were obtainable at the Bill Office at a tolerably early hour this morning.
I am not quite certain what course the noble Earl would desire us to pursue. We cannot, of course, interfere with House of Commons business in a direction which would cause these generally unopposed measures, which are taken at eleven p.m. or later in another place, to appear here before the closing weeks of the session.

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Nor am I quite certain whether the noble Earl desires to convey some reprobation on the printing department of this House for not producing these Bills at an earlier hour in the morning. We have known cases in our experience, as the noble Earl must well remember, where it has been generally suggested that needless delay has taken place in the printing department of the House and the serious attention of that department has been called to the fact. Whether the noble Earl desires that that should be done again in this case I am not quite clear, or whether he desires simply to content himself with blaming His Majesty's Government for not doing what I venture to think is the impossible—namely, postponing for three or four days at this period of the session each measure as it comes up. I am afraid, therefore, that I have no nostrum to offer which can be regarded as a complete cure for this complaint, which, as I venture to think, always has been an annual one. I do not blame the noble Earl for drawing attention to the fact, which does cause us from time to time inconvenience. But in the particular circumstances and having regard to the nature of these particular Bills, I cannot think that on this occasion the grievance can be regarded by the House as very serious.
THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE: My Lords, there can be no doubt that my noble friend behind me had a very strong case to put before the House. Our treatment in respect of these six Bills is almost scandalous, and the noble Marquess opposite really took no pains to defend it. The noble Marquess, of course, had ready to hand a very convenient rejoinder, and one which has been very often made use of on similar occasions. He told us that these things had constantly happened before. His argument virtually was that we were so much inured to suffering of this kind that we need not very much mind it. But may I respectfully point out to the noble Marquess that circumstances have changed a good deal since the days when these protests used to be made and these defences attempted. In those days your Lordships still had substantial powers of dealing with legislation, and having real powers it was, perhaps, not unnatural that we should not be quite so tenacious in regard to our rights of revision. But the substance of power has been taken away from us, and we have been left with nothing but the right of
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revision. The burden of your song now is that this House has the right of revision, and that it is a real right and one which ought to be insisted upon. Therefore the noble Marquess must not be surprised if we are more extreme to mark occurrences of this kind than we were.
As to the remedy, I confess I am almost as much puzzled as the noble Marquess opposite. These Bills, so far as I am aware, are not of a very contentious character, and I doubt whether your Lordships would be prepared by way of protest to say that they should not pass this House during the few days which stand between us and the close of the session. But I think it would be a fair thing, if my noble friend presses his objection, that the Second Readings should take place let us say tomorrow or next week. On the other band, my noble friend having made his protest may be content with that protest, reserving to himself, as indeed we must all reserve to ourselves, the right of saving what we may have to say upon these Bills at a future stage when we have had time to consider them.
LORD BALFOUR OF BURLEIGH: My Lords, with regard to the last Bills on the Paper, we are asked to make a precedent to-day which I never heard of before. I saw those Bills down on the Paper and I came to the House and tried to get copies of them, and even at half-past four this afternoon, after the House had begun to sit, copies were still unprocurable. I think that is a very real scandal, and I certainly suggest that in regard to the last two Bills—the Education (Scotland) Bill and the Education (Scotland) (Glasgow Electoral Divisions) Bill—it would be much better not to make a precedent by passing them to-day. They are short Bills and I have read them now, and I do not know that there is any objection to them, but precedents are always used against this House. I say that it is monstrous to ask us to give a Second Reading to-day to Bills of which we could not get copies at half-past four or later this afternoon, and I do not think it has ever been suggested before that we should give a Bill a Second Reading in these circumstances.
As to the Bankruptcy (Scotland) Consolidation Bill, which is to be taken to-day,

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and the Mental Deficiency Bill which is down for to-morrow, we have had very short notice about both of them. The Mental Deficiency Bill is an extraordinarily intricate measure, and has been the subject of a great deal of change in the other House. It is very difficult for those of us who are living in London and have Scottish correspondents to really get the points of any Amendment moved in such circumstances. What one asks is that the Bill as printed for this House should be subject to comment, but what happens is that one or other of the editions of the Bill as passed through the House of Commons is sent to us, but when the Bill comes up here the paging and lining of the suggested Amendments are entirely different and you have not time to send the Bill to Scotland as printed for this House to get put right perhaps a simple suggestion which it is desired to be made. It is hard on those of us who come from Scotland that this hurry should take place at the last period of the session, because you cannot get under forty-eight hours after a Bill as amended is reprinted a suggestion from a technical adviser in Scotland. The Bankruptcy (Scotland) Consolidation Bill consists of 200 clauses. It is supposed to be a Consolidation Bill, but my opinion is that it goes beyond consolidation. One of the most difficult things to check is whether a Bill is consolidation purely, or whether it contains amendment as well as consolidation. Very often it is convenient that there should be amendment along with consolidation. This House has machinery which was set up by the ex-Lord Chancellor, Lord Loreburn, by which there is a Joint Committee to go carefully into these Consolidation Bills. I understand that the Bankruptcy (Scotland) Consolidation Bill has not gone through that machinery. I say it is absolutely impossible for those not skilled in the law, like myself, to even attempt to consider a Bill of 200 clauses; and even when suggestions on technical points are sent up to one from friends in Scotland, how can one judge whether or not they should be brought up on a matter of this kind? I am told that some really hard cases could be shown to arise under the proposed provisions of this Bankruptcy Bill. I say that we have not had time in which adequately to discuss the Bill, and I join most heartily in the protest which my noble friend Lord Camperdown has made.
THE FIRST COMMISSIONER OF WORKS (EARL BEAUCHAMP): With regard to the last two Bills mentioned by the noble Earl—the Education (Scotland) Bill and the Education (Scotland) (Glasgow Electoral Divisions) Bill—I can assure him that I have no objection to taking them to-morrow in order that your Lordships may have time to consider them between now and then. We fully admit the existence of this grievance, but I venture to think that the people against whom the criticism should be directed are really those who are concerned with printing and circulating these Bills. We have said this before, and it really is so. Yesterday when these Bills had been read a first time, we put them down at once during the course of the sitting for Second Reading to-day. As your Lordships know, that must be done during the sitting of the House; and when that was done we had no reason to suppose that the printers would not print and would not circulate the Bills, which are neither long nor complicated, and which in the ordinary way would be printed and circulated in another place without the least difficulty of any sort or kind whatever. There is, I think, some difference in the way in which our printers treat us, which is a legitimate subject of complaint. But as far as the Bills which are down in my name are concerned, I should have no objection whatever to putting them off till another occasion. I repeat that if we had had any reason to suppose, at the moment when I put them down for Second Reading for to-day, that they would not have been printed and circulated immediately by the printers, I should have taken that into consideration and put them down for a later date.
VISCOUNT ST. ALDWYN: What the noble Earl has said with regard to the unnecessary delay in circulating these Bills is perfectly true, but if he will inquire a little further I think he will find that it is not due to any wickedness on the part of the printers, but rather on the part of the Treasury, who do not allow the printers for this House such good terms as they do in the case of the House of Commons printers. I have had occasion to inquire into this matter, and that, I think, is what really is at the bottom of it. If the noble Earl would persuade his colleagues at the Treasury to take the necessary measures, I think your Lordships would have no cause for complaint in the future.
LORD SOUTHWARK: As this question has been raised, there is another subject to which I want to draw your Lordships' attention, with regard to the printing of the Debates in your Lordships' House. In the House of Commons the Official Report of the Debate of the evening before is printed and circulated the following morning, but I notice that there is a difference between the House of Lords and the House of Commons in this respect, and that the Official Report of our Debates is circulated a week afterwards. There are occasions when a Debate extends over two nights—very rare I admit—when one would like to read the following morning what had taken place the previous day, but that at present one cannot do. If your Lordships are going to take the question of printing into consideration, I suggest that this is a matter which should be dealt with at the same time. With regard to what the noble Earl said as to the printers, perhaps the delay is not so much due to the printers as to those who give the printers instructions. I should suppose that there ought to be no more difficulty in getting the printing done for this House than there is in the case of the other House.
THE EARL OF CAMPERDOWN: Perhaps your Lordships will allow me to say a word in reply to one or two questions which the noble Marquess put to me. First, with regard to the question just put from the Back Bench opposite, it was asked why the Debates in this House are not printed and circulated the following day, as they are in the case of the House of Commons. That question has been raised before in this House, and the reason is this, that proofs of the speeches are sent round to the Peers who have made them in order to give them an opportunity of revising them.
It is all very well in regard to there Bills to take refuge behind the printers, as the noble Earl did. The noble Marquess asked whether I meant to blame the printers. No, I did not. I want to blame the Government, and for this reason—that a large number of Bills, not merely Bills like these but important Bills, are showered upon this House by the Government in the last ten days of the session. For the last six years I myself—and I believe the same may be said of many of your Lordships—have very nearly eaten my Christmas dinner in London because of
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the inordinate amount of legislation which the Government insisted on cramming into the end of the session, and they then blame your Lordships if it is not all passed. I shall content myself with the protest I have made, and personally I shall not object to proceeding with the Second Reading of the Bills on the Paper. I may, however, find it necessary hereafter to renew my protest, and perhaps in a stronger manner.

