§ Message from the Commons: That they agree to certain of the Amendments made by the Lords to the Government of Ireland Bill without amendment, to certain other of the Amendments with amendment, and have made a consequential Amendment to the Bill.
§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD BIRKENHEAD)My Lords, I beg to move that the Commons Amendments be now considered. It may be convenient that I should explain very shortly to your Lordships the effect of the Commons treatment of your Lordships' Amendments. In the first place it is a subject for congratulation that the Commons have received your Lordships' reply to the former Amendments in an extremely conciliatory spirit. The outstanding points of difference are so small that I am encouraged to hope they will not cause your Lordships trouble or even difference of opinion.
I divide them under heads. The first natural head is the constitution of the Council of Ireland. The subject of the Lords proposal sent to the Commons was that the Council of Ireland should consist of forty members, thirteen elected by each House of Commons and seven by each Senate, with the President nominated by the Lord Lieutenant. As an Amendment to this the Commons propose, after "Lord Lieutenant," to insert "acting in accordance with instructions from His Majesty," the object being to make it clear that the President is to be nominated 588 on the advice of the United Kingdom Ministers. I do not think there was much doubt about it, but this Amendment is proposed in order to make the matter quite plain. It is carrying out your Lordships' wishes and in complete agreement with your Lordships' proposal.
A similar observation might be made about the second Amendment, which is concerned with diseases of animals. The Commons have accepted your Lordships' Amendment under which the administration of the Diseases of Animals Act and powers to legislate with respect to contagious diseases of animals are to be vested in the Council of Ireland. The Commons have accepted that, with a consequential Amendment on page 14, line 35, of the Bill, to insert, after "fisheries," the words "and diseases of animals," The effect of this consequential Amendment will be to equip the Council with the same powers and provide for its expenses being met in the same way as its powers and expenses in connection with railways and fisheries. The result of this will be that the Council is given, power to appoint the necessary officers, and charge the salaries and remuneration of the officers and the other expenses of the Council on the Consolidated Funds of Southern and Northern Ireland. Without, this provision the Council would be unable to discharge the functions which your Lordships put upon them in connection with diseases of animals. Here, again, the Commons have carried out your Lordships' wishes and have made them in my opinion more effective.
The third subject-matter, and the only one on which the Commons have made any Amendment of substance, is concerned with the Amendment introduced by your Lordships into the suspensory clause, Clause 70 of the Bill. Clause 70, your Lordships will remember, provides for the suspension of Parliamentary government in either part of Ireland in the event of the majority of the members of the House of Commons of that part not being validly returned at the first election or failing to take the oath as members. It will be remembered that your Lordships, having in the first instance omitted this clause, agreed on Friday last to its reinstatement, but proposed to make certain Amendments in it which were before the House of Commons on Saturday. Under the Bill the proposal of the Government was that 589 an Order suspending Parliamentary government should be operative only for the limited time expressed in the Order, and that when that period expired a proclamation summoning the new Parliament would be issued and Parliamentary government, would be resumed automatically. Lord Midleton and other noble Lords objected to this automatic resumption of Parliamentary government, and their Amendments accordingly proposed that the Suspensory Order should not be limited in point of time, and that Crown Colony government, consequent thereon, should continue indefinitely, unless within two years after the date of the Suspensory Order both Houses of the United Kingdom Parliament passed a Resolution declaring that it was expedient that the Parliament should again be summoned for that part of Ireland. The Commons have proposed to make certain Amendments in these proposals, and subject thereto they have agreed with the Lords Amendments.
It might be convenient that I should explain the substance of the Amendments proposed by the Commons. In the first place, it is proposed that the period within which an opportunity may be given of restoring Parliamentary government should be a period of three years from June 1, 1921, instead of a period of two years from the date of the Suspensory Order, Now, my Lords, I do not think that that is an alternative proposal which ought to occasion very great difficulty. As far as I can understand them, the arguments that were relied upon in favour of the longer period are as follows. It is in the first place thought reasonable—adopting, I confess a different line of reasoning from that which occurred to me during the last discussion—that before a final decision is taken there should be an opportunity of a General Election. In the ordinary course of events a General Election is due in the month of June, 1924. It may well be that as a result of that Election—so it is argued—a Government may be in power in which the Irish would have more confidence than they repose in the present Government, and they may be more willing to adopt what we consider a reasonable course than they are at the present moment. In the second place, it was thought right that the powers which are contained in the Bill, and which are the result of long Parliamentary discussion, should not be destroyed except after consultation with, and authority to kill it from, the electorate. 590 An argument which is of great strength, and which I think ought to be borne in mind, when dealing with this simple question of time, is this. It is, of course, the case that those who are at present committed to criminal courses in Ireland would naturally prolong those excesses if they thought that by so doing they could destroy the present scheme in favour of their own scheme for an Irish republic, and therefore if the time is a short one they might easily make a strong effort to continue their course of illegality. If the period were six months nobody can doubt that an attempt would be made by the persons who are at present engaged in crime to go on for six months longer, The longer the period the more difficult it would be for counsels so desperate to be entertained, and for that reason it is very much hoped that your Lordships will find it possible to accept this period of three years instead of a period of two years from the Suspensory Order, which presumably might be in the middle of next year. If the Suspensory Order, were made in the middle of next year the difference would be only one year, and if it were at a later date the difference would be less than a year.
