§ Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
VISCOUNT GAGEMy Lords, this is Bill for the consolidation of the Poor Law in England and Wales to which your Lordships last Session granted a Second Reading, and which was subsequently referred to the Joint Select Committee on Consolidation Bills. As your Lordships are well aware, it is the practice of that Committee to deal clause by clause with the Bills referred to them, but the Joint Committee were only able last Session to examine about a half of this Bill. In their Report they recorded their opinion that the Bill was of the greatest value, in view of the urgency of consolidating the Acts relating to the Poor Law, which at present are in a state of she greatest complexity and confusion. The Joint Committee submitted that steps should be taken to reintroduce the Bill as soon as possible in the next Session, in order that the labour already 82 expended on it might not be thrown away, and that the Bill might be passed into law at an early date. The Bill, as is stated thereon, is identical with that introduced last Session, except that it embodies various Amendments made by the Joint Committee in the Bill and a few small corrections of a drafting nature. The necessary steps have been taken to reconstitute the Joint Select Committee, and I beg to move that the Bill be read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Viscount Gage.)
§ VISCOUNT HALDANEMy Lords, we are grateful for this Bill, which is a very useful one. It puts the Poor Law before us in a form in which we can read it without research. But, of course, this is only a first instalment, and I should have been glad if the noble Viscount could have told us when that other Bill for putting the Poor Law on a modern footing, which has been promised, is likely to appear. Of course he cannot do that. I am not pressing him to answer the question now. I only want to tell him that we take this as an instalment, and rather a small instalment, of what we are entitled to.
§ On Question, Bill read 2a, and referred to the Joint Committee on Consolidation Bills.
§ House adjourned at half-past four o'clock.