Lords Sitting of 10 July 1928

Preamble
The House met at a quarter past four of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
MARRIAGE (PROHIBITED DE GREES OF RELATIONSHIP) BILL.
Brought from the Commons; read 1a; and to be printed.
REORGANISATION OF OFFICES (SCOTLAND) BILL.
Brought from the Commons; read 1a; and to be printed.
LINCOLNSHIRE RIVERS FISHERIES PROVISIONAL ORDER BILL.
Brought from the Commons; read 1a; to be printed; and referred to the Examiners.

MINISTRY OF HEALTH PRO VISIONAL ORDER (RICHMOND (SURREY)) BILL.
VISCOUNT GAGE: My Lords, in submitting the Motion which stands in my name, I should explain that this Bill was brought from the Commons on June 7 last. It was necessary to retard proceedings in this House until the Richmond Parish Charity Lands Scheme Confirmation Bill had received the Royal Assent, for if any difficulty had arisen in connection with that Bill it would have been necessary to withdraw this measure. In those circumstances I hope that your Lordships will agree to this Motion.
Moved, That the Order made on the 22nd day of March last, "That no Provisional Order Confirmation Bill brought from the House of Commons shall be read a second time after Tuesday the 26th day of June next," be dispensed with, and that the Bill be now read 2a.—(Viscount Gage.)
On Question, Motion agreed to, and Bill read 2aaccordingly.

MINISTRY OF HEALTH PRO VISIONAL ORDER (WORTHING EXTENSION) BILL.
Read 3a(according to Order), with the Amendments, and passed, and returned to the Commons.

SLAUGHTER OF ANIMALS (SCOTLAND) BILL.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
LORD BALFOUR OF BURLEIGH: My Lords, the object of this Bill is to get rid as far as possible of all avoidable cruelty in the slaughter of animals for use for human food. Of the three main classes of animals used for human food, cattle, sheep and pigs, the first two, cattle and sheep, are included within the scope of this Bill, and the third class, pigs, are excluded. So far as cattle are concerned it is correct to say that there is really no longer any opposition to their inclusion in this Bill. That is not to say that there has not been, in times past, a great deal of opposition to the introduction of these measures. At one time it was claimed by the opponents of humane slaughter that it was impossible to bleed the carcases properly. It is also claimed that the process is extremely dangerous to the workmen taking part in the slaughter, and various other objections have been raised at one time or another, but familiarity with the new methods has finally overcome, I think I may say, all the opposition, and it has been found that in the case of cattle humanity and convenience go together.
It is necessary that I should explain to your Lordships that the important thing in the slaughter of animals is to secure proper bleeding of the carcases and that can only be done while the animal is still alive—alive but not conscious. The poleaxe, mainly used for animals hitherto, is not an instrument for killing but only for stunning the animals, and the instrument known as the humane killer ought to be described as a mechanically-operated instrument for stunning animals. Of course for the purpose of convenience it is necessary to stun the animal before bleeding it. That factor does not exist quite to the same extent in the case of sheep, and hence
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the proposal to prescribe humane methods for sheep does not meet with the same amount of acceptance as in the case of cattle.
I should like to point out at once that pigs are excluded from the scope of the Bill. That is not to say that there is any less cruelty in the case of pigs. A good many well-informed people tell me that probably there is more cruelty, but in the case of pigs there is considerable difficulty in securing proper bleeding where the humane killer is used; or at least so it is alleged. I am not at all sure that with perfection of the instrument and practice and familiarity, it may not be found possible to introduce the humane killer in the case of pigs as well as of other animals, but for the moment pigs are excluded from the Bill.
Then I should like to say a word or two in some detail about the question of sheep, because I cannot help thinking that possibly it is the question of sheep which has led my noble friend the Duke of Buccleuch to put down the Motion, which, somewhat to my surprise, I see upon the Paper, for the rejection of the Bill. In the case of cattle, once prejudice and habit have been overcome it has been found that convenience as well as humanity lies on the side of the humane killer. In the case of sheep that balance of convenience cannot yet be said to be so greatly on the side of the humane killer, but we do claim that it is not sufficiently against it to prevent its introduction. It has been claimed that the knife is as humane a method of killing sheep as the humane killer, but two tests have recently taken place in Glasgow and Edinburgh; firstly, on the subject of convenience, and secondly, more directed towards the question of humanity. On the question of convenience sheep were killed by two methods in Glasgow, and it was found that the time occupied was almost exactly the same. So far as humanity is concerned, two eminent physiologists were asked to act as observers in the Edinburgh experiment, and they reported that whereas unconsciousness in the case of killing by the humane method occurred in only four-fifths of a second, in the case of killing by knife it was never less than half a minute, and that in the case of the most expert slaughterers.

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This Bill has been discussed on two occasions in the House of Commons. On the first occasion it reached its Third Reading but time prevented it from being passed. This Session it has been thoroughly discussed in Committee and passed through all its stages in the House of Commons. It is right to say that in various Continental countries, such as Holland and Switzerland, this arrangement has been in force for some time, and, under model by-laws of the Ministry of Agriculture, an immense number of sheep are already being slaughtered with the aid of the humane killer in this country. In England no fewer than 268 local authorities have adopted the model by-laws of the Ministry of Agriculture and in Scotland I think there are already 73* local authorities which have by-laws prescribing the use of this instrument. The Scottish Office are in favour of the Bill and I hope my noble friend the Duke of Sutherland will have a word to say on that subject later on.
As for the clauses of the Bill, Clause 1 is the general provision as to slaughter, excepting pigs, and I should like to point out that it applies only to slaughterhouses and knackers' yards; that is to say, the small farmer and the crofter do not come under the scope of the Bill. Subsection (2) provides that the person operating the killer shall be a skilled person. It simply means that he has to get a licence and will not get his licence until he can use the instrument effectively, which is a very easy thing to learn to do. Subsection (3) provides penalties. Clause 2 has provisions as to licences. Clause 3 is introduced in order to bring the slaughter-houses of local authorities under the Workmen's Compensation Acts. Clause 4 is a matter of machinery. Clause 5 is put in with regard to Glasgow because the Corporation of Glasgow already has powers which go further than this Bill. Those local powers for the use of the humane killer apply not only to cattle and sheep but also to pigs, and therefore this clause is inserted, in order that they may apply it when they see fit. They have power to suspend the local Order and it is not at present in operation. It is likely to be put into operation in the near future. The other clauses of the Bill are not important.
* See col. 1061.
Clause 7 contains definitions. Clause 8 provides for an exception in the case of the Jews and Mahomedans who have religious scruples. Clause 9 has various provisions as to by-laws: it enables by-laws to be made generally for the prevention of cruelty to animals. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Balfour of Burleigh.)
THE DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH THE DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH, who had given Notice to move as an Amendment, That the Bill be read 2athis day six months, said: My Lords, I think my noble friend is wrong in assuming that there is practically no opposition to this Bill; certainly he has very much minimised its extent. The reason why I put down this Motion was that I was informed, particularly by the Farmers Union in Scotland, that they have great objection to the Bill. I put it down chiefly to show that it must not be assumed that this Bill is supported by everyone. I am sure all your Lordships will agree with the object of the Bill, which is to make the slaughtering of animals more humane, provided, however, that it does no harm to the human race and no harm to agriculture, particularly in Scotland. There are two notable exceptions made by the Bill. Swine are not included in its provisions and any one who is of the Jewish religion or the Moslem religion is also exempted. If the thing is desirable in itself why should there be these exemptions? Your Lordships are aware that both the Jewish law and the Moslem law were so framed largely on health grounds; the reason why they slaughter their animals in the way they do is that that way is more healthy than the one suggested by this Bill.
The chief point about the Bill is in regard to sheep. If swine are omitted from the Bill why should not sheep be omitted also? My noble friend has admitted that the cruelty is just as great in the case of sheep as in the case of swine. Many people maintain that the slaughtering of sheep under the system which the noble Lord recommends is not satisfactory. I do not wish to argue that point but that is the objection made to the Bill. There is one suggestion that I would make to my noble friend which, I think, would remove all opposition to the Bill—namely, that it should be left

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to the local authorities to say whether they will carry it out. I know that at the present time in Parliament, and in this House especially, great reliance is always placed on the local authorities, yet in every Act of Parliament less power is given to them, or more power is taken away from them and given to the Executive. If this suggestion were adopted, the change perhaps would not come into operation quite so quickly, but certainly, if it is found in the districts where they use the humane killer, that no injury results, the majority of the local authorities would before long adopt it.
Then, why should the Bill apply only to Scotland? If your Lordships are disinclined to accept any Amendments which I may bring forward at a later stage, I should hope that my noble friend will support me in taking the word "Scotland" out of the. Bill and making it apply to the whole of Great Britain. I think that would test the sincerity of this measure, because I understand that a very large number of noble Lords are quite prepared to vote for this Bill if it applies only to Scotland, but not at all if it applies to England also. What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Agriculture is not in a position at the present time to have any further drawbacks placed upon it. I do not think this Bill will have very much effect, but there have been many instances in which things are either prohibited or enforced in this country whereas our foreign competitors are allowed to do as they like. If my suggestion were adopted and this Bill were left to the discretion of the local authorities, those people who may think that they are unfairly dealt with would be satisfied, and if this instrument is as humane as it is claimed to be, it is quite certain that the local authorities would adopt it. I do not wish to put your Lordships to the trouble of a Division, but I must express on behalf of the Farmers Union and on behalf of others in Scotland my dissent from this Bill in the form in which it is at present.
THE PAYMASTER-GENERAL (THE DUKE OF SUTHERLAND): My Lords, I have listened very carefully to the remarks made by the noble Duke, the Duke of Buccleuch. Of course, I do not know exactly what action the mover of the Second Reading of the Bill will take in Committee, but it is only my business
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to-day to tell your Lordships that, as far as the main principles of the Bill are concerned, the Scottish Office and His Majesty's Government are fully in favour of it. They have been carefully into all the various provisions, and both in the House of Commons and here His Majesty's Government wish to give it full support. If any Amendments are moved in Committee, of course the noble Lord who moved the Second Reading will deal with them, but in the main this Bill is strongly supported by the Government.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

RABBITS BILL.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY OF THE MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE AND FISHERIES (THE EARL OF STRADBROKE): My Lords, in moving that this Bill be now read a second time, I would say at once in order to disarm criticism that the Bill is not at all the same as that which was introduced into your Lordships' House last year. It is an adaptation of the Bill of last Session, framed very carefully to meet as far as possible the criticisms and objections made in respect of that Bill, and set forth by the Select Committee of your Lordships' House which discussed the matter. As your Lordships probably know, the main object of the Bill is to enable an occupier of agricultural land who feels that he is suffering damage or is likely to suffer damage to his crops, by rabbits coming from the property of a neighbour, to appeal to the county council, and to obtain assistance from them in the last resort, if persuasion or other means have not brought about the abatement of the nuisance in the meantime.
There are a number of differences between this Bill and the Bill of last year. The chief criticisms of the Bill of last year were, I think, directed against the inclusion of rooks. Upon going into the matter, and bearing in mind the discussion that arose and the differences of opinion as to whether the good done by rooks was greater or less than the harm that was done by them, and finding also that it was practically impossible owing to their migratory habits to deal

