PROBATE AND REGISTRY OFFICE, CANTERBURY. (Hansard, 19 December 1928)

§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR

My Lords, I have no complaint against the noble Lord for raising the Question or for the method which he adopted in bringing it before your Lordships or the light in which he put it before you. But the facts as to the Canterbury Registry are not, I think, as the noble Lord must have led your Lordships to believe, that a registry which has been established for centuries is being closed by the order of the President of the Probate Division and the Lord Chancellor. The facts are these. In 1857 probate registries were set up or continued in various parts of the country, including Canterbury. In 1866 a scheme was brought into operation under which the salaries of the registrars and clerks and their duties were laid down. Since 1866 two things have happened. First of all, there has been a very great change in the distribution of population and in the distribution of work throughout the country. Secondly, the whole ideas of administration, scales of salaries and so on have profoundly altered.

As long ago as 1874, more than fifty years ago, complaints began to arise with regard to the conditions under which these registries were being carried on. From time to time the matter was raised in the Public Accounts Committee, and from time to time suggestions were made for alterations. But those suggestions never fructified. The matter continued 713 to get worse, and by the beginning of this century not only had the centres of population so altered that many of the registries found themselves with very little work for their staff, but also the people who were employed were underpaid; they had no security of tenure; they had no pensions; and they were not, strictly speaking, even servants of the State. The result was that in 1915 the whole matter was investigated, and a Report was submitted to Parliament recommending the abolition of registries—not all, but a very few cases—and suggesting that a small Committee should be set up to investigate further the carrying out of the scheme which was contained in that 1915 Report. There were other legal matters which had to be dealt with first, and it was not till 1922 that a Committee was set up under Mr. Tomlin, as he then was, Mr. Justice Tomlin now, to carry out the recommendations of the 1915 Report. That Committee made a Report in 1923, and in that Report embodied a scheme which gave a greater number of local registries and sub-registries than had originally been approved. That scheme is substantially the scheme which has since been adopted by Parliament.

Based upon the Tomlin Report, a Bill was introduced in 1921. In that Report it was proposed that it should be left to the President and to the Lord Chancellor to determine which registries should be maintained and which should be abolished. Parliament was told that the intention was, substantially, to carry out the scheme of the Tomlin Committee. That was not satisfactory to the House of Commons before whom the Bill came. In Committee there was a great outcry when it was pointed out, as it had to be, what very unsatisfactory conditions existed with regard to the registries, and the Committee insisted on the scheme itself being embodied in the Bill in the form of a Schedule. The Bill never became an Act because of the Dissolution of Parliament, but a new Bill was introduced in the present Parliament, in 1925, and it adopted the plan which the 1924 Committee had insisted upon—that is to say, of stating in the Schedule which registries should be maintained and which should not. That Schedule contained Canterbury as one of the places which was to cease to exist as a registry and was to become a sub-registry.

714 All that the 1925 Act did with regard to the President and the Lord Chancellor was to say that they should fix the dates upon which the new registries which were suggested should come into operation, and upon which the old registries were to be abolished and cease to exist, and power was given by Affirmative Resolution of both Houses of Parliament, on the recommendation of the President and the Lord Chancellor, to modify the Schedule if thought fit. So far as Canterbury is concerned it would be quite impossible for me or for my noble friend, the President of the Probate and Divorce Division, to find any ground upon which to invite either your Lordships' House or the other House of Parliament to modify the scheme in the Schedule. The population of Canterbury is just about 23,000. There are towns having a population in some cases of over 200,000 people which have not a registry or a sub-registry—Hull, Bradford, Plymouth, Portsmouth, Stoke, and I could name a very large number of others. Canterbury, in fact, has been extraordinarily favoured in having the status of a sub-registry conferred upon it by the Schedule. If it had not been given special privileges (no doubt by reason of its great antiquity and great traditions) normally it would cease to exist either as a registry or a sub-registry altogether.

