Lords Sitting of 21 February 1924

Preamble
The House met at a quarter past four of the clock, the LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
KIRKCALDY AND DYSART WATER ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL.
Read 3a (according to Order), and passed.
ABERDEEN HARBOUR ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL.
Read 3a (according to Order), and passed.

ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE BILL. [H.L.]
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (VISCOUNT HALDANE): My Lords, one of the interesting features of this Bill, perhaps in some ways the most interesting, is the illustration it affords of continuity in a certain Department of State. At the Foreign Office it has been long the tradition that there should be continuity as far as practicable. That arises from the unwritten character of our Constitution and the need and the necessity of adapting it to the circumstances of the world. In the office of Lord Chancellor there has been a similar continuity. No great legislation is over carried through Parliament without the cooperation of successive Lord Chancellors. The genesis and history of the Law of Property Act, the great Act of my coble and learned friend, Lord Birkenhead, is an illustration. He succeeded in carrying it through, and he had the co-operation of other previous occupants of the office which he held. So it is with this Bill. Many of its ideas were inherited from the administration—I am talking of the administration rather than the legislation—of my noble and learned friend Lord Birkenhead. Then came my noble and learned friend Lord Cave, who
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translated these ideas and added others of his own. Ho embodied them in a Bill which came before your Lordships' House.
It is my duty and my privilege to-day to present a Bill which, I think I may say, represents that continuity of which I have spoken with the work of my predecessors. In this Bill there is very little that indicates much change from the policy of the late Government who introduced the Bill and carried it to a considerable stage of progress. First of all, there is one misapprehension about it of which I should like to get rid. In an excellent, though too brief, article in The Times newspaper the Hill was explained and explained very lucidly; but the complaint was made against it that it was drawn in a fashion which made too many references to other Statutes and made it almost impossible for those who were not lawyers to follow it. That was quite true so far as it went. But what I think the writer did not quite appreciate was that the Bill was merely, a Bill to bring the law into such a condition that we could embody it in a consolidating Statute. That consolidating Statute is now in preparation. When it is introduced your Lordships will find that all those references to other Acts will disappear, that you will have before you a single whole which will embody the, law relating to the administration of justice, into which the existing Statutes will be fitted without any alteration of the law being made, and that the provisions of this Bill will be retained along with those of other Statutes. Therefore, it is only temporarily that you have the Bill in its present form before you. A little later on you will have it in a more intelligible form.
As to the substance of the Bill, it is very little that I have to say. The first point is one for which I am indebted to my noble and learned friend Lord Cave. During the war trial by jury had virtually to be abolished. Cases were tried by the Judges. This Bill proposes to restore the right of the British subject to be tried by a jury as he possessed it before the war and the only alteration is that almost of necessity a power is given to the Judge to say that the case is one which is of a nature quite unfitted to allow trial by a jury; just such a case, for example, as one depending on intricate accounts being taken. At pre-

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sent that would be forced to a reference. Our words in the Bill provide for it. The Judge is given a discretion to say whether the case is one which is likely to prove fit for trial by jury. That is not a great alteration of the law as it stood. We thought it well to make that provision in the interests of the litigants, in order to save them the expense of preparing for a trial twice, over.
Two Committees have reported since Lord Cave drafted this Bill. The Reports of these Committees relate mainly, but not entirely, to administrative questions. For instance, if an infant recovers damages in an action it is provided, as recommended by the Committee, that instead of the money being paid to the Public Trustee—an awkward proceeding—it should be paid into a county court, which will deal with it in the way that county courts now deal with money paid in under the Workmen's Compensation Act. Mr. Justice Branson's Committee recommended that that was the proper way to deal with it, and the Government have adopted that view, and made provision for it in the Bill.
The changes in the substance of the law are very small and there is only one part of the Bill which I think I need mention. The administration of the staffs of the High Court has come to be under the control of the Lord Chancellor, who is now provided with a highly competent staff for looking after them. In earlier days, they used to be partly under the Treasury, and at the desire of the Treasury we are now taking these matters over. The clause which relates to these changes lays down certain provisions which will make the conditions of the appointments more akin to those of the Civil Service in regard to old age pensions and other matters. I venture to submit to your Lordships that that is a very great improvement, which Lord Cave proposed and which I have adopted. I think that I have dealt with the main features of the Bill. The questions that will arise are such as can be more properly dealt with in Committee. The principle of the Bill is of course one which your Lordships have had before you, and I venture to submit that it should be read a second time. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a—(The Lord Chancellor.)
VISCOUNT CAVE: My Lords, after what has been said by my noble and learned friend on the Woolsack I need not say much more than that I welcome the introduction of this Bill. It is, in substance, the Bill which your Lordships passed through all its stages last year, with certain alterations which do not detract from, but rather add to, the value of the Bill. I will only make an observation upon one clause—the second clause—which deals with trial by jury, because that clause, I think, hardly received sufficiently careful and friendly consideration in another place last year. The effect of the clause is to restore to a very great extent the right of the subject, which existed before the war, to have his case tried by a jury if he so desires. In all cases where personal character is involved, such as cases of libel, or slander, or false imprisonment, or matters of that kind, the right is absolute. In other cases it is also absolute, unless it is made out to the satisfaction of the Judge that the case is more fit to be tried without a jury than with a jury. The existing Act contains an exception in these words : that if it is made out that the case can more conveniently be tried without a jury that may be done. The expression "conveniently" was the cause of some misapprehension, because it was held—wrongly, I think—to refer to some extent to the convenience of the Court. Of course, that is not a proper consideration. The real consideration is the fitness of the case itself to be tried with or without a jury, and the test is adopted, that it must be "more fit to be tried without a jury." I support the Second Beading of this Bill.
On Question, Bill read 2a and committed to a Committee of the whole House.

LEGITIMACY BILL. [H.L.]
Order of the Day for the Second Beading read.
LORD BUCKMASTER: My Lords, you may remember that towards the close of the last Parliament a Bill was introduced, and passed through its Second Beading in this House, having for its object the legitimation of illegitimate children. The Committee stage of the Bill was postponed in order that suggestions and appropriate

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amendments might be made, and by the time those amendments had been considered the political convulsion that upset the late Government overwhelmed this unfortunate measure. It now re-emerges not in the exact literal form in which it was before you on a former occasion, but with one exception—an important exception, to which I will call special attention—it is actually the Bill of which you then approved. That Bill passed through both its Second and Third Readings in the House of Commons without a Division, and received an equally favourable reception at your Lordships' hands.
For myself I am not surprised that it was so favourably regarded. It is to my mind impossible to consider the position of illegitimate children in this country without being at once struck by the unmerited injustice from which they suffer. There is no more pitiable object in the whole of our social life than that of a young girl who is the mother of an illegitimate child. The sanctity of the home life and of married life, the security of the laws that maintain and make the morality of modern life, are outraged by the fact of an illegitimate child being born, but the penalty the woman has to pay is something that seems to me to be far beyond the offence she has committed. She has to bear the shame and disgrace of what another woman regards, and rightly regards, as the crown and pride of her life. From the moment the child is born until it dies there is attached to it the stain and stigma of illegitimacy for which the child itself had no responsibility. No law that we can pass can help to amend the lot of the unhappy mother, but at least it is possible to do something to place the child in a position in which the law of the land does not exclude him from consideration as an ordinary legitimate child ; and this Bill is designed for that purpose.
I will not take long in going through the provisions of the measure, but I must do it in order to point out the difference between this Bill and the Bill which came before your Lordships on a former occasion. The first clause, which is the real enacting clause, provides that the marriage of the parents of an illegitimate child, where the father is domiciled in England or Wales at the date of the marriage, shall legitimate the child. Subsection (2) of this clause has caused some
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misunderstanding, and I am not surprised. It says :
" This section does not enable a legitimated person to take any interest in real or personal property which he would not have taken if this section had not been passed."
Subsequent provisions of the Bill, on the other hand, expressly enact that he shall take such interest. The whole difficulty created by the contrast between subsection (2) in Clause 1 and subsequent subsections in the Bill is answered by the fact that this particular subsection begins with the words—"This section." And Clause 1, which legitimates the child, does not in itself remove the difficulties which the remaining clauses of the Bill are designed to sweep away. The rights a legitimated child will enjoy are directly drawn from the subsequent provisions of the Bill.
Then Clause 2 contains something which must have struck some of your Lordships with surprise. It says:
" A legitimated person shall, as respects intestacies occurring alter the commencement of this Act, and before the first day of January, nineteen hundred and twenty-five, be entitled to take any interest in chattels real and other personal property not devolving on an heir, in like manner as if he had been born legitimate."
The explanation of this clause, which is now entirely out of date, is this. The original Bill, from which it was taken, was intended to come into operation on January 1, 1924, but on January 1, 1925, the Law of Property Act becomes operative, and that measure provides that the descent of real and personal property shall be assimilated. It is therefore necessary to make special provision for this gap of about twelve months, and I shall ask your Lordships to permit me to amend this Bill by omitting this provision.
Subsection (2) of this clause provides that:
" A legitimated person shall, as respects intestacies occurring after the thirty-first day of December, nineteen hundred and twenty-four, be entitled to take any interest in real or personal property in like manner as if he had been born legitimate, save that a legitimated person shall not be entitled to take by descent as heir of a lunatic or defective, living and of full age at the date aforesaid."
That seems rather a harsh provision, and if any noble Lord thinks proper to move its omission I shall not object. The point