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with rooks, they have been eliminated altogether from this Bill. With rabbits it is another question. The Select Committee of your Lordships' House had the following paragraph in their Report—
"No witness was willing to ascribe to these destructive animals any compensating virtues. Whatever value their carcases may have after death, during their lives rabbits are, unmitigated nuisances to the good farmer and forester."
The Committee then went on to say that instances were given in evidence before them of cases where the tenants could not defend themselves from damage done by rabbits coming from other properties. I think that makes out a case for the introduction of this Bill.
Another of the changes is that there is in this Bill a right of appeal if it is thought that there is any grievance against the action of the county council. An appeal may be made, firstly, if it is thought that service of notice is not authorised by the Act; secondly, that no damage sufficiently substantial to justify notice is caused or likely to be caused by failure to restrict rabbits; thirdly, that adequate steps have been taken to abate or prevent the damage; and, fourthly, that the time allowed for abating the nuisance is inadequate. Again, the county council can only act on a complaint being made by the occupier of land who fears that damage will be done to, or can show that damage has already been committed on, his farm. That does away with the fear that some people had that a county council would employ someone to go round the country to see where damage was being done by rabbits and to report to the county council, who would forthwith take action. That would not be possible under this Bill. Nor can the county council take action unless they are assured that substantial damage has been or is likely to be caused by rabbits, and if they have any fear in their minds that the case is a frivolous one they can demand a deposit of £2 from the person making the complaint. With regard to the abatement of the nuisance, the time has been increased from the fourteen days proposed in the Bill last year to twenty-one days in the present Bill, which should give ample time for the matter to be settled amicably.
The real difference, of course, between the Government and the Report of the
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Select Committee is as to the way of dealing with damage done by rabbits coming from neighbouring properties. The Select Committee admitted that there was an evil that ought to be corrected; but they thought that the damage should be met by the payment of compensation to the person suffering damage. The Government, on the other hand, hold the view that it is better to deal with the matter by abating the nuisance, by trying, by persuasive means, to get the nuisance abated, and we think that this object may be attained through the county council. If it were decided to demand compensation for damage done we think it would cause a great deal of friction and ill-feeling between people living in close proximity to one another and, naturally, constantly meeting. One can imagine the case of two farmers living on adjoining land, one cultivating his land and growing wheat and corn crops, and the other having grass land perhaps of a rather poor character, the two properties being separated by a bank and a ditch. The farmer of the grass land may not trouble very much about rabbits and may let them increase in large numbers. Directly the farmer who is cultivating his land puts in his crop the rabbits, of course, will come from the poor grass land and do considerable damage to the corn crop. A case of that kind ought to be checked, but we think that by using the county council as, so to speak, a buffer, persuasion may come in, the grass land farmer may be brought to take a reasonable view and to keep down his rabbits and not to cause unreasonable harm to his neighbour. If the damage were allowed to go on and compensation had to be paid, I am sure it would lead to a great deal of ill-feeling; and we all know how difficult it is at any time to assess the amount of damage done in that way.
Then, again, if the farmer is seeking compensation he will have all the expense of going to law, and of laying his case, and in that way there would be no chance of persuasion coming in. It would simply be a matter of a decision at law cut and dried. I would point out strongly that it is only in the very last resort that the county council would send any one on to private property to abate a nuisance that had been reported. The person against whom the charge was made and who was

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ordered to abate the nuisance would have every opportunity of abating it before the county council took action. I think that is what we should desire, as it is far preferable, surely, to abate the trouble of having crops destroyed by rabbits than to let them destroy crops and to have to pay compensation. The whole country is the loser by the small crops produced when rabbits cause damage, and the compensation to the farmer would not bring about the same result as if there was a good crop and rabbits were not allowed to damage it. There is another reason why this Bill should be brought in. As your Lordships know, many estates are sold now and are often bought by speculative buyers, who sell off such pieces of the land as they are able to sell. They generally retain the woodlands, cutting down all the timber. Those woodlands are then let. Strips of land, and frequently fields and in some cases even farms, are left derelict because they cannot find purchasers. These places naturally become the home of rabbits and all sorts of vermin, and farmers on adjoining land do need, I think your Lordships would agree, protection against damage from rabbits coming from those lands.
I would mention to your Lordships that this Bill was very fully discussed for a few days in the House of Commons and passed the Second and Third Readings without a Division. It has received strong support from powerful agricultural associations. The National Council of Agriculture for England have supported it by a resolution, and the County Councils Association, who gave evidence before the Select Committee last year, have, since the publication of the Report of that Committee, passed a resolution recognising that while it is impracticable to deal with rooks they hope the Government will introduce and carry through a Bill such as is now before your Lordships' House. The National Farmers Union and several county agricultural associations have also sent up resolutions supporting the Bill. In view of the general support of the agricultural community to the Bill, I hope that your Lordships will give it a Second Reading, bearing in mind that the Bill only authorises men to be sent on to private property as the very last resort and after every opportunity has been given for the nuisance to be abated. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(The Earl of Stradbroke.)
THE EARL OF WEMYSS THE EARL OF WEMYSS had given Notice to move as an Amendment, That the Bill be read 2athis day six months. The noble Earl said: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord behind me (Lord Banbury of Southam) for allowing my Motion to take precedence of his. His courtesy is remarkable considering that he must be quite alive to the fact that I am a complete novice in that form of Parliamentary negation of which he is so distinguished a past master. In the presence of agricultural depression no one can like moving the rejection of, or even criticising, a Bill which is introduced by the Government to alleviate agricultural distress, and although I think this Bill is a bad Bill and even a ridiculous Bill, I should not move its rejection unless I firmly believed and had been convinced by evidence that better results could be obtained by other means and without any of the friction that obviously this Bill will bring about.
Before I refer to the Bill itself I wish to touch upon another subject. I am amazed at hearing the noble Earl (The Earl of Stradbroke) say that he had disarmed criticism. On the contrary he has increased it. The noble Earl has said that the Bill is a different Bill from that of last year but it is the same Bill. I consider that the introduction of this Bill into your Lordships' House by the Government is a slight upon your Lordships' House and a reflection upon your Lordships' capacity. This Bill, as the noble Earl, Lord Stradbroke, has told you, is the successor to the Rooks and Rabbits Bill, but the unnatural alliance between the rooks and rabbits has been terminated and the rooks have obtained their divorce. To that extent the Bill is different. Beyond that I cannot think that it is in any way different. The Bill was referred to a Select Committee of your Lordships' House. I had the honour of being Chairman of that Committee. It was a representative Committee. The Front Opposition Bench was represented by Lord Olivier, who, I regret to see, is not in his place. Lord Strachie ably represented the Liberal Party. We sat for nine days and examined eighteen witnesses, and we would have examined as many more had they presented themselves, but very

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little interest was shown in the matter. We presented our Report. What happened to that Report? The ink on it was hardly dry before the Government had introduced a Bill embodying in it all we had condemned and leaving out of it all that we had recommended.
In my humble judgment this is a serious matter. Many of us refrain from intruding into the debates in your Lordships' House because we feel that under the Parliament Act debates here are really as futile as ploughing the sand, but we still believe there are opportunities in this House and that, although we cannot pass legislation and although even Lord Banbury cannot prevent legislation, we can be of use by serving on Select Committees, on Joint Committees and on Private Bill Committees in forming and shaping legislation; but if Committees of your Lordships' House are going to be treated as this Committee has been treated then there is no use in these Committees. They are merely a sham, a waste of public money and of your Lordships' time, and it is as well that that should be known. I am sorry this Government should have set an example that is likely to be followed. I believe that if the inner history of this Bill were known we should see some reason for the Government's action. I think we should find that, although Mr. Guinness and Sir John Gilmour appear as fathers of the Bill, they are really only its foster-parents, and that, if the truth were known, they are not very much enamoured of their nursling. I believe this is a Bill not so much to extinguish the rabbit as to placate the Farmers Union. As far as I can make out this is what happened. The Government were returned by an enormous majority and were expected to do something, and, if I may presume to say so, much has been done, but the agricultural interest expected a great deal. The Government were debarred from doing agriculture any good, and, therefore, they did what they could, which, frankly speaking, was not much. The Farmers Union were very much annoyed. They were almost rude to the foster-father of this Bill, Mr. Guinness, and the Government now introduce this Bill.
I should like to say a few words on the characteristics of the Bill. While the noble Earl, Lord Stradbroke, has given
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us the authorised version, I should like to give a short commentary on it. Under this Bill, where the county council thinks substantial damage is being done, it may send any person on to an occupier's land—any person! He need not be competent, he need not be an expert, he must be a person. He may be a chiropodist, he may be a poacher or a grocer, he may be a green person, he may know nothing about game preserves, or he may be quite likely to know too much. He is armed with the authority of the county council. If you interrupt him in his proceedings he shows you his authority, and if you object you are fined £5. So far that is very simple. And now, what are the restrictions? How is the scope of action of these men limited? You can only judge of that by the restrictions that are put on them and the one restriction is that they may not use steel traps underground or overground. I am told that that is a very doubtfully wise provision, but beyond that, apparently, there are no limits of any sort or kind to what one of these men may do. He may go by day or night. He may use all the engines of destruction he likes and no one can say him nay, though he may be an extremely bad shot. If he leaves gates open and cattle stray the occupier has to find the cattle. If he breaks down fences the occupier has to mend them. If, his work done, he lies down and smokes a pipe and sets fire to the gorse, no provision is made in the Bill for any compensation. That is what he may do, and I do not think that a county council should be empowered to give him such power.
When the man has done his work the bill goes to the occupier. He has to pay and there is no limitation as to the cost. Imagine a wretched farmer, an occupier hardly able to meet the rent. He has been invaded by these people. He sees these men employed by day, he hears shooting by night, and at every shot he hears he groans and says: "Bang goes twopence'" There is one other provision, that the occupier is to have the value of the rabbits. These rabbits are to be sold or otherwise disposed of. "Otherwise disposed of"—what does that mean? Does that mean that they are to be disposed of by the families of the rabbit killers, or does it mean that the rabbits are to be sent to stimulate the activities of those members of the

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county council who might be sluggish in administering the Act? Of course I shall be told that these are extreme cases, that county councils are composed of moderate men, wise men who will not do these things. I absolutely agree, and I go further, because I say that one of the weaknesses of this Bill is that very often it will be a dead letter and county councils will not do anything. But it may be abused, and Parliament has to see that Acts of this kind are not able to be abused. So far as I can see, the Government have taken no precautions at all in this direction.
My criticism, such as it is, has been entirely destructive, and I would like to say a few words on why your Committee rejected the first Bill and why, the members of it, as far as I know, are still firm in their objection. If we had been merely destructively critical I do not think we should have had a case. In the first place, I do not think anybody can accuse us of being pro-rabbit. The noble Earl, Lord Stradbroke, read out a passage in which we said:—
"Whatever value their carcases may have after death, during their lives rabbits are unmitigated nuisances to the good farmer and forester."
I do not think we could have said more than that. We also admitted that harm was done, as undoubtedly it is done. We went on to say:—
"The Committee are of opinion that in such cases some means of protection or compensation should be given. The Committee, however, having carefully considered the proposals contained in this Bill, have reluctantly come to the conclusion that even if these proposals were approved in principle they would be found unworkable in practice. The most ardent opponent of the rabbit was unable to find a solution of the many problems involved in the working of the Bill or to answer the obvious objections and criticisms that were raised. … They are, however, strongly of opinion that any owner or occupier suffering from damage to his crops by rabbits which come from places outside the land he occupies should be entitled to compensation and should be empowered to claim it in the county courts."
That is our contention, that it should be claimed in the county courts.
It was argued by the noble Earl just now that claims for compensation would cause friction. But surely more friction will be caused by a man under county council orders invading our land and possibly ill-using it than by any number of
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claims for compensation, which may be made quite naturally in the ordinary course of events, and which could not under any conceivable circumstances that I can see cause any friction. The advantages of claims for compensation are many. They will prevent the numerous complications that this Bill will otherwise involve. There would be no counter-claims for damage done by the rabbit killers, or disputes about the limitation of their powers. There would be no differences as regards the value of the rabbits killed nor any disagreement as to the amount of the rabbit-killer's expenses. All these and other possible complications, including appeals against county council orders, would make the Bill, however amended, extremely difficult to work.
I have a still stronger argument in favour of the matter being dealt with by claims for damages. Where the county council acts, and acts properly, the Bill may work all right, but what happens to the occupier who is damaged if the county council takes no action? He has no remedy at all. He must suffer the incursions of the rabbits, and past experience has shown us that sometimes county councils are extremely difficult to move. If, however, claims for compensation are allowed, his claim is at once heard, and he is certain of getting the compensation which he deserves and which everybody in this House and out of it wishes to see him get. I have given you the grounds on which this Committee based their Report. Nothing that I have heard since has made me in any way modify my opinion. It is because I think we should act by these means, and not by the means proposed in the Bill, which however much you argue must cause an infinitude of friction, and because I believe that all this can be avoided by the course which I have proposed and which the Committee recommended, that I beg to move the rejection of the Bill.
Amendment moved—
Leave out ("now") and at the end of the Motion insert ("this day six months")—(The Earl of Wemyss.)
LORD BANBURY OF SOUTHAM: My Lords, after the very able speech of the noble Earl below me, for which I thank him very much, because it has relieved me of the necessity of saying anything, which is always a pleasure to me for I

