Lords Sitting of 16 July 1928

Preamble
The House met at a quarter past four of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE BILL. [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons, agreed to, with Amendments.

DUDLEY CORPORATION BILL.
THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (THE EARL OF DONOUGHMORE): My Lords, with reference to the Dudley Corporation Bill I beg to move that the Order of March 22 last be dispensed with and that the Bill be read a second time.
Moved, That the Order made on the 22nd day of March last, "That no Private 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.—(The Earl of Donoughmore.)
On Question, Motion agreed to and Bill read 2aaccordingly.

FOOT-AND-MOUTH DISEASE.
LORD HINDLIP LORD HINDLIP rose to ask His Majesty's Government whether in January, 1928, when the Ministry of Agriculture conducted an official investigation into foot-and-mouth disease in South America, the Ministry assumed that the risk of infection from imported meat lay in the bone and marrow, that there was no serious danger in the blood of the chilled carcase, and that consequently as a means of conveying the disease there was no distinction between chilled and frozen meat, and whether the Ministry still makes that assumption; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I hope you will be not unduly bored by having this question of foot-and-mouth disease raised for the third time this summer. If so, I must apologise, but the matter is of considerable importance, not only to the agricultural

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community but also to the consumers of meat. On May 8, when the noble Lord, Lord Ernle, first raised this question, he made it quite plain that in his opinion one of the greatest sources, if not the greatest source, of infection among our herds was through the blood of chilled meat imported from the infected countries of South America. This view was not disputed and at that date I do not think it was challenged. The noble Earl who represents the Ministry of Agriculture, Lord Stradbroke, replying to Lord Ernle's suggestion that all meat from infected countries should be frozen and not chilled, did not to my mind refute the blood theory at all. He also promised that Lord Ernle's suggestion would be referred, I presume once more, to the Research Committee. Lord Ernle's contention and suggestion were supported about a fortnight later in a long and interesting letter to The Times from Sir William Haldane, and more recently by the Chief Veterinary Inspector for Australia, Mr. Haywood, in a Report to the Minister of Markets at Canberra. Mr. Haywood went so far as to say that the only means of eliminating foot-and-mouth disease from Great Britain was to treat all carcases coming from countries where the disease exists as potentially dangerous and store meat should be kept in freezers until the organisms are rendered innocuous. I suppose Mr. Haywood had access to the information at the disposal of the Ministry of Agriculture, and I do not imagine that he would have made a Report in such strong terms as those to his home Government unless he had been pretty certain of his facts.
Until June 27 it appeared that the Government did not challenge Lord Ernle's contention as regards danger from blood, but they did not, for some reason best known to themselves, wish to deal with the matter of chilled meat. On June 27 the noble Lord opposite, Lord Strachie, raised the question of the inspection of meat from infected countries, and the noble Earl, Lord Stradbroke, if he will allow me to say so, seemed somewhat skillfully to skate round the question of blood and—I hope he will forgive me if I am wrong—somewhat contradicted himself. He said:—
"With regard to chilled carcases, it was found that after 42 days bone marrow was
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infected but not after 76 days. Therefore we cannot yet say definitely how long the virus does continue alive in the blood or bones of the carcases."
I thought it was already proved, or contended, by the Research Committee that the virus in the blood could live only forty days. The noble Earl went on to say:—
"It seems that it [the virus] lives just as long in frozen meat as it does in chilled meat."
Lord Strachie then interjected:—
"Only in the bones."
The noble Earl replied:—
"That is so."
Personally I am rather in a quandary as to what view the noble Earl and the Ministry of Agriculture really do take as regards the blood.
On the same day, June 27, we had a speech from the noble Lord, Lord Bledisloe, whom I am glad to see in his place. He was fresh from the pampas and, if I may say so, brimming with enthusiasm for Argentina and all its meats. The noble Lord, who apparently had been in the Argentine on May 8, said:—
"It certainly is news to me if there is really considered to be any serious danger in the blood of the chilled carcase as a source of the conveyance of the disease. That, at any rate, is not the opinion, to my knowledge, of research workers on either side of the Atlantic."
Here again we have the theory of the virus in the blood contradicted by so high an authority as Lord Bledisloe. My Question simply concerns the blood, and I wish to keep the blood apart from the bones and the marrow, if it is possible to do so. As for my Motion for Papers, I dare say that there are no Papers, but I should like to know, if it is possible, what questions the Government put to the Research Committee after Lord Ernle's suggestion of May 8, whether any reply has yet been received, and, if so, what. I am under the impression, in spite of what the noble Earl said on June 27, that the Research Committee held the opinion that the virus of foot-and-mouth disease could live in the blood for only forty days.
LORD ERNLE: My Lords, I am told by the Parliamentary Secretary that it will be slightly more convenient to him that I should follow Lord Hindlip rather

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than set the debate going again by following his reply. I have so great an admiration for the unfailing good temper with which the Parliamentary Secretary has met his very persistent enquirers that I am only too glad to meet his convenience, but of course it makes my part a little difficult because I do not know what his answer to the Question will be. I imagine he will say, and say with great emphasis, that the case of fresh meat and the case of chilled meat are essentially different, because in the first case you have proof that the disease was conveyed through fresh meat whereas in the case of chilled meat there is only suspicion. With that view I may say that I entirely agree and I think that makes a most essential difference. He will also, I presume, admit what the Minister of Agriculture has admitted in another place—namely, that the Ministry do suspect both chilled and frozen meat. What I want to find out from him is whether they suspect the blood in the chilled meat or only the bone in the chilled meat, and I do not expect to get a very clear answer on that point.
The noble Lord alluded just now to the dexterity with which the noble Earl has evaded the really crucial point in this very difficult discussion. I do not think that any one is aware more than myself how great has been that skill and I hope that on this occasion he will make the admission. If he does not, all I can say is that I think he ought to make it. If he did so it would be entirely consistent with the whole history of foot-and-mouth disease in this country. I do not want to repeat what I have said on previous occasions, but you will find that in 1892, when we began our two-fold policy of slaughtering infected cattle in this country and preventing the importation of disease as far as possible from foreign countries, the new policy met with immediate success. From 1894 to 1910 we were free from foot-and-mouth disease except only in the years 1900 and 1901, when it was found that live cattle imported from Argentina were infected and live cattle were prohibited. There are two curious features about those sixteen years of immunity. Throughout the whole of that period the Continent was full of foot-and-mouth disease. Therefore it is quite plain that our precautions, whatever they were, were
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sufficient to keep the disease out of this country. There is no reason to think that there is any diminution in those precautions and so far as the old Continental trade is concerned I have no doubt that we are still able to keep the Continental foot-and-mouth disease at bay.
The other remarkale feature is that during the whole of that period frozen Meat was coming into this country in considerable quantities and yet was innocuous. That points to the fact, I believe, that bone is not a particularly dangerous source of infection. In 1908 South America became our chief supplier of chilled meat, and from 1910 to the present day we have never been free from foot-and-mouth disease, excepting in three war years, 1916, 1917 and 1918; and in those three years although frozen meat was still flowing into this country in the same proportion in which it comes in at the present day chilled meat was almost entirely suspended. It dwindled from having been 77 per cent. down to 6 per cent. and even 3 per cent. of the trade, and since the War we have seen an immense increase in foot-and-mouth disease. We have had it ever since, and we have had it with a violence which knows no parallel since 1892.
What are the new factors? We are right, I think, in assuming that the old Continental trade is still prevented from infecting this country and that frozen meat is not a cause of infection because it was innocuous for sixteen years and innocuous for three more years. What has happened is that we have been importing a great quantity of fresh meat from infected countries. We talk of fresh and chilled meat as if there was a difference between them. Both in their nature and infectivity they are as indistinguishable as they are indistinguishable on the butcher's stall, and while the Continental fresh meat has been checked, the fresh meat—what you may like to call chilled meat—from the Argentine continues to pour into this country, and to be carried about, distributed, sold, cut up into joints, and cooked, without the slightest precaution whatever against the possible source of infection.
I should like to recall to your minds the findings of the Research Committee. They are quite definite, and expressed with scientific precision. They find that the

