THE MARQUESS OF CREWEMy Lords, I desire to ask the noble Earl who leads the House whether he is able to make any statement to-day on the business to be transacted before we disperse for the recess. As I understand, the principal measure which will come up to your Lordships' House from another place is the Corn Production Bill, to which the House will no doubt desire to pay full attention. I should not suppose, subject to what may be the view of your Lordships, that it would be thought necessary for a very long interval to pass between the arrival of that measure here and its being put down for Second Reading. On the other hand, no doubt it would be desired that substantial time should be allowed between the Second Reading and the Committee stage. If the noble Earl is able to give us information, not only on this point but on the general business for the remainder of the present sittings, I am sure your Lordships will be grateful.
§ THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL (EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON)My Lords, I am sorry to be obliged to give a rather less definite answer to the question put by the noble Marquess than I had expected. As he pointed out, the determining factor in the case is the Corn Production Bill and the date at which that measure will come up to us from another place. On your Lordships' Paper there is a Motion standing in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, for August 1, and I should have liked to move that your Lordships' House should adjourn from August 2 until August 14. On the assumption that the Corn Production Bill did not reach us at an earlier date and that no other business of an important character required your Lordships' House to sit in the interval, I 45 should still hope to carry out that programme. But just now I was informed from another place that the prospects of the Corn Production Bill are rather more rosy as regards the date of its passage through the House of Commons than I had thought, and it may be that that Bill will leave another place sufficiently early to enable us to take the Second Reading in the manner suggested by the noble Marquess at an earlier date than I had anticipated. If that be so, there would then be, I imagine, a brief adjournment between the period of the Second Reading and the Committee stage in your Lordships' House. These matters are still undecided. But in the event of this sanguine prediction about the date of the Corn Production Bill coming from another place not being realised, I should still hope to ask your Lordships to take a brief holiday from the 2nd to the 14th of August.