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like to listen better than to speak, I do not think it is necessary for me to say a single word. I cannot conceive that any member of your Lordships' House, after the speech of the noble Earl below me, will vote for the Bill. In fact, I am almost inclined to think that the noble Earl, Lord Stradbroke, and my noble friend the Marquess of Salisbury, having been convinced by the speech of the noble Earl below me, will withdraw the Bill.
LORD DARLING: My Lords, I should like to say a word or two on this Bill. I am neither a devoted adherent of it nor a declared enemy of this Bill and of all other Bills, like the noble Lord beside me.
LORD BANBURY OF SOUTHAM: I am in favour of the humane slaughter Bill.
LORD DARLING: It occurs to me that this Bill does not take the most obvious and proper way of reducing the number of the rabbits that infest this country. It is perfectly well known that in countries which suffer ravages from the mosquito, for example, the most efficient method of destruction is not to send people about with nets trying to catch mosquitoes but to encourage the propagation of their natural enemies, such as goldfish. That is so whatever kind of animals ferœ naturœ you may desire to exterminate, and I wonder that it has not occurred to the Government that the proper way to get rid of this pest of rabbits is to bring in a Bill for the preservation of foxes. It is notorious that where hounds are few foxes are far between, and we should do something to redress the balance of nature and to see that there is a proper supply of foxes to eat the rabbits. Lest the fox should become the pest that the rabbit is now, there should be a proper supply of hounds to keep down the foxes.
This Bill, as I have said, makes some appeal to me. With a few Amendments I think that it should pass, and accordingly I shall vote for it. Looking at subsections (6) and (7) of Clause 1, it occurs to me that some amendment would make the Bill a very good one. Subsection (7) says:—
"No person authorised to act under this section on behalf of a county council shall
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use any spring trap either in a rabbit hole or elsewhere for the purpose of killing rabbits."
This limits the activity of the person employed by the county council very gravely. Here is the opportunity for doing something in aid of the fox. Any one who knows the methods of foxes will agree that the fox is more humane than the spring trap, which detains the creature alive until the morning suffering agony all night. That is why subsection (7) is there. I would further appeal to subsection (6), in which power is given to the county council to provide for the expenses of those who are engaged in the killing of rabbits. They incur expenses very indirectly. Subsection (6) says:—
"Any expenses incurred by a county council under this Act shall be defrayed, in the case of the council of a county borough—"
this will hardly arise, because one does not keep hounds in county boroughs very frequently—
"out of the borough fund or borough rate, and in the case of any other county council as part of their general expenses."
If my suggestion were adopted the country would greatly benefit. The county council would be able to subscribe to the packs of hounds in the county, the Masters of Hounds would see to it that there was a proper supply of foxes, foxes would never be wanting in the county—or otherwise there would be no hunting—and accordingly there would be enough foxes to destroy the rabbits. As those who hunt are the farmer's best friends and buy nearly all his hay, it will be seen that without interfering, with the help of traps and poachers, with the balance of nature the natural enemies of the rabbit would be stimulated to activity and this Bill might pass and yet do no harm. Accordingly, believing that it might be improved and made to please a large number of farmers and others in this country, I shall vote for the Second Reading.
LORD CLINTON: My Lords, I have listened very carefully to the speeches delivered by the mover and seconder of this Amendment and I have not discovered in them anything at all which goes against the principle of this Bill. I can scarcely imagine that any owner of land who has suffered as all have from the damage that rabbits do, can really

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be opposed to the principle of the Bill. It is true, as the noble Earl pointed out, that there are a great many points of detail which could with real advantage be altered. That, I trust, may be done by Amendments at a future stage. But I have so far heard nothing at all which should persuade any one of your Lordships to vote against the Second Reading. Everybody knows that the damage done by rabbits is enormous, and it is damage which is very difficult to assess. For that reason I am fairly confident that the Minister of Agriculture is right in not adopting the suggestion of the Select Committee of your Lordships' House, over which the noble Earl below me presided, regarding the method of paying compensation for damage. Apart from the difficulty of assessment, it is quite clear that in order to arrive at a valuation you would have to have arbitration, which would take a considerable time, would cause a great deal of ill-feeling and be very costly to both sides. Your Lordships probably know quite well that in a country valuation, if you suffer from rabbits through a farmer outside, there is very little prospect of your getting any compensation at all. While I would not say that the county council is the best possible authority, I am unable to suggest any authority more competent for this purpose.
In these days, when the margin of profit on estates and farms is so narrow, we cannot afford to keep on the land an entirely unprofitable stock. I know that there are many people who are apparently obsessed with the idea that the few pounds that they get for the rabbits that they sell in the winter represent profit. As a matter of fact they do nothing of the kind. No rabbit ever yet paid for its keep, and I am equally confident that every rabbit dies in debt. There is no reason whatever, on economical or other grounds, why rabbits should be encouraged. It is not only to farm crops and grass that we see damage done. The damage to plantations is so great that the cost of keeping rabbits out is one of the greatest deterrents to planting in this country. I have to do with the Forestry Commission, and during the time that our planting operations have been going on we have spent £40,000 in wire netting alone. If you add
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to that the cost of erection of posts, staples and so on, you will probably account for nearly another £40,000. We have to spend that money simply because other people keep up rabbits which would otherwise be destroyed. That in itself is a reason, I think, why people who are interested in forestry should really endeavour to get a measure of this kind passed. In the case of the ordinary private owner who plants six to ten acres at a time in clover, the cost to him is more than £4 per acre, and that adds 50 per cent, or more to the cost of the crop, and it is not surprising that we see the practice of planting disappearing so much in this country.
There is an idea that it is an invasion of private property for the county council to authorise any one else to enter upon your land, but surely my noble friend below me who says "Hear, hear," would not argue, and certainly would not practice, any exercise of his own private rights so as to injure his neighbours, and it is only in such cases that this measure can be applied. Noble Lords object to any unauthorised person coming on their land. I object still more strongly to an unauthorised rabbit coming upon my land, and the only way to get rid of both is to kill the rabbit. It is easy to talk of killing rabbits, but most of your Lordships know how extraordinarily difficult it is in practice. The Hares and Rabbits Bill, which was passed some forty years ago, had for its object the extermination of hares and rabbits, but they have increased ever since that Act was passed. It was passed on the representation of tenant farmers that their crops were being destroyed by the landlords' rabbits, but to-day we find that it is the tenant farmer himself who is keeping up the rabbits. I do not know whether it is so everywhere, but it is the case in the West of England, that the tenant farmer regards his concurrent rights to rabbits as an absolute right, and objects to the owner coming in and taking strong measures to keep the rabbits down. The disturbance which this causes may be exceedingly serious, and it should be avoided in every way.
In cases where owners have been firm enough to keep the rabbits down on the estate, I think you will find that the tenant farmer will acknowledge that he is very much better off owing to the

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destruction of the rabbits. The destruction of rabbits is difficult, because it requires to be continuous and persistent. It is of no use sending a man and clearing off a farm, unless the work is carried on continuously, because rabbits always go to fresh ground, and they will be there again next year. It requires a skilled man to keep them down, and it can only be done by using every possible method of destruction. Shooting merely will not keep them down, and strongly as I object to the spring trap, which is an instrument of fiendish cruelty, I believe at the same time you will never keep down the rabbits without its use, of course under most careful supervision. I believe that this Bill would be almost waste paper if the spring trap were prohibited, and the only way to get rid of spring traps is also to get rid of the rabbits. In saying this I am very strongly in favour of the principle of the measure. I hope Amendments will be introduced at a later stage, but I can see nothing in this Bill which ought to prevent any owner of an estate voting in its favour.
EARL RUSSELL: My Lords, my chief knowledge of this measure, or the arguments with regard to it, is derived from the Report of the Committee of this House which sat upon a previous measure, the Rooks and Rabbits Bill. I am in agreement with what I believe is the universal opinion—namely, that the rabbit is a curse and should be put down by every possible method—but I am not altogether in agreement with the noble Lord who spoke last when he minimises the effect, of a stranger entering by force or authority upon your land, and then taking what measures he thinks necessary short of steel traps. I do not think that the noble Earl who moved the rejection of the Bill exaggerated at all the kind of irritation which is likely to be caused thereby. I cannot help feeling that there may be friction, and almost breaches of the peace, in connection with that sort of thing, and certainly it is very material what sort of person is going to be sent upon your land. If it is a poacher out of employment he will, no doubt, occupy his time in making favourable observations for use on another occasion when he is not in official employ. If it be a person more of the character of an inspector, he may not be able to shoot straight,
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and may not know how to catch rabbits. The operation of ferreting or destroying rabbits involves several people, and a good deal of interference with private ownership, and I cannot help thinking that the friction will be enormous.
I do hope that if your Lordships think right to give a Second Reading to this Bill—I see that it has come up from another place, and I regret that I have not made myself familiar with the discussions there—you will again send it to a Select Committee, in order that it may be discussed with a view to seeing whether it can be made a useful and workable measure. My own view at present is that it is impossible, and I am disposed to support the mover of the rejection of the Bill. I am also disposed to agree with the view of the Committee that you might, at any rate in the first instance, try this simple remedy of county court action. Personally I should welcome a competent person to come upon my land to destroy the rabbits, but let that person come by invitation. The method in the Bill is one which I am a little surprised to find His Majesty's Government supporting, and I doubt whether it will have very many friends. I hope that at any rate, if your Lordships give a Second Reading to this Bill, you will insist that before it leaves this House it shall be made a measure which will work, in the ordinary relations of the countryside, without friction.
THE DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH: My Lords, perhaps I may say a word or two on this Bill because I was one of the members of the Committee of which the noble Earl, Lord Wemyss, was Chairman. That Committee was not unanimous. There was a minority of myself and my noble friend Lord Ashton, and, as of course your Lordships know, it is not usual in this House to make a Minority Report. I think the Committee were quite unanimous on one point—namely, that the Bill was so extraordinarily badly drafted by the Ministry of Agriculture that it was impossible to make a good Bill of it. The majority were against the Government Bill by, I think, five to two.
THE EARL OF WEMYSS: Four to one. The noble Duke will forgive me, but he did not vote.
THE DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH: I did vote on a Motion by Lord Strachie, but I did not vote on this matter because I had His Majesty's command to be in attendance in Edinburgh on that day. Otherwise I would have voted. Some years ago I had to preside over a Committee on the question of game damage in Scotland, and that Committee was not quite unanimous—there was one against—but otherwise it reported unanimously somewhat on the same lines as the Government Bill. Again, this question came up before the Agricultural Conference in Edinburgh a few years ago and, as your Lordships will recollect, that Conference was unanimous in supporting the recommendations of the Committee over which I had the honour to preside a few years previously. As regards the difference between that Committee's Report and the present Bill, I might mention that the Committee recommended for Scotland that the Board of Agriculture on the request of the county agricultural committees should be the authority. There are now no county agricultural committees in Scotland, and it is still the general desire there—I think amongst county councils, certainly among the Farmers Union and many other people—that the Board of Agriculture in Scotland should be the executive authority, and not the county councils. There is a very good reason for that, because at the present time the Board of Agriculture in Scotland is most notoriously over-staffed, and if they are given something to do it will be something to justify the very large number of people whom they employ there.
In supporting this Bill—and I agree largely with the remarks of my noble friend Lord Clinton—I would like to suggest that when he has to use this very large amount of rabbit netting (because the Forestry Commission in some places have very large areas) I am afraid that his people must be somewhat remiss, and I should like to know why they do not kill the rabbits on their land. There are any number of rabbits there, and any number of other vermin which do damage to trees. I have been tolerably successful in keeping rabbits down. I have not now for twenty-five or thirty years had to use any rabbit netting for protecting plantations, except in one or two cases on my boundary. I think that has saved me a very large amount of money. It certainly means that the trees have grown, instead
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of being bitten off, and it has saved much expense in that way. But besides, I am quite convinced that it has largely added to the production of the land on my estates. With regard to its being popular with farmers, when I first started to kill rabbits very few farmers, I agree, were in favour of it. Some of them, I think, now are, but I was able to show that the presence or absence of rabbits on grass land simply meant the difference between farming at a dead loss and perhaps at a considerable profit. Therefore, although I admit all the objections that there are to this Bill, the objections on the other side are so great that I believe the Bill, though it may not be very effective, if it is properly amended by your Lordships, will be of some use. But if the present prohibition against spring traps is kept in the Bill by the Government it will mean that the Bill is a sham and eyewash.
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY): My Lords, this subject is one which interests your Lordships, I know, and it interests us in two capacities. We are most of us landowners and farmers, and we are also most of us sportsmen; and although the rabbit has very few friends—as I think I shall show, hardly any—yet I think there is a sort of lingering affection for him—not in the case of the noble Earl (Lord Russell) perhaps—for the amount of pleasure he has given us in our youth. I must say that I was a little surprised at the line taken by my noble friend the Chairman of the Select Committee, Lord Wemyss. He seemed to think that the production of the Bill showed a want of respect to your Lordships' House. I would ask your Lordships to consider that seriously. The Bill of last year was a very different Bill from this. First of all, it dealt with rooks as well as rabbits, and the greater part of the debate last year really turned upon the rook question, and not the rabbit question. In addition to that, my noble friend, who, I thought, so clearly explained the Bill on behalf of the Government just now, showed that there is a procedure for appeal in this Bill in order to prevent any possibility of injustice. And may I point out to my noble friend that by the introduction of exactly that element of an appeal to a legal tribunal, which was