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virus of the poison exists in refrigerated meat from thirty to forty days, and no longer. It is a definite limit to the virus of infection in the blood of refrigerated meat. On the other hand, when they deal with the bone they give no limitation whatever. They say that it has been known to exist as long as seventy-six days, but they express no opinion that it may not last for 376 days. Therefore, even on the ground of time limit it may be convenient, and certainly is the course which I am going to take, to deal to-day only with chilled meat. I have said that it is indistinguishable from fresh meat in its nature and properties, and it is so. Both fresh and chilled meat are soft meats, both bleed, and in both the blood remains infective although the poison dies out in the carcase. The noble Earl, in his reply on June 27, referring to the risk of infection from fresh meat, said this: "The poison lingers in the blood smeared on the carcase." That is precisely what happens with chilled meat. The poison lingers in the blood on the carcase. It lingers in the blood which drips from the joint when cut off the carcase, and the one difference between the infectivity of the blood of chilled meat and fresh meat is this: you apply to the poison in the chilled meat a preservative which prolongs its life in the blood for a period of forty days.
It has been proved that fresh meat conveys the virus of infection to cattle. What are the facts of the particular case? There was a sewage farm surrounding a bacon factory. The fields became infected, cattle got foot-and-mouth disease. How did the infection get there? The inspectors do not tell us what the process was. They suggest that the effluent from the bacon factory or the overalls—and that is very significant—of a boy who had wandered out, wearing clothes he had worn in the factory, was the means by which it was conveyed. But when they came to the factory they found their suspicions confirmed. On the fresh carcases of pigs imported from the Netherlands were recent lesions of the disease. The case was complete; the proof was absolute. But you can never expect that particular proof in the case of beef carcases, owing to the different way in which the carcases are dressed. You would never have the opportunity, in the case of an imported carcase of beef, of tracing the
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lesions in the throat, in the mouth, and in the feet, as you have in the case of pigs' carcases. Therefore that evidence can never be brought forward against the chilled meat brought from infected countries. Otherwise there is this significant identity in the circumstances. The outward and visible signs of foot-and-mouth disease, the lesions, that is to say, of the throat and mouth and feet ought not to escape the eye of inspectors. Therefore the Netherlands urge that by increasing the number of their inspectors and by stimulating their vigilance they could, and would, effectually prevent the importation of infected meat into this country. But our Ministry quite rightly insist that no multiplication of inspectors, and no increase of vigilance, could detect the disease in its incubative stage before any outward and visible symptoms had appeared, and that in the incubative stage the poison is alive in the blood.
That applies exactly to chilled meat from South America. No doubt inspection is ten times more difficult because the cattle are ten times more numerous; but even if the South Americans are anxious—and I believe that they are most honestly anxious—to take every possible precaution, they cannot secure us from the infection of those cattle which have only reached the incubative stage of the disease. The noble Lord who sits below me (Lord Bledisloe) the other day passed on to us a very generous invitation from the Argentine Rural Society to go out and visit that country, and to see for ourselves all the admirable precautions that they are taking. I am sure if we went there we should be received with the greatest hospitality, and that we should be given every facility for our inquiry, but we should be just as powerless as, and in fact ten times more powerless than, the whole army of inspectors already are to detect infection in the incubative stage of the disease. A far more practical test would be to isolate twenty pigs in this country and feed them on samples of successive shipments of chilled meat from the Argentine. I do not wish to belittle the intelligence and capacity of your Lordships, but I do think that those twenty pigs feeding at home would bring us a more reliable answer than forty Peers feasting in South America.

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What I have said about chilled meat is only, I know, suspicion, but what I want to put to your Lordships is that the suspicion is very grave. I do not see what answer there is to the statement that chilled meat is in the thinnest possible way disguised from being fresh meat, and that it is rendered more dangerous, so far as the prolongation of the virus in the blood goes, by the very process of chilling it. I recognise to the full the difference between a proved case and a case of suspicion, and I do not want to press His Majesty's Government upon this point. I feel I probably know almost as well as the noble Earl the great embarrassment of the position in which they are placed, and I do not want to press them. They seem to me to be likely to be on the horns of a dilemma. And I may perhaps indicate only one of the horns—I will not touch upon the other. Supposing the Government determine that they have proof, or that the suspicions are so grave as to amount to proof, and they prohibit the import of chilled meat into this country. Discontent, we are told in a very famous essay, is a very grave danger to the State. Lord Bacon was thinking of hunger; but in our more delicate body politic an involuntary change of fashion in food might encourage that same discontent among the electorate, and prove fatal to the Government. And, moreover, if you stop the trade in chilled meat there is a possibility, I will not say probability, that the trade might altogether pass from us, and so you would not only deprive the people of a very valuable source of food supply, but you would deprive our manufacturers of the immense advantage of reciprocal trade in their commodities.
So I do not wish to press the Government on the point. I shall be quite satisfied if they tell us, as I hope they will, that they suspect the blood of chilled meat. Anyhow—and this is really the point of my speech—I would appeal to them to say that the suspicions are so grave, the history of the disease is so clear, that they ought to act upon their suspicions, and they ought to act in certain ways. I ventured to suggest a way in which they should act, and it was that the chilled meat should be placed in quarantine here for 21 days. The point of that is that the average voyage
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is 21 days. The quarantine of 21 days covers the complete period, the maximum limit, during which the poison is in the blood, and the moment that period is expired you can deal with the meat as safely as you can with the home produce in this country. It has already been done. It has been done by our Dominions. Soft meat of the nature of chilled meat, exactly the same thing, has been brought over to this country on a voyage of 55 to 60 days and marketed in good condition. Our friends in our overseas Dominions have done it without specially constructed ships for the carriage of chilled meat and without special machinery for keeping the air dry within the chamber. They have done it, so to speak, with home-made, make-shift appliances, but they have done it. There is, therefore, no doubt that the quarantine could be applied.
I am perfectly well aware, of course, that it would require a certain reorganisation of the trade. At present the chilled meat never goes into cold storage. In this case it would have to remain in cold storage for 21 days. But in view of the very grave suspicions and in view of the magnitude of the issues, I think the Government should make up their minds to act upon their suspicions and to enforce this policy. Supposing they do not, I venture to think they should act upon their suspicions in certain minor ways. Are the railway vans in which the chilled meat is carried disinfected at proper intervals? Are the private lorries in which the meat-packing companies convey the meat to its destination similarly disinfected? Is there any attempt at separation in the market in which this suspected meat is exposed for sale side by side with and possibly on the same stall as our home produced meat? Is there any effort to make known to the public the danger of the meat they are using? Why, for instance, should there not be by compulsion a card exposed to view wherever chilled meat is sold, setting out that though the meat is quite wholesome when it is cooked it must be used with great caution until it is cooked, that all the paper wrappings and all materials in which it is conveyed to private houses must be carefully and immediately destroyed, and that none of the raw food should be fed to pigs? I know that you have those Regulations already issued by the Ministry of Agriculture;

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but they never reach the millions of private houses into which this meat goes and from which the virus, the poison, may be distributed.
Those are practical suggestions, and they could be adopted, I take it, without in the least embarrassing the Government. I hope very much that the quarantine, the disinfection, the notice, and the other suggestions I have made will be most earnestly considered by the Government in fairness to our British farmers. We have had many discussions upon this question, and I am rather surprised that no one has endeavoured to show how great is the loss inflicted on British agriculture by this foot-and-mouth disease. Whenever a farmer reports an outbreak he is paid liberal compensation out of public money for the animals destroyed; but he is a very lucky man if he resumes his business in under six months, and the whole of the loss of its suspension falls upon him. One of the great branches of our agriculture is the export trade in pedigree stock. Owing to the prevalence of foot-and-mouth disease in this country Canada, the United States and South Africa are afraid of our cattle. Larger outlets are the infected markets of South America. So our best blood goes to help the stock of our commercial rivals. Even that outlet appears to be likely to be closed to us for I saw in the River Plate Review for June a statement in which they attribute the disease to our cattle which are imported into that country. There are brighter prospects opening up for grass farming. It is to be made more productive and capable of carrying a larger head of stock. How can you expect farmers to have the confidence and courage to launch out in herds when all the time there is hanging over them the prospect of an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease? I need not mention to your Lordships the dislocation of the milk industry, which so often happens, and the loss not only of the supply but the loss to the dairy farmer.
Another point I may mention is that the constant suspension of hunting in districts where it is carried on puts to great loss the farmers who expect to be able to sell their oats, their straw, and their hay and are not able to do it. If it is not altogether frivolous, I should like to add one other remark on that point. These constant suspensions of hunting are
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restricting hunting to the very rich men who can afford to have their sport interrupted and their horses thrown back upon them at great expense. I do not think the British public will contemplate without dismay the consequences of the repeated interruptions of hunting and the restriction if not the extinction of a national sport which has been for so long so general and so useful a school of physical fitness, steadiness of nerve, and quickness of decision. We all know that the Minister of Agriculture must administer his important office in the national and even in the Imperial interests of agriculture, but in your Lordships' House we are justified in making any suggestions which we think can help the British farmer to stand up against a calamity which is sometimes irretrievable.
THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY OF THE MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE AND FISHERIES (THE EARL OF STRADBROKE): My Lords, the noble Lord who asked the Question and the noble Lord who has just spoken have made very interesting and exhaustive speeches on the subject of foot-and-mouth disease. They have stated very fairly the great difficulties in which the Government find themselves in coping and dealing with this scourge. I am glad those noble Lords realise, as I am sure all your Lordships realise, how great those difficulties are. I hope your Lordships realise also that the Ministry of Agriculture are fully alive to the scourge of foot-and-mouth disease and are not letting the matter slide by, but are continually keeping it before their notice and urging those in charge of the Research Department to go into further investigations and to find out whatever it is possible to find out regarding the survival of the virus. The last published Report on this matter was that which appeared in 1927, the Second Progress Report of the Research Committee and on that Report all investigations that have been made since have been based, both as to the survival of the virus and any method that can be taken to prevent infection being brought into this country.
The noble Lord asked if the Ministry of Agriculture were alive to the fact that infection can be brought in by blood. Certainly we are alive to that fact. The Ministry have always had that in their mind and, as has been mentioned this afternoon, the action taken with regard