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is this, that a lunatic or defective person is incapable of making a disposition of his property by will or deed, and consequently has not the right which is enjoyed by other persons.
In Clause 3 it is provided that where property is disposed of by will or settlement the legitimated child shall be entitled to share equally with the legitimate children, and the general words of description include all children of the intended marriage. Your Lordships may probably like to consider subsection (4) of this clause. It provides that:
" Where property real or personal or any interest there in is limited in such a way that, if this Act had not been passed, it would (subject or not to any preceding limitations or charges) have devolved (as nearly as the law permits) along with a dignity or title of honour, then nothing in this Act shall operate to sever the property or any interest therein from such dignity, hut the same shall go and devolve (without prejudice to the preceding limitations or charges aforesaid) in like manner as if this Act had not been passed. This subsection applies, whether or not there is any express reference to the dignity or title of honour and notwithstanding that in some events the property, or some interest therein may become severed therefrom."
Clause 4 needs no special comment from me, and Clause 5 simply provides that a legitimated person shall have the same right to maintenance and support, and shall be entitled to take proceedings for compensation, or make any other claim under any Statute, as if he or she had been born legitimate. That is such an obvious conclusion from the principle of the Bill that I feel certain it will meet with no opposition. It only causes me to comment on the astounding fact that at the present moment the obligations of parents for their illegitimate children are so narrowly restricted. Personally I have never been able to see, and I doubt very much whether debates in this House will enlighten me, why the responsibility of a man for an illegitimate child is any less than for a child born in wedlock. He is directly responsible for the birth of the child, and why he should be allowed by law to escape all obligations simply by paying ten shillings a week I have never yet been able to understand.
Clause 6 provides that nothing in the Bill shall affect the succession to any dignity or title of honour or render any person capable of succeeding to or transmitting a right to succeed to any any such dignity or title. It also provides that
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nothing in the Bill shall authorise a legitimated person or his issue to take by descent under an estate tail or other entailed interest created before the commencement of the Act.
Clause 8, which looks rather a difficult clause, provides that where the parents are married and the father was domiciled at the time of the marriage in any country, other than England or Wales, by the law of which the illegitimate person became legitimated by virtue of such marriage, then the child shall be recognised as having been legitimated notwithstanding the fact that his father was not at the time of the birth of such child domiciled in a country where such a rule of law prevails. That seems to me to be a reasonable proposal, but I shall be interested to hear if any noble Lord has any comment to make upon it.
The Bill stands before you in the way in which it stood on a former occasion, subject only to this, that the former Bill contained a clause which provided that the benefits of this Bill should not extend to an illegitimate child, one of whose parents was, in fact, married at the date of the birth of the illegitimate child. I have never been able to understand why that was introduced. The object of this Bill is not to reward parents: it is intended to enable them to make some small atonement for a great and almost irreparable wrong, but it is not intended to induce them to commit acts of immorality, nor do I imagine that anyone will suppose that such will be its effect. If the real purpose of the Bill be to help the child, I would ask your Lordships what it is that the child who has been born of a union that is both irregular and adulterous has done to place him in a different category from a child who was merely born out of wedlock by the irregular relations of unmarried people. It is, to my mind, inconceivable that there should be any difference between the two.
I know that whenever these questions are discussed you always get back to an argument, which the imperfection of my intellect has never enabled me properly to apprehend, that acts of immorality are the result of a careful calculation of balance sheets in which are weighed up on the one side and on the other the advantages or disadvantages of the act, and the act is or is not committed according

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to the balance which is struck. I say emphatically that this is not my experience of life, nor do I believe that it is the experience of any other person. The suggestion that you are going to prevent adultery by saying: "If you do commit adultery, if a child is born and if you marry the mother afterwards, the child will still be illegitimate," is a form of argument which, if it appeals to your Lordships, I would treat with respect, but at the same time I must admit my own complete inability to understand it. This Bill will not divide this House along any Party line. It is intended to remedy a social injustice. It is an attempt by people who are fortunately placed to do something to relieve the burdens of others in less happy conditions. Such a Bill in my experience has never failed to find a favourable reception at your Lordships' hands, and I hope that the same kind consideration will be extended to this measure.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Buckmaster.)
THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY: My Lords, when this Bill was before your Lordships in a slightly different form in July last I was unfortunately unable to be present, but I take, both officially and personally, a very deep interest in this subject, and I should Like to say a very few words in respect of the Second Reading. I believe that on the whole the balance is in favour of this Bill, though the matter is not without difficulties. I say so both on the general grounds which have been eloquently urged by the noble and learned Lord to-night, and were eloquently urged by him and others on the previous occasion, and also because the Bill tends to bring into harmony the laws concerning marriage north and south of the Tweed, laws which are at present at variance. I am, of course, aware—and this point might be brought up on more subjects than one—that it is only with discrimination and caution that we can apply the argument sim-pliciter that the law north of the Tweed ought to be the law south of the Tweed, or vice versa. It is perfectly certain that we cannot abolish the difference between the two systems altogether, and I do not propose to urge that we should, but I think that in this particular case the
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argument is an exceedingly strong one that we should assimilate the law of England to the law which has worked perfectly well in Scotland for centuries past.
The Scottish law, however, in providing legitimation for children born out of wedlock, is governed by a proviso which affords very careful safeguards, and if we are to reap the advantages which are said to have arisen from the existence of this law in Scotland we must take care that in adopting the Scottish rule we adopt the safeguards which accompany it. It is in accordance with that view that I should be prepared to support an Amendment, which I hope will be moved in Committee, to re-introduce into this Bill the important safeguards to which the noble and learned Lord has just referred as having been included in the Bill when it was last before your Lordships, and which have disappeared from it now. Your Lordships will remember the words:—
" Nothing in this Act shall operate to legitimate any person whose father or mother was married to a third party when (the illegitimate person was born."
I am not going to argue that question now—it would be out of place, I think, to do so on the Second Reading—but I shall be ready to argue it in Committee, and to bring forward considerations which have not been touched upon in the noble and learned Lord's remarks in moving the Second Reading.
I should like to assure the noble and learned Lord that I am entirely in accord with him in all that he says about the futile argument—as I agree it must be called—which has been brought forward as to the encouragement of wrong-doing, immorality, and so on, in this way. I have never used that argument and I do not use it now. I agree with the noble and learned Lord that immorality is not brought about by calculations of this kind, but is due to passion and other things. It is not, therefore, upon that ground that I shall urge the re-introduction of a clause which would really make the measure that is now proposed harmonious with the law of Scotland, and would make it correspond with the Bill as it appeared before your Lordships last July.
I do not, of course, underrate—no one would suppose that I am likely to underrate—the importance of the moral and

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religious questions which are involved in this whole subject. They are grave to the last possible degree, and I feel their gravity intensely. But it is on other grounds, on the very kind of ground, in fact, upon which the noble Lord has advocated the Bill, that I wish to urge, and shall urge when the time comes, the reinsertion of that clause ; not upon moral and religious grounds, but because I believe, and I think I shall be prepared to show when the time comes, that the happiness of domestic life would in hundreds of cases be gravely imperilled by the Bill in its present form, and that on the ground of general expediency such a proviso is necessary in regard to the legitimation of children born out of wedlock. I shall return to that point when the time comes, but to-night I merely rose to say that while it is my intention to support the reintroduction of the original subsection when the Bill comes before us in Committee, I wish to advocate that your Lordships should give a Second Beading to this Bill to-night.
VISCOUNT FITZALAN OF DERWENT: My Lords, I wish to raise only one point upon this Bill, but, as this is the first time I have ventured to address your Lordships, I would ask for that kind consideration which your Lordships are wont to extend to any one who is in that position. My point has been already alluded to by the most reverend Primate. As I understand it, this Bill—and I think the noble and learned Lord referred to this point in his speech—would, as at present framed, legitimate the child of a married woman whose husband was alive but was not the father of the child. I cannot help thinking that this is going rather far. I am in favour of the main principle of the Bill, but I hope that when we come to the Committee stage a change may be made in that one particular respect. I thank your Lordships for allowing me to say these few words.
LORD PHILLIMORE: My Lords, I venture to say that this Bill is a step in the right direction, but in one respect it does not go far enough, and in another respect I think it goes too far. It does not go far enough because it does not legitimate wholly and frankly, and out of hand, the children with which it deals. It makes a second or a third class—
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legitimate children, illegitimate children, and children legitimated up to a point by this Act. It ought to go quite thoroughly to the end, and say that the child born under certain conditions of parents who afterwards marry, is just as much entitled to a dignity or to real estate, or to succeed by entail, as if he were a lawfully born child. I cannot help feeling that in a very few years that will be the result of this measure being passed People will say it is quite ridiculous that one man should inherit the whole of a ducal estate and another man should be the Duke. Similar cases will arise. After all, it is quite new in the history of the world, and so far as I know quite new in modern civilisation, that there should be this third and intermediate class of child. Therefore I venture to say that this Bill does not go far enough. It has not the courage of its opinions. It prevents, in Clauses 4 and 6, the legitimated child from having the natural rights of a child, and brands him for all time.
Where then does the Bill go too far? It goes too far for the reasons given by the most rev. Primate and for another reason which I shall submit to your Lordships. The old simple rule of Church and State—Church first and State afterwards—everywhere but in England and Ireland, has recognised that if a child is born of parents capable of marrying, and those parents do not marry somebody else in the meanwhile, but end by marrying each other, Church and State should say: "After all, marriage is a matter of consent. You did not solemnise or prove your marriage by the proper forms, but you have proved your marriage now, and for the sake of the children, if not for your own sakes, we shall deem that you have been married from the beginning, and your children shall have all the rights as if you solemnised your marriage at first. But for that purpose you must be free to marry." The point which the most rev. Primate did not notice is that you must not in the meantime have contracted another marriage.
Let me show your Lordships, purely on practical grounds, the objection to the Bill as it stands in that respect. A child is the fruit of an adulterous union, the woman being married. The intrigue is not known. The parties go on and the husband dies in ignorance of the intrigue, and then the guilty couple marry. What

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is the position of a child procreated by the paramour and the adulterous wife ? Is he then to be the legitimated child of his actual parents ? Is he to be bastardised from being what he has always grown up in the belief that he was? He has always supposed that he was the son of the husband of his mother, he has lived with his brothers and sisters in that belief, and has enjoyed all the comforts of the family. Is he then to find that his real parents are going to say that he was their child, and therefore he is to be legitimated as their child, and necessarily bastardised as regards the position he has always been in before? I do not think anybody has thought that out, and I cannot help thinking that if the noble and learned Lord thinks it out he will consider that some step will have to be taken if the clause which the most rev. Primate proposes is not carried.
Take another case. The old rule of law is that parents should remain unmarried and not enter into another tie. Suppose they enter into another tie. Suppose a man has a mistress who has a child. He then marries in the regular way and has a child by the lawful wife. The wife dies, and then, out of repentance or from a desire to make amends to the mistress, he marries her. He at once brings the mistress's child into equality, at any rate, with, and possibly into superiority over, the child of the marriage. Hard indeed would that be upon the child of the marriage, who has never been aware that there is any such second claimant to his position. I say possible superiority, because I imagine that these provisions making a second class of children will be swept away in a few years, and then the mistress's son will be the elder son, and the son of the legitimate wife will find that his father's bastard child, of whose existence he has been unaware, is entitled to succeed to his father's honours and estate.
Such things have happened as a man quarrelling with his heirs, and the son of a lawful marriage, if he know that his father had an intrigue, might live all his life in the fear that if he offended his father he might be disinherited. For those reasons, and I say nothing about others, I hope not only that the provision referred to by the most rev. Primate will be introduced, but also that those oilier precautions which I have mentioned will be taken. The, noble and
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learned Lord at the end of his speech delivered an appeal to us all on behalf of illegitimate children. I wonder that he docs not say that in his view all children should be legitimate. That at any rate is the result of his last argument against this clause, and I hope to support the most rev. Primate when the time comes.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, it only remains for me to state the general attitude of the Government towards this Bill. The Bill consists of a general principle, which is expressed in the first clause, and then of a number of exceptions which are made to guard questions of title. As to the general principle the Government look upon this Bill with favour. We think it is conceived in the interest of the child, and that it ought to be looked upon as embodying propositions which should form part of the law of the land. Then, when I come to the exceptions, I have listened with attention to the criticisms which have been made. There was the criticism made by the most rev. Primate, and criticisms made by Viscount FitzAlan, and also by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Phillimore. All these go to points of detail. I am not saying that they are right or essential. What. I say to Lord Buckmaster is that it would be well if he thoroughly sifted them out, in order to make progress with the Bill, and I suggest to him that he and I should conler about the concessions to be made and about the questions which arise on the clauses of this Bill.
I have read the Bill with some attention. I think it is a Bill which is drafted very competently, but questions which are more than questions of drafting arise on the clauses, which I should like to consider a little more closely, having a sense of the responsibility which any one must feel who is in any way responsible for changes made in the law. Therefore, if my noble friend will confer with me on the provisions of the Bill, I will call in the experts whom I can command, and we shall have the whole matter before us. That entails that the Bill should not be put down for a few days for the Committee stage. We must endeavour to see what light we can get upon it before we come again before your Lordships' House. If my noble friend will take that course then certainly the Government will not offer the slightest opposition to the Bill. Rather

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the contrary; it regards the Bill with favour, and it may facilitate its progress through your Lordships' House if we have taken the pains to go into the matter before it is further considered.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the whole House.

UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE BILL.
Order of the Day for the Second Beading read.
EARL DE LA WARR: My Lords, the measure which it is my privilege to lay before your Lordships this evening is the first Bill that has been brought to this House by a Labour Government. Therefore it has, I think, a certain slight historic interest. It is the last of a series of eight measures designed to make the old unemployment Insurance Act of 1911 capable of dealing with the present exceptional circumstances. As your Lordships know, the scheme of the unemployment insurance system was drawn up to deal with normal risks of unemployment when trade was comparatively prosperous. These attempts at transforming the original Act have not, I am afraid, been altogether satisfactory. My right hon. friend the Minister of Labour has undertaken to bring in a really comprehensive measure to deal with the whole matter. In the meantime, however, there is one difficulty that requires immediate attention.
As your Lordships know, there is a gap of three weeks which intervenes between two periods of benefit, and to make this point quite clear I will read to your Lordships the proviso which it is proposed to repeal :—
'' Where benefit so authorised as aforesaid has been received by any person in the first benefit year for periods amounting in the aggregate to twelve weeks, that person shall cease to be qualified for the receipt of benefit in that benefit year until the expiration of three weeks from the date on which the last period in respect of which benefit was payable ended."
It is obvious what this gap was originally intended to do. It was intended to compel the unemployed man to look for work and to discourage the shirker—on the whole, a very desirable object. But I submit to you that it is a mockery to tell an unemployed man to look for work now, when we know that there is no work. The
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effect of this proviso is not to decrease unemployment, far from it. It is to confront the unemployed man with the cruel alternative of misery, frequently bordering on actual starvation, or of going to the Poor Law authorities, with all the consequent humiliations of pauperism. The object of this measure is to remove this cruel alternative. His Majesty's Ministers propose to do away with the gap, to rescind the proviso that I have read to your Lordships, and to make payments continuous.
The estimated cost was originally £600,000, but, owing to certain delays in introducing the measure, it has since been reduced to £500.000. Surely this is a very paltry sum when speaking of alleviating the misery of so many of our unemployed, especially when you take into consideration the undoubted saving in the rates that must result. The considerations that I have laid before your Lordships have secured unanimous approval for this provision in another place. I venture to hope that your Lordships will show equal sympathy, and that your approval will be granted with all haste, having due regard to consideration of the matter by your Lordships. Even now, day by day, week by week, thousands of men are entering upon this gap period, and I appeal to your Lordships to give practical effect to this Bill immediately, and thus show your undoubted sympathy with the cause of the unemployed, and remove from thousands of your countrymen the fears of pauperism. I beg to move that the Bill be read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill he now read 2a.—(Earl De La Warr.)
VISCOUNT CAVE: My Lords, I should like to congratulate the noble Earl upon the fact that, so early in his career in this House, he has had the responsibility of introducing the first Government Bill, and also upon the manner in which he has discharged that duty, for he has stated clearly and, to the best of my belief, quite accurately, the existing law and the effect which the Bill is intended to have. I look upon this Bill as in the nature of an experiment. It is true, as the noble Earl has said, that the object of the gap was to prevent a man who is unemployed from supposing that he will always be maintained at the expense of the Unemployment Fund, however long he is unemployed, to encourage him to look forward

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to the gap which is coming, and try to find work before it comes, and, of course, when the gap arrives, to give him a further incentive to finding work in the hope that he may continue to be employed in that work and may not again come back upon the Fund. I think that the gap had a useful intention.
But, as the noble Earl has pointed out, it is said by persons who are good judges that, although there are advantages in the gap, there have also been serious disadvantages—that the expedient has not had quite the effect that was hoped from it, and that many perfectly deserving working men have, owing to this expedient, either suffered distress during the period for which the allowance is discontinued or, what is almost as bad, have gone in some cases upon the rates, and so have had for the first time the experience of being maintained at the public expense. It is said that in some cases the evils greatly outweigh the benefits. That being so, so far as my friends and I are concerned, we are quite prepared, upon the recommendation of His Majesty's Government, to say that, the experiment should be tried, and we do not desire to offer any opposition to it.
EARL BUXTON: My Lords, I do not rise to oppose this Bill in any way. On the contrary, those with whom I act are in favour of it on the ground stated by the noble Earl in his introductory statement. As a matter of fact, this particular proviso was put into the original Act, for which I was personally responsible, with the object, as stated by the noble Earl, of saving money in the first instance so that the benefit should be able to extend for a larger number of weeks in other cases, but especially to give an inducement to the man, as stated by the noble Viscount who has just spoken, to look out in anticipation for work and, when this interval came, of doing his best to obtain it. That Act was passed, of course, in normal times when there was comparatively little unemployment, and when it was possible in many cases for a man to obtain work. I understand that the position of the Government now, in introducing this Bill, is that, though the gap of three weeks may be an inducement to a man to seek work, the chances are that he will not be able to obtain it, that the result of the three weeks will not be to enable him to obtain work and so reduce
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unemployment, but will mean a very great addition to his discomfort and difficulties in being out of employment and, indeed, may bring him into very difficult circumstances indeed. So far as I am concerned, I think that is a blot on the Act and the sooner it is remedied the better.
I rose really to enter a caveat rather than to discuss the merits of this Bill, upon which, I think, we are all agreed. I should be glad if I might have the attention of the Lord Chancellor to this matter. I read the account of the debate in the other House and I understood from it that the Minister of Labour or his Department is preparing a Bill to amend the Unemployment Insurance Acts. I must confess that I was—I will not say alarmed, but a little disturbed at a remark which fell from the Minister of Labour. Very likely it was not deliberate and I do not wish for any answer in regard to it now, but I would like to ask the Lord Chancellor and my noble friend sitting below me to bear in mind, in regard to that new Bill, that the whole basis of the original Insurance Act, and the Acts which have been passed to amend it from time to time, was a contributory one. The employer contributes, the workman contributes and the State contributes.
The best test that this basis has been a successful one for the Insurance Act and the Acts amending that Act is that, in spite of the very great strain and the very great stress brought on the Acts by the, war, they stood the strain and the stress, and a considerable margin was accumulated for other purposes. That Act has been extended now to something like twelve million persons, whereas the original Act applied only, I think, to about two millons. I hope that the indication to which I have referred in the speech of the Minister of Labour did not mean that the Government will, in any sense, relinquish or depart from a contributory basis. The contributory basis is a stable one. It gives an interest to each of the three parties. I enter this caveat because I am anxious that the Government, in considering this matter, should bear in mind the basis of the original Insurance Act and not depart from it in any material respect.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: In reply to the noble Earl may I say that no decision in regard to the contributory

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basis has been come to. In considering the question I will certainly bear in mind what my noble friend has said on the subject. No suggestion has been made with regard to it this afternoon.
On Question, Rill read 2a : Committee negatived.
EARL DE LA WARR: My Lords. I beg to move that Standing Order No. XXXIX be considered in order to its being dispensed with, for the purpose of taking the Third Reading of this Bill.
Moved, That Standing Order No. XXXIX be considered in order to its being dispensed with.—(Earl De La Warr.)
On Question, Motion agreed to: Standing Order No. XXXIX suspended accordingly.
EARL DE LA WARR: I beg to move that this Bill be now read a Third time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 3a,—(Earl De La Warr.)
On Question, Bill read 3a and passed.