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the burden of my noble friend's advocacy, we have provided the proper remedy which ought to be adopted.
The Bill is therefore an entirely different Bill in most respects from the Bill of last year, and I would suggest that, so far from there being any disrespect to your Lordships, the Government have paid a very great regard to the House; they have accepted the greater part, or at any rate a very large part, of the recommendations of the Select Committee, and have produced a very different Bill. May I also say—though it is not in qualification at all of these last observations of mine—that it is interesting to learn from the speech of the noble Duke, the Duke of Buccleuch, that the proceedings of the Committee were not unanimous. Listening to my noble friend Lord Wemyss, one would have thought that there was a unanimous opinion in the Select Committee of your Lordships' House, to which the Government were indifferent. But that was not at all the case. The noble Duke, and I think Lord Ashton, both very important members of your Lordships' House, took a different view.
Then the question is, what is the view of the farmers?—the farmers who really are primarily involved, because, although landowners are naturally sensitive about their own property, I am quite certain that the first thing we shall all think of is how the business of agriculture can best be carried on. Therefore the first consideration with us is the farmer. My noble friend Lord Wemyss was not quite consistent in a part of his speech, because he declared that this Bill really emanated from the Farmers Union, and yet when he went on to describe in extremely eloquent terms the difficulties which the Bill presents, it was always the farmers who were held up as being the probable victims of this Bill and of the depredations which would be taking place on the land which they occupy. I think we must assume that, as the Farmers Union have advocated this Bill, representing as they do the farming community of this country, the farmers are anxious for it. That is not conclusive—of course it is not—but when we are considering all that is to be said for the Bill, we must begin by saying that the farmers are in favour of it—not every
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farmer, of course, but the farmers as a whole. Well that is an important consideration.
I have said that rabbits stand, as the Report says, in a wholly different position from rooks. Let us consider how strong the observations of my noble friend and his Committee were:—
"No witness was willing to ascribe to these destructive animals any compensating virtues. Whatever value their carcases may have after death, during their lives rabbits are an unmitigated nuisance to the good farmer and forester."
That is a strong observation. Responding to that opinion, which I venture to say the two members of the minority entirely shared and, as I believe, every member of your Lordships' House shared, the Government go to their advisers and produce the best Bill they can. It is open to your Lordships to reject it, but it would be a very strong measure if your Lordships did so. Your Select Committee say in effect: Here is a grave public mischief; here are animals which breed in this country and which are nothing but an unmitigated nuisance. And when the Government produce the best Bill they can to deal with that nuisance, you say: "Out with it on the Second Reading. We will not even consider it in Committee." Your Select Committee reported that this was a real evil and difficulty, and if you will not even consider the Bill after Second Reading but say: "No, let it be rejected on Second Reading," that, I say, is a very strong measure.
Let me say a little more in particular about the method which is pursued in the Bill. It is held that it is very wrong to approach the county council in the first instance. Will your Lordships be kind enough to remember the phrase used by the Select Committee, that these animals are a nuisance? What in this country is the procedure in the case of the abatement of nuisances? You go, of course, to an administrative authority. Everybody knows that you do not, in the first instance, go to a court of justice to abate a nuisance. You go to the proper local authorities, who act in the first instance. Once it is well fixed in your mind that the rabbit is a nuisance, not merely in the colloquial sense but technically a nuisance, then you will see that the procedure of going to an

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administrative authority follows every precedent almost which our legislation has set.
I will not take precisely a nuisance, but a question which is very analogous—the procedure in the case of a house which is unfit for human habitation. That is private property. The noble Earl [Earl Russell] says that you must not invade private property. Speaking from the depth of his Socialistic convictions, he is quite sure that you must not touch private property.
EARL RUSSELL: The noble Marquess, I am sure, would not wish to misrepresent me. I did not say that. I said that I thought the provisions of this Bill would cause friction in the country through the invasion of private property.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: The noble Earl is always dexterous, but I think all your Lordships must have been surprised at the care with which he thought we ought to treat private property, and I was very much gratified to observe it. In the case of houses unfit for human habitation you go to the local authority and say: "Here is what amounts to a nuisance; here are houses unfit for human habitation." And the local authority goes to the owner and says: "You must put this right." That is the procedure of this Bill. It is not the same local authority, of course, but that is the procedure. Supposing in the case of a house unfit for human habitation the owner does not put it right, I ask your Lordships to reflect upon the next step. The local authority goes and puts it right of its own motion and by its own authority. That is the universal custom. That is what happens in the case of a house unfit for human habitation where the owner will not accept the direction of the local authority, and that is the procedure here. The relevant local authority says: "You must abate this nuisance of rabbits. If you do not, we shall abate it for you." That is precisely in line, as I suggest to your Lordships, with the treatment of analogous cases in town property which amount to a nuisance.
The real difference between the two views which have been submitted to your Lordships is whether you really look upon
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rabbits as a nuisance or not. Once you look upon them as a nuisance, it must follow that you should obey the ordinary precedents—that you should go first to the local authority, that the local authority should then give its direction to the owner, and if the owner is unwise enough not to accept that direction then the local authority does it for itself. In all these cases that I have quoted there are, of course, legal proceedings which come in, and that is what makes the Bill of this year different from the Bill of last year—that there is a provision for legal proceedings. I do not want to press my analogy too far. I admit that the legal proceedings in the present Bill are in the nature of an appeal; but they are there. There is no invasion of the rights of property without the possibility of an appeal by the owner of the private property to the appropriate legal tribunal. That appears in the Bill, and that is a change of which the noble Earl has taken no notice at all. I have tried to show to your Lordships that the procedure provided in the Bill is not really so very contrary to precedent. No doubt there are differences, but in large measure the sort of methods that are applied in the case of town property are now applied in the case of a nuisance in the countryside.
And let me repeat, finally, what I think was said by my noble friend who represents the Ministry of Agriculture in your Lordships' House, that when you are considering this question, compensation, which is the proposal of my noble friend Lord Wemyss, is not quite the same thing as prevention. Compensation may be effective in the case of the occupier who complains of the depredations of rabbits, as a preventative and in protecting him from loss caused thereby. That is not everything. What we want to do in this country, especially at this moment, is to preserve the production of the soil to the utmost. To me it would not be satisfactory if we provided compensation in every case where there was destruction of food. What we want to do is to preserve the food for the sake of the people and for the sake of the community. However much rich men may be willing to pay compensation for it we do not want to have the food destroyed. It is not sufficient to say: "We will compensate for the damage which the rabbits do." We want

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to prevent the rabbits doing the damage. The principle of the Bill is this. What we do is to make a provision under which the rabbits shall be put an end to. We do not rely upon compensation as the proper remedy. Compensation is all very well as between individuals, as between the victim and the man who has caused the trouble. But when you are thinking of the interests of the country as a whole, you want to prevent an evil and not merely to pay compensation for it.
Those are the reasons for which the Government submit this Bill. This, of course, is only the Second Reading stage. My noble friend Lord Clinton, who is a very great authority in these matters, supports the Second Reading, but suggests that there ought to be Amendments made in Committee. Very likely that ought to be the case. My noble friend the Duke of Bucclench also supports the Bill, but he thinks that there ought to be certain changes made in Committee. By all means let my noble
friends propose those changes and the Government will give them every consideration. I should be the last one—I am sure your Lordships would know it from what little experience you have had of myself in the House—to resist any reasonable Amendment. By all means let any reasonable Amendment be made, but that would be impossible unless your Lordships allowed the Second Reading to-night. I would ask you, therefore, to follow the advice of my noble friend Lord Clinton and of my noble friend the Duke of Buccleuch and give this Bill a Second Reading, and not let it be said that when the House of Lords, which knows more about land than any other body in the world, has an opportunity of putting a stop to the depredations of rabbits, which they hate, they used their authority to intervene and stop even the Second Reading of the Bill.
On Question, Whether the word "now" shall stand part of the Motion?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 55; Not-Contents, 63.

CONTENTS.

Hailsham, L. (L. Chancellor.)

Onslow, E.

Cochrane of Cults, L.

Plymouth, E. [Teller.]

Cushendun, L.

Salisbury, M. (L. Privy Seal.)

Stanhope, E.

Darling, L.

Stradbroke, E.

Dawnay, L. (V. Downe.)

Strafford, E.

de Mauley, L.

Sutherland, D.

Vane, E. (M. Londonderry.)

Elphinstone, L.

Ernle, L.

Camden, M.

Cecil of Chelwood, V.

Gage, L. (V. Gage.)

Falmouth, V.

Glenarthur, L.

Shaftesbury, E. (L. Steward.)

Hood, V.

Hardinge of Penshurst, L.

Airlie, E.

Peel, V.

Hayter, L.

Beauchamp, E.

Hemphill, L.

Clarendon, E.

Worcester, L. Bp.

Hunsdon of Hunsdon, L.

Dartmouth, E.

Knaresborough, L.

Doncaster, E. (D. Buccleuch and Queensberry.)

Ashton of Hyde, L.

Kylsant, L.

Balfour of Burleigh, L.

Merthyr, L.

Graham, E. (D. Montrose.)

Boston, L.

Monteagle, L. (M. Sligo.)

Iddesleigh, E.

Castlemaine, L.

Muir Mackenzie, L.

Lucan, E. [Teller.]

Charnwood, L.

Oriel, L. (V. Massereene.)

Lytton, E.

Clinton, L.

Rayleigh, L.