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to the importation of carcases from Europe was based on the fact that it was found that infection was introduced through the blood of carcases imported in that way. But I must also remind your Lordships that the carcases from Europe were brought in very shortly after they were slaughtered. As I said the other night, the trade is so well-managed and so completely developed that carcases slaughtered overnight were offered for sale on the London market the next morning. We must also bear in mind, with all the experiments, whatever their value may be, that time has a great deal to say in the matter. Whereas these carcases from Europe were brought in a very short time after slaughter, carcases from South America have to be on the voyage a considerable number of days, and everybody, I think, will admit that the longer the period that elapses between the cargoes being brought to this country from overseas the less is the risk of the virus being alive when the carcase reaches here.
I am reminded that it has been said that blood can keep the virus alive for 30 or 40 days in chilled meat. That, I think, is said because of a statement made with regard to an experiment on blood taken from the heart of a carcase. The heart was separated from the carcase and the blood kept in a frozen state in order to test it and see if the virus would live. The virus was found to be alive after from 30 to 40 days. But that does not apply to blood in every part of the carcase, because, as your Lordships know, after death occurs, an acid permeates the body, and, although it may not reach the heart and all the deep arteries, yet it does permeate the muscles and ordinary blood veins, and where the acid permeates the virus is killed. Therefore if the virus does remain alive for a long time in some parts of the blood, it does not necessarily so remain for so long a period in the ordinary blood smears that must appear on the carcase treated in the ordinary commercial way.
With regard to the question whether there is more danger from carcases that are chilled or carcases that are frozen, I must confess that so far as the experiments have gone there seem to be greater risks from frozen carcases than from chilled carcases. If, for instance, the virus has to be sent, as it is sometimes sent,
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by one Research Station to another for experimental purposes, the virus can only be sent when it is frozen. We have found that the only effective way of transmitting it for any journey, even a comparatively short journey, is by freezing it. Therefore, I am afraid, there is not much hope to be found by ordering the carcases to be frozen instead of chilled. I think some confusion may have arisen in noble Lords' minds by the figures that have been given as to the length of time that the virus lives. It must be understood that all these experiments have been made with a certain object in view and that the periods over which the experiments were continued were 42 days with chilled meat and 76 days with frozen meat. Those periods were chosen because they were considered to be the periods which were the longest during which meat would be in transit from any part of the world to this market. When those experiments were complete it was decided not to go any further in that direction, but we shall now proceed further with those experiments.
As I explained on a previous occasion the station at Pirbright had to be closed down for repairs and new buildings had to be erected. Those buildings have now been put up and a refrigerator installed to deal with quarter carcases and with whole sheep, so that meat can be treated there in exactly the same condition as that in which it arrives on ships for use in this country. The Second Progress Report to which I have referred did not in any way pretend to be a final Report. It may be considered as but the commencement of a great many experiments and Reports that are to be made with reference to foot-and-mouth disease. We want to go on experimenting and experimenting so that we can find not only how to check the virus, but, if possible, some way by which meat can be imported into this country without any risk of its bringing in infection—to find in fact a means whereby the meat can be inoculated. I must admit that we are a long way from that. Still I want your Lordships to bear in mind that the Research Committee are doing everything in their power that can be thought of to enable meat to be imported—as we all admit it has to be imported for feeding the people of this country—without the risk of its bringing in disease.

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Reference has been made by my noble friend Lord Hindlip to the fact that a Question was asked by Lord Ernle some time ago about the possibility of keeping the meat longer isolated after it arrives. Lord Ernle also referred to it himself. Directly after that Question was asked I had inquiries made and I wrote to the noble Lord himself explaining the result of those inquiries. We found that it was not likely from a commercial point of view to be a success. I was told that chilled meat imported as an experiment from Australia took fifty-five to sixty days in transit, that when it arrived some of the meat had a certain amount of mould on it, and that some considerable portion of the cargo had to be destroyed. Like all your Lordships, I should naturally be only too glad if we could find that was not so, as there would be more likelihood of our being able to encourage trade with our Dominions overseas, who are greatly handicapped by the length of the sea journey as compared with the journey from other countries. But we must face facts as they are. With regard to this cargo I have referred to, naturally every care was taken to see that there was no failure in any direction. The result, I am afraid, proved that at present nothing has been discovered that would make it likely to be a commercial success.
One or two other questions have been asked since the noble Lord who put the Question on the Paper sat down. One was whether it was illegal to bring the coverings of foreign meat into contact with animals. It is so, of course. Our Regulations enforce that, as also they enforce that no uncooked meat shall be fed to animals, but that it shall all be boiled. The noble Lord, Lord Ernle, said that people did not know these Regulations and that they ought to be more freely distributed. Naturally any suggestion made by him will receive the very earnest consideration of the Minister of Agriculture. We are only too glad when noble Lords, either in this House or by writing to the office, make suggestions. We make every effort to carry out their suggestions if they are feasible. But your Lordships will undertand—the noble Lord himself said so—that it would be exceedingly difficult and would be wrong for the Government to act on suspicion. We must act on fact.
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If anything can be proved, if it is proved that disease has been brought into the country by certain methods, we should be justified in asking for Regulations to be put into force to stop that, but I think your Lordships will understand that we can hardly act on suspicion only. While we are most ready and most anxious to consider any suggestions that are made we cannot, I am afraid, act merely on suspicion, but we can, and do, keep in mind all the suggestions that have been made.
We are fully alive, I can assure your Lordships once again, to the great danger of and to the harm that is being done by, foot-and-mouth disease throughout the country. It is quite true that farmers are very generously treated in the matter of compensation for cattle slaughtered, but, as Lord Ernle pointed out, they are sufferers from the fact that their trade is practically at a standstill for several months afterwards. We all know the great inconvenience they suffer when foot-and-mouth disease breaks out. I can only assure your Lordships once more that we are keeping the subject very much before us and the Research Committee are going ahead. Their progress, it is true, may seem slow, but none of these experiments can be considered verified until they have been tried over and over again, or at least several times. Moreover, in the research world experiments are never accepted, I think, until they are verified by outside people taking the same steps that the Government Department have taken. I hope that I have convinced the noble Lord who raised this matter that we are alive to the question and that we will do all we can to check any possibility of infection being brought into the country, but, at the same time, that we cannot act on suspicion.
LORD PARMOOR: My Lords, I should like to say a few words in support of the noble Lord, Lord Ernle. It is impossible, of course, to exaggerate the difficulties and loss which foot-and-mouth disease has brought to the farmers of this country. As Lord Ernle has well pointed out, it is not a question simply of compensation for the animals killed, but we have also to consider the dislocation of the farming business within the districts in which foot-and-mouth disease has broken out. We are suffering in this

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country at the present time from a double disadvantage. We have the disadvantage of the dislocation of farming business, we have the loss to our farmers and we have the interference with the export trade of our well-bred animals abroad, while at the same time we are not released from the main difficulty which we desire to solve. We do not get rid finally of foot-and-mouth disease in these islands. When, as Lord President of the Council, I was at the head of the Research Department we had many serious consultations on the question of foot-and-mouth disease. Therefore, I am not for a moment suggesting that it is not a very difficult problem. I do not know at the present time exactly how far these research experiments have been carried, but I know that at that time every effort was made to ensure that they should be carried on as effectively as possible and by persons best qualified to undertake scientific research in matters of this kind.
When the noble Lord, Lord Ernle, used the word "suspicion" I think the noble Earl who represents the Ministry of Agriculture in this House hardly gave weight to what he really meant. He did not mean suspicion in what I may call the current meaning of the word, but a suspicion which brought a large amount of conviction to the ordinary man who is cognisant of the conditions under which that suspicion has arisen. I agree in one respect with what the noble Earl said, that you do want corroboration of fact as regards scientific experiments, but it is exactly that corroboration of fact which Lord Ernle gave in the very interesting speech he made. As I understood it, his speech was mainly directed to show that the suspicion was such in this case that so far as you can draw conclusions from the facts to which he referred, you would feel satisfied that there was a connection between the importation of chilled meat and the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in this country from time to time.
Lord Ernle, who is, of course, a great authority on this topic and who was for a long time himself at the Ministry of Agriculture, made two suggestions. I do not think the noble Earl dealt with those suggestions. I know, of course, that it is difficult to deal with suggestions in this House, but I do not think that he gave
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due weight to what the noble Lord, Lord Ernle, said. Lord Ernle said, in the first place, that he thought the time had come when a quarantine system might be initiated in order to meet the suspicion that has arisen, and to see if he was right in his opinion that it was owing to the importation of chilled meat that we had these recurring outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease in this country. Surely the statistics based on years when chilled meat was imported and on years when it was not imported must bring more than a suspicion, almost a reality, to the ordinary man, when he hears the suggestion that foot-and-mouth disease in this country may be traced to chilled meat. I was rather disappointed, I must say, looking at this matter from the farmer's point of view, to hear no reference made to that by the noble Earl who represents the Ministry of Agriculture in this House. I am quite aware that Lord Ernle himself emphasised the difficulty, and I do not wish to deny the difficulty for one moment, but there was a concrete proposal of a very valuable kind and one would really like to know what is the opinion of the Minister of Agriculture as to putting that concrete proposal into operation.
There was another point made by Lord Ernle and I am not quite sure that the noble Earl appreciated the importance of it. That was that the carriage of chilled meat should be protected by further inspection and by disinfection of the trucks and lorries in which it is carried from the central market to the butchers' shops, where it is sold, or to any other place. I believe that the Ministry of Agriculture have done a great deal in that direction, and I do not want to criticise them, but surely more might be done. If, as seems to be thought, chilled meat importation cannot be stopped—and I assent to that for the moment—surely a suggestion of that kind ought not only to be carefully considered but to be put into effective operation at the earliest possible moment. I do not for a moment suggest that the noble Earl who represents the Ministry of Agriculture in this House is not alive to the importance of a question of this kind, but I certainly did not hear him give any encouragement to the suggestion which the noble Lord, Lord Ernle, made.

