LORDS AMENDMENT. (Hansard, 27 July 1925)

§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR
My Lords, I shall ask your Lordships to agree with the Commons in both these matters. The first Amendment relates to the clause that was inserted in this House and concerns the division of the furniture between the husband and wife on the occasion of the making of a separation order. When the Amendment was proposed here I ventured to ask your Lordships not to accept it because it was new in principle and 451 would be difficult to administer, but your Lordships took a different view and carried the Amendment in Committee. Then, on Report Stage, I told your Lordships that I was still unconvinced regarding the advisability of retaining this Amendment, but I suggested a wording which I thought would improve the form of the Amendment. I did that in order that it might have the best possible chance of adoption and that form was adopted by the House. I added that, in the event of the other House not agreeing to the Amendment. I reserved my right to take any course that I thought fit. Now that the Commons have disagreed with the Amendment altogether, I think it would be impossible to press it, especially at this stage of the Bill. I can quite understand that those who supported the Amendment should regret that it was not accepted by another place, but in the circumstances I think the best course will be for your Lordships to agree with the Commons.

§ LORD ASKWITH
My Lords, I was the individual who moved this Amendment when it was carried by a majority of one and I and my friends who support me regret very much that the Commons have not accepted it, particularly as the reasons given seem curiously inexact in fact and in argument. I notice that it was suggested on behalf of the Home Office in another place that the opinion of the magistrates would be canvassed to find out whether there was any grievance. I do not know whether that has been done in the short time that has elapsed since the Bill was in the Commons and has come back here, out if there has been any canvass or inquiry of the kind it would not be so much the magistrates who would give the information about grievances as other persons who would be more intimate with the particular localities and the parties concerned. Many unhappy unions are not brought before the magistrate owing to the fact that one or other of the parties is afraid that the furniture would be lost or that he or she would be separated from his or her partner with the children upon an allowance wholly incapable of providing furniture or even in many 452 cases lodgings. The wording which the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack had put into the clause, one might have thought, would have shown that it was at the discretion of the magistrate whether or not an apportionment was to take place and also that that apportionment was only to continue so long as the order remained. But in the circumstances, at this late period of the Session, I do not propose to ask the House to insist on the Amendment or to disagree with the noble and learned Viscount's opinion.

§ EARL BEAUCHAMP
My Lords, it is not undesirable before your Lordships pass from this Bill that some comment should be made on the action of His Majesty's Government in connection with this matter. It is true that the principle which is involved in this Amendment may be a new one and may even cause some, difficulty in administering the Act, but in view of the fact that so many women, without the passage of this Amendment, will suffer a great deal of pecuniary loss and considerable hardship, I confess that it is with real regret that I note the decision of His Majesty's Government not to insist upon the Amendment. I think it was the one Amendment which, during- the whole of this Session on any Government Bill, this House opposed the wishes of His Majesty's Government, and therefore it is that I specially regret that, after a Division in this House—won, I admit, by only a very small majority—His Majesty's Government should so disregard the opinion of this House as not to insist upon the passage of this particular Amendment. It is, common criticism that members of the Party to which I have the honour to belong are very contemptuous of the opinion of this House. I think criticisms of that kind have often come from noble Lords opposite. I shall at any rate in future be able to say that if we are contemptuous, which I am not prepared to admit, at any rate noble Lords opposite do not consider that the opinion of your Lordships' House as registered in a Division should always be followed when it happens to be contrary to their own.

§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR
My Lords, I must say that I do not think the Government is in the least open to the rep-roach of having dealt disrespectfully 453 with the opinion of this House. The Amendment was only carried by a majority of one and I said at the time out of respect to the House that, though I did not ask the House to reverse its opinion on Report, I nevertheless reserved the right to advise the House not to press this particular Amendment if it was not found acceptable in another place. That being so I venture to suggest that we have paid the fullest respect, as I think we always do, to the opinon of your Lordships' House.