ELECTRIC LIGHTING PROVISIONAL ORDERS (No. 5) BILL.
Read 3a (according to Order), with the Amendments, and passed, and returned to the Commons.

CONVEYANCING BILL. [H.L.]
[SECOND READING.]
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (VISCOUNT HALDANE): My Lords, after what has just been said I should feel, under ordinary circumstances, very uncomfortable in bringing up this Bill at this period of the session, but in point of fact, whatever criticisms may be made of other Ministers, I at least come out well, because I am bringing up this Bill after it has been printed for a long time, and, Further, with the mere intention of moving the Second Reading and not pressing the Bill further this session. For that course I have an excellent reason. We are dealing in this Bill and in the Real Property Bill with perhaps the most intricate subject to which legislation can be directed, a subject which requires all the consideration that can be given to it; and not only the best expert assistance, but the best expert criticisms when the measure has been placed before the public. It is with a view of placing the measure before your Lordships' House for full consideration, and through this House before the public for expert treatment, that I take this opportunity of asking your Lordships to consider the Bill. My plan is to leave this Bill after the present stage until early next session, and then to introduce it, I hope, effectively, and the Government then propose to proceed with both this Bill and the Real Property Bill. Although these Bills have been prepared with the utmost care which it was within my power to devote to them, and although I have had the best expert assistance, I am well aware that in a

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subject so intricate points will turn up which will require consideration, and therefore we and those who are interested in them approach the consideration of these measures with an open mind.
These Bills embody in the main the results of the work of a very remarkable Royal Commission, I think one of the most effective Royal Commissions that have sat in modern years—I mean the Royal Commission on the Transfer of Land, which was appointed in the summer of 1908 and over which the noble Viscount, Lord St. Aldwyn, presided. That Commission reported in January, 1911. My noble friend Lord Beauchamp was also a member, and there were associated with the two noble Lords to whom I have referred some of the most distinguished experts in the country. The result was a Report which for comprehensiveness and for the amount of investigation it represented has hardly a rival in recent years. That Report has been much discussed, and I think it has met with a remarkable degree of approval. It recommended various improvements of the existing machinery for land transfer, particularly with reference to the registration of transfers, and also it pointed out that it was impossible to make really effective progress in anything like a complete degree unless the title to land itself and the broad principles of the machinery of transfer as between buyer and seller were radically simplified. The Report indicated these points but without pronouncing upon them, and it has been left for us to take action on the Report and to carry out the suggestions, because what was said on this point did not amount to more than suggestions. These suggestions belong to the first of the two Bills on the Paper to-day, the Bill with which I am at this moment dealing, and perhaps it would be convenient that I should explain them.
Dealing with land in the way of simplifying its title and the machinery of its transfer is always a much more difficult thing than it looks. People say, "Why not make land like Stock, so that it can be transferred as simply as Stock?" The answer is that land is not like Stock; it is in its nature totally different. The owner of, say, £100 worth of Stock has no right to any specific thing. What he is entitled to is his dividends and his capital when the concern is wound up, and to a
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certain amount of control in the way of voting during the life of the company in which he holds his Stock. That is a right that lawyers call a right in action; it is not a right to a specific thing. But when you come to land, the situation is quite different. A man owns property with a mansion house on it, or it may be a house in town. That house may be his home; it may be the centre of a great deal of affection; he may have family associations connected with it; he may be, although it be the humblest of dwellings, unwilling to leave it because it is there that the traditions of his boyhood are centred. It may be that it is property on which he sets great store; it may be that it is a property which has altogether unique characteristics in his eyes. Its boundaries may be matters of great particularity; he may have rights over adjacent properties, and adjacent property owners may have rights of way and other rights over his property. The public also may have rights, and there may be all sorts of incidents of which account has to be taken in considering the nature of that property and the title to it. If you go back to the Land Laws of the Roman Empire and even of the Roman Republic you will find provisions just as minute, corresponding to the modern real property titles which exist to-day. That is one thing which differentiates land from Stock, and differentiates it most conclusively.
Then there is another thing. Land is a thing which a man very often likes to keep, and to leave to his wife for life and then to his children, when he is deprived of it by death. It may be that he does not desire to see it much changed. With Stock he has no such interest in the specific thing. Besides these two tendencies there is a third tendency which has made itself very manifest. In early days in this country land was the subject of the feudal system; and not only because of the tenure which existed under the feudal system, but also according to the principles of the Common Law, which were very rigid, the transfer of land was effected by solemn delivery of possession, and the effect of that delivery of possession was to vest the title in the person to whom the possession was delivered irrespective of whether the persons who handed over that possession had a title or not. There were, accordingly, what we call tortious thefts, and to provide for that state of

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things it was enacted that the person who bought the land, even with a bad title, got a title which the Courts at Common Law enforced. Then there was the controlling hand of those who occupied the Office which I now hold. The Chancellors of early days began in effect to deal with people's consciences according as they thought that persons had been acting honestly or not, and where notice was given that a man was getting possession of another man's land the Court of Chancery took hold of that man and said to him, "You are in the position of a trustee for the real owner." That had a disastrous effect on the title to land, and there has grown up a very complicated system, rendered more complicated by the fact that our forefathers would not willingly depart from the principles of the feudal system and of the Common Law. Consequently it was by a multiplicity of ingenious devices that conveyancers escaped from the often absurd consequences of the law. They invented a system of fines and the Statute of Uses and a multitude of other things on which I could dilate, the result being that until recently the law of real property had become still more complicated than it was even in the early days when the absurdities of which I have spoken existed. That is why the difficulty of the modern reformer is very great.
In the last fifty years great progress has been made. I think the greatest progress that was made by any one Minister was that made by Lord Cairns when he introduced in his Settled Land Act the principle that land for the future should be settled but settled only as to its value. The broad principle of Lord Cairns's Act was that the person who had estate in land, it might be only for life, or it might be only an equitable estate through trustees, could turn it into money so long as the money was protected and settled. That was a great and beneficial reform. It had borne fruit, and has been developed by subsequent Chancellors. My noble and learned friend Lord Halsbury himself made very valuable additions to the development of that principle, and to-day the law has been very much simplified even from what it was when Lord Cairns dealt with it in 1882. That is what makes it possible to make an advance to-day. I think your Lordships all feel that land ought to be more simply and more cheaply transferable than it is at the present time, and that the
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various fetters which hamper those who own land, whether it is settled or whether it is not settled, should be struck off. The question is how that can best be done. How far is it possible, not to make land like Stock, because you will never make land like Stock, but to make the machinery for the transfer of land as between the seller and the buyer resemble the machinery by which Stock is sold by one person to another. To that extent, if you confine what you are doing to the relation of seller and buyer, I think it is possible to make a very great simplification in the process of conveyancing, and it is with the simplification of these processes that the first of the two Bills before the House this evening—the Conveyancing Bill—proposes to deal.
The principle of this Bill is not an invention of mine; it was devised by a very eminent conveyancer, the late Mr. Wolstenholme, and is embodied in a form introduced by the late Lord Davey, who introduced a Bill which was read a second time in this House in the year 1897. We have taken the principle of that Bill and remodelled it, and constructed a Bill which aims at making land, as between buyer and seller, as closely resemble Stock as we can manage without endeavouring to accomplish the impossible. What we do is this. Up till now a purchaser's great difficulty is that when he contracts to buy a piece of land and investigates the title before he pays the price and takes the conveyance, he finds himself affected with notice of every kind of equitable estate, and he cannot pay his money because he cannot get a clean title. These estates are the estates of people who have a subordinate interest in the land, it may be in remainder expectant on the determination of the life interest of the person who has the land, or it may be by way of trust on behalf of other persons who have subordinate interests under the title. What we propose is that there shall always be somebody who shall be able to make a clean title to the buyer, subject to this, that the subordinate interests must be carefully protected. They will be protected in two ways—first, as Lord Cairns provided; and, secondly, by a new safeguard, a system of cautions, which will be put upon a proper register provided for the purpose, and will be put on the register by those who have subordinate interests, and by the trustees where there are trustees. In that way everybody will be protected.