Mount Edgcumbe, E.

Clwyd, L.

St. Levan, L.

Wavertree, L.

NOT-CONTENTS.

Argyll, D.

Northbrook, E.

Annaly, L.

Bedford, D.

Spencer, E.

Askwith, L.

Avebury, L.

Zetland, M.

Allendale, V.

Banbury of Southam, L. [Teller.]

Bertie of Thame, V.

Ancaster, E.

Churchill, V.

Barnard, L.

Bathurst, E.

Elibank, V.

Biddulph, L.

Harewood, E.

FitzAlan of Derwent, V.

Carson, L.

Lindsay, E.

Leverhulme, V.

Clanwilliam, L. (E. Clanwilliam.)

Macclesfield, E.

Sumner, V.

Malmesbury, E.

Younger of Leckie, V.

Clements, L. (E. Leitrim.)

Midleton, E.

de Clifford, L.

Morton, E.

Aberconway, L.

Digby, L.

Dynevor, L.

Kintore, L. (E. Kintore.)

Redesdale, L.

Fairfax of Cameron, L.

Lambourne, L.

Saltoun, L.

Fairlie, L. (E. Glasgow.)

Lamington, L.

Sandys, L.

Faringdon, L.

Lawrence, L.

Stanmore, L.

Forester, L.

Leigh, L.

Strachie, L. [Teller.]

Gainford, L.

Meldrum, L. (M. Huntly.)

Sudley, L. (E. Arran.)

Greenway, L.

Montagu of Beaulieu, L.

Sydenham of Combe, L.

Hampton, L.

Newton, L.

Templemore, L.

Hare, L. (E. Listowel.)

Ponsonby, L. (E. Bessborough.)

Wemyss, L. (E. Wemyss.)

Hindlip, L.

Wyfold, L.

Howard of Glossop, L.

Resolved in the negative and Motion disagreed to accordingly.
On Question, Amendment agreed to: Bill to be read 2athis day six months accordingly.

PETROLEUM (CONSOLIDATION) BILL. [H.L.]
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
THE EARL OF PLYMOUTH: My Lords, I beg to move the Second Reading of this Bill.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(The Earl of Plymouth.)
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to the Joint Committee on Consolidation Bills.

LONDON TRAFFIC REGULATIONS.
LORD LAMINGTON LORD LAMINGTON rose to ask His Majesty's Government—

1. What effect "one-way thorough-fares" have had on the number of accidents to pedestrians in the Metropolitan Police area;

2. What has been the number of accidents to pedestrians for the twelve months preceding the date of the last return;

3. Whether the speed limit of 20 miles per hour should not be enforced in the Metropolitan area;

4. Whether they have any proposals for making the thoroughfares less dangerous for pedestrians;

and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, the Questions which I have put down on the Paper are Questions which I have raised on previous occasions in 1924 and 1925. They are very simple. Everyone who tries to walk about the streets of London is aware of the perils caused by congestion. To quote actual figures of the
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mortality that takes place, in 1923 there were 668 fatal accidents and 485 of the victims were pedestrians. In 1924 the 668 had increased to 884. The number of accidents to pedestrians I do not know. Last year the 884 had increased to 1,058. That was so far satisfactory in that the ratio of increase was less than it had been in preceding years. The Questions that I have put down deal chiefly with one-way thoroughfares and how far they have been responsible for any increase in the number of fatal accidents. I have no knowledge myself. I ask the Questions purely in order to obtain information as to whether the changes have led to an increase in the number of accidents. Judging by my own experience of trying to get across thoroughfares where one-way traffic is in force, I imagine they must have added to the number of deaths.
It must be remembered that very often there are three streams of traffic coming along through the one thoroughfare. These three streams approach at three different angles. That makes it far more difficult for pedestrians to exercise proper caution. I had an experience the other day at Hyde Park Corner. In these one-way thoroughfares a policeman holds up the traffic presumably in the whole thoroughfare, but that is not actually the case. One crosses with security half way to a refuge, but that security does not extend to the second half of the crossing. Quite recently I was very nearly run over by a taxicab which did not obey the policeman's signal in the other half of the thoroughfare. The driver did not seem to care. He went on laughing. I think if any of your Lordships attempt to cross from Constitution Hill to St. George's Hospital or from Victoria Underground Station to Grosvenor Gardens between the hours of five and seven in the evening—I take those hours because that is the time when I have experienced the greatest difficulty in crossing—you will find it almost impossible

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to get across without either great risk or considerable delay in waiting for a moment when the road is reasonably clear.
It is quite possible that these one-way crossings have reduced the number of deaths or accidents simply because people absolutely do not try to cross. I have met several friends lately who have told me that they do not think of going across a one-way thoroughfare because the danger is so great. That means that they are debarred from certain of our streets in their attempt to get through London. It seems to me that if one-way crossings have been responsible for the greater number of accidents there ought to be greater security given to pedestrians by increasing the number of police. I have seen it stated lately that the Metropolitan Police Force ought to be increased by 1,000 or 1,200 men. It seems to me ridiculous to have highly trained men, men trained for high responsibilities and delicate duties, employed in this way. Why not have a subordinate force like that to which Lord Montagu of Beaulieu referred recently, to carry out duties of this nature?
Another Question I have put down has reference to speed. People who have motor cars seem to think that they are entitled to go at the fastest speed the motor can attain. That will be denied no doubt by the authorities, but I know by my own experience that it is often those streets which are most empty of traffic which are really most dangerous. I might cite Grosvenor Crescent. You do not see a motor in sight and you think it safe to cross, but one comes along at thirty or forty miles an hour and you find yourself in great danger when you have taken every reasonable precaution to see that the thoroughfare is clear. The majority of accidents, I believe, occur not in very crowded areas but in suburban areas where high rates of speed are more likely. It is very striking to find that whereas last year the number of fatal accidents in the Metropolitan area had gone up to 1,058, the fatal accidents in the City of London numbered only 15, a lower number, I think, than ever before. It shows strikingly that the probability is that it is the speed of motor cars that is the great cause of danger. These high speeds obtain not only in suburban areas but in other streets which are at all clear. Take a thoroughfare like
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Knightsbridge. I have seen omnibuses go down there at thirty or forty miles an hour. I do not refer to London General omnibuses, but pirate omnibuses go at any speed they like and so, of course, do other motor vehicles.
I cannot doubt for a moment that it is the undue speed at which motor traffic is conducted that is chiefly liable for these accidents. I should say that of those who own motor cars it would be a very moderate estimate to say that nine-tenths of them are not going on very special or urgent business. They are out simply for their own pleasure, or to satisfy their own particular activities, but they go at these high rates of speed to the great danger of the general public. That is why I think you ought to have a very strict limitation of speed in the Metropolis. It is not sufficient to say that a driver has a clear view. All kinds of unexpected occurrences may take place. These high speeds upset the nerves of pedestrians. Lately there has been some discussion in the Press about the noise caused by traffic and suggestions have been made that noise ought to be reduced because of its effect on the nerves. I think the speed at which motor traffic is conducted equally upsets the nerves of the people and frightens some people, particularly ladies, unnecessarily, so that now they do not venture to go into certain areas of London. I should like to know what proposals the authorities have to make. I do not know whether the London Traffic Advisory Board is still in existence.
THE FIRST COMMISSIONER OF WORKS (VISCOUNT PEEL):It is.
LORD LAMINGTON: Then I should like to know whether they have been able to formulate any proposal to make the streets safer for pedestrians. I should like to repeat what I have said on previous occasions, that I think it would be very useful if they would issue every year with their Report a chart showing where accidents have occurred. I do not mean all accidents, or the map of London would be one big blot, but, just as wreck charts are published by the Government, so there should be a chart of London showing where fatal accidents have taken place. I think this would be very informing and would give

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warning to the public and drivers generally of the most dangerous points. It is adding insult to injury when the latest report that I saw printed in the Press tells us that these accidents are chiefly caused by the carelessness of the public. That is too monstrous. There may be isolated cases, but it is a fact that it is very difficult to get across the street. In Knightsbridge, the street with which I am most familiar, it is really a great undertaking to cross the street anywhere between Hyde Park Corner and the Albert Gate. You may take every reasonable precaution, but when you are halfway across a cycle appears from behind an omnibus and in dodging it you are likely to be thrust under some other vehicle. I quote this to show that if you want to cross the street in London you have to incur very great risks, and it is quite unfair to give currency to the idea that these accidents are chiefly due to the carelessness of pedestrians. I beg to move.
LORD DE CLIFFORD: My Lords, I think we are all very grateful to the noble Lord who has raised this question, because we are sadly aware that there has been a dreadful toll of injury in this City of ours. I am unable to ascribe it to one-way traffic. The most serious aspect appears to me to be the large number of children involved. I notice from the latest Report of the Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis that, out of 1,058 people killed last year, 221 were children, and out of some 48,000 people injured over 10,000 were children. I think that is far too high a percentage to rest content with. It is very easy to criticise, but I would like to put forward the suggestion that, if it were possible, policemen should be posted outside all schools in main roads to assist the children across. I know that this is done now in certain places, but I cannot say whether it is a standing order or not. Another question that I should like to ask, although I do not suppose that the noble Viscount will be able to tell me the answer to-day, is why there should be such a large number of accidents in the district of Bow. I notice nearly 400 more children were injured in that district than in any other.
The Police Reports of the last few years have shown that there has been comparatively no great increase in the
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accidents in which taxicab and omnibus drivers have been involved. On the other hand, if you look at the number of people injured by private cars, you will find that it is more than twelve and a quarter times as great as it was in 1918, while the number of those injured by omnibuses and cabs has only doubled. It seems obvious to me that this is because the drivers of omnibuses and cabs are picked men who have to undergo a strict test. This bears out the suggestion that strict tests should be instituted and applied before anybody is allowed to take out a driving licence. The present position is perfectly ludicrous. Anybody who cannot drive can pay 5s., take out a licence and go out and kill somebody with a car. Another point is that very great injury is caused by flying glass when vehicles come into collision. This is a very serious thing, for people who depend on their good looks for their livelihood, and it seems to me that it might be possible to provide that unsplinterable glass should be fitted in all vehicles licensed to ply for hire. I am not suggesting this with any desire to add fresh burdens to proprietors of ears, but in a spirit of helpfulness.
I cannot agree with the noble Lord that it is a monstrous thing that the Police Report should say that people are killed through their own carelessness. Strict investigation is made by a police constable on the spot when accidents of that kind occur, and the noble Lord would seem to suggest that the policemen do not take notes accurately. I have driven a lot, and I cannot say that it is a pleasure to drive in London. It is with the greatest difficulty that one gets about at all. But no driver wants to kill anybody, and nobody would say that drivers deliberately run people down. They would like to save these people, but in a large number of cases it is the victim's own fault. There was a complaint in the Press last evening that there are far too many signs intended to help the public to cross the road in Waterloo Place. I cannot subscribe to that complaint, for these signs show that the City Council of Westminster do take some interest in pedestrians. The only thing that I would like them to add is an indication of the direction in which the traffic is going so that people can keep an eye on it.