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I am certain that the noble Earl appreciated, as everyone must at the Ministry of Agriculture, that we are dealing with a matter which goes to the very basis of the prosperity of farming in this country. As Lord Ernle pointed out, and as we all know, we are looking for the regeneration of farming largely in connection with the improvement of our pastures and our herds. I think that everybody who is cognisant of the conditions must be aware of this. In those circumstances no possibility of improvement which might prevent the introduction of foot-and-mouth disease into this country ought to be left untried, and so I hope, though perhaps the noble Earl cannot give an answer at the moment, that he and the Ministry will keep in mind the two very concrete proposals that were made, and that if there is a chance—I think that there is more than a chance—that these suggestions will deal with this evil they ought to be put into effective operation at the earliest possible moment. I think we all owe a debt to Lord Ernle for the way in which he has brought this matter before your Lordships, not disguising the difficulty, for none of us can do so, but suggesting what might be a very effective means of dealing with what is at the moment a most unfortunate condition of affairs.
LORD STRACHIE: My Lords, If I may intervene for a moment, I cannot think that the noble Earl's reply will satisfy the farming community in this country. I think that they will be very disappointed with his speech, which practically amounted to saying that he does not know if the Ministry can do anything in the future. I was rather surprised that the noble Earl did not reply more fully to Lord Ernle's remarks as to the difference between fresh meat and chilled meat. The noble Lord said quite plainly that it could not distinguish one from the other. I think one might go a step further and say that if, as the Parliamentary Secretary admits, the infection has been brought into this country with fresh meat, then it could also be brought in with chilled meat, if the two are indistinguishable. This cannot be denied if you once admit that fresh meat and chilled meat are exactly the same as far as the possibility of infection is concerned.
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I was also disappointed that the noble Earl did not indicate that he would accept Lord Ernle's suggestion that experiments should be made in the direction of feeding chilled meat to pigs. If this meat were fed to pigs which could be isolated, it would provide an interesting experiment and it might turn out to be very useful. I am surprised that such a suggestion, coming from one of Lord Ernle's experience and reputation, should be turned down by the noble Earl who, so far as I could hear, did not appear to taken any notice of it. As regard chilled meat being quarantined, here again Lord Ernle seemed to me to make a very valuable suggestion and that suggestion was turned down by the noble Earl. On what ground? Because experiments have been made in Australia on chilled meat that has taken some fifty or sixty days to bring over. But, as Lord Ernle pointed out the meat was brought from the Colonies under conditions that are not applicable to the importation from Argentina. If all meat had to be kept in quarantine for sixty days, the question would arise of the Dominions adopting the same means of bringing chilled meat over as in the case of the Argentine.
What struck me most, both to-day and in the debate of June 27, was that the noble Earl's real ground of dislike for the suggestion that chilled meat should be quarantined seemed to be that it would interfere with the trader who puts goods into cold storage. Apparently, so far as the noble Earl is concerned, it does not matter what the poor farmer has to suffer. His sympathy is with the trader. I say that it is relatively unimportant if the trader is put to greater expense and has more trouble as a result of quarantine, if that method is really going to be effective. I was rather surprised to hear the noble Earl say that there was more risk from frozen meat than from chilled meat. The noble Earl will correct me if I am wrong, but I seem to recollect that Colonel Guinness, in another place, said that it was quite certain that infection did not come from frozen meat, though there was a suspicion that it came from chilled meat. There is a complete contradiction between the statements of the Parliamentary Secretary and the Minister of Agriculture. I hope that, though the noble Earl has been able to give us no satisfaction to-day,

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he will go further into the question and on some future occasion will be able to give us some assurance that something will be done, for foot-and-mouth disease causes enormous difficulties and these outbreaks continue to cause enormous loss to agriculturists in this country.
LORD BLEDISLOE: My Lords, as I listened to the extraordinarily able speech of my noble friend Lord Ernle, full of knowledge and perspicacity and, if I may say so, of most incisive interrogations of the noble Earl in front of me, I felt almost relieved that I was no longer occupying the position that he occupies with such ability. I am tempted to say, however, that all those speculations and hypotheses which have been the basis of several debates in this House and of a certain number, I believe, in another place, do not carry us very far. They are certainly creating, particularly the interrogatories addressed to the Minister of Agriculture in the House of Commons, considerable unrest on the other side of the Atlantic, and notably, of course, in Argentina. As many members of this House and others who are interested in the country's trade are aware, they have created a feeling of insecurity in respect of trade passing between this country and South America.
The case that Lord Ernle has submitted to your Lordships is, I am bound to say, the most convincing case that I have ever heard propounded in your Lordships' House. But when he reminds us that, during the periods when there was an interruption in the trade in chilled carcases with this country, there appeared to be some abatement in the outbreaks of the disease on this side of the Atlantic, or at any rate in this country, I think it is only fair to remind your Lordships of the fact that on every occasion when there has been any serious outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in any part of the United Kingdom there has apparently been a serious prevalence of the disease on the Continent of Europe, notably in Germany, Belgium, Holland and, two years ago, very particularly in Denmark, and occasionally also in France. I notice that the word "suspicion" has been bandied about this House in this connection. I am not sure whether the noble Earl is prepared to assent to the proposition that the Ministry of Agriculture hold the view, or entertain suspicions,
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that Argentine chilled meat is the source of outbreaks of the disease that are now occasional and sometimes prevalent in this country, because I should have thought that this was putting it rather high. So far from suggesting, as the noble and learned Lord opposite has suggested, that this suspicion amounts to something like conviction, I am bound to say that when I was at the Ministry of Agriculture the idea of our veterinary experts was that there was undoubtedly a possibility of the transference of the virus of the disease from South America to this country, but it certainly was not sufficient to ground any serious suspicion upon.
Surely, when one bears in mind that about 48 per cent. of the whole of the beef supply to the urban population of this country now comes from the Argentine Republic, if this were a real, serious source of danger to the flocks and herds of this country the disease would be far more prevalent than it is, and we should have it constantly among us to a more extensive and dangerous degree. That is not the case. On the other hand it is the case that when you have the disease rife on the Continent of Europe, within a comparatively short distance from our shores, almost invariably we have a serious and prolonged outbreak or a series of outbreaks in this country. I do venture to hope that noble Lords in this House, who after all have some claim to speak on the subject of our oldest and greatest industry, and many of whom are our largest stockholders, will at least give credit to the Argentine for trying to do their best, under difficult conditions, to carry out what His Majesty's Government are asking them to do. As regards blood as a possible source of transference of this disease, I have myself watched these carefully-cleaned carcases being quartered and wrapped up and stitched up, first in stockinette and afterwards in Hessian matting. I find it extremely difficult to believe that there can be any blood on the surface of the carcases as despatched, or that, if there is any, it can be a source of transference of the disease to other articles coming in contact with these packed quarters of chilled meat.
What really rose to ask was whether the time has not come to see if we can get a little beyond this stage of

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hypothesis and suspicion, and whether we cannot, by some such experiment as the noble Lord behind me suggested, endeavour to get at the facts. Supposing you were to feed quite a considerable quantity of bone and flesh and blood, forming parts of chilled carcases coming from the Argentine, to a selected and healthy herd of pigs: surely, by such an experiment you would ascertain whether foot-and-mouth disease, which at times is seriously prevalent in the Argentine—I have known of a herd being infected three times within twelve months—is brought here in chilled meat. Surely such an experiment as is suggested would carry us a good deal further than all these debates, grounded upon suspicion and speculation, as to whether this is, or is not, a source of outbreaks of the disease in this country. I would like to support this suggestion of my noble friend behind me, and I would like to ask the noble Earl whether he will consult with his experts as to whether such an experiment is advisable, in the first place in justice to the Argentine, and secondly in order to allay, to a large extent, the suspicion which is prevalent in the minds of the agricultural community at a time when, as we all know, they are suffering from serious depression, and when they are very apt to look to any trouble such as is suggested as aggravating their difficulties, as one with which the Government ought to cope.
In the other suggestion which was made by the noble Lord behind me I see greater difficulty. It was a suggestion that there should be instituted a quarantine of twenty-one days for all chilled carcases coming to this country. I do not say that it is alone a sufficient reason for rejecting the suggestion, but it would involve an enormous amount of locked-up capital, and also danger of some deterioration of the carcases. If, as Lord Ernie informs me, it is possible by conveying these carcases from properly chilled chambers on board ship into properly chilled chambers on this side, to institute quarantine without serious deterioration, then that might be worth while attempting, but the other experiment does strike me as a matter easy to carry out and as likely to be far more convincing in its results. I therefore want to press upon the Government, while resisting the claim embodied in the
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Question before the House, the desirability not only of trying to restore some measure of confidence on this subject among politicians and farmers, but of putting an end to the suspicion which exists by some such suggestion as has been made.
LORD BANBURY OF SOUTHAM: My Lords, I am not sure that I understood the noble Earl rightly, and I should therefore like to ask him this question. As I understood him, he admitted that in the case of blood coming from the heart of the animal there was not only a suspicion but it was the fact that the virus existed, but there was only a suspicion that it existed in blood coming from other parts of the animal. If I am correct in what I thought I heard the noble Earl say, it really is an admission that the virus exists in the blood, provided the blood comes from a certain portion of the animal. In those circumstances it seems to me absolutely necessary that something should be done. My noble friend behind me said that if you kept the carcase for twenty-one days in cold storage after the twenty-one days occupied on the voyage, you would add to the expense, but you might do away with the enormous expense which results from slaughtering animals, and therefore you have to weigh one expense against the other. I do not know which would be the greater, but I think it would be advisable, even if it does cost a little, to try and see whether something of this sort could be attempted.
THE EARL OF STRADBROKE: I am afraid that I did not make myself very clear, and therefore I apologise to my noble friend, but I think I said that I should be only too glad to consider the suggestions made by Lord Ernle, and that they should receive the attention of the Ministry.
LORD HINDLIP: My Lords, although as regards the Question on the Paper I do not know that I am very much wiser, yet I must say that I think I can be quite satisfied with the result of putting down the Question, because we have had a very interesting debate and certainly one or two valuable suggestions. We have also secured the valuable support of Lord Bledisloe for an experiment carried out on the lines suggested by Lord Ernle. If that experiment is carried out