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When anybody proposes to buy land, the first thing he will do will be to inquire at the Registry whether they have any cautions recorded. Finding certain cautions he says to the vendor, "I will pay my money but you must produce a certificate from the Registrar that the persons interested in these cautions have had their interests satisfied and are prepared to take them off." A purchaser will have nothing to do with the machinery by which the cautions are registered; all he is concerned to do is to get his title clear of the cautions in the way I have indicated and then he will have a clean title. The way that is accomplished is this. We modify estates in land by saying that estates in land are for the future to consist of two kinds—proprietary estates, the only kind recognised between seller and buyer; and subordinate estates, estates under trusts. For the future a man will be able to settle his land exactly as he does at the present time. We do not take away any power that he possesses to-day, only he will not be able to settle his land by carving up the legal fee simple. He will be able to settle estates, but the estates which he creates will take effect exactly as they would if there were trustees appointed under a settlement. The persons interested will be protected as well as they are at the present time, because not only will the Settled Land Act protect them but they will have an entry on the register of these cautions wherever there is an estate of the kind I have mentioned. When a man settles his estate the business of the trustees or solicitors will be to put the cautions on the register as part of the settlement, and the purchaser will find them there when he inquires into the abstract of title. All he will have to do will be to say to the person who has the proprietary estate, "You must give me a certificate that these cautions are swept away, and you must give me a conveyance from yourself."
A man, we will say, wishes to settle his land on his marriage on himself for life and afterwards to his widow and then to his eldest son and his other children in successive entail. The proprietary estate will be in the tenant for life as between himself and the buyer. He will be the absolute owner subject to these cautions of which I have spoken or the trustees of the settlement, if there are trustees of the settlement. In addition to Lord Cairns's
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Act you have the further protection of the cautions being put on where there are trustees of the settlement. But the great point is that when any one goes to deal in land he will deal with the person who is the absolute owner. That will apply not only to the freehold interest in land, the only freehold interest in land being the freehold interest of the person absolutely entitled to it, but it will refer also to the person who has not a freehold interest but an interest for a term of years. The proprietory estate can only be either for an estate in fee simple or for a term of years, so that the purchaser will always have somebody with a single and simple title, and those interested will be protected in the way I have indicated. In addition to that there will be what are called paramount interests in an estate. An estate may be settled subject to an existing jointure or rent charge, which very often happens, and of course it would not be right to enable the person entitled under the settlement to over-reach that. If this general change is made the effect of it will be shortly this, that settlements will be quite secure. By provisions which come into both Bills there will always be somebody of full age holding the deed, because where there is an infant the trustees of the settlement are to be capable of exercising his powers. That is quite right, for one of the most embarrassing things conveyancers have to deal with is when they find that the land is vested in an infant. There will always be somebody to deal on behalf of the infant under proper safeguards.
Then we aim at putting the land as seldom as possible in the hands of trustees. Experience shows that trustees very rarely take the same interest in land as the owner himself does. If a man has only a life estate and it is tied up in his trustees and left to his trustees to act, it cannot be expected that they will show the same interest in the property as the absolute owner himself would. Therefore we have added the principle in this Bill, and in the other Bill also, of conferring powers of dealing as fully as possible upon the person in possession of the land, it may be only of a life estate, as distinguished from the trustees who up till comparatively recently it has been the custom to endow with powers. Lord Cairns's Act made a distinct step forward in that direction. Then there will be shorter abstracts of title. Another matter is this. Hitherto

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the Crown has always insisted on having specially secured claims for Death Duties. We propose that the Crown should be protected just in the same way as anybody else by the cautions, so that the purchaser will be sure of getting a clean title as regards the Death Ditties. That saves a great deal of expense in investigating abstracts and greatly simplifies the question of title. The same with regard to bankruptcy. As your Lordships know, Lord Halsbury, by the Act he carried through in 1897, made laud on trust to be dealt with according to the terms of the settlement pass to a legal representative or go to the heir in the proper course of administration. We have adopted that, and you will always have somebody who will be able to deal with it on the death, and it will not be tied up with the difficulty of an infant heir, as very often occurs.
If we had only proceeded so far we should have greatly simplified title, but we should not have secured it. There was a case about three weeks ago, since this Bill was printed, which shows the insecurity of title to land even now. There was a property which belonged to a gentleman who died in 1899, apparently intestate. His widow sold part of the property as administratrix. She lived till 1911, and after her death the will of the original testator was found, and the unfortunate purchaser who had bought from the supposed administratrix who was displaced by the will subsequently found that he had got no title and he was deprived of the property and lost a great deal of his money. That case was fiercely litigated, and the result of it represents the law as it now stands. A thing of that kind can be best dealt with by a register of title such as is proposed by the Bill. Such a register formed the subject of part of the Report of Lord St. Aldwyn's Commission, and until that is done, or until certain other changes are made which I think we may make even in the law as it stands at present, to obviate such a system, there will always be these risks in connection with the transfer of land.
That brings me to one or two other changes which we make, and to some which we do not make. I wish to speak of those for a moment before I pass to the reforms which we make carrying out the Report of the Royal Commission. Some people have said, "Why have you not abolished the Statute of Uses?" We
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have cut down the operation of the Statute of Uses in the ordinary course very much, but we have not abolished it altogether. When I was a junior at the Bar, conveyancing for a good many years—I suppose everybody gets steeped in these things when they are much accustomed to them—I got very conservative instincts about this thing, and I ceased to be affected by the demands made for the abolition of the Statute. The Statute of Uses is one of the most convenient things in the world if it is kept within proper restraint. A noble Lord might say to me, "Why do you carry a walking stick? I learnt to walk without one"; and I might reply, "If I were to begin again to walk without the use of a walking stick I might learn to do without it, but having arrived at my present age and always having been accustomed to carrying one I find that a walking stick is a most convenient aid to getting over the ground." And I suppose having been so much accustomed to the Statute of Uses I, as a conveyancer, found that Statute most convenient. We have not repealed it, but we have confined its operations within narrow limits. We have swept away all those executory limitations and uses, and we have kept it only so far as it is a convenient method of creating rent charges and things for which there is no machinery in the Statutes.
Then again people say, "Why do you not abolish tenures?" Tenures were important 200 years ago or less and they are comparatively unimportant now, but they belong to the history of the land, and as they have really reduced themselves to almost nothing at all we do not abolish them. Then it is said, "Why not abolish estates tail?" That is a very convenient way of dealing with land. I remember the case of a member of your Lordships' House whose fortune was a considerable one in money and who wished to make a settlement in tail. The distinguished conveyancing counsel whom he consulted said, "I could draw up a series of limitations by way of trust which would tie up the money for a period, but they will get you into complications such as will be sure to lead to litigation or to the settlement coming to an end, and you cannot unless you invest your money in land make the proper limitations you want." He said, "I do not want to buy land," and the conveyancer took a sheet of paper, "This will be enough; if you transfer your money

