§ Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
§ VISCOUNT SANDHURSTMy Lords, this is a very short and simple Bill. It is absolutely non-contentious, and it passed through all its stages in a single sitting in the House of Commons. It is to enable an injured workman to obtain compensation under the Workmen's Compensation Act, 1906, although the contract of service or apprenticeship under which the injured person was working at the time when the accident causing the injury happened was illegal. By the law, to recover compensation a workman, as your Lordships know, must be a workman within the meaning of the Act, and supposing that the employer has entered into an agreement which is illegal, the man has no status whatever. There have been cases before the Court where great hardship has thereby resulted, it having been declared by the Court that the workman was not entitled to compensation owing to the contract being illegal. The effect of this Bill is to enable compensation to be paid, in spite of the illegal contract. The right proposed is not absolute; it is left to the arbitrator to decide whether the illegality should be waived in favour of the workman; the Bill applies not only to accidents, but to industrial diseases, as industrial disease is, beyond a doubt, covered by the framework of the 1906 Act. I have stated the object of this Bill, and I beg to move that it be read a second time.
§ Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a— (Viscount Sandhurst).
§ On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.