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as regards chilled meat, I do not think that this debate will have been wasted. As to the matter of Papers, I do not know whether the noble Earl told us what he asked the Research Committee, or if the Research Committee gave any answer, but I am at all events quite satisfied with the debate.
THE EARL OF STRADBROKE: The Committee have not published any further Report, but they will in due course.
Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

DOGS (AMENDMENT) BILL.
Read 3a(according to Order).
Clause 2:
Delivery of stray (dogs to police.
2. Section four of the principal Act shall be repealed, and the following section shall be substituted therefor:—
"4.—(1) Any person (in this section referred to as 'the finder') who takes possession of a stray dog shall forthwith either—

"(a) return the dog to its owner; or

"(b) take the dog to the police station which is nearest to the place where the dog was found and inform the police officer in charge of that station where the dog was found.

"(2) Where a dog has been so taken to a police station then—

"(a) if the finder desires to keep the dog he shall inform the said police officer of his name and address, and the said police officer shall make out in duplicate a certificate in such form as may be prescribed by the Secretary of State stating the description of the dog, the place where it was found, the date on which it was brought to the police station, the name and address of the finder, and shall give one copy of the certificate to the finder and retain the other, and thereupon the finder may remove the dog, but shall be under an obligation to keep it for not less than one month;

"(b) if the finder does not desire to keep the dog the said police officer shall treat it as if it had been seized by him in pursuance of section three of this Act.

"(3) If the finder fails to comply with any of the provisions of this section he shall be liable on summary conviction to fine not exceeding forty "shillings."
LORD BANBURY OF SOUTHAM LORD BANBURY OF SOUTHAM moved to leave out Clause 2. The noble Lord said: Under the Act of 1906 Clauses 3 and 4 must be read together. Clause 4 is the clause which under this Bill it is proposed to leave out and to substitute for it another clause, which I propose to leave out, thus leaving the law in exactly the same position as it is now. Clause 4 of the Act of 1906 says that:—
"Any person who takes possession of a stray dog shall forthwith either return the dog to its owner or give notice in writing to the chief officer of police of the district where the dog was found."
Clause 3, which must be read in conjunction with it, says:—
"Where a police officer has reason to believe that any dog found in a highway or place of public resort is a stray dog, he may seize the dog and may detain it until the owner has claimed it and paid all expenses incurred by reason of its detention."
And subsection (5) says:—
"No dog so seized shall be given or sold for the purposes of vivisection."
That is the law as it stands now.
In February of this year a Bill was introduced in another place, the chief object of which was to make owners of dogs liable for injury to poultry. To that I have no objection. It then went on to repeal Section 4 of the principal Act, which I have just read, and to substitute this:
"Any person who takes possession of a stray dog shall forthwith either return the dog to its owner or deliver the dog to a police officer of the police area in which the dog was found, and inform that officer where the dog was found."
Then the clause said that if any person failed to comply with the provisions of the foregoing subsection he should be liable to a fine; and it further said:—
"A dog which has been delivered to a police officer under this section shall be treated as if it had been seized by that officer in pursuance of Section three of this Act."
That is to say, that if any dog was seized by a police officer it should be treated in pursuance of the Act of 1906, with the result that no stray dog or lost dog which is taken to the police would be used for the purposes of vivisection.
That was the Bill as introduced in the House of Commons, as it passed the Second Reading in the House of Commons, and as it passed the Committee stage in the House of Commons.

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Then on Friday, June 15, on the Report stage, an Amendment was moved to leave out that clause, and to put in another one, and the other one is in the Bill which is before your Lordships. The effect of this is that the protection which exists at the present moment against the use for vivisection purposes of a stray or lost dog which some person finds is done away with. I do not believe that when this clause was put in on the Report stage in the House of Commons anybody—certainly not the promoters of the Bill—fully realised what they were doing. I myself did not realise it. I did not realise it when I read the Bill here, and I did not realise it until my noble friend Lord Bertie of Thame put down an Amendment. I then thought, having had certain experience of Acts of Parliament, that the best thing I could do was to look up all the Acts relating to it, and I found that the result is, as I say, that the protection which exists at the present moment is done away with. If any of your Lordships loses a dog there is nothing whatever to prevent the person finding it from selling to anybody who wants to buy it for the purposes of vivisection. As the law stands any person finding this dog has to give notice to the police, and the police are not allowed to sell it to anyone who will use it for the purposes of vivisection.
Under the clause which I propose to leave out there are two alternatives. A person who finds a stray dog has to take it to the police station. If he is a person who is fond of animals, and feels that, if it was his own dog, he would like somebody to assist in finding out the owner, he takes the dog to the police station. That class of person in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred does not want to keep the dog. Therefore the police take possession of it, and they cannot sell it for the purposes of vivisection. But supposing a person finds it whose object it is to look for stray or lost dogs in order to make money out of them, by keeping them for a month and then selling them for the purposes of vivisection: what is to prevent him? We will suppose that he is perfectly honest and takes the dog to the police station. The police inspector says: "Do you wish to leave the dog? If so, we will take care of it; if not, under the new law you have the right to keep it for a month, and at the end of the month you can do what you
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like with it." The man, thinking that he can make a good thing out of it by selling it to places where vivisection is practised, says: "I will keep the dog." But supposing he is not a very scrupulous person, and that he finds a dog with a collar on it, and before taking it to the police station removes that collar, and throws it away. Then the identification of the dog is, to a certain extent, lost and the profit that the man is going to make is pretty sure. Knowing human nature, and bearing in mind a case that occurred not very long ago when two dogs were found in a sack, and another case in which a dog had been taken off the doorstep of its owner, and they were all found at an institution where vivisection was carried on, I venture to say it is pretty certain that under this alteration of the law there will be people who will take advantage of it for the purposes which I have suggested.
I would prefer, if your Lordships leave out Clause 2, that the clause which was in the Bill when it was introduced, when it passed its Second Reading and when it passed through Committee, should be reinserted. But I do not wish to insist upon that if your Lordships will only leave out Clause 2. It may be said: "If that is done it means that the Bill has to go back to another place and possibly will be lost." We are here as a revising chamber. If every time a Bill is brought before us and we feel that something ought to be done in regard to it, we are to be told: "You cannot do it because the Bill may be lost in another place," we may just as well not come here at all. Therefore I do not think that argument is of any use.
I would point out that we are now nearing the end of the Session. In my time in the House of Commons, and I imagine the same thing takes place now, a fortnight or three weeks before the end of the Session—my noble friend Lord Ullswater will bear me out, I think—it was always the habit of the Government to suspend the eleven o'clock rule, with the result that somewhere about two or three o'clock in the morning members were often rather sleepy and were more inclined to go to bed than to do anything else. If the Government suspend the eleven o'clock rule for the remainder of this Session and if they put a star against this Bill—it is a Private Member's

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Bill and I do not much like starring Private Members' Bills though it has been done in the case of a Bill of my own—all that would happen would be that somewhere about three in the morning a proposal would be made to agree with the Lords in the said Amendment and it would go through without any objection or, perhaps, members would have to stay up another quarter of an hour or twenty minutes, and when it is a fine summer morning that does no one any harm. I hope your Lordships will support me, because this is an insidious attempt to do what has been attempted in an outspoken manner for some time and has failed—that is, to obtain all stray or lost dogs for the purposes of vivisection. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 1, line 18, leave out Clause 2.—(Lord Banbury of Southam.)
VISCOUNT BERTIE OF THAME: My Lords, as my noble friend Lord Banbury has told your Lordships, I had an Amendment on the Paper on the Committee stage with the object of protecting these dogs against vivisection. My noble friend Lord Stradbroke did me the courtesy of giving me an interview at which I was confronted by the noble Earl himself, the noble Earl in charge of the Bill and three Government officials. They persuaded me not to proceed with my Amendment, quite legitimately, on the ground that my Amendment was impracticable. I think that the only way of protecting these dogs is the way in which Lord Banbury proposes to protect them, and I hope your Lordships will accept his Amendment.
THE EARL OF CRANBROOK: My Lords, in moving this Amendment, my noble friend Lord Banbury is hoping to make it less easy for dogs to be used for vivisection. I think it would be as well if I explained to your Lordships how the law stands at the moment. Under the Dogs Act, 1906, the finder of a dog is under the obligation either of returning it to the owner or of writing to the police telling them where he found the dog and giving them a description of the dog he has found. There is no obligation on the finder to take the dog to the police and the police have no power to make the finder take the dog to them. If he allows a reasonable time
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to elapse there is nothing to prevent him using or selling that dog for purposes of vivisection.
LORD BANBURY OF SOUTHAM: I do not want to interrupt my noble friend, but I do not admit that. I have the Act before me and I read the section to your Lordships. It is quite clear that if the police have reason to believe that any dog found in a highway or place of public resort is a stray dog, they may seize the dog and detain it.
THE EARL OF CRANBROOK: I am informed that the Act of 1906 refers to the fact that the police may seize a dog if they find it in the highway but that has no effect on any other person finding the dog. It has been felt that that has left the door very wide open indeed for dishonest persons who wish to steal dogs. They have merely to send an entirely inaccurate report to the police, saying that they have found a dog of a different type to that which they have actually found and in a different place and no one would then be able to trace his dog and get hold of it again. As the noble Lord has pointed out, when this Bill came up in another place there was a provision which followed one of the Defence of the Realm Regulations saying that a person finding a dog should either return it to its owner or take it forthwith to the police. Certain societies interested in dogs objected to this because they said that a person finding a dog might become very fond of it and want to keep it as his own. Therefore, the clause which is now before your Lordships was introduced on behalf of those societies to enable a person taking the dog to the police to be allowed to keep it as his own if he so desires. It is obviously impossible that a person should keep this dog under a different form of ownership to that of any other dog. I am glad that the noble Viscount, Lord Bertie, acquitted the noble Earl and myself of any attempt at third degree methods when he came to the Ministry of Agriculture.
If my noble friend Lord Banbury looks at the section he will find, as I have said, that it is easy under the old law for a person who wants to steal a dog to do so. He has only to give an inaccurate report to the police about the dog and where he found it, and he can keep the dog and the owner will not be

