MOVABLE DWELLINGS BILL. [H.L.] (Hansard, 28 April 1914)

§ THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY
My Lords, I should like to put a question, if I may, to my noble friend. In this Bill there reappears the provision for the registration of movable dwellings which 1060 found a place in the original Bill for which my noble friend was responsible. That provision, however, was not recommended by the Select Committee of your Lordships' House which considered the Bill in 1910. The reasons why the Select Committee criticised that provision were three. In the first place, they thought that registration with a view to enforcing sanitary regulations was a process inapplicable to movable dwellings considering their character. You cannot apply regulations of air and space to a piece of sail cloth on two sticks, which is the kind of movable dwelling with which you often have to deal. In the second place, registration for purposes of identification was likewise not considered a very defensible proposal. The identification will be, I suppose, something like that in the case of a motor-car, but it is very easy to change names or numbers, and the kind of status of the persons who live in these movable dwellings would not act as a sort of deterrent from their being guilty of conduct of that kind. Lastly, the difficulty as to these gipsies is confined to a very limited part of the country; yet these registration provisions would have to apply throughout the whole of the country. It seems to me that that is lighting a very big fire to roast your pig. Widespread regulations would have to be made for the purposes of this registration, when the difficulty really arises only in a very few counties. For those reasons, though I do not say they spoke very positively on the subject, the Select Committee did not recommend this provision. But my noble friend has reprinted it in the present Bill, and I should like him to give your Lordships an explanation as to why he has taken that course.

§ THE PAYMASTER-GENERAL (LORD STRACHIE)
My Lords, before the noble Lord in charge of the Bill replies, I may perhaps be allowed to say that I agree with what the noble Marquess has just said as to the proposed registration. I have here a paragraph from the Report of the Select Committee, in which they state that it seemed unreasonable to insist upon registration, with all the trouble it involves, over the whole country when it is required in a comparatively small portion; and they considered that restrictions on movable dwellings should be applied only where required. I venture to suggest to the noble Lord in charge of the Bill whether 1061 he might not reconsider the proposal in Clause 1, which I think I am right in saying is the only clause in the Bill which is compulsory upon county councils. It seems to me, speaking as a county councillor quite as much as the representative in your Lordships' House of the Local Government Board, that this is just one of those matters in which the county councils themselves are the best judges whether the provision should be put in force or not. Then I would remind Lord Clifford of Chudleigh that you cannot put in force a Bill of this kind without expense. It is true that provision is made for a small fee, a fee of half-a-crown, for registration, but all the other expenses will have to fall upon the county funds. Moreover, this half-a-crown is not going to be sufficient to pay even the expenses of registration, because it would be a farce for a county council merely to say, "We will register any one who likes to come and pay his half-a-crown; but if he does not choose to register we will do nothing." They will have to appoint officers, or they may get the Police to act for them; but sometimes the Standing Joint Committee refuse to give assistance through their officers to the county council. In those cases the county council would have themselves to appoint officers and pay them. If that be so, then it is clear that in that case considerable expense would be put upon the county council. There is continual complaint now that more and more expenditure is constantly being put upon county councils, and that inadequate sums are given towards these additional services. Certainly as a county councillor I regard it as most undesirable that we should go on piling up work on these bodies without providing for its cost. I think this is one of the cases where county councils should be allowed to choose whether or not they will adopt the particular provision for registration.

§ LORD CLIFFORD OF CHUDLEIGH
My Lords, it is chiefly at the instance of the Association of County Councils of England that I have reinserted in the Bill this clause with regard to registration. As the noble Marquess has explained, the objections of the Select Committee to registration, as it was in the former Bill, divided themselves under two heads—one, where the object of registration was that of making the condition precedent to registration that certain sanitary and other 1062 regulations should be complied with; and the other—the one which appears in the Bill as at present before your Lordships' House—merely registration for the purpose of identification. I may say at once that any registration which was not universal would, of course, be practically useless, because these dwellings are moved about from place to place, and the persons living in those which were creating a nuisance would always reply that they came from a county which had not seen fit to adopt registration. It is obvious, therefore, that registration for the purpose of identification, if not universal, will he absolutely useless. The Report of the Select Committee with regard to the second head of registration was as follows— They would have been disposed to think that registration for the purpose of identification alone might be worth trying, except for one consideration to which they have already adverted—that the parts of the United Kingdom where the difficulty is acute are very limited. It seems unreasonable to insist upon registration, with all the trouble which it involves, over the whole country when it is only required in a comparatively small fraction of it. Restrictions on movable dwellings should, the Committee think, be applied only where they are required. In other words, speaking generally, legislation should be adoptive, and under these conditions registration might fail in its objects. My objection to this portion of the Report is that permissive registration adopted in certain cases only is perfectly useless for the object in view. Unless it is universal the provision must be a dead letter, because every movable dweller would assert that he belonged to a county which had not adopted the registration clause.

§ LORD CLIFFORD OF CHUDLEIGH
The object of the new subsection which I propose to add at the end of Clause 2 is merely to give power to the sanitary authority to move the county council, if they desire it, to make an order. The order, the House will observe, is to be made only in cases where the occupation of any place by a movable dwelling creates a danger to health; and the local sanitary authorities thought that they ought to have power to move the county council—who under the Bill, if it became law, would have the power to make an order prohibiting the use—to act in the matter, and that the county council should not be at liberty to set this aside until they had held a public inquiry on the spot to find out whether or not the local sanitary authority were justified in asking for the issue of an order.

§ LORD CLIFFORD OF CHUDLEIGH
Your Lordships will notice that there are excepted from the Bill movable dwellings used by or on behalf of any portion of His Majesty's naval or military forces and any encampment which may be certified as under proper supervision by the Territorial Force Association of a county. This clause was put in so as to meet the case of Boy Scouts and other encampments of that nature. It is not desired to interfere 1064 in these cases, and it was thought that it would be an easy expedient for whoever was in command to get a certificate from the Territorial Association that the encampments were under proper supervision.