The next Amendment proposed by the Commons is that His Majesty's Government may by Order in Council, within the period of three years, provide for the resumption of Parliamentary government unless both Houses pass a Resolution declaring that it is inexpedient so to do. I think one point escaped those who were formulating the Commons Amendment, which will require to be put right in this House, and I shall move an Amendment to do so. It might be apprehended that under the terms of the Amendment, as it left the House of Commons, they might by Order in Council provide for the resumption of Parliamentary government without the Houses appreciating such was the intention of the Government, and without the Houses therefore having an opportunity of passing a Resolution declaring that it is inexpedient to do so. Of course, that was never contemplated, and it may be dealt with by an Amendment which will provide that the Order shall be laid on the Table, in each House of Parliament, for a period of thirty days, or some such period, so that each House will be seized of the intention of the Government. Here again it is thought far better, on a proper opportunity, that the matter should be left in this way, that the proposal of 591 the Government should be made effective unless both Houses pass a Resolution declaring that it is inexpedient. The difference is not of first importance, but it is an improvement, and as I have already said the Government very much hope your Lordships will accept this view.
The only remaining matter is an Amendment which is more of form. It is that the proviso at the end of the new subsection (3) proposed by your Lordships be recast. The scheme as it left this House provided for the second election being held, but it left the original Suspensory Order standing, and failed to provide in any way for the restoration of the powers of responsible government. That was an oversight. The Commons Amendment remedies this defect by charging His Majesty to revoke the Suspensory Order so as to enable the second Government to discharge its functions. I think that exhausts what I have to say at this stage.
§ Moved, That the Commons Amendments be now considered.— (The Lord Chancellor.)
§ THE EARL OF MIDLETONMy Lords the observations of the noble and learned Lord regarding the powers given to the Lord Lieutenant raises in us some misgiving as to the case in which the Lord Lieutenant has to come to a decision. These decisions, I understand, would be given on the advice of a Minister. If that is so, I much regret that the point was not taken earlier. This apparently means that all the Members who are to represent the minority in the Senate are to be nominated by the Lord Lieutenant on the advice of Ministers. We had always understood that the action of the Lord Lieutenant would be by direction of His Majesty. It would be entirely improper at one period or another in Ireland that there should be a conflict of opinion on this point. The other are smaller Amendments and I will pass over them. It does not seem quite [...] have been understood out of doors that your Lordships have in no way waived the main question of the Council. What We contended for was that it should represent all the four Houses—the two Senates and the two Lower Houses. That has bean acceded to by the Government, and I think it most important that it should be clearly realised that that concession has been made to the views entertained here, more especially as we put them for- 592 ward solely with the desire of making the best possible Senate that we could.
When we come to the question of the appointed day, we get to a point of very serious difference. I must say that I think the noble and learned Lord has hardly put the matter as clearly as he might have done, having regard to what passed at the earlier stages. What was the original proposal of the Government? It was one of which it is difficult to find a parallel in any Act of Parliament. This my Lords, is a great constitutional question. It is a question of whether there should be one or two Parliaments in Ireland, when they should be set up, and under what conditions. The original proposal of the Government was that this offer, the result of such long debate, and after thirty or forty years of earnest struggle, should be made to Ireland, and that if either portion of Ireland declined it that part of Ireland should immediately be placed under Crown Colony government, and from that time forward for two, five, ten, fifteen, or twenty years, or any period, the Government and the Government alone should have it in its power from time to time to make offers of a measure which that part of the country had already said they did not desire, and that, failing acceptance, in the interval Crown Colony government should continue. Parliament in this great constitutional question is nowhere. The Government is to continue to hold sway and take what course it thinks fit. I submit that no such proposal was ever before contained in an Act of Parliament.