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able to trace it. Under the proposed clause he has to take the dog to the police station or return the dog to its owner. The owner, therefore, has a very much better chance of getting his dog again. I do not ask your Lordships to resist this Amendment in any spirit of opposition or because it would make it more difficult for the Bill to be passed in another place, but because I feel that the clause in the Bill is in favour of dogs. It confers an enormous benefit upon dogs in this country, and I hope, therefore, that your Lordships will resist the noble Lord's Amendment and confer that benefit upon the dogs.
LORD DAWSON OF PENN: My Lords, I would venture to submit that we have to consider two varieties of dogs. One is the owned dog. Is there a member of your Lordships' House who would not take any precaution necessary to preserve the owned dog to its owner? Then there is the stray dog—the poor creature that wanders about eking out such a living as it can find, uncared for, a misery to itself and a danger to the community. The extent to which that is a problem may be shown by the fact that each year something like 30,000 stray dogs are destroyed in London alone. Is it not obvious, if there is the same provision for both varieties of dogs, that the owned dog will suffer? If you put an embargo on the use of the stray dog for experimental purposes, do you not correspondingly endanger the owned dog?
This Bill seems to me to provide well for that contingency. Its provisions are such as will help in the identification of the owned dog and will diminish the chances of mishap. Therefore, it deserves the support of your Lordships' House. It is clear that the object of the noble Lord, Lord Banbury, and the same is true of the noble Viscount, Lord Bertie of Thame, is not only the protection of the owned dog, but to make this an opportunity for a flank attack on the use of dogs for experimentation. I will take his challenge, for it is clear enough, that the question of experimentation on animals stands or falls by the use or not of dogs. Whichever way you approach this question of experimentation on dogs, surround it by as much misrepresentation of fact as you will—and there is no subject I know of which is more misrepresented than this—whichever
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way you approach it, you always arrive, it seems to me, at two aspects of the question. The first one is this: Do material advantages accrue to mankind from experimentation on dogs and experimentation on animals in general? The second question is a different one, and that is: Whatever those advantages may be, is it ethically justifiable that mankind should take advantage of them?
The first of those questions as to whether material advantages do accrue to mankind is surely a question for those people with skilled knowledge. There is no one else who can give the answer. Supposing, for example, you are building a bridge across a river. You may decide the policy as to whether the bridge should be built or not, but whether that bridge is to be built of chrome steel or manganese steel, or what the distribution of the stresses should be you leave to the engineers. I would venture to submit to your Lordships that the problems of the engineer are nothing compared with the problems which arise in connection with the body and mind of man. I am not going to trouble your Lordships at this stage of the evening with evidence as to whether man does gain advantages from experiment or not, but there is this remarkable fact. We are accustomed to find experts differing, and differing materially, but on this question of experimentation on dogs there is such a consensus of opinion amongst the medical men of the civilised world—the civilised world, I would have the noble Lord remember—that it amounts to a practical unanimity.
We have recently had a conference representing every aspect of medicine and surgery and of the sciences on which medicine and surgery rest. A more representative conference there could not be, and that conference says this to the British nation, that without experimentation on animals medicine and surgery cannot carry on. I do not mean that they would not do their best; but intellectually we should come to stagnation. I will put it to your Lordships in another way. Supposing I were asked to find a staff for a hospital of, say, 200 beds in this City, and I had to find surgeons and physicians, of

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sufficient standing on the one hand and who would embrace the principles that the noble Lord advocates on the other, I could not find that staff. Such a staff does not exist. That will indicate to your Lordships to what extent unanimity exists amongst members of the medical profession on this question.
I now come to another aspect of the matter and that is the ethical aspect of it. To my mind the only honest opponents are those who approach this question from the ethical standpoint. I have in mind the man who says: "Whatever the advantages that accrue to mankind it is ethically unjustifiable that you should make use of them." I respect that man. I respect him provided that he does not himself make use of those remedies in his time of trouble. I maintain that it is a question for the public. We invite the public to answer that question. It is for them to say "Yes" or "No," and if they say "Yes" by all means let us have the legislation which shall make all these things illegal. That at any rate would be a logical and straightforward course. If, on the other hand, the answer is "No; we do not wish to stop these things," then I say for Heaven's sake leave us alone to go on with our work and do not harass us day by day and year by year. I have admitted that the question as to whether it is ethically justifiable to make use of experiments on animals should be decided by the public, and I say that what is true of the dog is true of other animals. We tell you, with a real sense of responsibility, that we cannot do without dogs—that we cannot substitute other animals in every case. Our universal rule is this, that we never use an animal higher in the scale of creation than is absolutely necessary. We use the lowest animal possible, compatible with doing our best and getting successful results.
That question therefore is a question for the public. By all means let them decide the question: "Is it ethically justifiable?" But in order that they may be in a position to answer this question, I think it would be of some profit if I were to try to clear away a few misconceptions. I will take the question of pain. Is it likely that those of us whose upbringing has been in association with pain are going to do anything
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which would needlessly increase pain when our careers are spent in assuaging it? We are not likely to be less sensitive than the noble Lord opposite on the question of inflicting pain. On the contrary, we know more about it and we know what it means. Therefore upon any question of the indifference of my profession to pain I will not waste your Lordship's time by dwelling. When I come to this question of pain I would point out that the majority of cases of experiment are carried out on anæsthetised animals. As to the 30,000 animals which are anæsthetised every year all we ask is that they shall be made use of not only for the benefit of mankind but for themselves. It must be borne in mind that the majority of experiments on animals are carried out under anæsthesia, and the dogs and other animals are completely ignorant of what is going on.
I will go further. I will admit that there is a minority of cases where animals are given diseases in order to aid in the diagnosis of disease in man. I will further admit that there are what we call survival experiments. I would like to dwell for a moment on the question of survival experiments. I would like to bring before your Lordships exactly what survival experiment means. An example will serve my purpose best. A great part of the treatment of gastrointestinal disease in modern times depends upon experiments on animals. We will suppose a man is going to be short-circuited for duodenal ulcer. You may take his pain and distress and divide it into three parts. There is first the stage of anticipation. There is that stage when he has to make up his mind to face the risks to himself and his family, and when he says to himself: "What is going to happen to me in my profession?" All these anxieties of mind far exceed distress of body. Man has to go through all that, not the animal. The animal has no such power of anticipation. Now I come to the second stage, that is the stage of the actual operation of short-circuiting. There the man and the animal are on a par. They are both under anæsthesia and both feel nothing. I come to the third stage, the stage which in some respects is most distressing, that trying process of building