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to be invested in securities nominally to be held on trust to be sold and invested in land, but not actually to be so invested; then you can make the limitations exactly as if the land has been bought, and you can entail the money which is held in trust to be invested in land." That is the way the difficulty was got over. I only mention these things to show that what we really want to do is to get rid of the evils of the Statute of Uses and not to do away with the Statute itself, which contains many convenient instruments if properly dealt with. We give the owners in entail of property power to leave it by will, and also power to make entail and disentail without going to the cost of enrolling the deed. Those are very convenient provisions, and save a certain amount of expense.
Now I come to that part of the two Bills which is covered, and it is really the greater part, by the Report of the noble Viscount's Royal Commission. Part I of the Real Property Bill deals with a number of long required improvements. Many of them were suggested in the Report and the others were embodied in a Bill which was introduced in the year 1912 giving effect to that part of the Report of the noble Viscount's Commission. That Bill was agreed on by the Law Society representing the solicitors, and by the Bar Council. Many of these provisions were considered at an earlier stage by a Select Committee of this House presided over by Lord Davey and were approved by that Committee. Your Lordships will find one or two very convenient provisions. For instance, under the Settled Land Act as it stands now a limited owner, a life tenant, may mortgage the estate in order to raise money to pay off charges, but he has no power to raise money to make improvements. We give him that power. We give him the power of a tenant for life under Lord Cairns's Act, extending the powers of making improvements. We extend the category of authorised improvements which he can make—there is a list of them in the Bill. I will not dwell upon them, but they are useful provisions dealing with the installation of electric light and other things which are proper to be done. Then we somewhat more emancipate married women. We think it absurd that they should have to go to Commissioners to make a conveyance, and we put them on the same footing as ordinary people in respect of their property.
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Part II of the Real Property Bill also carries out the Report of the Royal Commission, and I think here we follow that Report more closely. The Bill proposes to do away with copyhold, a form of tenure which I think has nothing to recommend it. The Commission proposed to do away with copyhold; we have done that, and copyhold will be turned into freehold subject to all rights. Besides that, we abolish all special customs as to descent and special tenures. Then we take perpetually renewable leaseholds, of which there are a great many, and we convert those in all cases into a term of 2,000 years, practically a fee simple subject to the incidents which would naturally attach to them. Then Part III provides for the extinguishment of manorial incidents where copyhold land has been converted. If the lords and tenants of copyhold land choose to take action within five years for extinguishment they get certain advantages, such as being excused the payment of stamp duties and office fees to the Board of Agriculture. If they choose to delay they will have to do things at their own expense but they will have to do them in the end. The result is that everybody will be compensated and nothing will be taken from anybody which he is entitled to at the present time.
Part IV deals with a number of amendments of the general law recommended by the Royal Commission. I ought to tell your Lordships what these amendments are. They are fully set out on pages 5 and 6 of the White Paper (No. 119). To some of them I have already referred. The necessity for the enrolment of disentailing assurances is abolished. A tenant in tail in possession is enabled to dispose of property by his will. And then there are various useful provisions such as this. If at present a man mortgages his property and pays the mortgage off he has to pay the cost of a formal conveyance of the property by the mortgagee to himself. We now say that the receipt for the mortgage money is to have the effect of re-vesting the property in him just as in the case of building society mortgages at the present time. Then there is a useful provision which enables the Court—we give this power only to the Court, to be exercised in its discretion—to discharge or modify restrictive covenants which have become obsolete and which no longer are of any

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importance. That also was recommended by Viscount St. Aldwyn's Commission. There is one point with regard to which I have been a little more conservative than the noble Viscount. He recommended twenty years for the period of title. We think that at present it is safer to take thirty. There will be life estates outstanding, and we have taken thirty years instead of forty as at present for the period for which title is to be shown in the absence of special contract.
Then I pass to Part V. That repeals and re-enacts with amendments Part I of the Land Transfer Act of 1897. It reenacts with improvements Lord Halsbury's amendment of that Act, and deals with things such as real property vesting on the death of its owner in his personal representative, according to the Report of the Commission. Finally, Part VI deals with various amendments of the Land Transfer Acts regulating the registration of land in accordance with the recommendations of the Royal Commission. A question has been raised as to whether the Land Transfer Act ought not to be extended. Your Lordships know what a storm of opposition the proposal for the compulsory extension of the Land Transfer Act has awakened. I have great faith in the Land Transfer Act and its principles, and if we get it to work well in the place where it is compulsory, the administrative county of London, and amend it and leave it optional in the whole of the country people will take advantage of it, I think, in increasing numbers. We have enabled them to get absolute titles more cheaply than at the present time, and the machinery of the registration of title is very much simplified. There is only one thing we have not done. We have neither directly nor indirectly tried to apply any compulsion in extending the area within which registration is compulsory. We think that the best way, the only way of making progress is to make land transfer under the Registration of Titles Act as perfect as you can and then leave it to the common sense of the people to make use of the Act for their properties outside London, and in that way we will find a desire on all hands for an extension of the system throughout the country. After a great deal of consideration I have come to the conclusion that that is the most likely way of getting an advance—not by driving people but by persuading them; and I hope that these reforms will
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persuade them that land transfer is by far the most effective system when it is carried out under the provisions of the Registration of Titles Act.
I have told your Lordships the substance of these two Bills. The field is a very complicated and difficult one. As I have said, I have consulted those people who were able to give me the very best expert assistance. I had the advantage of the help of members of the Royal Commission, who gave me great assistance in the preparations of the Bills; indeed, the whole of the drafting was carried out by a committee presided over by a distinguished conveyancer, Sir Philip Gregory, who was a member of Viscount St. Aldwyn's Commission. I have also had the assistance of both sides in politics. Mr. J. W. Hills, the Unionist Member for Durham City, who is also a solicitor, has given me great assistance in this matter. The result has been that I think I may say that the Incorporated Law Society and the general body of solicitors are more favourable to this measure of reform than they have been to any measure of reform of a similar kind up to this time. The Bar Council have also communicated with me to the effect that they are in favour of it.
But, as I said in opening, we are not going to do anything until the Spring, so I invite your Lordships to set to work on these things, and if you find points of criticism we shall be glad to consider them. What is very satisfactory is that I have found on all hands a real desire to make a great change in the direction of simplifying the title to land and cheapening its transfer. I think everybody is convinced that whatever other reforms we make in connection with land they will only be hampered and hindered unless we deal with this necessary preliminary. What I have described to your Lordships may seem complicated, but it is as simple as I have known how to make it. In dealing with much of it one is in the region of the obscure and the uncertain, but I am pretty sure of this, that if these two measures should be fortunate enough to become law and to fulfil our expectations, they will do a good deal to simplify the present state of the law. They have been drawn with no desire to adopt any Party or partisan lines or to disregard the interests of any particular class. As I have said, I move the Bills formally only to-day in order to