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It is a very serious prospect to contemplate, but in two or three years' time we shall have twice as much traffic on the roads as there is now, and I would suggest that the whole subject of traffic control and one-way streets should be gone into. The noble Lord said that he would like to see the twenty-mile speed limit enforced in the Metropolis. I am afraid that is impossible. I do not see how you could enforce this limit in a street like Piccadilly or in the Strand, or even in the City. It might be done in the parks, but even there the police do not attempt to enforce a twenty-mile limit. I was watching the police in a control there the other day and they were allowing thirty miles an hour, and then they complained that the only time when they caught them was when the road was quite safe. I quite agree with the noble Lord regarding the need of a subordinate service of police, because at present police are taken off their beats during the middle of the day to help to deal with congested traffic. I trust that I have not taken up too much of your Lordships' time with these observations.
LORD MONTAGU OF BEAULIEU: My Lords, when I rose at the same time as the noble Lord who has just spoken I did not understand that I was standing between the House and the noble Lord and that there were special reasons, which have since been explained to me by a noble Lord opposite, why the House desired to hear him. I do not want to detain the House more than a moment or two. I should like to point out that we all sympathise with the noble Lord who raised this matter, because we are all pedestrians in London and have great difficulty in walking across the streets. I do not think, however, that very much can be done at present except by the extension of the very excellent system of putting up notices at points where crossings are safer and in inducing people not to cross at random but only at the places where these notices appear. I believe it is the confirmed opinion of the London and Home Counties Advisory Committee and of the Police that these notices have already done a good deal to increase the safety of the pedestrian. There are other ways in which principles of safety have been impressed upon the public by the Safety First League, which has done excellent work in that direction,
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and by the Road Fellowship League, of which I have the honour to be President, and which has done much to moderate the desire of those people who wish to drive at speeds which are not suitable to the character of the road on which they are driving.
I think the noble Lord who raised this matter rather threw cold water upon the statistics produced by the police. I have in my hand the Report of the Commissioner of Police for 1927, and after dissecting the number of fatalities in the London area it shows that out of 1,027 fatalities in all 528 are ascribed to the carelessness of pedestrians—pedestrians crossing our roads without due care, 281; hesitating or faltering, 110; playing in the middle of the road, 23; and so on. The driver may be everything wicked and inconsiderate at times, but there must be contributory causes, and in my opinion there is such a thing as walking, as well as driving, to the public danger. If a person chooses to step off the kerb without looking, into the middle of crowded traffic, it is a suicidal thing to do. Of course we all have moments of absent-mindedness, and there always will be danger where you have fast moving vehicles on the one side and careless people on the other. As regards the one-way thoroughfares, I entirely support the action of the Advisory Committee who advised on this question. Taking them as a whole the one-way thoroughfares have been successful, and it is impossible to conceive that it would be advisable to go back to the former system and do away with what are called round-abouts. Just outside this House at Westminster the system has been of the greatest possible assistance in ameliorating the running of the traffic, and I do not believe from the statistics that it has led to any increase in the number of accidents to pedestrians.
As regards the enforcing of the 20 mile limit everybody knows that it is impossible in London. You cannot have a police trap on every road in London. You want to increase the speed of London traffic if you are to get it to run through the streets smoothly. All kinds of remedies have been suggested for safeguarding the unfortunate pedestrian. My own idea is that before long, sooner rather than later, we should have in London escalators either under or over

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our streets. Instead of having such subways as you have now at the Bank, Blackfriars Bridge and elsewhere, enabling pedestrians to cross from one side of the road to another without having to go through dense traffic, I think that these subways should be provided with moving platforms, because it is very unfair upon the infirm, and upon old people and young people, to ask them to go down ten or twelve steps, through a long passage, and up again ten or twelve steps, in order to avoid the traffic. You should enable the pedestrians to cross the road by a mechanical convenience which would not put them to extra trouble.
I do not wish to detain your Lordships any longer, but I would like to finish by saying that I hold in my hand the results of the findings of a very large number of coroners' inquests, which have been held all over the country, inquiring into the causes of accidents. It seems to me that these are very interesting figures. They are percentages, and are as follows:—Avoidable by motor drivers, 36 per cent.; unavoidable by motor drivers, 64 per cent.; excessive speed, 12.9 per cent.; inattention, 6.2 per cent. On the other hand we have: crossing carelessly, 6.7 per cent.; steeping off the footway without looking, 3.8 per cent. To sum up the results of coroners' inquests all over the country, 36 per cent. of the accidents were found to have been avoidable by motor drivers, whereas 64 per cent. were found to have been unavoidable by motor drivers. I think that that to a large extent shows that pedestrians as well as drivers must co-operate, for their own sake. I may remark that there are lessons now being given in the schools on the question of safety first. The Board of Education sent out an excellent little circular on the point, and children are being taught in the primary schools the proper way of crossing the road and the dangers arising from traffic. That seems to me to be the way we should start—namely, by training pedestrians, because we have to deal with new forms of traffic and with new dangers. I think we should carry on that good work and try to train the younger generation in such matters.
EARL RUSSELL: My Lords, whenever these matters of motor traffic come up there are certain things which it seems
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to me ought to be said in the interests of accuracy. I have said them all to your Lordships before, and I only hope you will forgive me if I am tedious in repeating them. Let me deal first with the assertion that there is no such thing as a reckless pedestrian, or that that description should not be employed. Virtue is not confined to pedestrians. They suffer sometimes from the same vices of carelessness and inattention as motorists, and the results of inquests prove that pedestrians over and over again have behaved in such a way that even the most careful driver could not avoid an accident. Of course those considerations hardly apply to children, and one does feel that the mortality among children is a very regrettable feature, and one which ought to be stopped in every possible way. I think a great deal has been done by giving instruction to children in the schools. Of course it takes time, probably a generation, to get used to the fact that our roads are no longer roads as people used to understand them. They are not places where you can play, and wander about, but are in effect unfenced railway tracks, and school children have to learn that they must not cross a road without proper precautions.
Having said that, I go on to say that I am prepared to blame motorists in practically all cases where there is an accident. There are cases, I am sure, and a great many cases, in which the most careful driver could not avoid an accident, but prima facie he is the person responsible for driving the car safely, and he is the person who should be blamed prima facie when an accident occurs, unless he can shift the blame by showing that really he was driving safely. I have been surprised at the fact that in the comparatively few cases where a motorist has been committed for manslaughter, the jury almost invariably lets him off. One would not expect the sympathy of the jury to be with the motorist, and I can only suppose that the fact is that when the evidence is given the motorist does manage to show that he has not done anything he should not have done, or omitted to do anything that he should have done. If that is so, it would not be proper to convict him for manslaughter. I can only say for my own part that if I had

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the misfortune to injure and, even more, to kill, a human being, I should have great difficulty in feeling that I was not to blame.
The noble Lord, Lord de Clifford, raised that old hare of a test for skill in driving. That matter has been considered for years and years by every sort of competent Committee, and they have all come to the conclusion, which is undoubtedly the correct conclusion, that skill in driving is not the same thing as care in driving, that you may pass an examination with flying colours, and yet be a driver quite unfit to go upon the public roads. That is a matter of caution and temperament, and not of skill. At the same time, I think it is true that, nowadays particularly, when the number of cars and the number of new drivers upon the road are growing by leaps and bounds, there are a good many drivers on the roads who have not got the first elements of road sense, who have not had any training in road manners or road care, and who certainly would be much the better for being put through a course of instruction. If any method could be devised which would effect that end, I dare say it would be a good thing. I see myself, and I am sure your Lordships see when you are driving on the crowded roads that we have now, many people who are driving in a way which suggests that they really do not know how a road should be used.
We come to the question of enforcing a speed limit in London. I do not hesitate to say that the greater part of the bad and reckless driving to-day is due to the enforcement of a speed limit from the beginning of the Motor Car Act. The attention of the public, the attention of the police, the attention of the magistrates has been fixed upon the entirely unimportant thing of absolute speed in numbers of miles per hour, and in looking at that they have lost sight of the really important thing, the question whether the driving is safe or dangerous. The result is that an entirely wrong focus has been given to the whole thing. Speed limit occupies the attention of the police, and it has very largely occupied the attention of the magistrates. It is now practically given up as an offence to be prosecuted, although it is still on the Statute Book, and motorists are in the unpleasant
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position of breaking the law every time they go out. I have no doubt all of us do it. It is unfortunate, but it is not by concentrating upon absolute speed that you will prevent this.
There is an enormous number of cases of bad and reckless driving which, in my view, ought to be prosecuted, and could quite easily be prosecuted by the police. There is such a thing as taking corners on the wrong side. That is a perfectly easy thing for the police to give evidence of, and to see. A man who does that is exposing everybody to the chance of three cars being involved in an accident—his own and two others—and that is a thing which ought to be stopped and punished. There is, then, the very dangerous offence of "cutting in." Your Lordships, if you read the papers at this time of year, will see that quite a large number of motor cyclists are killed every week-end. It is a cruel thing to say, but in many of these cases it is practically suicide; the way in which motor cycles are driven on the road provokes accidents. They "cut in" in a most reckless way, simply because they are smaller vehicles than the others, and sooner or later there comes a horrible smash, generally with fatal results. The police could do a great deal in attending to these matters, both in London and in the country.
Let me give an example in London itself. Every night, from 11 o'clock to 11.15, there is a string of taxi-cabs racing as hard as they can race down Pall Mall to get back to the theatre centre of London for fares. They go at a tremendous speed, and if the roads are wet they very often cannot pull up without skidding. Those men might be checked and warned, and after warning one or two of them might be summoned. The driving is of such a kind that they cannot pull up if a legitimate obstruction appears in the way. Such reckless driving goes on, not only in London but in the country, and if only the attention of the police could be directed to these real examples, of which any expert motorist can tell them—and the Royal Automobile Club or the Automobile Association could put them on to them—than I am sure we should have an improvement in the general level of driving, and an improvement, I hope, in the number of fatal accidents. The number of fatal accidents ought to be reduced,

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but it can only be reduced, not by speed limits, still less by traps about speed limits, nor even by setting driving examinations, but by enforcing upon those who do not realise their responsibility careful driving when they are on the roads.
LORD GAINFORD: My Lords, I only want to ask the noble Viscount, Lord Peel, three questions. Some years ago, when I was at the Board of Education I took great pains to try to arrange with the education committee of the. London County Council that schools should be placed in such situations that the children attending them should not have to cross dangerous streets. I should like to know whether, since we endeavoured to have the children instructed in these matters in the schools, there has been any increase in the number of accidents among children of school age in proportion to their numbers attending school. Those are cases in which I am sure the sympathy of everyone goes out to the poor children and the parents of the children. The second question is in connection with the very long period during which the middle of one of the busiest traffic centres in London, Piccadilly Circus, has been occupied by contractors. For months, almost for years, a central position has been occupied by those contractors, and it is a matter of vital importance to know when that site is going to be available for foot passengers. The time that has been occupied by the contractors amounts to a scandal. There is no capital in the world that I have ever visited that would allow a central position like that to be occupied for so many months, merely in building an underground escalator, even though we know that that may be a complicated matter. It would be interesting to know whether there have been many accidents in Piccadilly Circus, and whether they are partly due, not to round-about traffic, but to the occupation of that central site by contractors. My third question is whether, with a view to expediting traffic in the main streets of London, it would be possible so to arrange that slow-going horse traffic proceeding at a walking pace should occupy the road only when the more rapid traffic is not using it. If a regulation to that effect could be passed it would be to the advantage and convenience of the public.
VISCOUNT CECIL OF CHELWOOD: My Lords, I think we all owe a great debt of gratitude to my noble friend for raising this question again. I am not sure, after listening to the discussion which has taken place, whether, even yet, the immense seriousness of this question is fully appreciated. It is not only that a thousand individuals were killed in the London area alone last year, but very nearly 50,000 were injured, and if your Lordships by way of illustration take the returns from the whole country, all over these islands that is, you will find that no fewer than 4,000 people were killed and 160,000 injured. It is probable that 160,000 is an under-estimate, because the proportion between killed and injured in London is much larger than it is in the country. I only imagine, therefore, that the same care in reporting injuries is not taken in the country as is taken in London. I think your Lordships will be quite safe in assuming that not less than 200,000 people were injured last year by accidents with vehicles, practically motor accidents, and that 4,000 of those were killed.
That, I think, is a tremendously serious state of things. It is made all the more serious by the fact that every year there is an increase. Ten years ago there were only 600 killed in London (I go back to the London area because that is what we are discussing to-day): that, again, has been very nearly doubled because it is over 1,000 now. Only 15,000 were injured. That has been more than trebled in the ten years. It is perfectly true, as my noble friend Lord Gainford will see from looking at the statistics, that one of the few cheering parts of those statistics is that the fatal accidents to children have not increased in the last ten years. They are just about the same. They have always been about 220; though that is a terrible toll to take of child-life in this country. A good deal has been said—I shall have to come back to it in a moment—about the carelessness of pedestrians: that it has been their own fault. I do not deny that there are cases where the pedestrian acts in such a way that no care, however great, can save an accident, but they are rare; in my judgment, very rare. I believe that in the great majority of cases if the vehicle was not being driven too fast and if proper care had been shown the accident would not have occurred. That is my belief.