POOR LAW RELIEF IN POPLAR.
EARL BEAUCHAMP EARL BEAUCHAMP rose to call attention to the administration of Poor Law relief by the Poplar Guardians, and to ask His Majesty's Government if the action of the Board is approved by them ; to call attention to the rescission of the Special Order by the Minister of Health : and to move for Papers. The noble Earl said : My Lords, it will be seen that this Question, of which I have given notice, is really divided into two parts. It may be for the general convenience of your Lordships' House if I say at once that the first part of the Question is that to which I attach the greater importance, and it is that part to which chiefly I shall direct my remarks.
The facts in this matter are admitted. Nobody denies them. The system of Poor Law relief, as administered by the Poplar Guardians, was reported upon by a Special Commissioner appointed by the Ministry of Health, in May. 1922, and the White Paper which was issued contains, in various parts, a series of condemnations of the way in which they carried out their duties. I shall venture to read to your Lordships a few extracts from that Report. On page 18, where the
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conclusions are summarised, the Commissioner—the very able clerk to the Burnley Guardians—says that there were insufficient deductions in respect of children's earnings in calculating the allowance of relief, resulting in the granting of relief in cases in which no real destitution existed. Again, relief was allowed in excess of the earnings of an independent workman who maintained himself by his labour.
He noted the payment of wages in excess of trade union rates, and he said that
" The administration of the Poor Law in this parish is dictated by a policy adopted by the Guardians which is in many instances foreign to the spirit and intention of the Poor Law Statutes.''
Again, he noted
" The lavish allowances of outdoor relief encouraged persons to apply who would not otherwise do so.… The Guardians' policy has a tendency to demoralise the recipients and is calculated to destroy incentive to thrift, self-reliance and industry."
Finally, he stated :
" I consider that, on the present rate of expenditure, by careful administration, a saving of at least £100,000 per annum would result."
How far it went, indeed, is shown by an interesting letter. I think a genuine letter, written without any intention of irony, which appears on page 10 of this Report. A large firm of employers, Messrs. George Armstrong and Co., wrote, on January 20, 1922, to the Guardians as follows:—
" Our employees who live in Poplar have pointed out to us that they can get more money by being unemployed than working for us, and as we have no wish to prevent them from getting as much as possible, we propose to dismiss them so that they can take advantage of your relief."
Some figures which I quote later tend to the same conclusion. These facts are not denied by the Poplar Board of Guardians.
They issued a pamphlet, which has probably been seen by a good many of your Lordships, that was entitled : "Guilty and Proud of it." It was the statement that they issued in response to the Report of Mr. Cooper, and I shall venture to trouble your Lordships with two extracts. They say :
" We claim it as a virtue that in the main our scales are applied without variation. We are not the people to discriminate between the deserving and the undeserving."
Again, on page 22, they say:
" Our work in Poplar will not be finished until we have compelled the Government itself to face the problem of unemployment by providing full and adequate maintenance for those for whom there is no work."
The term "full and adequate maintenance "is obviously capable of a good many interpretations, but a somewhat sinister light is thrown upon the meaning attached to that phrase by the Poplar Board of Guardians in the next sentence in their pamphlet :—
" The unemployment pay doled out by Sir Alfred Mond is foolishly inadequate."
The case, I think, is perfectly clear. The facts are admitted by everybody.
What we want to know is whether these methods of the Poplar Board of Guardians are approved by His Majesty's Government, or not That is, I think, a quite plain and simple issue which I venture to put to the noble and learned Viscount on the "Woolsack. The sequence of events which have really stirred up this trouble afresh are very likely familiar to your Lordships. With the advent of the new Government a deputation called at the Ministry of Health, and received a sympathetic reply. The Special Order was rescinded without very much being said about it, but, owing to the storm which arose after the rescission of the Order an explanation was sent out of an exceedingly mellifluous kind, and I cannot help feeling that I detect in it the master hand of the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack. It seems to me that it was intended to allay the fears which arose, not only in your Lordships' House but in many parts of the country. The explanation, however is, I think, really insufficient, and what we want to know now is whether the rescission of the. Order is to be interpreted as a victory for Poplarism, or not.
I saw in the New Lender of last week an article from which I shall read to your Lordships two passages. It bears on the letter to which I referred just now in speaking of how people out of work get better pay than those who are at work. It is an article by Mr. Edgar Lansbury in the New Leader, which, I think, is the official organ of His Majesty's Government. In the New Leader of last Saturday there appeared this :
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" Many members of the Poplar Board work at the docks and on the railways and receive less in wages than the scale of relief which they pay to their unemployed fellow workers."
What an astonishing state of affairs ! The article goes on :
" They know that in Mr. Wheatley they have a Health Minister who will put the health side of his work first; they know that he will understand and sympathise with them in the horrible problem of poverty, misery and distress which faces them."
Mr. Wheatley is not the only person who sympathises with the Poplar Board of Guardians in the difficulties that they have to face, nor in the special difficulties which exist in so poor a district as Poplar. Mr. Lansbury finished his article with another passage which I wish to quote to your Lordships. He says:—
" They will still carry on their work of feeding the hungry and clothing the naked; they will still comfort the aged sick in their affliction ; they will still care for the widows and the fatherless,."
So do nearly all other boards of guardians throughout the country, and without transgressing the law in the way in which it is being broken by the Poplar Board of Guardians.
What we want to know from the noble and learned Viscount is whether the rescission of this Order, which marked them out because of the length to which they had gone in breaking the law, is really to be regarded as a mark of sympathy on the part of the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack and his colleagues. It is a real hardship upon other boards of guardians, not only those neighbouring on Poplar but all up and down the country, who are trying conscientiously to carry on their work, and now find that the extravagant methods of Poplar are apparently approved by His Majesty's Government. It is so easy to be charitable with other people's money. For my own part, I think we are rather obliged, on such an occasion as this, to express our approval of all those boards of guardians who have resisted the temptation, who have refused to follow the easy path, who, by a method of careful and economical administration, have managed to keep within the law and yet to provide for those poor who are to be found within their districts. A great deal of pressure has been put on some of these

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boards of guardians, especially upon those boards of guardians which border upon Poplar itself. It seems to me that it is really unfair to those men who are trying to carry out the law that His Majesty's Government should have made their work even more difficult than it is at the present time. We want to know whether the policy of His Majesty's Government is one supporting Poplar, and whether they wish other boards of guardians to follow the example of Poplar and do the same kind of thing as the Poplar Board of Guardians have done.
It is not only Poplar which is involved in this matter. I am sure the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack realises to the full the fact that this case has awakened a great deal of interest all over the country. Boards of guardians everywhere are watching, and are anxious to know what is the policy of His Majesty's Government in the matter. They are pressed over and over again by people with whom they have, as we all have, a great deal of sympathy because of their unemployment, who come to them and say : "We want the Poplar scale." It would be of great assistance to all these boards of guardians if the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack would say what is the view of His Majesty's Government in regard to this matter. Do they, or do they not, think it desirable that the various boards of guardians should follow the example of Poplar? Last week I saw in The Times a letter from Mr. George Lansbury, who said that the more the Government got Poplarised the more popular it would be. The sentiment is as bad as the jingle. What we want to know is whether, that being the opinion of one of the most prominent supporters of His Majesty's Government, it is also the opinion of the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack.
Poplarism is used as a vague phrase. What it means is full maintenance—very full maintenance—as the alternative to work. That may be right or it may be wrong. This is not the moment to enter upon the controversy as to whether it be right or wrong. The scale administered by Poplar is not the law of the land, and, therefore, it seems to me that it is very little use indeed to say that in rescinding this Order the Minister of Health was only sweeping away obsolete machinery
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which could not be used. It was a great deal more than that. It was pressure from Poplar which induced Mr. Wheatley to withdraw this Order. It was a triumph for Poplar. It is regarded by the Poplar Guardians as being a large advance in their direction, and that is why we challenge His Majesty's Government on this matter, and ask them to give us a full statement of their views upon it.
For a few moments I turn to the question of the rescission of the Special Order. It is a difficult matter, and a legal matter, on which I hope my noble and learned friends, the Earl of Birkenhead and Lord Buckmaster, may say something during this discussion. Whatever may be the legal technicalities in this matter, it was an unexampled measure on the part of Mr. Wheatley to rescind this Order. It was rescinded before the report of the auditor was made. I do not know whether the audits of the Ministry of Health are generally made as late as this, but they have not yet, apparently, received the report of the auditor for the early part of last year. Therefore the Minister of Health does not yet know whether there will be a surcharge or not, and before he knew whether there was to be a surcharge or not he withdrew the Order and deprived himself of the power of making a surcharge if he wished.
I confess that I do not think the whole of the blame in this matter is to be attributed to Mr. Wheatley. During the whole of last year another Government was in office and they took no steps whatever. It will be interesting to know why. It has been suggested to me that it is impossible to make a surcharge of this character until the auditor has made his report, and if that is so it is a perfectly valid and obvious defence I shall be interested to know whether that is the case or not. But until now an Order has never been rescinded except on a promise of good behaviour for the future. And there has been no such promise in this case. The rescission has been carried out by the Minister of Health without asking the Poplar Guardians for any pledge as to their conduct in the future. The matter, in itself, is important, but it is still more important with regard to the future, with regard to the whole policy of His Majesty's Government, and with regard

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to the work of poor law guardians throughout this country. Therefore I return to the first part of my Question and ask the Lord Chancellor if he will be good enough to let us know exactly how far the rescission of the Order means that His Majesty's Government approve of the action of the Poor Law Guardians of Poplar.
THE EARL OF BIRKENHEAD: My Lords, before the noble and learned Viscount replies to the Question which the noble Earl has put to him I ask leave to make a very brief observation on the subject. In the greater part of the speech which he has delivered I assume that the noble Earl has been preaching to the converted, but when I find the noble Earl, so recently after a very important decision taken by his Party, coming forward in alarm and impeaching upon deep grounds of political principles the conduct of the Government, which the decision of himself and his companions and leaders alone made possible, I am led to muse a little on the irony and paradox of contemporary politics. You would gather from what the noble Earl said that the Poplar issue was a new one. When did it first engage his reforming zeal? Did he not hear of the Mond Order at the time when the Mond Order was an important contemporary document? The noble Earl has since publicly embraced Sir Alfred Mond, but so far as I can gather he has never taken the slightest trouble to acquaint himself with the responsibility which was then the responsibility of Sir Alfred Mond, and must now, I suppose, be undertaken equally by the Party which welcomes Sir Alfred Mond back as one of its ablest members.
The noble Earl now comes to your Lordships' House full of terror at this new Socialism, which many of us had observed going on for the last four years and which many of us had taken steps to correct. Only a few short weeks ago he expressed his pleasure at the destruction of the Conservative Government and his delight at the substitution for that Government of those who sit upon the Front Bench opposite and upon the corresponding Bench in the House of Commons. The noble Earl, who, once the issue of Protection has ceased to be a real live issue in our internal politics, would find great embarrassment in giving three profound grounds of political difference: between us and himself, now comes, in about a
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fortnight's time, and pathetically complains in this House of the dangerous courses which those whom he and his friends placed in power are taking. Whoever deserves sympathy, the noble Earl and his friends deserve not the slightest sympathy. They could have known, and they ought to have known, that by every political commitment of this Government it must make some gesture on behalf of the Poplar movement, and for the, noble Earl to affect this surprise and indignation is really to impose on the simplicity of your Lordships.
Now I come to the merits of the question. It is much more difficult and complicated than the careful speech of the noble Karl would suggest. Let this be made perfectly plain in the first place. The noble Earl is right when he says that the Poplar experiment is an attempt to put in practice in the plainest and crudest form the doctrines of doctrinaire Socialism. It is an attempt to give to every man, whether he works or whether ho chooses to avoid work, the same reward that is given to the man who obeys the eternal law of eternal toil. It is the first time that the attempt has been plainly made in this country. This must be added. It has been made by the Poplar Guardians in successive years with the plain knowledge of the illegality of that which they did. The Lord Chancellor, who I understand is to reply and who is an accomplished lawyer, will not dissent from my statement, that over a series of years the conduct of the Poplar Guardians has been marked by recurrent illegality.
But the matter is not exhausted by making this admission, the difficulties are not concluded by placing upon record the successive, and I will say impudent, illegalities of which the Poplar Board of Guardians have been guilty, because there still remains the immensely difficult, and up to the present the unsolved, administrative problem. Let me make a comment on that problem. Year by year the Poplar Guardians disregarded the censures of an auditor and the instructions of a Ministry. What then was the proper course for the Ministry of Health to adopt? And in attempting to reach a conclusion as to the course which they ought to have adopted we may derive some instruction from this fact, that a uniform course was adopted by

