§ THE EARL OF ONSLOW rose to ask His Majesty's Government whether they are prepared to take any steps to afford to the Scilly Islands the advantages which accrue to a spending authority under the Agricultural Rates Act, 1923. The noble Earl said: My Lords, this Question probably requires one word of explanation. The Scilly Islands are peculiarly situated because they do not constitute a Poor Law union. The Poor Law is administered by the parishes, and in these circumstances it has been held that payment of an additional grant under the Agricultural Rates Act, 1923, cannot be made. I think everybody is agreed that the Islands should be able to benefit by that Act, just as England is able to benefit. The peculiar position in which they stand was overlooked at the time when the Act was passed; otherwise, provision would have been made to meet it.
§ The Scilly Island authorities brought the matter to the notice of the late Government, and it was suggested that it might be put right by a clause in the Finance Bill of this year authorising the payment of an additional Grant under the Agricultural Rates Act to the Scilly Islands Council in respect of Poor Law expenditure, but, as your Lordships may have observed, no such clause was included in the Finance Bill. Another suggestion was made that the Islands should be constituted a Poor Law authority. I do not know whether that is possible or not, but if so it would remove the difficulty. I think it is admitted that the Islands suffer under a disability, and I should be very glad 687 if His Majesty's Government could tell me whether they propose to do anything to rectify it.
§ LORD PARMOORMy Lords, as the noble Earl knows, the Council of the Isles of Scilly is a spending authority for the purpose of the Agricultural Rates Acts, and receives its appropriate share of the Grant payable under that Act. But the difficulty to which the noble Earl refers arises, I think, from a different source. So far as the Isles of Scilly are concerned—it is not quite the same, I think, in all the other islands—the Poor Law rate is not paid by the spending authority. Poor Law administration is in the hands of overseers, and there are no guardians. The result is that certain sums which are paid to spending authorities outside the Scilly Islands are not paid to the spending authority within the Scilly Islands. That is exactly how the matter stands, and that was the point that it, was proposed to put right in the Finance Bill of this year. But this was found to be impossible for certain technical reasons.
The difficulty could be remedied in one of two ways. Either the money could be paid in the case of the Isles of Scilly to the spending authority in a wider sense, that is to say, though it could not be so paid now, the money paid to the spending authority could be made to include Poor Law payments made within the Isles of Scilly. That would be one way of dealing with the difficulty. The other way would be to introduce a change in the Poor Law administration of the Isles themselves. I quite agree with the noble Earl that this is a matter which should be put right in one way or another at the first available opportunity, but unfortunately that opportunity has not so far arisen. The amount of inconvenience or injustice is really comparatively slight, but on the first occasion that arises the Government would desire to put a matter of that kind right. I do not think, however, that it could be done immediately in any way.