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up your health after your illness, the time of shock, of convalescence. Now contrast man and animal there. The man may be weeks and months before he is well. In the case of the animal what happens? You may have an operation on a dog for short-circuiting and the same or next day it will be playing about with its owner. In the case of an operation on a monkey I have myself seen the animal within twenty-four hours sitting on his perch eating a banana. That horrible process of getting well, of recovering is unknown to the animal.
The fact is it is a slavery of terms. If you read in the papers that one of your Lordships had been vivisected and that his appendix had been removed you would be distressed and horrified, but if you read that he had been operated upon you would think nothing of it. There is no difference between the one and the other. What has happened to the animal has happened to the man, but what happens to the man is infinitely greater, tenfold or a hundredfold greater, than what happens to the animal. I think it is necessary to understand what the implication would be if a measure for suppressing experimentation on animals were passed. It would affect the whole range of medicine: the diseases of the gastro-intestinal tract, typhoid, lockjaw—I could go on with a list which would occupy too much of your Lordships' time on an afternoon like this. Much of what we know about gall stones dogs have told us. Take jaundice, including the malignant jaundice of dogs. Whereas at one time a dog stricken with malignant jaundice nearly always died, since the discovery of Trypan Blue the majority of dogs stricken with this disease are saved. In the investigation of disease that animal has to be used which the particular problem requires. For instance, for the investigation of infantile paralysis the monkey is the only animal which it is of use to employ. Then take tetanus. In the War we had more experience than we wanted of that terrible disease. I would not wish anybody should witness what that disease means.
Now, to be as brief as I can, I think it is important for people to know the consequences of removing from medicine all these results based on experimentation on animals. They have only to be
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understood by the public and I have no doubt what the public would say. The propagandists against vivisection are not themselves subject to their own gospel. If a propagandist against vivisection is stricken with any of these diseases he gives an implicit, if not an explicit, consent to vivisection. If those who are against all experimentation on animals are in their own persons or in their own families afflicted with disease, do your Lordships suppose for one moment that they do not adopt the remedies which are based on experimentation? I can assure you that with few exceptions they do adopt them; and is it to be wondered at? Imagine love and life in the balance, the crisis of anxious illness. At such a time the theories of the comfortable armchair give place to more commonsense and reasonable ideas.
Nor would I be hard on their inconsistencies. After all, one does not expect human beings to be consistent. Life would be a drab and dreary business if we always were consistent. If the uses of new drugs cannot be worked out on animals, the alternative is to work them out on human beings. Perhaps the noble Lord will form a band of people of conscientious convictions who will allow us to work out new drugs on them? When it comes to working out new drugs like pituitrin, adrenalin, and digitalin, the question is whether it is better to work them out on animals before we transfer their use to human beings. I would not say anything against consistency if in the hour of trouble the philosophy of anti-vivisection broke down. I would think humanly of that, but what I think surpasses the limits of tolerance is that these people can get these remedies when they like and yet they are constantly disturbing the minds of unknowing and innocent people in our hospitals in order to prevent these remedies reaching them.
What happens? All hospitals in this country are up against the difficulty of getting funds at the present time. They make an appeal in their distress, and then along come these fanatical people. They put advertisements in the daily Press, they inveigh against the hospital, they send letters to the subscribers and they do their best to spoil the appeal for funds. They appeal to the

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ignorant and the unknowing by misrepresentations which may be called gross and by that means diminish the flow of charitable funds. Yet let one of these propagandists himself be ill and all he has to do is to go to a private doctor and not suffer at all. You may take it that that is the usual rule.
It may be asked whether an example can be given. We had the terrors of lockjaw in the War, when people died in convulsions which could only be described as agonising. Investigations were set on foot and a serum was administered to wounded soldiers on the field of battle. The effect was that the mortality from tetanus in the War came down to quite small proportions. Since the War it has teen the rule for all well-ordered hospitals to have constantly in stock anti-tetanic serum, because street accidents are brought in from time to time which require anti-tetanic serum to be promptly injected. That is contrary to the principles of the anti-vivisectionist. And what happens? There is a hospital in this very City where they would not use anti-tetanic serum. A street accident was brought there and they refused to give anti-tetanic serum, and the patient died of lockjaw. And they call that hospital a charity. I call it a place for propagandism and nothing more, and I hope that King Edward's Fund will take note of this episode and will not give that hospital a certificate that it is a charity, ready to treat the maimed and the wounded by the best methods known to science at the present time.
At the same time as these poor people, the workers who have no choice where they shall be taken, are taken to this hospital, would the Governors of the Hospital, or their children, if they had an injury in a street accident, go without anti-tetanic serum? Not at all, they would go home and call their private doctor and it would be given. What it amounts to is that these people are practising their theories on the dog, only this time it is on the human dog, and the world suffers thereby. I put it to your Lordships that the health of this nation is a momentous matter, to be treated seriously and not made the playing ground of vain imaginings, of misguided thought and of perverted sentiment, and I ask your Lordships to reject
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the Amendment of the noble Lord opposite.
LORD DANESFORT: My Lords, I am certainly not going to follow the noble Lord into the rather discursive and, if I may say so with the utmost respect, somewhat irrelevant arguments that he has introduced into this discussion. We have listened to an exceedingly well-informed essay from doubtless a most competent person on the whole subject of vivisection. That is not, I venture to submit to your Lordships, the question before the House at the present time, or anything like it. The sole and only question that is before your Lordships to-day is whether it is right and proper, in a Bill that was introduced in another place for the protection of poultry, to try to insert a clause which deprives the stray dog of the protection that he now enjoys from vivisection. The noble Lord who has just spoken evidently thinks that, there is something in this Amendment which would interfere with his vivisecting stray dogs. If he is right in so thinking, why had not the noble Lord the courage of his convictions and, if he wanted to make relevant a discussion upon vivisection, why did he not put down an Amendment to the Bill and say that stray dogs taken to the police might be used indiscriminately for vivisection? Had he done so this discussion would at any rate have been in order, and I think that your Lordships would have been able to deal with such an Amendment in a Bill of this character.
It is rather interesting to see what a very remarkable difference of opinion there is between the noble Earl who is in charge of the Bill and the noble Lord who has just spoken. The noble Earl desires to oppose my noble friend's Amendment because he thinks that it would take away part of the, protection from vivisection which the stray dog now enjoys. That is the reason, and the only reason as I understood him, why the noble Earl in charge of the Bill opposes this Amendment. The noble Lord who has just spoken was very candid in the early part of his speech and he opposed the Amendment on the ground—I do not think that I am misrepresenting his language, because I put it down at the time—that he regarded this Amendment

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as a restriction on stray dogs being used for experimental purposes.
LORD DAWSON OF PENN: No.
LORD DANESFORT: If the noble Lord will correct me and tell me what he did say I shall be very much obliged.
LORD DAWSON OF PENN: What I said was that this Bill affected the owned dog by tending to put an embargo upon the stray dog. The matter of vivisection was introduced by the noble Lord, not by me.
LORD DANESFORT: But there is protection at present for the stray dog under the Act of 1906. Stray dogs seized by the police cannot be used or sold for the purpose of vivisection.
THE EARL OF CRANBROOK: If the noble Lord will excuse me for a moment, under this Bill, if it passes, stray dogs seized by the police cannot be used for vivisection.
LORD DANESFORT: Yes, but the noble Lord seems to think that the stray dog is a fit subject for vivisection, because he went on to say—again I took his words down but he will correct me if I am wrong—that he regarded this as a flank attack upon the use of stray dogs in vivisection. I think that I have correctly represented his statement. I ask your Lordships not to allow the noble Lord on an occasion like this to use this debate for the purpose of justifying the vivisection of stray dogs and introducing a totally irrelevant question into the discussion. The noble Earl behind me is anxious to keep up the protection from vivisection which the stray dog now enjoys. I am anxious to keep it up also, and the only question between the noble Earl and myself is whether that protection is best kept up by omitting the clause which Lord Banbury proposes to omit or by keeping it in. For my part, having looked into the matter very carefully, I consider that the protection given to stray dogs at present by the law will be best maintained by the Amendment of my noble friend, and therefore I shall certainly vote with him; but now that the noble Lord opposite has disclosed the reason why he opposes Lord Banbury's Amendment, I hope that noble Lords who wish to preserve the relevancies of debate—I will not use a stronger word—
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will vote in a contrary direction to that which the noble Lord advocates.
THE EARL OF STRADEROKE: My Lords, though this is not a Government Bill, yet when the Bill was introduced I told your Lordships that the Government looked upon it as being a very useful measure which would do away with anomalies and that they thought it desirable that it should be added to the law of this country. A long and interesting speech has been made on the question of vivisection, but it is only incidental to this Bill and I do not therefore propose to refer to it. I should like to say that I agree with the remarks of the noble Earl in charge of the Bill. The clause that is under discussion and that Lord Banbury desires to eliminate was inserted at the request of, and after very long and careful consideration with, various associations connected with the protection and care of dogs, and I think we shall agree that the clause as it now stands does give a stray dog a better chance. That was the object of the clause, and I think it is clear that a man who takes the trouble when he finds a dog to take it to a police station, where a description is taken, would do so only if he really wished to keep the dog and give it a good home. That was the view taken by those who urged the introduction of this clause.
It has been mentioned that, under Section 3 of the Act of 1906, if a dog is seized by the police it cannot be sold or given away for the purpose of vivisection, and at the same time under that Act anybody who finds a dog can keep it and after a reasonable time he can do what he likes with it. Therefore I think that under this clause which is under discussion, where a finder is bound to keep a dog for a month if he elects to keep it, the dog has a better chance not only of the original owner recovering it but also of its finding a good home. The societies that came and discussed the question of this clause, and agreed upon it, are the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the Canine Defence League—and with regard to that association I would say that they were discussing certain parts of this Bill so recently as Friday last, and raised no objection to the clause—the Battersea Home for Lost Dogs, and the Glasgow Dogs Home. Up to the present no