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four successive Health Ministers—Sir Alfred Mond, Sir Arthur Griffith-Boscawen, Mr. Neville Chamberlain and Sir William Joynson-Hicks. Whether they were right or wrong, four different Ministers, equipped with the experience and the knowledge of their staffs, applied their minds to this question, and those four Ministers resembled one another alike in that which they did and in that which they omitted to do ; and that which they did and that which they omitted to do each, in its own way, supplies a vivid illustration of the difficulty of the problem which was represented by the illegalities deliberately undertaken by the Poplar Guardians.
From first to last this, as I understand it, was the course of events. In the first place, illegality: in the second place, auditor's inquiry; in the third place, the consequent surcharge. What, in the opinion of the noble Earl, was the duty of the Minister of Health when this surcharge Order had been made and the illegality repeated ? The problem is far more difficult than anything in the speech of the noble Earl would suggest. Shall the Minister of Health refuse to make any advance at all to Poplar because an unpaid surcharge still exists, nominally leviable upon the Guardians, and because continued acts of illegality are notoriously taking place ? Not only was that view not taken by the Ministry of Health for all those years, but, on the contrary, the Ministry of Health continued to make advances of money to the Poplar Guardians, to the very Guardians upon whose head surcharges rested and who were involving themselves each week and each month in repeated acts of illegality.
I think it is correct to say that advances were made after the surcharges, but the date is not material. The material point is that these advances were made at a time when it was known that the Poplar Guardians were involved in acts of illegality, and that, so far from being repentant in relation to those acts, they had ostentatiously made it known that they intended to continue them. Why were those advances made ? They were made because no Government would have taken the responsibility of allowing no relief to be given in Poplar. The fact that they were continued in so many changing circumstances, and under so many different Ministers, will confirm the
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view, which your Lordships will have already formed, that in the present condition of the population of Poplar the Ministry had no choice except to make these advances continuously, as I think it will be found that he did make them, for a long period of time, and after the surcharges had taken place.
One other point remains to be carefully considered—a point which did not, I think, engage so much of the noble Earl's attention as it might have done. What does he suggest is the policy that ought to have been adopted in relation to these surcharges ? The total amount, I think, at the date when the Minister took a step open to grave objection—not, I think, precisely to the objection put forward by the noble Earl, but an objection which I will attempt to indicate in a moment—the total amount of the surcharges at the time when that Order was cancelled was £100,000. In another year it might, for all I know, have been £150,000. Those surcharges, or a great portion of them, had been in existence for a very considerable time, as the noble Earl pointed out to the House. No one of those Ministers who were at the head of the Ministry of Health at the time when these surcharges existed had made the slightest attempt to collect them. Indeed, it is obvious that it would be quite ludicrous to attempt to collect the £100,000 surcharge from the Poplar Guardians, because, without making any reflection upon the solvency of these gentlemen, they have themselves made it extremely plain, if I may so put it, that it would have exceeded the reasonable limits of convenience for them to make up that sum at the present moment, or at any moment which they could reasonably predict.
To what a situation were we plainly drifting ? We were drifting to a situation in which Minister after Minister was solemnly accumulating the totals of an obligation which he and all his predecessors knew quite plainly never had been paid, never would be paid, and never could be paid. Whether the Minister was right or wrong—and I think, as most of us think, that he was completely wrong—in the course which he adopted, let us attempt to examine the situation fairly and plainly. No Minister could for long have consented to see the accumulation of these nominal and never-to-be-paid surcharges continually going

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on. I remember that my noble friend Lord Balfour, whom I see upon the Cross Benches once said in a memorable debate upon an Irish topic in the House of Commons : "I do not mind your describing my Government as odious, but you cannot expect me to acquiesce in making it ludicrous.'' In the same spirit I can see the kind of case which can be made out upon its merits, and which has already been obscurely indicated by the Minister who was responsible and by the Prime Minister, That case, as I understand it, is this. You have imposed surcharges. It was a ludicrous device. You knew that they never could be paid, and that those upon whom they were purported to be imposed never intended to pay them, and defiantly informed you that they never intended to pay them ; so that you united every conceivable disadvantage in the course which you adopted, because you imposed a futile penalty which could never be enforced, and the men upon whom you purported to enforce it were openly ridiculing you and defying you.
Such was the situation when the responsibility fell upon the shoulders of the Party many of whose members, though not all, had openly relied for the support of the public upon doctrines which are not in principle distinguishable from what I may call the pure fruit of Poplar, and undoubtedly a dilemma then arose. It is very difficult, if you have preached Poplar upon the platform—as my noble friend Lord Parmoor has done for so many years —it is, no doubt, extremely difficult, when Poplar comes and waits upon you in a deputation, to point out to them that you have been wrong all this time, or else (the only other alternative) that they are wrong now. The latter is, of course, a somewhat difficult admonition to address to gentlemen who are not yet fitting upon the Treasury Bench, though we shall no doubt in due time welcome them there. Accordingly, we find the Minister confronted with this dilemma. He took a decision. It was, I think, as regards both the period of its formation and the methods of its expression, a crude decision. His decision was that he would rescind and wipe out the surcharges.
Give me leave to point out how abundantly this justifies that which I and my friends have ventured to point out both to the country and to the Liberal
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Party, that the danger of the Socialist. Party did not entirely lie in that which they might do by legislation, but was to be found largely in that which, by a mere administrative order, a stroke of the pen, they could make effective. This was done by the Minister whom the noble Earl and his friends placed in office. That Minister would not be in office had it not been for the noble Earl and the friends of the noble Earl, who come in plaintive and belated appeal to this House, to complain of their creature—of the man whom they placed on the Treasury Bench.
This decision is taken by administrative Order. I object to it, not because of that which it actually effected, because why should one complain of any Order, if carried out with dignity, which merely corrects and banishes an absurdity. I complain of it, not for that reason but because that particular absurdity ought, not to have been corrected by the kind of gesture, at the very moment, which enabled the Poplar Guardians to go home and say: "We have triumphed, our system has triumphed ; and the Government admits that the whole, of the Poplar scheme is well founded, and is capable of application to the whole country ?" What else can be the result? The Minister was dealing with what was a dangerous and illegal scheme, and then the Minister publicly wiped out these surcharges, which, ridiculous as they were, marked the censure of official opinion. In that way he armed the guardians of the country to do that which Poplar did, and. gave them the right to say that this is what the Labour Government approves of.
One must be practical in these matters. The noble Earl invited me to deal with the technical points involved. I could do so, but I do not attempt to do so, for this reason, that it does not seem to me that this is a matter which requires technical or legal contributions from lawyers. The broad outstanding points are too plain to require any technical disquisition. What we have to ask ourselves is: Where are we going? Where does this policy lead us? I shall be asked, or I may be asked, by the noble Viscount on the Woolsack this question: He may say: "You have said that these surcharges could not have been enforced : you say you censure us for having publicly erased the surcharges ;

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what would you have done ? "That is a question which he and your Lordship are fully entitled to put to me, and I will attempt to reply to it. Only two courses were open to any Government, whether Liberal, Conservative or Labour, determined to enforce the law. Unless we are to see the whole Poor Law system dissolved in anarchy, only two courses were open—one ineffective, and the other, in my judgment, effective, although administratively inconvenient.
The first and ineffective coarse would be to disqualify immediately the members of any board of guardians which had involved itself in illegality of this kind. I have said that in my opinion this remedy would not be completely effective, because, if you take a district like Poplar, those who are familiar with the workings of democratic government, and the kind of appeal which sounds pleasantly in the car of democratic voters, will know that it is not unpopular, even in these days, to say in a very poor neighbourhood that a man, whether he works or not, is entitled to be paid the full trade union rate of wages. It is not unpopular, and until its economic possibilities, and the social ruin which it involves, have been made plain upon a large stage, it will continue to be popular. It follows that if you dislodge the personnel of one board of guardians you will possibly find that substitution will be made of other boards of guardians who share the same views upon economic matters. Therefore I do not look to this remedy as a promising one.
There is a remedy which I am sure would be effective to achieve this purpose, although administratively inconvenient. In my judgment, if similar cases are to be dealt with and corrected in the future, if a board of guardians will not do its duty, and if reasonable judgment and observation teach you that the substitution of others following upon disqualification will not give you a different policy, there is only one course, drastic as it is, and that is the supersession, for the time being, in that area, of that body, and the substitution of a Committee of the Ministry of Health. If a public body will not discharge its functions within the law, the only course that can be adopted by society, still strong enough to protect itself, is to substitute in that area, and for that moment, until sanity and obedience to
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the law returns, an authority constituted by the Ministry of Health. I have heard that some such scheme was in the minds of the late Government. I am sure that upon those lines, and upon those lines alone, will a sufficient method of correction be found for the illegalities in Poplar.
I do associate myself so far with the speech made by the noble Earl that I think the House is entitled to invite the noble and learned Viscount to make it perfectly plain whether the cancellation of these surcharges is to be construed as an indication on the part of the Government that they do not intend to permit such surcharges to be imposed in the future, or, if they are imposed, intend to cancel them. We are entitled, in the second place, to ask him quite plainly whether he concurs in the description which I have given of the illegalities committed by the Poplar Board of Guardians. We are also entitled, and this is a far more important question, to ask him what is the policy of the Government in case these illegalities should be repeated, because we know that the Board of Guardians intends to repeat them. They have said that they have gained the victory ; that they are guilty, but not ashamed ; and therefore similar courses will be practised by them in the future, and it is by no means improbable that other boards, seeing how pleasant is the primrose path under the present administration, wall themselves adopt similar courses.
Therefore the last question that I put is one which is fundamental, and here the noble Earl rendered a service by raising this Question. What is the policy of the Government if these cases of illegality are continued ? In what I have said I have made it plain that I do not think the task committed to the present Government by its predecessors was an easy one. I think that in judging that which has been done, and if we are given satisfactory reassurances as to the future, we should make allowances for the difficulties in which not only this Government but its predecessors had found themselves involved. But one thing is vital for all of us, wherever we sit, and I greatly doubt whether many of those who sit opposite to me and whether many of its recent recruits will dispute this one great truth, that once you make it known to the work-