Your Lordships' House had two proposals before it with the object of modifying this. The first was the proposal of my noble friend Lord Salisbury, who thought the circumstances of Ireland were such that even before the first offer was made both Houses should pass a Resolution that in their opinion the condition of Ireland was fitting, and that the Government should satisfy both Houses before they took the step contemplated. Others of your Lordships took the less drastic view. We took the view that an Act of Parliament is an Act of Parliament, and that it is passed with a view of being set in motion, whether we like it or not. We like it very little in its present form, but, having been passed, we agreed that the offer should be made, and that if the offer failed of acceptance the Government 593 should act on the decision to place Ireland under Crown Colony government. I ask your Lordships to consider for a moment what that concession meant. The obvious and the only course would have been that the part of Ireland which did not accept the Government proposal should come back under the rule of Great Britain, but the Government wish to carry out three different operations, and for all of these they consider Crown Colony government essential. The first is that they wish to establish an Ulster Parliament, even if the South of Ireland declines its Parliament. We differed from them in that, but we were ready to concede it. The second point of the Government was that by setting up Crown Colony government they would be able to deal administratively with the Civil Servants all over Ireland in all respects, just as if two Parliaments had been set up. The third point was that the Irish Members should no longer come to Westminster in the same number and interfere in business here if Crown Colony government was set up. But that would not have been the case if Great Britain had resumed her rule over the South of Ireland. Those are very important and very serious changes to make.
Your Lordships agreed that the Bill should be put into force under those conditions if at the first time of asking, a few months from now, the South of Ireland decided to refuse the Bill. But we joined issue from the first against the indefinite powers which the Government asked for in order to extend those operations. The noble and learned Lord claimed great credit for the Government for limiting Crown Colony government under the Amendment, which the House of Commons have sent up, to three years and a half. It did not occur to him to vindicate the Government against the charge we make against them, that they desire to keep the whole control of Ireland in their own hands for three and a half years without any intervention on the part of Parliament.
In considering this period of three and a half years I ask your Lordships to look back and see what has taken place in Ireland since June, 1917. At that time the Convention had just ceased to sit. The Government are now asking Ireland, after all that has happened since, to accept terms which were rejected by the South of Ireland at the time of the Convention. We have had this fearful trouble and disquiet, 594 almost revolution indeed, and yet your Lordships are asked to pass this Bill tonight in this form, and for three and a half years to have no power whatever of intervening, and to leave them the power for the whole of that period to offer again to the South of Ireland the boon which she I has refused and before the whole world to say, "Well, we have made our offer and the alternative is Crown Colony government." We feel that in deference to Parliament, in deference to the experience of the past, and in deference to the fact that there is no other part of His Majesty's dominions in such an unquiet condition, this is an unreasonable demand to make. We maintain that the Government must act under the authority of Parliament and not beyond the authority of Parliament.
What does the noble and learned Lord offer us? I Will not say much about the question as between two years and three and a-half years. I do not attach so very much importance to waiting for a General Election to see whether that General Election would repudiate the state of affairs which the noble and learned Lord urges us to leave in their hands. The exact measure of time in not so important. But let us consider what it is that the Government offer? What authority do they offer? "We must take our own course unless both Houses agree by a majority to arrest us in that course." There is a majority of 450 in favour of the Government in the House of Commons, and it is perfectly well known that as, long as the present House of Commons sits it is out of the power of any Member ninety-nine times out of a hundred to carry a Resolution against the Government. Therefore we have asked for a shorter period in which to close this account, and have asked the Government to come before us and say, "We are now again about to make this experiment, and for this reason." When they so come it will be open to this House to say to them, "You are bound to change what you are proposing. You are asking a people who have declined particular proposals for certain reasons to accept those same proposals under duress, and if they do not accept them you will put them under Crown Colony government." We, in this place, want to be in a position to urge upon the Government that if they fail on the first occasion and come again in two years' time they shall make proposals which have some chance of being accepted. At all events 595 we have a right to be heard, and that we can only have if it is forced upon the Government to come with a definite concrete proposal to Parliament for Parliamentary authority to do that which in every other Bill it is given to a Government to undertake and which they will have undertaken and failed to carry out on the first occasion.