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I do not say it is always so, but it is so in the great majority of cases.
I think that the time has come when we ought to take this matter very seriously indeed. Your Lordships can easily imagine if figures of this kind arose from an industrial disease, or something of that kind, what an outcry there would be, and very rightly. There would be an outcry all over the country and a demand that something should be done to put it right. If you will look carefully at the statistics for London you will see one very interesting fact. It is interesting in reference to a remark that fell from my noble friend Lord Russell. Taxicabs are responsible for very few accidents, very few indeed; about 3 per cent. That is a very interesting fact, and I will come back to it in a moment. Private motor cars are responsible, roughly speaking, apparently, for about one-third of the fatal accidents, and for a very large number, 15,000, about one-third also, of the non-fatal accidents. Commercial vehicles are responsible for about one-third of the fatal accidents, and for not so many, apparently, of the non-fatal accidents.
LORD MONTAGU OF BEAULIEU: I am sorry to interrupt the noble Viscount, but I should like to say one word. Private motor cars include, of course, all kinds of vehicles which are not actually private motor cars. They comprise 64 per cent. of the traffic of London as shown by a traffic census. Therefore, their average is rather large.
VISCOUNT CECIL OF CHELWOOD: I am much obliged to my noble friend. I was not aware of that. I was only taking the figures as they are given to us in the Return. I am not making an attack in respect of private motor cars, but I mention the figures because I think when we come to examine what can be done to stop accidents, it may be interesting to see what kind of vehicle is responsible for a large proportion of the accidents.
EARL RUSSELL: Just to make sure of these statistics, I assume that the commercial motor car includes the omnibus.
VISCOUNT CECIL OF CHELWOOD: No, I think not; the omnibus is separate. Apparently, the omnibus does not cause a very large number. I am not sure as
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to the proportion in regard to the number of omnibuses; that may be high, I do not know; but the actual number caused by omnibus traffic does not seem to be very large. The omnibus appears to be included in a separate column in the Metropolitan Police statistics. What can be done? A good deal has been said about measures which might be taken to increase the care of pedestrians. I am all for doing that as far as it can be done; but I venture very respectfully to associate myself with what fell from the noble Earl, Lord Russell. I do think it is quite a wrong way of looking at this thing to say that because the pedestrian is careless he may be killed. That is wrong, and it is a very dangerous doctrine to allow any currency to. The motor car driver must assume at the present time that pedestrians are going to be careless, because they will be careless, and he must drive accordingly. That, as it seems to me, is his duty to the public.
Now I come back to the figures as to taxicabs because they seem to be interesting. How do taxicabs differ from the other motor vehicles that are on the streets? They seem to me to differ in several respects. To begin with, their engine power is not very high and they usually do not go very fast. They are very light. They are very easily stopped—they have very powerful brakes—and they are very easily turned. They are very handy vehicles. I believe the fact that they can be stopped with extraordinary rapidity, as any of your Lordships who use taxicabs will often have noticed to your discomfort, is a very important fact. They can be stopped almost within their own length when they are going at their normal pace.
VISCOUNT PEEL: They can also turn easily.
VISCOUNT CECIL OF CHELWOOD: I have said that they can turn easily; but that is less useful in avoiding an accident than stopping. I found from experience of such cases at the Bar, that the only really safe thing for a motor car driver to do when there was danger of an accident was to stop; that any attempt to drive with great skill, or to get round, or to manœuvre was a very hazardous proceeding. The next thing is that taxi-cab drivers are very sternly

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controlled. Their licences are capable of being revoked at any moment, and that is a very severe penalty which is always impending over their heads. It seems to me if you take those facts, that it is at any rate a possible conclusion that the real line of reform is to try to approximate the conditions of ordinary motor cars to the conditions which prevail with taxi-cabs. In spite of my noble friend opposite, I think that nowadays it would be well to have an examination before drivers are allowed to go on the streets of London or, indeed, to be licensed so drive motor cars at all. I am not talking so much of private motor cars only. Your Lordships no doubt have seen commercial motor cars being driven in the most reckless way down streets by people who have very little control or knowledge as to how to drive a motor car.
I venture to suggest to the Government that an examination would be a useful thing if it can be done, and, if there is any means of persuading the tribunals of this country, I think they ought to be much more ready to suspend the licences of drivers who have been guilty of carelessness in driving. The noble Earl called attention to the great difficulty of getting a jury to convict in eases of accusations of manslaughter. But he must remember that you have to prove against the motor car driver not only ordinary negligence but criminal negligence, and that is not so easy, as I am sure my noble friend would agree if he had come across these cases in practice. You have to show not that the man just for a moment did the wrong thing; that will not do for a manslaughter case. You have to show something which amounts to criminal negligence. That is a very difficult thing to define. I do not think it has ever been defined; but it is more than ordinary negligence. That is one of the reasons, I am convinced, why it is very difficult to get a conviction from a jury.
Another reason is this. You see the actual individual before the Court. The jury put themselves in his place. They see that he made a mistake, that he was perhaps careless, but that to send him to prison would be a very harsh measure in reference to that individual. I do not believe you will get convictions. I do
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not believe you will get any number of motorists sent to prison. I think you might induce the tribunals to suspend their licences much more frequently, and in my judgment that would be a more effective penalty than sending them to prison. I confess I should be very glad to see some inquiry as to whether you cannot have a mechanical limit to speed—something in the engine. I do not know whether that could be done, but engineering friends have told me it is not impracticable to have something which will prevent a car being driven beyond a certain speed. I think that is worth investigation.
Finally, I do suggest—and here I entirely agree with what my noble friend said—that you want to lay down rules as to what ought to be done and what ought not to be done on the road, similar to the regulations for preventing collisions at sea. You want to say: "You are not to drive on the wrong side; you are not to pass another vehicle going round a corner; you are not to stop at a corner." There are a number of things of that kind which ought to be laid down in the regulations for careful driving, and if those regulations are broken that would be conclusive proof of negligence on the part of the driver unless he could say positively that it was the only possible thing, the only wise thing he could do in the circumstances. I am sorry to have kept your Lordships so long, but I think the matter so serious that I have ventured to do so, and in conclusion I do ask the Government to appoint a small Departmental Committee to go into this question of what can be done to increase the safety of our roads. I dare say they have done it, but we have never seen a report. I think it ought to be carefully examined. The thing has become a really crying scandal, and it is impossible, it seems to me, for Parliament any longer to submit to the state of things existing without making some determined attempt to cure it.
LORD NEWTON: My Lords, when this discussion takes place we generally get the case of the pedestrian stated from two aspects. The general view of the case has been stated more or less fully by my noble friend Lord Lamington and by my noble friend who has just sat down. The other view, which is confined to a much smaller section is, if I

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may say so, the view that the pedestrian is an aggressive and a dangerous person who is a sort of menace to the inoffensive motorist or the innocent scorcher. That may be a little exaggeration, but that is mare or less what they complain about. At any rate there cannot be any disagreement as to the perils of the streets at the present moment. I would remind the House that Mr. Sidney Webb, who, I think, was President of the Board of Trade in the last Socialist Government, expressed the astonishing opinion that the streets of London were more dangerous than working in a coal-mine. That astonishing assertion as far as I know has never been contradicted, and therefore, presumably, can be proved to be true.
My noble friend Lord Lamington asked His Majesty's Government whether they have any proposals for making thoroughfares less dangerous to pedestrians. I should very much doubt if they have any proposal to make. I have a proposal myself to make, which I hope will not be disregarded. I have frequently urged it here and in other places without any success. I maintain that it is a much more practical proposal than I have heard made by anybody this afternoon. The great majority of accidents to pedestrians are caused by the fact that we have two rules of the road, one for vehicles and another for pedestrians. Vehicles proceed on the left, pedestrians on the right. The result is that the pedestrian steps into the road with the traffic behind him. Not only that, but he crosses the road inadvertently and innumerable accidents occur. If the Ordinary commonsense principle was adopted of having only one rule, if, in other words, pedestrians moved along to the left instead of to the right, an enormous number of accidents would be avoided. If anybody doubts my statement I would ask them to try the experiment on their way home to-night. This particular remedy which, as I say, I frequently urge unsuccessfully, has been considered by numerous bodies. It has been considered by House of Commons Committees, by Ministry of Transport Committees, by county councils, by urban district councils, by chief constables, by the Metropolitan Police, and by many other bodies, and in every single case
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they have expressed approval of the principle.
I may add, in addition to those authorities, that I know from statements made to me by themselves that the late Minister of Transport, the present Home Secretary, Sir William Joynson-Hicks, and Colonel Moore-Brabazon are personally strongly in favour of this change, and the only objection that has ever proceeded against this commonsense alteration comes from people who say that it is contrary to their religious belief or to some principle of Magna Charta. Nobody ever produces any intelligible reason against this perfectly simple change. I contend that as long as we tolerate this ridiculous system of having two rules for regulating road traffic we have very little right to complain if a large proportion of the population is destroyed. The matter really goes rather further than that. I would suggest, more especially to my noble friend Lord Cecil, that here is a great opportunity. What is really required is uniformity with regard to traffic control. Let the League of Nations take it up. Let us try to get uniformity everywhere. Let him advocate the principle that every nation should act in the same way. So far as I know there is uniformity of regulation as regards the air, there is uniformity of regulation as regards the sea, why on earth should we not have it in regard to the land? All sorts of international congresses and conferences perpetually meet for very little reason whatever merely to employ people's time. Here is a sensible and practical object which I think might be achieved.
VISCOUNT CECIL OF CHELWOOD: We are the only exception.
LORD NEWTON: I beg the noble Viscount's pardon. We are the only people with two rules so far as I am aware.
VISCOUNT CECIL OF CHELWOOD: I think my noble friend will find, though there may be others, there are very very few who have our rules of the road. I am talking of European States.
LORD MONTAGU OF BEAULIEU: There are several countries who have the same rules as ourselves. I brought this before the League of Nations seven or