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ing classes that the same emolument and the same standard of comfort that attends zealous toil attends a studied and resolute determination not to work at all, from that moment the industrial and the commercial existence of this nation is destroyed.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, my noble friend Lord Beauchamp began his speech by asking me certain questions. My noble and learned friend Lord Birkenhead, in what I would venture to call a more judicial speech, proceeded to examine the whole situation, and he put some questions which were not substantially different. It will, therefore, be convenient that I should answer the questions put together, before entering, in the brief compass in which I hope to deal with it, into the details of the topic of controversy.
The first question put by Lord Beauchamp was this: Do the Government approve of all that the Poplar Guardians have said? The answer to that question is: No. The second question was : Was the rescission of the Order of 1922 a mark of sympathy for a breach of the law ? To that the answer is also: No. The third question was: Do we want other boards of guardians in the country to follow the example of Poplar? That question is somewhat ambiguous. If my noble friend means that other boards of guardians have been giving relief on a scale not in excess of Poplar, then I can tell him that I have got a list of boards of guardians, particularly in the East End of London, who are giving relief on a scale which is in excess of that being given in Poplar. Your Lordships may ask how that is to be accounted for. Undoubtedly, the scale of relief has been high. The answer is that the scale of distress in the East End, arising from unemployment, has been something almost without precedent. The situation has been very difficult, and, if some of the guardians have done their work quietly, and in such a fashion that they have not; come under the censure of the auditor, that is due to their superior skill, but it is not duo to the fact that they have in all eases given less than Poplar. On the contrary, in a series of instances, which I have here, they have given more.
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The Poplar Guardians were people who expressed the emotions of a class in Poplar who were very much distressed. They not only expressed these emotions vividly, but they also transgressed the law, and it is those transgressions of the law with which we are concerned, because it was with those transgressions that my right hon. friend Mr. Wheatley has been thought in some quarters to be associated. It is not true that Mr. Wheatley broke the law in anything he did; Mr. Wheatley has acted strictly within the powers confided to him. Had he been a more experienced Minister he might perhaps have given to the public fuller explanations of the exact ground on which he was proceeding in each case. And I think, if he had done so, he would have impressed upon the public mind that in no sense and in no way was he exceeding his legal powers. He said nothing to the Poplar Guardians to encourage them to exceed their legal powers.
What he did was this. It is easy to talk of a surcharge. The surcharge is the decision of an auditor, who is not a Ministry of Health official at all, but has his authority by appointment ab extra The auditor gives his decision, and then it remains for the responsible Minister to say whether he will enforce that decision—enforce it by making the guardians who have exceeded what they ought to have spent pay, or else go to prison. That is a very responsible business for the Minister. Of course, you can take a short cut and make martyrs of the offending guardians, but what good do you do then ? As my noble and learned friend Lord Birkenhead pointed out in his speech, probably the locality, moved by enthusiasm and perhaps by passion, will just elect another guardian of the same kind, perhaps a whole board of guardians of the same kind, and you are no better off than you were before. What are you to do ? Lord Birkenhead suggested that you should appoint officials of the Ministry of Health to come and carry on local government in that region. I should be very sorry to be one of the officials of the Ministry of Health on such an errand, as I can conceive nothing more impossible and impracticable than to suspend local government under the established system in an area like that, and hope that you will get smooth working of the municipal institutions. You will not, and it is not

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in that way that the law can be enforced. When I come to the point I will say what is in the mind of the Government about the reform of the law as regards the future. These were the questions that were put to me—
THE EARL OF BIRKENHEAD: No. The noble and learned Viscount will pardon my interrupting, but there was a very important question I asked—much the most important question I asked—and it was this. Assuming, as I pointed out that we are entitled to assume, that these illegalities continue, what is the policy of the Government ? That is a very important question, which has been left quite unanswered.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I said it was a question of policy that I was coming to. I cannot deal with it until I have dealt with one or two intermediate things, but I will deal with it, and I said I would deal with it. What is the situation just now ?—because before we can talk of policy we must know what the situation really has been. Under the general law it is the obligation of the rich to come to the assistance of the poor in their necessity. That has been so since the days of Queen Elizabeth, under the Statute passed at that time. Then, in 1834, to check the extravagance of guardians, the power to make an audit was conferred, or at any rate strengthened. Since 1834 it has always been in the power of the responsible Minister—not the Minister of Health; it used to be other Ministers—to make a scale and say what the scale should be.
Then there is another factor. The richer boroughs in London come to the assistance of the poorer boroughs, by providing assistance through a Common Fund which equalises rates. If your Lordships want to know the reason of that you have only to look at the variations of poverty in such places as the City and Westminster, compared with Poplar and Bethnal Green. There is an enormous difference, and it is right that the rich should come to the assistance of the poor in the case of those London boroughs. Well, that was the law, and the rates in Poplar have been assisted from the Common Fund. In 1921 an Act was passed which, by the second subsection of Section (1), enabled the authorities to
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make a scale which should regulate the assistance to be given out of the Common Fund for the benefit of the rates, including Poplar. Then there followed upon that the famous Poplar Order of 1922, which made the scale and applied it. Well, it did not work, and within a few months the Government of that day—I have no doubt very properly—not only got rid of the part of the Act which contained the power to make that scale, but appeared to have taken cognisance of the scale. The scale was a thing which was past. I do not say that it remains. At any rate, as the result of the power that had been exercised, part of the scale was alive and to that extent operated.
But for the rest, an Act was passed in 1923 which by its first section repealed the whole arrangement which was contained in the Act of 1921, and said that for the future there was to be a flat rate, a maximum of 9d., which is the extent to which the Common Fund is to be drawn on for the assistance of the rates in such places as Poplar. When that was done it created a new situation, but it left the Minister of the day with the remnant of the old situation upon his hands. He had the Poplar Order, with its effects, to deal with. In 1922, before the Statute under which it was done had been repealed, and again in 1923 the auditors proceeded to see whether the Guardians had observed that scale or not. Your Lordships will observe that it was not the old system. It was the passing from the old one to one under which there was a contribution of 9d. from the Common Fund. But the old one was alive to this extent, that things had been done under it, and the auditor proceeded to look into those things. After he had looked into them he did not surcharge, but he notified that he probably would surcharge.
That was the situation with which an unfortunate succession of Health Ministers found themselves confronted. They were faced with the question of what was to be done with Mr. Lansbury and other members of the Poplar Board of Guardians who had transgressed the law. The first thing that these Ministers, one after the other, considered was with whom they were to deal. Certain of the members were very well known people who were receiving great sympathy from a large number of their constituents in

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Poplar for having done what they did—which was to pay out more money than was authorised by the State. It was wrong to pay out more money than was authorised by the State, but I ask your Lordships to bear in mind the distress that there was in Poplar, the intensity of popular feeling there, and the strong temptation to these people, holding the views they did, to do everything they could to assist those who were in such dire straits.
Undoubtedly, they did pay out, and illegally paid out, more money than was authorised by the State. But one Minister after another—Sir Alfred Mond, Mr. Neville Chamberlain and Sir William Joynson-Hicks—thought that it was no use to put those people in prison. It was perfectly obvious that nothing could be recovered from them it they wore made bankrupt. The only alternative was to put them m prison, and they had them in prison for a time, not on this question but in regard to a totally different matter. For contempt of a mandamus they had to go to gaol, and very quickly the Government had to get them out. Successive Ministers did not try to enforce the surcharge, and speaking for myself I have no doubt that they were right. Then the surcharges stood. Mr. Wheatley became Minister and these people came to him and said : "Do you mean to enforce the surcharges?" And he said. "No." He did not say that he would disregard the law in not doing it. On the contrary, whether he enforced the surcharges or not was plainly within his discretion. He only said that he was not going to exercise his discretion by enforcing the surcharges.
How could he enforce the surcharges? It was no good putting the guardians in prison or making them bankrupt. It would only be incurring charges without getting the money. It was said that Mr. Wheatley gave general encouragement to these people to disregard the law. I have looked into the matter, and I find that all he said was what I have told your Lordships, that he would not enforce the surcharges, which actually had not been made but which had been notified. Two years had passed since the first of them had been notified and nobody had shown the slightest sign of taking any action to enforce them. As regards the rest, he said no word which
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indicated any advice or suggestion on his part to the Poplar Guardians that they should not obey the law. On the contrary, the law was kept before their eyes.
The law on the subject is contained in the famous decision in the Merthyr Tydfil case which was decided in 1900. Any of your Lordships who are interested in it will find the report in the Library. There the duty of the guardians is laid down as clearly as it can be laid down. It has been complained that the law is obscure. It is not obscure. The law can do no more than lay down general principles, and these were laid down by the late Lord Lindley in a memorable judgment which has been the authority on the subject ever since. He made perfectly plain what the duty of the guardians was.
Long before Mr. Wheatley came on the scene it was decided that you could not take any steps against them, and the question now is how we stand to-day. We stand to-day in this position, that the law is in full force with the power of the auditor to surcharge. The auditor will investigate the accounts and may surcharge as he has done before. What trouble we may have then with the guardians I do not know. When the matter comes up, if it does come up, which Heaven forbid, we will do our best to deal with it. I only remind your Lordships that it is impossible for any Government to do more than lay down the law plainly and then to deal with cases as they get them in a concrete fashion. It is a difficult thing in every respect.
That brings me at once to the question of whether the law is in a satisfactory condition. That is what my noble and learned friend Lord Birkenhead referred to. Certainly I am dead against the suggestion of appointing a Receiver or of asking an Official Receiver to take on the business of local government in any district where the guardians have done this sort of thing. That would be disastrous to local government in London and to broader aspects of local government in the country generally. In 1909 the Poor Law Commission reported. In 1919 a Reconstruction Committee, presided over by Sir Donald Maclean, also reported upon this question and they agreed in drawing attention to the fact that many

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of the evils with which we are confronted and much of the difficulty of enforcing the Poor Law result from this, that under the Poor Law you mix up and commingle a vast number of things which are wholly different.
Your Lordships would not wish to interfere with the guardians in the exercise of a discretion within the law in relieving freely cases arising out of unemployment. Then there are the cases of people who are paupers and those who are suffering from mental infirmity. That is an evil of a different kind from that presented by the case of the man who cannot get work, not through any fault of his own but simply because there is no work for him to do. I could multiply instances, but one will suffice for my purpose. The unemployed man obviously ought to be dealt with under unemployment insurance, while the lunatic ought to be dealt with under a system of institutional treatment. The sick pauper ought to come under the Ministry of Health. Then there are the cases of children. These have to be dealt with in their own way. The result of the present system is that all these things are lumped together, and come under the jurisdiction of the guardians who have to administer a complicated kind of relief. But if you break up the bundle and take the sticks separately it is much easier to deal with them. You will then know whether the guardians are relieving strikers who could get work. That is illegal. But you would have to deal with a very different position if you had a law that was broken up. You would then have a distinction between the different classes of people who have to be dealt with. You would be able to distinguish between the wives and children who were destitute and who must be kept in health, and the case of the man himself.
The plan of the Government is to deal with the matter. Of course it is a very big question, and one that will take time. Then there is the other question which we may be able to deal with more rapidly, but that is also a very complicated one, and I do not propose to go into details in regard to it now, but will merely say that it is a matter which is receiving consideration. I wish to say, in conclusion, that only in the way that I have indicated will you solve this problem. It
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is no use resorting to violent measures. Even if they succeed in one case they will not succeed in many cases. The Poplar Guardians were stirred by the number of people who presented a spectacle of the misery under which they were living. They acted rashly, and I hope they will not so act again, but at any rate it would have been the height of unwisdom on the part of Mr. Wheatley to have followed a course which was not adopted by his predecessors of enforcing the surcharge. It was wiser to follow the course adopted by his predecessors of not enforcing the consequences of the surcharge.
LORD BUCKMASTER: My Lords, it does not seem to me that in this debate it is a profitable matter either to speculate on the reasons why the present Government are in Office, or to consider in detail whether former Ministers of Health have or have not discharged the responsible duties attaching to their Office. The debate as it progressed appeared to me to assume a more and more depressing complexion. The speech of the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack has, I admit, left me in a state of profound gloom. What has happened? We have been told that, urged and stimulated by distress, the gravity and the extent of which I have no desire whatever to minimise, the Poplar Guardians have deliberately and systematically broken the law, and that everybody appeared to be impotent to prevent the law from being broken. The noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack does not suggest now that there is any method that they can adopt, or that they propose to adopt, for the purpose of preventing a repetition of this illegality. It is no use the noble and learned Viscount saying surcharge, because his Minister said, "No, I will not do it, other people may, but it is no use speaking to me about surcharge." I cannot help thinking everyone must agree that in effect when the Minister of Health said : "It is not my intention to surcharge you," he meant thereby "I do not mean to do what my predecessors in office have done, but I intend you to have some special consideration at my hands," and it is that which has caused a considerable alarm among all people who realise that it is impossible to enforce the Jaw with regard to the spending of public funds.