The noble Lord says, quite truly, that the number of applications has increased from something over 300 when the Act was passed to 539 in the last year in regard to which there is any record. There has been a similar increase, or a very considerable increase, in applications all over the country, so that it is not a case so much of Canterbury gaining proportionately but for believing, as is the case, that there has been an increase in the business generally. Even if it were the case that Canterbury alone was increasing, 539 applications in a registry, assuming 300 working days, would mean just under two a day. The minimum staff on which a registry can be conducted is the registrar, two clerks—allowing one to be away on holidays—and another employee, making four in all as the minimum staff for the smallest registry. It is difficult to give your Lordships an exact estimate of how much work is required to make a grant. It is difficult because the grants vary, but all difficult cases 715 have to go to London under the Regulations because anything out of the ordinary must be dealt with at Somerset House. The so-called routine cases may take a quarter of an hour or they may take a good deal more. I suppose about half an hour would be a fair average time. There would therefore be, assuming two grants a day, an hour's work, but for one man, and for that purpose you are to keep four people employed continuously and you are to say: "It does not matter doing that because you make a profit if you assume that you have only to pay the salaries out of the fees received for grants." Really it may show a profit calculated in that way, but that is not what I understand as economy.

If we were to say to Canterbury: "You, with your 539 grants are to be raised to the status of a registry," it would be impossible to resist the application of scores of towns which would have two or three or five or six or eight or ten times as many grants. If you were to say Canterbury with its 500 grants is entitled to have a registry they would say: "So are we." The whole scheme would then have to be thrown out. I could not, and the President could not, say that we will ask Parliament to make Canterbury a registry because it has 539 grants, and at the same time say that we will not ask Parliament to make Plymouth or Portsmouth or a score of other places registries, where they have ten or twenty times as many applications as at Canterbury.

The noble Lord has said truly that oral applications are made. I think 300 is the figure with regard to Canterbury. I have no doubt that is true. Your Lordships understand that an application for pro-hate can be done through a solicitor, or can be done by correspondence, or a personal application may be made. Excise officers are charged with the duty of advising people with regard to filling up the application, and there are Excise officers at Canterbury as elsewhere. The arrangement is that there should be an office opened specially one day a week at Canterbury for such people as desire personally to make an application at that particular time. The noble Lord says the day is an inconvenient one. There is nothing of that in the memorial. I suppose the day was not fixed then. But if the day is inconvenient, as suggested 716 by the noble Lord, I am sure the learned President, who fixes the day, would be anxious to meet the convenience of people in the locality, and I will tell him that the noble Lord says that Wednesday is not the best day. I dare say that will be looked into and possibly remedies applied and the day changed to another day of the week.

The noble Lord says the memorial which was submitted stated that there are ancient records which ought to be kept at Canterbury. The noble Lord said that was very important. I have had the figures got out and I find that during last year there were sixty searches in all made at Canterbury, and of those ten were made by local people and fifty by people who had travelled to Canterbury for the purpose of making them. So, from the point of view of convenience, it would have been far better to have removed the records to London where they could have been consulted much more easily, but in fact I am afraid I have hardened my conscience a little in favour of Canterbury by reason of its historic past, and arrangements have been made at my request and with my concurrence under which records are being kept at Canterbury in the custody of the Registrar of the County Court, who is a responsible person, and there will be facilities for those people who want to look at them there. I am not sure whether from the point of view of the general public it is the best arrangement, but it does give weight to the representations which the noble Lord has brought forward as to the historic interest.

Finally he said that there had been some neglect of the Corporation in that a deputation was not received. If any useful purpose could have been served by receiving a deputation I am sure the learned President and I would have been only too glad to do it. It cannot be said that we have not paid attention to the representations made by people living in and near Canterbury. I hold in my hand the dossier of correspondence which has taken place with regard to this change. The noble Lord says the Corporation did not know of it until last July, but in fact there was elaborate correspondence in 1925. The noble Lord, Lord Cushendun, now a member of this House, was at that time the representative of Canterbury in the House of 717 Commons. I had both interviews and correspondence with him and I had correspondence, I think, with a number of Members of Parliament who represented various constituencies in Kent and who had been stirred up in the way which some of us remember by their constituents to make representations, and to whom I endeavoured to make a full reply such as I have just given to your Lordships.

The only reason why, when I received a statement from the Corporation of Canterbury of the facts which the noble Lord has brought before your Lordships, with a request to send a deputation to see me, I did not invite them to do so was that I felt it would be wasting their time and to some extent public money and my own time. If any question of fact had been in dispute, or there was any statement in their memorandum which was challenged or on which I wanted further information, I should have been only too pleased to see them, but on the facts of the case it would have been impossible for the learned President or myself without very grave dereliction of our duty, imposed on us by Act of Parliament, to accede to the request, and if we had been disposed to do it I do not think it would have been possible to hope to induce either House of Parliament to pass the Resolution which would have been necessary to make the modification Canterbury desired. I have done my best to satisfy the noble Lord that the matter has not been dealt with summarily and that there really is a case too strong to be ignored.