The point between us and the Government is a very distinct one. We have to decide whether for two years or three and a-half years this state of things shall continue. If the noble and learned Lord were to tell me that two years seems to the Government too short a time and that three years from the first time the offer is made would satisfy the Government, I have no doubt that any reasonable accommodation would be considered. But on the point that after they have once failed to obtain acceptance of their measure the Government must come to both Houses, I am afraid I cannot offer any compromise so far as we are concerned. I earnestly hope that your Lordships will stand by this Amendment. It is a reasonable one. It has great support outside. It is justified by the extraordinary condition of Ireland at the present time, and, if I may say so, entirely through the failure of the Government in the past to carry out an efficient policy in Ireland.
I must also add one sentence in view of the remark made by the Prime Minister in another place. He said that this measure had been the fruit of much consultation with all parties, and especially with that party in Ireland which which I am connected. He specially mentioned Mr. Walter Long in that connection. If any application had been made to us we would have told the Government that in framing the measure as it was originally produced they were riding for a fall. We have never had an opportunity, any one of us, of advancing any opinion upon it for two years before it came before your Lordships House; we were never consulted in any way.
If your Lordships lose hold of this Bill I cannot but fear that the same course will be taken in the future; that from now until the end of three and a-half years, whatever mistakes may be made, however much those connected with the country feel that those mistakes might be avoided, we shall be forced to see the Government again and again exasperating the people of the South by taking the very 596 course of all others that they propose at this moment, which is the most likely to lead to trouble and which has caused to be a nullity the immense concessions which this Parliament desires to make in the interests of peace to Ireland. For those reasons, if the noble and learned Lord has moved that this House do agree with the Commons in the said Amendment, I must ask your Lordships not to accept it.
§ THE LORD CHANCELLORI have not moved that. The Motion simply is, That the Commons Amendments be now considered.
THE MARQUESS OF CREWEMy Lords, we all recognise, and I recognise to the full, the part which my noble friend who has just spoken has played through all these discussions. Dating from the time of the Convention and through all these debates in your Lordships' House the noble Earl has impressed everybody not merely by the deep sincerity and conviction with which he has spoken, but by his most evident desire to help in moulding this measure into a form that would be best for Ireland. Therefore everything that comes from him must, I am certain, be treated with the utmost respect by His Majesty's Government and by everybody else in your Lordships' House.
On this particular matter I do not find myself entirely in agreement with my noble friend, to this extent—that I see a very marked difference between the two years and the three years and a-half. To my mind much may hinge upon the necessary intervention of a General Election before a scheme for the government of the South of Ireland can be altogether set aside. It seems that as the Bill was originally drafted His Majesty's Government might, so to speak, throw this offer to Ireland and on its by no means impossible refusal might then settle down to the arbitrary form of government against whose description I have so often protested. I should prefer to describe it as what the Government of Poland was during the old régime in Russia. It seemed possible that the Government might give up the idea of Home Rule for Southern Ireland as a bad job so far as one could look forward and settle down to this form of Government. Therefore my noble friend desired that the matter should be left under the perpetual control of Parliament.
I understand from what the Prime Minister said in another place that he 597 fears that the possibility is the precise reverse—namely, that whereas the time might come when His Majesty's Government would be willing to proceed with a further offer, Parliament might step in and prevent it. Whether that was a possible occurrence under my noble friend's proposal it is, of course, impossible to say. But I confess that I am greatly impressed by the necessary intervention of a General Election before the question can be said to fall altogether. It means, I take it, that His Majesty's Government are placed on their mettle, before their appeal to the country is made, to do something to settle this question on Home Rule lines. They cannot, as it seems to me, abandon the attempt in the expectation that other matters will be occupying the public mind, and that the people of this country will be content to allow the arbitrary form of government to continue. If before the General Election something is not done to satisfy public opinion, however unreasonable in the South of Ireland it may seem to be, this question is bound to become a main, and probably the main, question in an appeal to the country. That must have the effect of keeping the mind of His Majesty's Government fixed on the necessity of doing everything they can to settle the question—if not precisely as provided in this Bill, by some form of amendment or fresh offer which the South of Ireland can take into consideration.
Therefore, holding these views, I cannot join my noble friend in resisting this proposal. I need not go back to explain that there is a great deal in the whole measure which seems to me profoundly unsatisfactory, but even as it is I think that your Lordships' House would be wise to accept this compromise on the grounds that I have endeavoured to explain.
§ On Question, That the Commons Amendments be now considered, Motion agreed to.
§ [NOTE.—The references are to Bill (197) as first printed for the House of Lords.]