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make discussion possible. It would not be right, of course, to ask your Lordships to approve the broad principles of these complicated measures at this time of the session and with so little consideration; but I thought that this discussion would probably be the best introduction to that mature consideration of these far-reaching proposals which is requisite if they are to receive general acceptance.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
VISCOUNT ST. ALDWYN: My Lords, it would be impertinent far a mere layman like myself to attempt to enter in any detail upon a criticism of the able and lucid exposition which the noble and learned Viscount has just given to your Lordships of the provisions of these two Bills. I should not indeed venture to address your Lordships on the subject at all were it not that, as the noble and learned Viscount said, for two years I served as Chairman of the Royal Commission which investigated the working of the Land Transfer Acts, and these two Bills comprise very many of the suggestions which we made. I think perhaps I may venture to express the obligation which I am sure is felt by all who sit on this side of the House to the noble and learned Viscount for the manner in which he has dealt with this subject. For myself, at any rate, I am quite sure that I am voicing what will be felt by every member who served on that laborious Royal Commission when I say that it is a great deal to have our labours praised in the manner in which they have been praised to-day by so high a legal authority as the noble and learned Viscount. But what is even more gratifying is that so large a portion of our recommendations should have been accepted and embodied in these Bills. I am quite sure that the course pursued by the noble and learned Viscount in introducing and fully explaining his measures this session and then leaving them, without taking any stage of them here, to be considered by your Lordships and by the country will be by far the best way of bringing these Bills, as I hope they may be brought, into a shape in which they may become law.
I will not attempt to dwell upon the many recommendations which the Royal Commission made on the working of the Land Transfer Acts, or on the extent to
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which they have been embodied in these Bills. They have been very largely but not entirely embodied, and when we come to discuss the Bills in Committee there may be points upon which I may venture to submit suggestions to the noble and learned Viscount. I may say at once that I regret that he has been more conservative than we were on the question of the length of title required in an open contract. We fully considered that matter, and we thought, having regard to the practice of conveyancers and the growing desire to shorten titles, that it was perfectly safe to recommend that the present term of forty years should be reduced to twenty years. The noble and learned Viscount has not ventured to go as far as we went, but I hope when we come to discuss the point in Committee that it may be possible to convince him that twenty years would be safe enough.
The noble and learned Viscount has adopted what is known as the scheme of Mr. Wolstenholme in the Conveyancing Bill, and he has described in the Memorandum which he has placed before your Lordships how the Bill based on that scheme will reduce to a minimum the investigation and reinvestigation of titles by reducing the number of instruments to be included in the abstract and simplifying and shortening the instruments to be produced to a purchaser. He said that it will shorten and simplify the methods of conveyancing and dispose of some of the difficulties felt by the Royal Commission with regard to the registration of settled land, and that it will incidentally approximate the title to land to the title to Stock. I will not attempt to discuss how far the Bill carries out that description, because my authority on such a matter is not one that I could expect your Lordships to accept. But I will venture to quote an authority which your Lordships, I think, would do well to consider—I refer to Sir Fortescue Brickdale, the Registrar of the Land Registry. Sir Fortescue Brickdale described to the Royal Commission Mr. Wolstenholme's scheme, and not only described it but criticised it, and his criticism of the scheme was this. He said that it was only really directed against complications in title due to settlements, that it did not abolish abstracts of title, and that old deeds would still have to be looked up, abstr actsmade and verified, requisitions and replies continued; so

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that the chief causes of expense and delay would remain, and even in the simplest cases a layman would need legal aid. That, of course, was said with regard to the comparison between Mr. Wolstenholme's scheme and the law relating to land registry. But the noble and learned Viscount himself described Mr. Wolstenholme's scheme as an amendment merely of what he called the legal machinery of conveyancing. I very much wish that the noble and learned Viscount had gone further and struck at what, to my mind, is the root of all the complications to which he alluded—that is, the Statute of Uses. The noble and learned Viscount gave us some reasons why he had not felt able to do that. He said that the Statute of Uses was a walking stick for conveyancers. He spoke as an old conveyancer, but I confess I was not very much impressed by that argument. It certainly was a Tory argument; because, after all, if the conveyancing system is so complicated and difficult as he described it himself, and as I must say it was described by many witnesses before the Royal Commission, surely it is hardly worth while to maintain the Statute of Uses merely as a walking stick to that system.
Then, again, the noble and learned Viscount told us that tenures must be continued, merely because they belonged to the history of the land—an even more antediluvian argument, if I may venture to say so—and the system of entail is also to be continued, simplified to some extent I gather, but still continued under the very complicated system of settlements by way of uses. I should like to read to your Lordships what was said to the Royal Commission by a very high authority, a very able lawyer, as I am sure will be recognised by the noble and learned Viscount—I refer to Mr. Cyprian Williams. He urged that the principles of the law of real property should be assimilated to those of personal property by abolishing the feudal tenure of land and the system of estates in fee simple, fee tail, and otherwise, which is founded on feudal tenure, and by making freehold land the subject of a right of ownership exactly similar to the ownership of chattels or of terms of years in land. That proposal has since been embodied in a Bill, which was, I think, last year before the House of Commons, brought in by Mr. W. J. Hills,
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the Member for Durham City, whom the noble and learned Viscount has consulted on this matter. I have a vivid recollection, and I am sure the noble Earl opposite will sympathise with me in this, of the evidence given to the Royal Commission by many very able conveyancers from Lincoln's Inn. I felt, when I heard them describe all the complications and windings of that remarkable system, that I had before me something like a number of very able and very successful spiders who minister to the excessive desire of many men to control the disposition of their property many years after they have been deprived of it by death, and who, ensconced in the crevices of Lincoln's Inn, weave webs in which flies in the shape of landowners are voluntarily enmeshed, and from which they can never escape except by even more skilful and acute legal aid than that which has placed them within those webs. I wish the noble and learned Viscount had had the courage of Mr. Cyprian Williams and proposed to abolish the Statute of Uses and the complicated system of conveyance by way of uses.
The Royal Commission did to some extent consider this matter. They did not feel able to recommend what I have just said, because they thought that it involved considerations which went beyond their order of reference. But what they did say was this. They said they were satisfied that the cheap and easy working of the existing system of registry of title is gravely impeded by causes arising from the differences between the law of real property and the law of personal property, especially through complicated settlements by way of uses; and they recorded their opinion—and this was the unanimous opinion of the Commission—that the complete establishment of a system of land transfer satisfactory to the public and fulfilling the expectations of the authors of the Land Transfer Acts would be materially aided by the assimilation of the law of real property to that of personal property. I do not think that I need say anything more on that subject, but I do hope that the noble and learned Viscount and His Majesty's Government will give some further consideration to the matter before next year.
Now I come to the part of these proposals dealing with the amendment

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of the Land Transfer Acts. The noble and learned Viscount did not say anything about a matter which to my mind is of very great importance in hindering the working of those Acts. He explained to your Lordships the decision of the Government not to propose to extend the compulsory working of those Acts beyond the county of London, but to amend them as proposed in these Bills before the question of extending them was considered, and he expressed a very strong hope that, so amended, they might commend themselves more than they do at present to the great majority of landowners in the country. I hope it may be so, but I am quite sure that one of the main causes which have hitherto prevented landowners availing themselves of the Land Transfer Acts is the cost of doing so. That will be in some measure remedied by the proposals of the Bills to grant an absolute title as cheaply as a possessory title and more easily than it has been granted in the past.
But there is also a matter which does require consideration on which the noble and learned Viscount said nothing at all—that is the question of fees to the Land Registry Office. There is a clause in this Bill under which it will be possible for the Lord Chancellor, with the assent of the Treasury, to spread the fees payable by a landowner for registering his title to his land over a series of years, but the fees ought to be reduced as well. The principle of the Act of 1897 was that the system should pay its way without any charge on the taxpayers. That was all very well as long as the system was voluntary, because a man need not register his title unless he liked, but if he chose to do so he must pay the fees demanded. That did deter an extension of the system. But directly you make it compulsory you ought to be more liberal with regard to the fees; for this reason, that the only justification for compelling a man to register the title to his land when he does not want to do so is that it is for the public good, and if it is for the public good surely the public ought to bear some part of the expense of it. But what has been done is absolutely contrary to this. By the Fee Order, as it is called, of 1908, passed when the present Government were in office, the fees were largely increased on large estates and even on estates of no more than £1,000 in
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capital value, in order to enable much lower fees to be charged in registering very small properties, and, secondly, to pay for the expenses of the Land Registry Office.
The expenses of the Land Registry Office are mainly of two kinds—first for mapping, which I will venture to say ought to fall on the taxpayers, because it ought to be the business of the public in England, as it is in Germany, to have a proper ordnance map of the country sufficient to be used in transactions of this kind by a Public Office. The other main part of the expense of the Office has been the repayment of the sum borrowed for erecting the registry building and purchasing the land on which it was built. It is the fact that that land cost no less than £155,000, and that sum has to be paid, according to the present system, by instalments in less than forty years. I do think that is extremely unfair on the present generation of landholders as compared with future generations, and that the term ought to be extended to either sixty or eighty years in order to make those annual repayments less and thus enable the fees to be reduced, or else, as recommended by the Royal Commission, the Office should only be charged with a fair rent for the building and for repairs and maintenance, which again would come, I suppose, to not much more than half of the nearly £10,000 a year which is now charged on account of the building. These are points to which I hope the noble and learned Viscount will call the attention of the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
There is yet another matter to which I hope the Lord Chancellor will call the attention of Ids colleague. The noble and learned Viscount said, I think quite rightly, that everybody desires to make land more simply and more easily transferable. That is the object of the Land Transfer Acts and the object of the noble and learned Viscount and his colleagues in introducing these Bills. We all of us desire it, and I may add that no body of men in this country have shown their desire for it more than this House. Time after time Bills for this purpose have been brought forward by successive Lord Chancellors and have been passed in this House, but have been stopped in the House of Commons owing to the influence of the legal profession upon