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We are in face of a very grave danger, the extent and magnitude of which it is quite impossible to measure.
So far as I can gather from what the noble and learned Viscount upon the Woolsack said, our attitude towards the Poplar Guardians and the others who have broken the law ought to be this : "We marvel at your moderation ; if you had spent twice as much we should have been equally impotent. We should have been quite unable to check you ; and all we can say is that you will be in due course surcharged, and a benevolent Minister of Health may tell you he does not intend the surcharge to be enforced."
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I did not intend to convey that impression. I addressed myself solely to what was done under the Order of 1922, and I only said that it would not be enforced.
LORD BUCKMASTER: I must admit that I find myself in some difficulty. It may be that we have all been misunderstanding what has taken place. I certainly understood that the Minister of Health had said in plain language to the Poplar Guardians that he did not intend that the surcharge should be made, and everybody seems to have agreed that if the surcharge had been made there was no means by which it could be enforced. And that is, indeed, the justification that has been put forward for the action he took. Be it so. Then it makes no difference whether the surcharge was £100,000, or £200,000, or £250,000 ; you would be equally impotent ; and I say that if there be no means whatever by which people who have charge of public money can be properly limited and restrained in their functions in applying that money for the purposes for which it is entrusted to their charge, then there is a danger the magnitude of which, I repeat, it is impossible to over-estimate.
The noble and learned Viscount was asked by more than one speaker what it was that the Government did propose to do. He answered by telling us what, I have no doubt, was right that the question is a very complicated one, and that there was a necessity of registering different grades and degrees of poverty and distress, and having an amendment: of the Poor Law. All that is no doubt very good, but what is the amendment that
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you are going to propose ? What are the steps that are going to be taken ? Is anything going to be done ? Are the other boards of guardians to be told: "Well, you may spend whatever the kindness of your heart dictates and you think the necessity of the case may require, without the least regard to restrictions by Orders, or by the supervision of the auditors, because, provided everybody who is a member of your board of guardians has no means, there is no opportunity whatever by which the Orders of the Minister can be enforced." That appears to me to be the conclusion of this matter.
I hope your Lordships will not think that I exaggerate little things when I say that conclusion left me in a state of profound gloom. There surely ought to be some other opportunity, and it seems to me that there are means that might be taken. I agree with the noble and learned Lord upon the Woolsack that imprisonment is nearly always a futile thing for violations of Orders of this kind, because it undoubtedly docs excite popular feeling, but is it not possible that the funds which are to be administered for this purpose should be earmarked, that there should be only a limited amount upon which drafts can be made, that there should be some means of checking the weekly payments ? There is no power, no legal authority, to overdraw at the bank. Overdrafts at the bank are outside the powers of boards of guardians ; borrowing at the bank is outside their powers unless it has been altered by recent law ; and the consequence is that banks will not permit overdrafts. Therefore if some control were effected by earmarking funds that are at the disposal of boards of guardians for specific purposes, and some control exercised over the scale upon which that money was being used, it should be possible to prevent the repetition of a matter which, if it is not a public scandal, certainly approaches to what is a public danger.
I hope no one will think that I, or any other members of your Lordships' House, do not appreciate all that is meant by the appeal of want and poverty and suffering made to a board of guardians like Poplar who are in daily contact with eases which they seek to relieve. But I do think that there is no worse form of charity than that of relieving distress

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at other people's expense. It is the most demoralising thing that can happen. It demoralises those who receive and those who have to pay, and it destroys all sense of responsibility. If the case of Poplar is as grave as represented, then the proper course is for the scale of payments to be large and opportunities given for the relief of this exceptional distress. The one thing that can never be justified is to have laws and allow them to be broken, and take no steps to see that they are effectively enforced. The whole basis of democratic government lies in this—that laws must be obeyed, and they must be obeyed for the simple reason that every person enjoys equally with every other person the right to take the necessary steps, by constitutional means, to effect their change.
VISCOUNT CAVE: My Lords, before the debate closes I hope I may be allowed to say a few words on the speech made by the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack. Let me say a word or two first about what has been done and then as to what ought to be done in the future. We have it admitted at last, although it was denied by the Lord President of the Council a few days ago, that an Order was made in June, 1922, which prescribed a scale above which the Poplar Guardians were not to grant relief. That is common ground to-day. It is also admitted that that Order has now been rescinded and that the Minister of Health has expressed his intention of remitting any surcharge which might be made in respect of moneys paid in contravention of that Order.
LORD PARMOOR: May I interrupt the noble and learned Viscount for a moment? I thought I made that limitation the other day.
VISCOUNT CAVE: The statement the noble and learned Lord made referred to the Order, and if he will refer to the OFFICIAL REPORT he will find that he was in error. It has not been said by anyone to-day that the Order of June, 1922 was obsolete when it was repealed. It was not obsolete, and it did not derive its power from the Acts to which the Lord Chancellor has referred. The Order of June, 1922, was made under the old Act of 1834 and under that Act alone. It is true it
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incorporated the scale which had been fixed under the Act of 1921 and forbade the Poplar Guardians to go beyond that scale, but it did not depend on the Act of 1921 and was not affected by the Act of 1923. It stood, until the moment it was repealed, as an effective Order restraining the Poplar Guardians. There is one other point upon which I must comment in order to get rid of a good deal of confusion. I want to note that the former Ministers of Health had no power to enforce any surcharge against the Poplar Guardians in respect of moneys paid in contravention of the Order for the simple reason that no surcharge has been made. That to-day is common ground, and the noble Earl, Lord Birkenhead, was somewhat mistaken when he assumed that there had been a surcharge which had not been enforced. There was no surcharge. The auditor had not concluded his audit, and therefore the time for a surcharge had not arisen and no notification of any surcharge had been or could be given. That is a sufficient answer to the suggestion that the former Minister of Health ought to have taken action. But I do not care a rap about these personal things ; I want to clear the misapprehension out of the way.
What is the position to-day ? First, there is no check at all upon the Poplar Guardians except the old check under the Act of 1834, to which they have paid no attention whatever for years past. Secondly, it has been notified to them, and to other boards of guardians throughout the country, that whatever restrictions are put upon them by the Ministry of Health or by Parliament, they need not obey them, and if a surcharge is made it will be remitted. They have been given full authority to break the law as much as they please without fear of the consequences. Those are two things which I hope the country and this House will insist on being remedied. There ought to be an effective check on people of this kind, and if they break the law they ought to know that they will suffer. I hope His Majesty's Government will not be allowed to ride off upon the ground of a suggestion that they are going to look into the general law and have it altered. They do not tell us how. The very consideration will take a long time ; it will mean a good deal of discussion and opposition. And

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if the remedy is to be put oft until the law has been altered in this way, then long before that time an enormous amount of public money will have been thrown away and ratepayers will have suffered severely.
We do not know what are the proposals in the minds of His Majesty's Ministers. We have not been told. Is it this, that the poor rates for Poplar and Shoreditch shall be thrown upon the whole of London ? Does it mean that the Poplar Guardians may fix their expenditure, but that the whole of London will have to pay for it? If so, it will be merely a fraction of the Poplar expenditure which Poplar will bear, and there will be every encouragement to them to spend sums without limit. I hope we shall not be asked to wait, at any rate that we shall not consent to wait, until these general inquiries have been concluded. I am putting my points very shortly, because I do not want to detain the House too long.
Just consider. The Poplar Guardians have not only relieved too many able-bodied people but they have relieved them upon too high a scale. The Report of Mr. Cooper shows that whereas neighbouring places, equally poor, I think, Stepney, Bermondsey, and so on, relieve on a comparatively moderate scale—Stepney relieves one person in fourteen of its population, Bermondsey one in thirteen, and Shoreditch one in twelve—Poplar relieves one in five. Then take the scale of relief. Under the Poplar scale the maximum relief for a household was fixed at £2 14 s. The Poplar Guardians have given £4, £5, £6 and, in some cases, £7, going many pounds beyond the amount which the law allowed. The result is, as was to be expected, an enormous burden upon the rates of Poplar. I think the. Poplar rates exceed 20 s. in the £, but I forget the exact amount. You may say, "Why do not the Poplar ratepayers turn out the guardians?" The answer is very simple. The rateable value of Poplar consists, as to two-thirds, of property belonging to corporations and other bodies who have no vote at all in the election of guardians. One-third of the rateable value of property elects the guardians, and therefore it is quite natural that we have not in that place the kind of check by the ratepayers which you have elsewhere.
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That is a crying evil, and I think we really ought to ask for a clear and an early remedy.
What ought to be done ? First, I suggest that it should be laid down that when a surcharge is made it shall be enforced. I do not mean, of course, that where a guardian, or a member of some public body, has made a bona fide mistake and has laid himself open to a surcharge, it must be enforced against him. I mean only that people who wilfully, deliberately and consistently break the law ought to know that there is a real risk that the surcharge, when it comes, will be enforced. So only can the law be enforced. The Ministry ought to make an example of some body or some person to show others that they cannot go on breaking the law with impunity. But I agree with those who have said that a surcharge alone is a weapon which is apt to break in your hand, because you have people surcharged who have not a penny with which to pay, and the whole thing becomes a mere farce. One must find some other way.
I am permitted to say that the late Government had prepared a Bill, which they were just about to introduce, dealing with this matter. It went upon lines somewhat similar to those which the noble and learned Earl behind me has outlined to-day. It was proposed, in cases of persistent breach of the law on the part of a public authority, to give to some other public authority which might have been willing to undertake the task the right to take over and administer its powers. It was ascertained that in the case of the Poplar Guardians a great London authority, an elected body, was ready and willing to lake over the powers, if so desired, by an Order made under Act of Parliament. There, at all events, a remedy would have been found. You would have obtained honest, patriotic men ready to obey the law and prepared to administer these powers, and you would have had some kind of remedy for the evils which are going on.
Another remedy was suggested by my noble friend Lord Buckmaster, and will, I think, deserve consideration, but any Government which is in power in this country ought to find, and to find promptly, some way by which, in the case

