LORDS AMENDMENTS. (Hansard, 2 August 1922)

§ VISCOUNT PEEL
My Lords, I move that this House doth not insist upon the said Amendments; that is to say, from the Amendment to Clause 1, on page 2, in lines 11 to 37 down to the Amendment to the First Schedule. These are privilege Amendments.

§ THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY
My Lords, I do not call into question this procedure which is a convenient procedure where there is no controversy. I cannot say that there is no controversy in this particular case, but as, owing to these being privilege Amendments, none of your Lordships would desire to resist the Motion which the Government have made, there is no inconvenience in putting the Questions all in one.
There is, however, one of these Amendments, to which I referred just now, which does seem to me to call for some notice. It is an Amendment which your Lordships inserted, and if your Lordships will refer to the Paper you will see what it is that the Commons have struck out. It is as follows— (1) The provisions as to disturbance allowance, free railway warrant, and separation allowance contained in the Third Schedule to this Act shall apply with respect to any officer or man of the Royal Irish Constabulary to whom compensation is payable under section one of this Act— I do not complain of those words going out, so far as I understand, them. But here are the material words— — or who at the date fixed for the disbandment of the force is in receipt of a pension under the enactments relating to the Royal Irish Constabulary and is at that date resident in Ireland… In other words, your Lordships secured to pensioners living in Ireland the provisions as to disturbance allowance, free railway warrants, and separation allowance which are secured under the Bill to serving constables who have just been disbanded.
The reason your Lordships inserted that Amendment was that you were satisfied that these constables who had retired and lived in Ireland were in many cases as much a target for hostile action on the part of the extreme section of the Sinn Fein Party in Ireland as those constables who were just disbanded. They were in exactly the same position so far as danger and obloquy were concerned. They had only recently retired from the Force, they were pensioned and were living in Ireland. If they are in danger of their lives, and if their families are in danger of their lives—and we know to what lengths the perpetrators of extreme outrage have gone in attacking the families of loyalists—it does seem that they ought to be given the same arrangements as to disturbance allowance, free railway warrant, and separation allowance 1082 as serving constables. We tried to secure that, but the Commons have disagreed with it. I shall be interested to know what defence the noble Viscount can offer for that proceeding on the part of another place. We cannot, of course, resist it, but if the matter is as bad as I believe it to be, the Government must not complain if they hear of it again out of doors.

THE EARL OF DESART
My Lords, I should like to supplement what the noble Marquess has said by calling the attention of the noble Viscount to the fact that my noble friend, Lord Carson, once certainly and possibly twice drew the attention of the House to two very harrowing cases in which pensioners were driven out of Ireland and came over here in a state of great destitution. Although we cannot get it put into this Bill, as I see perfectly well, I think one might fairly make an appeal to the Government to take these cases into their consideration so that these men should not be restricted to getting support from Sir Samuel Hoare's tribunal, which was created for a totally different purpose. I was rather encouraged in that by the course to which the noble Viscount drew attention with regard to an Amendment which was not accepted, but as to which certain steps were to be taken. If that machinery or any machinery can be brought into play in regard to these men so that in really serious cases of this kind they should receive proper warrants and passes to give them the relief to which morally they are unquestionably entitled, I hope that may be considered as an executive act quite apart from this Bill altogether. The case is the same, the result is the same, and the men are in exactly the same position.

§ VISCOUNT PEEL
As I have previously said to my noble friend, I pointed out I think when I was discussing that point as regards the Royal Irish Constabulary Pension Order, 1922, that as it only started on April 1, 1921, it obviously could not apply as the noble and learned Lord desired.

THE EARL OF DESART
My appeal is rather a general one for it to be considered.

§ VISCOUNT PEEL
Of course, this is a very large Amendment indeed, because it applies, I understand, to something like 7,000 pensioners, and certainly from the information that we have received, there 1083 are very few cases where any of those men who have previously retired have made complaints, and have brought their cases forward. Provision is made to this extent, and no more than to this extent, in their case, that if any of these pensioners find their position so intolerable in Ireland that they wish to leave it, they are able to get an advance for their railway tickets and also up to £20 to bring them into this country, and in that case their position would be considered by the Hoare Committee. I believe there are—I am speaking only from memory, and cannot be exact—a few cases where these applications have been made. But provision is made in this way, as the noble and learned Lord will see.

THE EARL OF DESART
I am very much obliged to the noble Viscount. My point really was that they ought not to come in the same category as mere refugees. The answer which I rather expected has been given—namely, that there were few cases—but that rather strengthens my appeal. If there were an enormous number of cases to be dealt with I quite conceive that there would be objection, but I should not think such objection could apply in the situation which the noble Viscount has revealed. My argument is that there would be few cases, but they would be cases suffering precisely the same hardship as that suffered by the disbanded men referred to by my noble and learned friend Lord Carson. I made an appeal that those cases should have some consideration, and that they should be dealt with equitably.

§ VISCOUNT PEEL
The Government will very soon be in a position to judge what the number of eases is.

§ THE EARL OF MIDLETON
The Government in this, as in other cases, have undertaken that they will see that the very best is done for these men that can be done. I do not know whether the noble Viscount who has to repel these onslaughts realises, any more than does the noble Earl who spoke earlier in the evening from the same bench, that a certain want of sympathy is apparent, though it probably does not exist, on the part of the Government. There is not that recognition which there ought to be of these cases. They are cases that cannot be administered on the ordinary lines in which the cases of British civil servants in the past have been dealt with. You are here dealing with a different state of affairs. I ask the Government to re- 1084 member that the position of this House and the honour of the country is bound up in these questions. I think a great deal may be done in administration of the Act, and I am sorry the noble Viscount has not been able to prevail upon his colleagues in the House of Commons to accept our view. We can only leave it to the Government to show the best spirit that they can.

§ VISCOUNT PEEL
I much regret if I did not reply to the point made by the noble Earl in the course of the discussion. The Government are extremely sensible of the force of the observation which he has made. I will only make this last appeal to your Lordships, that in judging of what has been done for the force I ask you to look at the proceedings as a whole. The noble Earl said that you ought not to judge these cases as if they were the cases of the ordinary Civil Service. That is precisely what the Government have not done. The terms given to the Royal Irish Constabulary—you may criticise them or not— are wholly beyond, and vastly beyond, anything that has been done either in this country or in any other country to a disbanded force, and the action of the Government, therefore, is not comparable to any action taken elsewhere. On behalf of the Government I wholly repudiate the suggestion that any lack of sympathy has been shown.

§ THE EARL OF MIDLETON
I can only speak again by your Lordships' indulgence, but I wish, in a word, to support what I have said. It was pointed out in the House of Commons last night that if a man retired with £5 a week as pension, and got another situation of £3 10s. as a private, he would then only get £1 10s. a week as pension, and therefore there would be no inducement for him to take this other work. That is what I meant to suggest.