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their representatives there. Therefore I was glad to see the other day that even the Chancellor of the Exchequer, when referring to this subject, for once in a way did not blame your Lordships' House for any difficulty in the transfer of land, but he admitted that it was due to what he described as the chicanery of the profession of which he is himself a member. I suppose the Chancellor of the Exchequer sympathises with the noble and learned Viscount and all his colleagues in the Government with regard to the legislation which we are now considering. But what has he done to promote it? It would really hardly be believed were it not the fact that even while the ex-Lord Chancellor, Lord Loreburn, was considering this question, even after he had appointed the Royal Commission to investigate it, and when he was himself considering, as I know he was, the introduction of a Bill to carry out their recommendations, the Chancellor of the Exchequer by the Budget of 1909–10 was working in exactly the opposite direction to make the tranfer of land less cheap and more difficult.
What did the Chancellor of the Exchequer do? He doubled the Stamp Duty on land transfers. Not only that, but by introducing the Increment Value Duty he compelled every single transfer of land to be sent to the Land Valuation Department of the Inland Revenue Office to be checked there to see whether Increment Value Duty was payable before it could be carried through. That has entailed immense trouble and expense to everybody who has attempted to sell land, and since that Act became law it has been estimated that, whereas no more than two out of every thousand transfers of land have been proved to be liable to Increment Value Duty, which has only produced £20,000 in the last year, the cost of sending all these transfers to the Land Valuation Department to be considered has been more than ten times as much as this £20,000 to the landowners who have sold their land. I do hope that the Lord Chancellor will persuade the Chancellor of the Exchequer to make his practice in these matters consistent with the policy of the rest of his colleagues, and that the consideration, which he suggests to the country and to the legal profession, of these Bills during the coming year will also extend to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, so that when the Bills are introduced again we may be
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told that in the matter of fees, and I hope also in the matter of these excessive and increased duties, something will be done by the Treasury which will be in accordance with, and not opposed to, the policy of the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack.
THE MARQUESS OF CREWE: My Lords, I have no intention of engaging in any argument on the subject-matter of these two Bills which my noble and learned friend has explained so lucidly to the House. I rise to do little more than express the pleasure which we feel at the very handsome and obviously genuine compliment which the noble Viscount, Lord St. Aldwyn, paid to my noble and learned friend for what I venture to call the great national work which he is performing in framing and introducing these two important measures. In introducing the Bills my noble and learned friend expressed his appreciation, in turn, of the service which the noble Viscount himself had rendered by presiding over the inquiry into this intensely intricate subject. I am not going to attempt to follow the noble Viscount into the various friendly criticisms which he made of what he considered some of the omissions from my noble and learned friend's scheme. He characterised our conveyancing system much in the terms in which a great novelist characterised the Chancery system of sixty years ago, and I can almost imagine the noble Viscount devoting the forthcoming holiday to writing a story comparable with "Bleak House" of what the effect might be on an unhappy landowning family who became victims to our system of conveyancing.
So far as the question of land transfer is concerned I have no doubt whatever that my noble and learned friend will give close consideration to one point which the noble Viscount mentioned—namely, that of the expenses charged in respect of land registration. Nobody can deny the force of the criticisms which the noble Viscount levelled at the scale of fees which are chargeable, although he will, of course, recognise that, like all other questions of remissions of charge, we come to a point which excites the susceptibility of the Treasury. One matter on which the noble Viscount touched has become almost a common form in the past in various discussions which have taken place—I refer

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to the supposed almost indomitable resistance which the solicitors' profession might be expected to offer to any simplification or cheapening of transactions connected with the title to land or its transfer. That has been the lion in the path of almost all the would-be reformers in the past. But I think we may be encouraged by what my noble and learned friend stated, both when introducing these Bills and to-night, as to signs of a possible change of attitude on the part of the profession. If one comes to consider it, it might be argued, I think, by the Law Society or by the solicitors' profession that even from the most purely selfish point of view there might be compensation for the diminution in the actual value of much of the business which solicitors do by a great increase in the volume of business done. Individual transactions, it is assumed, will be less profitable, but may solicitors not reasonably hope that there may be a multiplication of transactions, which, taking the profession as a whole, may produce a not inadequate compensation? Of course there will be cases—I think it must be generally admitted—where solicitors, or firms of solicitors, will find their profits perhaps largely diminished by the disappearance of, or at any rate the great shrinkage in, those enormously expensive cases of which we all have had personal knowledge or have heard. But on the other hand there must be other solicitors, not possibly the same individuals, who will gain largely by the number of small transactions which it is hoped may be the result of legislation such as this.
I am glad to know that the course which my noble and learned friend has taken with regard to these Bills has met with the approval of noble Lords opposite. In his view—and it is one which I share—it would not be reasonable, at this period of the session, and in the absence of so many noble Lords who might and probably would desire to take some part in the discussion on the Second Reading, to carry these Bills through that stage to-day, and more particularly we should not like to do so in the absence of the noble and learned Earl, Lord Halsbury, whose name is so closely and honourably connected with former attempts to solve these questions. But so far as the actual business is concerned my noble and learned friend loses nothing by postponing the further consideration until the spring of next year. I quite
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share his hope that good use will be made of the interval by those who are competent to form opinions on the subject, and I have no doubt that when my noble and learned friend next year brings in his Bills he will meet with a great deal of instructive criticism, most of it, I should hope, of an amicable kind, which will assist him in turning these great and important reforms into the shape of a Statute.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: It is only a few words that I wish to say in reply. First I desire to express my gratification at the mode in which your Lordships have been pleased to receive these Bills. Whatever comes of it I feel very strongly that this is really the only way to make progress in a subject of much complication and difficulty. My noble friend Lord St. Aldwyn suggested that I was a little too conservative for his taste in this matter, and that a little less caution might be more desirable, but in the latter part of his speech he said it was proved that this House is much more of a reforming House in the matter of land transfer than is the other House. In the other House the persons concerned communicate with their local Members, and the local Members are not interested enough in the subject, to desire to press the matter on. Perhaps he will understand from that how it is that I, who have a good deal of experience of the other House, think it wise to go in a cautious and somewhat conservative spirit in this matter. It is not the Members in the other House that I fear, but those who advise them and communicate with them, and who have not the practical and personal interest in the problem that many of your Lordships have.
Experience shows that we cannot hope to make progress in this matter unless we carry with us the great body of those who are engaged in the profession of dealing with the transfer of land. The history of this question is strewn with the wrecks of Bills brought in with the best of intention and spirit and in the most progressive mode, only to come to an end because there was not enough interest and encouragement to carry them on. That is one reason why I have proceeded in a cautious spirit in this direction, desiring to carry as many people with me as I can. I think that the noble Viscount is really much more radical than I am on the question