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of constant and deliberate breach of the law, a remedy may be supplied. I have said all that I wish to say at this late period of the afternoon. It is the fact that the Poplar Guardians have adopted deliberately a policy of breaking down our Poor Law which was set up in 1834. They want to go back to the pre-1834 conditions, which caused so much trouble and so much distress in this country. They want to set up the principle of work or maintenance at the same rate as if a man were doing work. That is a fatal policy deliberately adopted. I am sure that it ought to be stopped, and that some early steps ought to be taken by the Government to prevent its being carried out.
THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL (LORD PARMOOR): My Lords, speaking on behalf of the Government upon what is admitted on all hands to be a very difficult problem, I wish to say most emphatically that I believe the Government are as much in earnest as any one in any part of the House to make obedience to the law a fundamental condition of the manner in which they are carrying on government, and ought to carry on government, in this country. I wish presently to deal at close quarters with some of the suggestions that have been made. The action of the Government—it is open to criticism and it has to be explained—has certainly never been based on the proposition that laws which ought to be enforced should be disobeyed. I want to make that quite clear at the outset, and I think I can make it still clearer when I come to the difficulties which have been suggested.
As regards the speech made by the noble Viscount opposite, he was, of course, perfectly accurate in what he stated. It is true that our modern Poor Law dates from 1834, and it is true that the Poor Law, as re-settled after long inquiry in 1834, was so re-settled because prior to that date the custom had arisen of supplementing wages out of the Poor Fund. I know of a country district in Buckinghamshire where, prior to 1834, the rates had risen under these conditions to 30 s. in the £, with the result that a whole village became derelict. It was in reference, no doubt, to such conditions that the Act of 1834 was passed, and it is under the Act of 1834 that the Mond scale
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was established. I do not think there can be the slightest doubt regarding the law upon that point.
Let me, therefore, go one step further. So far as the auditor is concerned, he is outside official or Government control of any sort and is in an entirely independent position. Certainly, whatever has been done in this case, the auditor's position has not been interfered with in any way. Before I go on to describe what happened in this case let me make this further statement. I have not the statistics before me (though I had them yesterday in reference to a Question which was not asked owing to the unfortunate illness of Lord Banbury); but a very important point will be observed in this connection—that in the last published account from the Ministry of Health it will be found that in 90 per cent. of the cases of surcharge the surcharges were paid without question, and that, I am told, is roughly the proportion in previous years in which the surcharge has been found an effective system of control.
That is very important, because it has been suggested, and was suggested, I think, by the noble Viscount, that something had been done in this case to weaken the control which the auditor exercised by the pressure of a surcharge. In 90 per cent. of the cases the matter does not come before the Minister at all, and my statistics show—I do not want to quote them too certainly, because figures are difficult to retain in one's head—that the only amount which was left in that year to be paid as surcharge, and which was brought up for review before the Minister (it was not Mr. Wheatley at the time) was £10. This shows two things : first of all, that the action of the auditor, in a great majority of eases, is effective ; and secondly, that in cases where the surcharge of the auditor is questioned it has, as a matter of practice, been remitted in a very large number of eases. I do not wish to give these facts as an excuse for the present case, but merely to illustrate the system of administration.
I think there has been one other mistake upon this point. The Minister has to consider two things. I think it is under the Act of 1848, in which Act there were Commissioners in the first instance, where there is now the Minister of

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Health, that the Minister has to consider, first of all, whether the auditor has acted legally in making the surcharge. If he finds the answer is in the negative, and it is so found, no doubt, in some cases, there the matter is. In other cases he may find that the auditor's surcharge is in itself legal, as has been found in many cases. I am not quite sure as to the stage of the Poplar case. It is only then that the Minister's discretion arises as regards remitting the surcharge, whatever it may be, and that is in a comparatively small number of cases. I may speak with some personal knowledge, because in days when I was dealing a good deal with local government I had to act as chairman of our county education authority, after what was called the "whisky money "was paid to us. I spent the whole of a vacation upon it, and I recollect that subsequently I was addressing your Lordships in this House when a telegram was put into my hands, informing me that I had been surcharged £10,000. That was because there had been raised the question whether we were entitled to use the money for buildings, or only for lectures, and we had used it for buildings. I was asked to go down to my county at once, but I could not go at once, because I was working in this House, but after a great deal of anxiety and trouble—because certainly the payment of such a sum in those days would have bankrupted me—the surcharge was remitted in my case. It was a point on which there might be reasonable difference of opinion with regard to the legality of our action, and subsequently the view which I took of the Act was established.
Now all that Mr. Wheatley did and it has been done in hundreds of cases, although perhaps his discretion was not exercised as some of your Lordships would have exercised it, was to notify the guardians that he remitted the surcharge. That was wholly a matter within his discretion. I have often thought that a discretion of this kind should not be left in the hands of a Minister, because it leaves the matter open to a political aspect, and from the point of view of the local authority it is extremely hard that a man who has voluntarily done his duty in public work should be surcharged a sum which may ruin him. I have often thought that there should be some judicial decision by an outside authority. In this case no
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general principle arises, but it is only a particular decision given in a particular case, which, whether right or wrong, applies to that case alone.
Now I come to the other part of the case which has been discussed in this House. What was the proper thing to have done ? What was the best thing to have done ? We have had a considerable number of suggestions, and I should like to deal with four, which appear to me to be well worthy of consideration. The first suggestion came from Lord Birkenhead. As I understood it, he suggested that the Ministry of Health might retain advances of money due from the Treasury to the boards of guardians. I think that was the first view he put forward, but he forgot that the surcharge is on individuals. You do not surcharge the guardians as a body at all. You surcharge individuals for having taken illegal action. If is rather difficult to keep in mind all the details of Poor Law administration, but so far as I know the Ministry of Health cannot withhold funds for the relief of the poor generally because certain guardians are held by the auditors to have been acting illegally. I do not think any such power could have been exercised, because the payment is to the board for Poor Law purposes, and the surcharge is on the individual for having acted illegally. The second suggestion of the noble Karl I think destroyed itself. It was to disqualify any members of the board, so that they could not be re-elected. I think the noble Earl said, quite rightly, that this would be purely ineffective, because it is clear that in places such as Poplar you would have a new body elected on similar grounds and to carry out a similar policy—in fact, probably an exaggerated policy—because nothing so much excites local feeling as action of that sort.
Then the noble Earl made a suggestion with which the noble Viscount on the Woolsack dealt. It is wholly impossible, at any rate without legislation. Whether legislation should be introduced or not I am not giving an opinion. I know of no means by which you can supersede an elected representative body by bureaucratic action.
VISCOUNT CECIL OF CHELWOOD: Not in this country.
LORD PARMOOR: You can do it in other countries, no doubt. Perhaps I have had more experience of local government than of central government, and speaking on behalf of our local system of government, and being a firm believer, in the long run, in the representative system, I would do everything in my power to prevent representative bodies being superseded by bureaucratic bodies. Those were the suggestions made by the noble Earl. Do they help the Government ? Is there one of those suggestions which could be used effectively in this very difficult problem, which is rendered not less difficult because charges are made against the Government that they are really upsetting the social system ? That did not come into the mind of the Minister who had to deal with a particular difficulty, such as Mr. Wheatley dealt with in this case.
There was a suggestion by the noble and learned Viscount with which I am thoroughly in favour, and which is really in accordance with the suggestion of the Poor Law Commission of 1909, and the more recent Committee which sat under the Chairmanship of Sir Donald Maclean, and which comprised among its members Lord George Hamilton, who, as Chairman, signed the Report in 1909, and Mr. Sidney Webb, the sponsor for the Minority Report. The main lines suggested were exactly in accordance with the suggestion of the noble Viscount, and I hope that these difficulties having been brought to notice, everyone who cares for local government will fully consider them. Instead of the guardians being a detached body you bring them into your general local government system. For instance, in London, to take an illustration, you would administer the Poor Law practically through the boroughs as part of your local government, and in that way you segregate, and you can deal by segregation with a lot of complex conditions which now come under the Poor Law authority, and which are a constant source, of difficulty.
Then you ought to have an over-riding authority. You get it in all our county councils, and you could not have a finer body than the County Council in London, because the London County Council has always attracted a very high
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type of ability to its ranks. What would you have? You would have the higher local authority in a position to enforce what the lower local authority ought to have enforced, but neglected to enforce. That is exactly right. It is in accordance with all the principles of representative and local government. It cannot be done at the present moment. The noble Viscount knows that as well as I do. Rut, as the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack pointed out, these Reports are under the consideration of the Government. I cannot go further than that. I believe that salvation in this difficulty is to be found in that way, without any of those exotic suggestions which are wholly inconsistent with our local liberties under our representative system.
And all I plead in the meantime is this—certainly for myself and, I believe, for all members of the Government—that nothing is further from our minds than to encourage disobedience in these matters of local government. Nothing, to my mind, is so important as that these provisions of the law should be obeyed and enforced. There has been no disobedience at the present time, so far as Mr. Wheatley is concerned, although it may be said that he has exercised his discretion in one way when your Lordships might have exercised it in another way. And it is an extravagant suggestion—one of those suggestions which cause the very difficulty that we want to get rid of—to make that, because in one instance possibly, in your Lordships' view, a mistake in discretion has been made, there is the slightest ground for saying that the Government encourage disobedience. I admit that, if such an inference could be drawn, it would undoubtedly be a great reason for accusing the Government for the action which has been taken. But I do not believe there is any foundation for that suggestion. You have an extraordinarily difficult position, which was met within the legal powers of the Ministry of Health. I hope that I have made clear what I believe the position to be, and that some way may be found by which the present difficulties may be overcome in accordance with the great principles of local government.
Motion, by leave, withdrawn.
House adjourned during pleasure.
House resumed.

ROYAL COMMISSION.
The Royal Assent was given to the following Bills :
Unemployment Insurance.
Kirkealdy and Dysart Water Order Confirmation.
Aberdeen Harbour Order Confirmation.
[From Minutes of February 20.]

SPENCER SETTLED CHATTELS.
Petition for a Bill, together with a copy of the proposed Bill annexed thereto; read, and referred to two English Judges.

ABERDARE CANAL BILL. [H.L.]
BIRMINGHAM CORPORATION BILL. [H.L.]
HASLINGDEN CORPORATION BILL. [H.L.]
LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL (LAMBETH BRIDGE) BILL. [H.L.]
MALVERN HILLS BILL. [H.L.]
NEATH HARBOUR BILL. [H.L.]
WAKEFIELD CORPORATION BILL. [H.L.]
WEST THURROCK WHARF AND RAILWAYS BILL. [H.L.]
Committed: The Committees to be proposed by the Committee of Selection.

ADVERTISEMENTS REGULATION BILL. [H.L.]
To be read 2aon Tuesday, March 4 next—(Lord Newton.)
House adjourned at twenty minutes past seven o'clock.