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eight years ago, but it was turned down. I wanted uniform rules to apply all over the world.
EARL RUSSELL: The Government would never sign the Convention.
LORD NEWTON: My complaint is that we have two rules. We may be just as right as anybody else. What I want to see is one rule. However, we are not discussing the future of the world, we are discussing the question of safety in our streets. I would urge that we proceed carefully, and the first step to be taken is that this whole question of walking on the left should be again considered. My noble friend Lord Peel promised me when we last discussed this question that it should receive earnest consideration—a, reply which I have always received when I have brought any matter forward. I imagine they are still earnestly considering it. I would appeal to him to pay some attention to the suggestion, which was made by my noble friend Lord Cecil, that this question really should be tackled in earnest and without further delay.
LORD BANBURY OF SOUTHAM: My Lords, at this late hour I shall only say a few words upon this matter. I do not think that the suggestion just made by my noble friend below me (Lord Newton) is going to have any effect, or very little effect, upon the fatal accidents which really are very serious and demand the attention of everybody who desires to see the traffic of our roads conducted properly. At the present moment the traffic on our roads is conducted in the same way in which the railway traffic used to be conducted many years ago in America. Railways in America were unfenced. The engine rang a bell and if anybody got in the way it was said: "Oh well, he ought not to have been in the way, the engine rang the bell." That is very much the idea which is prevalent among motorists to-day. They blow their horn and they think that is sufficient, and if you do not get out of the way you are run over.
The Question to-day—and I think we ought to be grateful to my noble friend for raising it—relates chiefly to London. One of the things in London which causes these accidents is one-way traffic. If any of your Lordships attempt to cross Parliament Square, unless the police are
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there to help you, you may wait four or five minutes and then cross only with great difficulty. If you go to Constitution Hill and try to cross to St. George's Hospital, you may stand five or six minutes at each of two places and then you are very likely to get run over. Over and over again I have stood there and seen motor cars or taxicabs or commercial vehicles come round. The drivers have seen me standing there but they do not stop. They do not even reduce speed. I have for fifty years or more driven in London—with horses not with motor cars—and I have always found that when people were driving horses the majority, if they saw someone trying to pass, would give that person an opportunity to do so. But it is not done now, and in one-way traffic it is almost impossible to get across with safety even by waiting.
And what is the good of one-way traffic? As a Scottish member in another place said, the only result is to add sixpence to the taxi-fare. I believe that is true. I do not believe you gain anything by it. You see a constant succession of moving vehicles, but when you have been all round the town before you get where you want to go I think you will find you would have got there as quickly if there had been no roundabout traffic. Then there is the danger to the pedestrian. You cross to a refuge, look round and see all the traffic coming one side of the refuge. You start to cross and some impatient motorist, seeing that the traffic on one side of the refuge is a little thick, turns to the right, blows his horn, and comes straight at you and you have to get out of the way or be killed. With all due deference to my noble friend below me, I believe that if one-way traffic were done away with you would have far fewer accidents. I quite agree that there are pedestrians who are careless and who step off the pavement without looking, but I do not believe they form the majority.
LORD LAMINGTON: They soon get killed.
LORD BANBURY OF SOUTHAM: The person who is unfortunate enough to have to walk has to be put upon in order that my noble friend Lord Montagu of Beaulieu may not be impeded in his beautiful motor-car, which is bound to go at not less than sixty miles an hour.
VISCOUNT PEEL: My Lords, a number of very valuable suggestions have been made on this subject as to the way of meeting the difficulties caused by motorists and pedestrians. My noble friend Viscount Cecil said he did not think the risks and dangers were sufficiently realised. Possibly they are not by everybody, but they are realised by His Majesty's Government, who have given a very great deal of consideration both at the Home Office and the Ministry of Transport to these very difficult problems. Your Lordships will realise that the suggestions made are not all of them congruous and that makes them difficult to deal with. Perhaps at this late hour I may be excused from dealing with all the suggestions made by noble Lords, but I may say that of course they will all be considered by the two Departments concerned, the Home Office and the Ministry of Transport. As regards the proposal made by Lord Newton, I can only reiterate in even more forcible language the usual formula. Not only will I take it into my most serious but into my gravest consideration.
I do not think I can be expected now to apportion the exact degree of culpability as between pedestrians and motorists, but I was very much struck by one observation made by Earl Russell as regards "cutting in." Perhaps I might be allowed to give an experience I had the other day. Unlike many of your Lordships, I was coming up from the region near Ascot during Ascot Week and I was passing the course about 10 o'clock in the morning. As I came on to the broad roads near Staines I was met, even at that early hour, by great squadrons of motors of all kinds, light and heavy, and including those tremendous char-a-bancs, bearing down upon me. "Cutting in" was going on continually until not only did these motor cars not keep to their own half of the road, but they covered the whole road and presently there was an almost impenetrable forest of cars. I had to draw up to the near side kerb, and even drawing up in that way and remaining completely still I hardly escaped complete destruction. I did complain to the police but of course, as your Lordships will imagine, though a complaint made to a policeman at that time was treated with politeness, it was impossible
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to deal with the problem unless there was a policeman every few yards. I will only say a word about the question raised by a noble Lord, about two kinds of policemen. That has been considered, but it is extremely difficult to separate the duty of looking after traffic from other police duties, and establishing a class of men who would not have ordinary police duties but would be solely concerned with the management and control of traffic.
The next point I ought to mention is the Question raised by Lord Lamington about one-way thoroughfares. On that my noble friend Lord Banbury, whom I do not see in his place at the moment, spoke with great emphasis. He said a great deal of the trouble had been caused by these roundabouts and one-way traffic systems. That certainly is not the experience, so far, of the Ministry of Transport. I should like to give what figures I have been able to obtain, although they are not very satisfactory and are only tentative. The general view of the Ministry is that not sufficient time has elapsed to pronounce with any certainty on the point, but they hope that as the system becomes more familiar to pedestrians and others the number of accidents will be considerably reduced. As regards the question of traffic, there is not the slightest doubt at the Ministry of Transport that this roundabout system is far better than the old system. Figures are not available for making a comparison between traffic accidents to pedestrians at roundabouts and in one-way traffic with the similar accidents before these systems were introduced.
The figures I have show that, taking all accidents including those to pedestrians, there have been fewer fatal accidents and rather more non-fatal ones involving personal injuries. There have been sixteen of these systems in force for varying times from 3½ years to one year, and from the inception of the various systems to the end of March last there were six fatal, seventy-two serious, and 842 slight accidents. In the corresponding period just prior to the installing of these different systems the figures were seventeen fatal, fifty-three serious, and 617 slight accidents. Your Lordships must draw what deductions you can from those figures. They are a little puzzling. You will see that the number of fatal

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accidents has obviously been reduced considerably, whereas the serious accidents seem to have increased. I confess that the only conclusion that I can draw is that experience is still too short to allow us to pronounce very distinctly upon these matters. I hope that very soon, as experience increases, the Ministry of Transport will be able to draw more definite deductions from a comparison between the two systems.
The next Question regarded the number of accidents to pedestrians for the Twelve months preceding the date of the last return. The figure that I have of fatal accidents to pedestrians within the Metropolitan area during the twelve months ending March 31, 1928, is 773. The next Question, with which I do not think I need deal at great length, is whether the twenty-mile speed limit should not be enforced in the Metropolitan area. I have the number of cases that have been taken into Court. In 1926 it was some 16,000; in 1927 it was 18,000 odd; and in the twelve months ending May 31, 1928, it was 18,905. I am afraid that I cannot give the number of convictions, although I understand that in the great majority of cases convictions were obtained. In London streets it is naturally difficult to measure rates of progress and it is generally better to prosecute for dangerous driving. Your Lordships will remember that this speed limit was fixed twenty-five years ago by the Act of 1903, and I think it is generally recognised that it is not very suitable for the present day. This, at any rate, appears to be the view taken by juries, because, except in very flagrant cases, they are unwilling to convict merely on the ground of excessive speed. As for the alteration of the speed limit and the question whether there should be a limit at all, I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord Lamington, is aware that these points have been already embodied in a Bill, which, I think, has been circulated.
VISCOUNT CECIL OF CHELWOOD: It has not been circulated. I inquired at the Printed Paper Office. No Bill was presented this year or last year.
VISCOUNT PEEL: It has not got so far us that, but the noble Lord knows the system of publishing a draft of a Bill. The Bill has not been introduced into
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either House or laid upon the Table. That is the only answer that I can give upon that point—that the subject will be thrashed out in this Bill. The noble Lord's last Question was whether the Government have any proposals for making the thoroughfares less dangerous. There have been a good many proposals, but all the proposals put together have so far had little effect upon the number of fatal accidents. Certain things have been done. More refuges have been provided at dangerous crossings and more "Please Cross Here" notices have been put up at points where there are refuges or where there is a traffic policeman on duty to assist pedestrians in crossing. I think that Lord de Clifford suggested that these signs were rather confusing and added to the muddle. Perhaps he will be able to give us some suggestions as to how they should be placed. Questions of the improvement of street corners have been discussed with different local authorities, but your Lordships know that there are a great many street corners, and that matter has not proceeded very quickly. Special investigations are being made regarding streets where an abnormal number of accidents have taken place and it is hoped that some fruitful deductions will be drawn.
The only other point with which I think I need deal and in regard to which action is being taken at the moment, is in connection with the schools, which were referred to by Lord Gainford. I spoke on this subject a few months ago in this House and I told your Lordships that the Advisory Committee were specially considering the question of accidents to children. Those inquiries are still going on. No Report has yet been made, but very valuable assistance has been obtained from local authorities. There is one interesting point in connection with accidents to children, and that is raised by the question whether these accidents are more or fewer during the holidays. The figures that have been given to me seem to show that the percentage of accidents is very much the same in school time and out of school time. During the three years from 1925 to 1927 the London County schools were closed for 202 days, excluding Saturdays and Sundays, or for 18.45 per cent. of the whole period. During those days 134 fatalities occurred, or 19.9 per cent. of the total number. It will be seen that the percentage

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of fatalities in school days and at other times is very nearly the same. This may be attributed, of course, to the fact that, owing to the teachers giving good instruction, the children take the same average amount of care in crossing the streets in the holidays as in school time.
Those are all the actual steps that are now being taken by the Ministry of Transport, but all these problems are under the consideration of the Traffic Advisory Committee and I hope that they will soon be able to submit a Report to the Minister. I do not know whether there are any Papers that I could usefully lay, but I will consider the question of the chart which the noble Lord suggested. He would, no doubt, desire colours to distinguish the streets in which there had been the largest number of accidents. I shall be very glad to ask the Minister of Transport whether that could be done.
VISCOUNT CECIL OF CHELWOOD: Before the noble Viscount resumes his seat I should like to ask whether he can consider asking the Advisory Committee or whatever is the proper body, or a Departmental Committee specially appointed, for a comprehensive report on the question of what could be done, what has been done and what are the causes of these accidents—something that will inform the public and let us know in this House that the matter is really being seriously and systematically considered. Perhaps he will consider that point if he cannot give me a reply now.
VISCOUNT PEEL: I was hesitating for a moment to answer the noble Viscount, because the Advisory Committee are now considering all kinds of methods by which they might be able to deal with the difficulty, and I was wondering whether a general inquiry into the causes of accidents with a view to finding out, for instance, how many are due to pedestrians and how many to drivers, could be undertaken at the same time, or whether it would cause any delay. Without giving a definite answer at the moment, I will certainly bring that point to the attention of the Minister of Transport in order to see what can be done in that way and whether such a step would be useful in the interests of the public and for the information of this
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House. I shall be very glad to bring that point to his notice. I apologise for not having dealt with all the points that were raised, but they were so many that I think it was almost impossible to deal with all of them in the compass of a reply.
LORD LAMINGTON: My Lords, the one outstanding fact that has been brought before us by the noble Viscount is that the total number of fatal accidents to pedestrians, which was 485 in 1923, has shown an enormous increase. That is one important point in connection with my Question, and I still maintain that it would be most desirable to know how much the speed of cars has contributed to this terrible holocaust. The noble Earl, Lord Russell, complained that the question of speed has too much engrossed the attention of the public all these years; but even he went on to say that in Pall Mall at a certain hour of the night the speed of the taxicabs was something terrific. I maintain that not only at eleven o'clock at night, but, if you go to Knightsbridge, after seven o'clock, you may see some of these pirate omnibuses and other vehicles travelling at thirty or forty miles an hour, and it does not require two policemen to calculate the speed of such vehicles. Even if no prosecution results they might take the driver's number and report it, and warn the man, and that will do something at least to diminish the risk to pedestrians.
Something has been said about pedestrians being careless, but whereas in 1909 there were 289 fatal accidents in London, this has now gone up to the awful number of over 1,000. The noble Viscount, Lord Peel, said something just now about the speed limit having continued for about twenty-five years, and implied that it might be necessary to increase the speed limit, but the wretched legs of pedestrians do not grow any longer, nor does their activity in getting across the streets increase. The whole point of my Question is that care of the pedestrian should be the first consideration. I am glad to think that on the whole the noble Viscount's reply has been fairly satisfactory, and I beg to withdraw the Motion which stands in my name.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.
House adjourned at twenty-five minutes past seven o'clock.