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of land transfer. He says, "Why do you not abolish the Statute of Uses?" I do not want to abolish the Statute of Uses, but I want to get away from its evil consequences. The illustration he gave brought out the point. I said that none of these temptations will be possible if the Conveyancing Bill which we are now discussing passes into law. It will no longer be possible to limit an estate by means of use or to create an entail by means of use. All the evil consequences of the Statute of Uses will be abolished, except its legitimate function as an instrument to create a term of years for a rent charge. Practically that will be the only function it will have. There will remain the power to create separate interests by way of trust. If Mr. Cyprian Williams's Bill had passed and all tenure had been swept away, then settlements by way of trust, which are just as difficult and just as embarrassing, would have been created under the new régime as under the old, and they would have been worse, and all sorts of things would have been devised by the ingenuity of conveyancers which would have evaded the provisions for freedom which the noble Viscount and all of us wish to see. I think that the more the noble Viscount studies this Bill the more he will find that the Statute of Uses is clipped and confined in its operations to the most simple and legitimate tasks—namely, that of facilitating the operation of conveyancing which the rigid and ancient provisions of the Common Law have rendered very difficult.
Then as regards tenures, when you have got rid of copyhold you have practically got rid of everything which is objectionable nowadays in tenures. The noble Viscount, of course, does not want to carry it to the extent of leases, but he does want to get rid of copyhold. How mischievous it would be to go rashly among these ancient institutions of the law, which, although having their drawbacks, also have their advantages in that they give you a clear principle on which to proceed. The noble Viscount also referred to Sir Fortescue Brickdale's criticism. I quite admit that you will never get rid of abstracts unless you register the title. I think these changes with freedom of title between the owner and the person to whom he is selling will pave the way to registration of title more than anything else you can do, but I grant that all you can do without
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registration of title is to simplify abstracts and investigation. You never can get rid of them.
As regards finance, I entirely agree with my noble friend the Leader of the House in what he said. I think that one ought to be very considerate as regards the cost of land transfer. I have that in view, and, as the noble Viscount has pointed out, there are provisions in this matter which give room of elasticity. As regards the stamps on the transfer, he will appreciate that the State is not prone to giving back what it has once got in these days, and the reduction of the Stamp Duty on conveyances would be a very dubious process. But as regards cheapening the cost of registry and the amount of contribution proposed, I think there is a great deal in what the noble Viscount says, and I will bear it in mind. I have only again to thank your Lordships for the way in which you have received these Bills, and to ask leave to withdraw the Motion for Second Reading.
Motion, by leave of the House, withdrawn: Then Bill (by leave of the House) withdrawn.

ERAL PROPERTY BILL. [H.L.]
Order of the Day for the Second Reading: Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a: Motion (by leave of the House) withdrawn: Then Bill (by leave of the House) withdrawn.

LOCAL AUTHORITIES CONTRIBUTIONS (CRYSTAL PALACE) BILL.
[SECOND READING.]
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
THE EARL OF DUNMORE: My Lords, this Bill, the object of which is set out in the Memorandum, has been promoted by the Corporation of London on behalf of the local authorities whose names are scheduled, and also on behalf of other local authorities who may hereafter wish to contribute with the consent of the Local Government Board. The history and description of the Crystal Palace and grounds are well known to your Lordships.

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The proprietors of this concern have been for some time past desirous of disposing of the property. On May 1 last the purchase of the Crystal Palace with a considerable amount of ground round it was completed by the Earl of Plymouth, who wished to save it for the use of the nation. The whole of the cost—£230,000—has been raised either by private subscription or has been guaranteed by certain local authorities; but those local authorities have to obtain statutory sanction before they may contribute the money which they have already voted. I do not think that this House will refuse to these local authorities a power which I may say has already been given to the London County Council. The London County Council in the General Powers Bill, the Third Reading of which took place in this House this afternoon, is obtaining power to contribute £20,000. No objection has been raised to that provision in either House of Parliament, and therefore I think I may say that the principle of contribution out of the rates has already been sanctioned by Parliament. This Bill, which was introduced in the House of Commons originally as a private Member's Bill, was taken over by the Government. It has gone through all stages in the other House and has been supported by many Members on both sides of that House representing the local authorities who are contributing. This Bill is only an enabling Bill. The scheme for the maintenance and the management of the Crystal Palace and grounds will be submitted to Parliament in the next session. As there is so much business on the Paper I do not think I need detain your Lordships by entering into further detail as to this Bill, which is really not contentious. I will only add that I think a great debt of gratitude is due to the noble Earl, Lord Plymouth, who initiated this project, and to the Lord Mayor of London and to all those who have done so much to further this scheme, a scheme which I trust will do a great deal to promote the education and happiness of the community.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(The Earl of Dunmore.)
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House To-morrow, and Standing Order No. XXXIX to be considered in order to its being dispensed with.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT (ADJUSTMENTS) BILL.
[SECOND READLNG.]
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
LORD STRACHIE: My Lords, this is a Bill which has come up from the House of Commons practically as an agreed Bill. It is founded upon the Report of the Joint Select Committee of Lords and Commons which was appointed last session and over which the Duke of Devonshire presided. A great deal of thanks is due to the noble Duke for his untiring efforts and to the Committee for the great amount of work they did and for the practical Report they issued. The object of this Joint Select Committee was to consider the principles which should govern the financial adjustments as regards England and Scotland made under the Local Government Acts of 1888 and 1894 consequent upon alterations of areas. This Joint Committee reported in favour of certain principles to govern not only England but Scotland.
The Government have not embodied in this Bill any reference to Scotland, for the reason that it was found desirable not to include Scotland for various considerations. The first, which of course naturally would occur to anyone's mind, was that if you made this applicable to Scotland difficulties would be created, because the Scottish Local Government Acts of 1888 and 1894 are very dissimilar to those of England; in fact, if you made this Bill applicable to Scotland you would have to strike out the greater part of the Bill itself. There was also a further consideration, and a much more urgent one. The local authorities of England, the County Councils Association and the Municipal Boroughs Association, agreed to take this Bill as a compromise and a settlement of the dispute which has been going on for so long between them; but unfortunately the Scottish authorities were unwilling to come to a compromise. The subject was raised in the House of Commons, and the Secretary for Scotland explained that it would kill the Bill if a provision making it applicable to Scotland was applied; but he undertook, if an agreement could be come to between the Scottish local authorities, to consider the desirability of bringing in a Bill early next session to deal with the difficulty.

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As no doubt some of your Lordships may be aware, the main point in dispute was whether there should be compensation for loss of rateable area. It had always been treated as right to give compensation to the authority that lost rateable area up to the year 1894 and 1897, when that claim, although it was regarded as admissible up to then, was decided by the House of Lords to be indefensible. The conclusion to which the Committee came was that while it would not be just to give to either party compensation for loss of rateable value as such, yet each party should be entitled to produce evidence to prove that in carrying out the administration of their areas they would have imposed upon them the increased burden in reference to some particular head of administration in consequence of the taking away of part of their area and that compensation should be paid to the party having to bear such increased burden. The Committee also dealt with the method of adjusting receipts payable to the Exchequer Contribution Accounts of counties and county boroughs.
That conclusion is embodied in this Bill, and I think the noble Duke will agree with me that this Bill carries out the recommendations which were made by the Committee as far as England is concerned. The terms of the Bill have been settled by the Local Government Board in consultation with representatives of the various classes of local authorities affected. Clauses generally on the lines of the Bill have been inserted in the Provisional Orders issued by the Local Government Board for the extension of boroughs and the constitution of county boroughs this session and last, and these clauses passed without opposition in both Houses. That being so, and there being general agreement as regards this Bill amongst the English local authorities I trust that your Lordships will give it a Second Reading to-day.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Strachie.)
THE DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE: My Lords, as I had the honour of presiding over the Joint Committee to which the noble Lord referred, I should like to take this opportunity of expressing my thanks to those who took part with me in the work we succeeded in accomplishing, and to thank the Government for having
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brought forward this proposal. The question I admit was a complicated and difficult one, and the Committee owe a great debt of gratitude to the rather formidable array of eminent counsel who assisted us on that occasion and also to the number of witnesses representing various features of local life for the help and assistance they gave us. Certainly every attempt was made by all who took part in that Committee to arrive at a fair conclusion as between the various contending parties, and I hope we arrived at a decision which is of some practical value and which will enable these long, tedious, and extremely costly disputes to be brought to a satisfactory conclusion. The whole trouble to my mind, as far as one can judge, is in the paucity of the English language to supply a word to cover exactly what everybody wants to be done.
As your Lordships are aware, under the provisions of the Local Government Act, 1888, ten county boroughs were established, and sixty-one others were added to the Schedule during the passage of the Bill through Parliament, and a body of Commissioners were appointed under the Act, generally known as Lord Derby's Commission. This Commission took upwards of two years to complete its labours, and eventually laid down a series of general principles which up to 1904—when what are generally known as the Caterham and Hartlepool cases came up for consideration before the House of Lords—were generally recognised; but the practice established by that Commission was practically reversed. The trouble which we had on the Committee was in endeavouring to find a form of words which, while neither using the word "compensation" nor "adjustment," would provide that none of the parties would be worse off than they were before. Whether the language which we used in paragraph 10 of our Report, and which I think is practically adopted in the Bill, has succeeded in doing that or not, I can only say we made the best attempt we could to arrive at that conclusion. This is certainly a matter which requires rather more than an Act of Parliament, because these questions ought to my mind most unquestionably to be settled by give and take on both sides. It is extremely difficult to lay down a series of general rules where conditions and circumstances and characteristics are so entirely different.

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Before I had the honour of presiding over this Joint Committee I was connected, as Mayor, with a town in the South of England which was asking for powers to extend itself into a borough. We were able to come to a very satisfactory arrangement with the county council, and although this took place very nearly two years before the Joint Committee sat, the conclusions we arrived at in that case were practically identical with those arrived at by the Committee after hearing the evidence that was placed before it; and I hope that many of the cases which are bound to come up, probably in increasing numbers, in the future, will be settled without long delay being occasioned and great cost and inconvenience to all parties concerned. Although we may have settled to a large extent many of the outstanding difficulties which arise in consequence of the creation of new areas, the impression was left very strongly on the Committee that the time was rapidly approaching when many of the questions which were raised and which came before us must be treated from an entirely different standpoint. It is impossible at this moment to go into the question of local and national taxation, but all through the course of our inquiries one of the great difficulties which we had to contend with was the question of main roads. It was abundantly proved to us that the main roads were becoming, from force of circumstances, more a national burden than a local one, and that if further steps were taken towards a readjustment of national and local expenditure on services of this character you would do a great deal to do away with the difficulties which appear when questions of the readjustments of local areas come up for consideration and decision. In the passage of this Bill I hope that that far wider, and in many ways far more important, issue will not be allowed to be lost sight of.
It was clear to the Committee that this measure must necessarily be of a temporary character. I feel confident that the only way in which a final and permanent settlement can be effected is by a thorough investigation into what are local and what are national services and what money is to be provided for them. In the meantime the Bill, I think, clearly carries out the spirit and the letter of our Report, and will I hope deal with the cases which immediately come before us and be of some practical value. I was glad to
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hear what the noble Lord had to say with reference to Scotland, because certainly the case of Scotland demanded separate legislation. Strange though it may seem to your Lordships who may know more about Scotland than I do, the Committee found themselves in a position to state in paragraph 19 that the case of Scotland presented fewer difficulties than the case of England. It is not usual for Scotland to present fewer difficulties than England, but when we completed our inquiries we found that they had made a considerable advance in Scotland; we found in the case of Scotland that a sum of upwards of £40,000 had been spent in fighting these cases. I hope it will be possible at no distant date to bring in a measure applying to Scotland.
THE EARL OF CAMPERDOWN: My Lords, I do not rise to offer any opposition to the Second Reading of this Bill. I merely wish to ask one question with regard to it, which perhaps the noble Lord will answer. How does this Bill affect the administrative county of London? The noble Duke called attention to the fact that this Bill omits Scotland altogether. The Committee over which he presided were presumably perfectly impartial in the matter as between the towns and the counties. Whether the towns in England agreed I am not aware, but it seems to have been stated in the other House that some of the Scottish burghs disagreed, and it is because agreement has not been arrived at in that case that Scotland is not included in this Bill. But, as the noble Duke said just now, there is even less difficulty in the case of Scotland than there is in the case of England. If this Bill becomes law with regard to England it is not improbable that when Scottish cases are brought to Parliament counsel will immediately call the attention of the Committee to what has become law in England and what is recommended by this Joint Committee, and it is not at all likely that the burghs will gain anything; on the contrary, it is much more likely that they will lose money by not acceding to this recommendation which holds good in England. I do not know whether I heard Lord Strachie correctly, but I think he said that if agreement is arrived at between the burghs and counties in Scotland a Bill will be brought in next year. I must ask him to go a little further than that. Will he give an undertaking that this question of Scotland shall

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be dealt with in a Bill next year whether agreement is arrived at between the interested parties or not? On the answer which is given to that question our attitude must depend a good deal in the future.
LORD STRACHIE: I will answer the questions which the noble Earl has put to me. London would, of course, come under this Bill if the London County Council thought fit to apply for a Provisional Order to extend the county boundary; but, on the other hand, it would be perfectly clear that no alteration of so extensive a character could be dealt with by a mere Provisional Order, and it would have to be by a public Bill. So strongly was that felt in the House of Commons that the President of the Local Government Board undertook that if it was necessary for London to enlarge its areas it should be dealt with by a public Bill. I hope that undertaking will satisfy the noble Earl on that point. As regards the other question which the noble Earl addressed to me, I would remind him that I am only representing the Local Government Board in the absence of Lord Allendale; and I cannot pretend to represent the Scottish Department at all, because that Department is represented in this House by the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies.
THE EARL OF CAMPERDOWN: Then who represents the Scottish Office in the absence of the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies?
LORD STRACHIE: The Secretary for Scotland has expressed his readiness, if the Scottish burgh and county authorities were agreed, to consider whether it would not be desirable to do for Scotland what had been done in the case of England and introduce a Bill carrying out a joint settlement in their particular case. But the noble Earl went further and asked whether, in the event of there not being agreement, I would undertake on behalf of the Secretary for Scotland to bring in a Bill next year. It is, of course, impossible for me to give any such undertaking without consulting the Secretary for Scotland.
THE EARL OF CAMPERDOWN: The only reason why Scotland is not included in this Bill is that the authorities concerned have not come to an agreement. Therefore the statement that if agreement
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is arrived at the Secretary for Scotland will bring in a Bill proceeds on the principle that the authorities in Scotland will take a course quite different from that which they have taken up to the present time. No doubt the noble Lord will have seen the Secretary for Scotland by the time we go into Committee on this Bill, and I will repeat my question on that occasion.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House To-morrow.

PUBLIC BUILDINGS EXPENSES BILL.
Second Reading (which stands appointed for this day) put off till To-morrow.

BANKRUPTCY (SCOTLAND) CONSOLIDA TION BILL.
[SECOND READING.]
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, this is one of those Bills which, unfortunately, could not be printed in time for circulation this morning, but the Bill was printed this forenoon. It was extensively discussed in Grand Committee, and was circulated in the course of those proceedings to a large number of people. Seven-eights of this Bill is consolidation, though it does make certain amendments in the Scottish bankruptcy law, amendments which were recommended by a Departmental Committee presided over by one of the ablest of the Judges of the Court of Session. They are amendments of a technical character. I have been through them, and I am sure they are amendments of which your Lordships will highly approve. I will explain them. If an author of a book goes to a publisher and the publisher agrees to publish his book for the consideration of royalties and the publisher goes bankrupt, the unfortunate author cannot get his royalties because his contract is determined by the bankruptcy; but notwithstanding this the copyright remains vested in the trustee in bankruptcy, who is able to go on publishing the book and making a profit out of it. That is a monstrous injustice which has been put right in this Bill. Then under the English law, under the Act of 1888, a claim for wages, just like a claim for rates

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and taxes, has preference in a liquidation in bankruptcy. Whether that was so in Scotland or not was a matter of great dispute. The learned Judge who presided over the Departmental Committee and his colleagues took the view that, whether it was or not, it ought to be, and they have inserted a provision in this Bill making the law in that respect harmonise with the law of England. Those are the amendments which the Bill makes. As I have said, they were recommended by the Departmental Committee; they have been carefully scrutinised in the House of Commons; and they seem to me to be very reasonable amendments in the law. Otherwise the Bill mainly consolidates the existing law.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House To-morrow.

EDUCATION (SCOTLAND) BILL.
EDUCATION (SCOTLAND) (GLASGOW ELECTORAL DIVISIONS) BILL.
Second Reading (which stands appointed for this day) put off till To-morrow.

POST OFFICE BILL.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
THE EARL OF CRAVEN: My Lords, this Bill is non-controversial, and I therefore hope that your Lordships will give it a Second Reading.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(The Earl of Craven.)
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House To-morrow.
House adjourned at half-past Seven o'clock, till To-morrow, a quarter past Four o'clock.