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objection has been lodged at the Government Department against this clause, and therefore it is rather a matter of surprise to us that this Amendment should have been put down for to-day, to eliminate the clause. It is the Government's view that the Bill will be better as it stands, and that it would be inadvisable to eliminate the clause.
LORD BANBURY OF SOUTHAM: My Lords, I would like to point out to Lord Stradbroke that, like some of the gentlemen whom he has mentioned, he has been misled as to the actual state of the law at the present moment. At the present moment under Clause 4 of the principal Act any person who takes possession of a stray dog shall forthwith either return the dog to its owner or inform the police, but Clause 3 says that where a police officer has reason to believe that any dog found in a highway or place of public resort is a stray dog, he has got to do certain things. I found a dog—I am speaking of what actually occurred to me—and under the law as it exists I sent my servant to the police. They said: "You have to bring the dog to us; you cannot keep it." The dog was sent to them. The same thing happened only a few years ago with another dog. My wife found a dog and she was anxious to keep it, and I myself went to the police station. The police informed me that they took possession of all dogs when notice was brought to them. I said: "Well, I am a respectable person"—I do not know whether noble Lords will agree with that—"you know my address, won't you allow me to save you the trouble of keeping the dog for seven days, and I will keep it?" The sergeant said that I had better see the inspector, and the inspector, being a sensible person, told me I could keep the dog, and I did so. I found the owner and returned it to him.
That is the law as it stands. What better evidence have we that this clause is going to make an alteration against the stray dog than the authority of the noble Lord opposite? Lord Danesfort asked why the noble Lord opposite did not put down an Amendment. But he did. On the Committee stage he put down an Amendment to repeal subsection (5) of Clause 3 of the Act of 1906, but did not move it. He is not moving it now because he has got all he wants if
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this Bill passes as it is. I did not raise the subject of vivisection. As a matter of fact, although I am against dogs being vivisected I am not an anti-vivisectionist. I did not raise the question. Having been defeated, I have not attempted to bring a Bill on again in this House. If the noble Lord wants to buy a dog in a legitimate way the law allows him to do so, but it is another thing to say that if I lose my dog it is to be a chance for some person who finds it to keep it a month and then to sell it to the noble Lord.
THE EARL OF CRANBROOK: I should say that at the time when the noble Lord found the dog that he speaks of the Defence of the Realm Act was in operation.
LORD BANBURY OF SOUTHAM: Oh, no! It was two years ago.
THE EARL OF CRANBROOK: Then it was a case of the police acting ultra vires. Either a finder wants a dog to be vivisected or he does not. If he does not want it to be vivisected, he can keep it himself or carry it to the police, and then the police will deal with it under Section 3 of the principal Act, which says that a dog is not to be sold for vivisection. On the other hand, if a person who finds a dog wants it for vivisection, he is obliged to keep it for at least a month, whereas under the old law he need only write to the police, without giving any description, and can keep the dog and use it for vivisection. There is no doubt in my mind that the new clause is better for the dog, and I hope that your Lordships will reject the Amendment.
LORD BANBURY OF SOUTHAM: The R.S.P.C.A., of which I am Chairman, has sent no petition in favour of this Bill.
THE EARL OF STRADBROKE: I am informed otherwise.
LORD BANBURY OF SOUTHAM: I am Chairman of the Society.
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY): My Lords, we are wall aware from the public Press that the noble Lord is Chairman of the Society, but we are not quite sure whether they are always quite agreed. I do not rise to take any part on behalf of the Government—we have no responsibility

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for this Bill—but as Leader of the House I would like to point out what will be the effect of carrying this Amendment. The noble Lord proposes to strike out the clause altogether. This clause has been inserted in the Bill with no special reference to vivisection, but with a view of maintaining as far as possible the rights of the owner of a lost dog, so that he may have a better chance of recovering the dog than he would have under the ordinary law. If my noble friend had proposed to replace this clause with some other clause which would have equally achieved his end, and perhaps secured the particular view he holds on vivisection, that would have been a very different case, but what he does is to eviscerate the Bill of one of its essential clauses without putting anything in its place.
LORD BANBURY OF SOUTHAM: It is first necessary to omit the clause.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: On the Third Reading you can do nothing except
Resolved in the affirmative, and Amendment disagreed to accordingly.
Bill passed.

REORGANISATION OF OFFICES (SCOTLAND) BILL.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
THE PAYMASTER-GENERAL (THE DUKE OF SUTHERLAND): My Lords,
what is given Notice of, and therefore on this particular occasion we can do nothing except strike out this clause. The only proposal under the strict rules of the House is to eviscerate this Bill by taking out the clause and putting nothing in its place. I do not pretend to be an expert in the matter, but I understand that this clause is inserted on behalf of the owners of dogs, and it seems rather a pity that without due consideration, at the last moment, you should eviscerate the Bill without making any proposal to put something better in the place of the clause.
VISCOUNT BERTIE OF THAME: Can the noble Marquess suggest suitable words which would have the effect of preventing dogs from being vivisected?
On Question, Whether the Clause proposed to be left out shall stand part of the Bill?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 33: Not-Contents, 5.

CONTENTS.

Canterbury, L. Abp.

Plymouth, E.

de Clifford, L.

Hailsham, L. (L. Chancellor.)

Stanhope, E.

Ernle, L.

Salisbury, M. (L. Privy Seal.)

Stradbroke, E.

Fairfax of Cameron, L.

Gage, L. (V. Gage.)

Hutchinson, V. (E. Donoughmore.)

Hampton, L.

Sutherland, D.

Muir Mackenzie, L.

Ullswater, V.

Parmoor, L.

Beauchamp, E.

Younger of Leckie, V.

Somerleyton, L.

Cranbrook, E. [Teller.]

Southwark, L.

De La Warr, E.

Askwith, L.

Templemore, L.

Iddesleigh, E. [Teller.]

Cushendun, L.

Teynham, L.

Lucan, E.

Darling, L.

Thomson L.

Mar and Kellie, E.

Dawson of Penn, L.

Wraxall, L.

NOT-CONTENTS.

Westmeath, E.

Banbury of Southam, L. [Teller.]

Danesfort, L.

Strachie, L.

Bertie of Thame, V. [Teller.]

two Bills for the reorganisation of offices in Scotland have previously been before the House. In 1923 a Bill was introduced by Lord Novar (then Secretary for Scotland), which made no progress owing to the dissolution of Parliament. In the following year the Bill was reintroduced in practically the same form by Lord Muir Mackenzie on behalf of the Labour Government. It was passed with certain Amendments, but made no progress in the House of Commons before the dissolution of Parliament.
There are two changes of importance in the present Bill as compared with that of 1924. In the first place, while the 1924 Bill proposed a reduction in the size of the Scottish Board of Health, the present Bill gives effect in the case of that Department and of two others—the Board or Agriculture and the Prison Commission—to the recommendations of the Royal Commission on the Civil Service that the Board system of administration should be replaced by the departmental system now generally in force in the London Departments and also in the Scottish Office and the Scottish Education Department. Experience of the working of these Departments has led the Secretary of State for Scotland to the definite conclusion, coinciding with that of the Royal Commission, that in the interests of efficiency and the expedition of business the departmental system is, under modern conditions, much to be preferred. Similar views were expressed by noble Lords in the debate on the 1924 Bill. This is a peculiarly suitable time for the change, as it happens that in these three Departments there have recently been or will shortly be no fewer than six retirements of Board members representing two-thirds of the paid personnel of these Boards.
The second important change in this Bill relates to the organisation of the Register House Departments. The 1924 Bill as presented to the House proposed that the office of Deputy Clerk Register, which had been vacant since 1919, should cease to exist, that his powers should be vested in the Secretary for Scotland, and that each of the Register House departments should be in charge meantime of a Keeper responsible to the Secretary for Scotland—subject always to the jurisdiction of the Court of Session and the Treasury—but with power to the Secretary for Scotland to combine those offices under one head. Lord Dunedin took exception to some of these provisions, and certain Amendments (which he accepted, though not entirely meeting his views) were made, the most important of which was to vest the powers and ditties of the Deputy Clerk Register in the Keeper of the Records.
When the present Government came to review the position in 1925—keeping in view the opinions expressed in the House of Lords and elsewhere in favour
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of a unified control of the Register House—they reached the conclusion that a further modification of the proposals would be desirable. While it was clear that the resuscitation of the office of Deputy Clerk Register in its old form would be unsatisfactory and uneconomical, the Government was impressed by the need for unified control of these departments under a single head. The present Bill, therefore, constitutes a new office of Keeper of the Registers and Records of Scotland, to whom will be transferred not only the powers and duties of the Deputy Clerk Register, but those also of the Keeper of the Register of Sasines and of the Keeper of the Register of Deeds. This officer will be the working head of the three departments. The proposals involve no change in the position of the Court of Session or of the Secretary of State in relation to the work of the departments, and do not confer on the Keeper of the Registers and Records any power which has not been exercised by the several officers whose functions are transferred to him. The question is purely one of internal organisation and administration, and the Government believe that their proposals, which are welcomed by the Lord President of the Court of Session, will be conducive to efficiency and economy in the working of these departments.
Of the other clauses of the Bill, some are consequential on the two main features already described, and some repetitions, substantially, of clauses in the 1924 Bill, to which no exception was taken at the time. The only clauses not coming into one or other of these categories are Clauses 10 and 11. The object of Clause 10 is to bring the staff of the Principal Extractor of the Court, of Session into Civil Service conditions of employment as recommended by Commissions which have inquired into the Scottish legal departments; while Clause 11 is designed to remove a statutory qualification for membership of the Board of Trustees for the National Galleries of Scotland which has proved a source of difficulty in practice. Section 4 of the Act of 1906 requires that three of the seven members of the Board shall be members of elected local authorities in Scotland. That requirement has served no useful purpose and has at times led

1055
to difficulties in constituting the Board. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—[The Duke of Sutherland.]
LORD MUIR MACKENZIE: My Lords, I have a clear recollection of what took place in 1924 when I had the honour of taking charge of a Bill for the reorganisation of certain Departments in Scotland. I recollect taking very great pains to arrive at an agreement with Lord Dunedin, who was and is the highest possible authority on matters of this kind, as upon many other matters. I certainly thought at the time that I had been successful in winning his approval; but there is no doubt that the matter was in controversy in Scotland then. I am not greatly surprised, although on seeing the Bill I was a little surprised, to find that the Bill has been founded apparently on different opinions from those which prevailed in 1924. Four years have passed and it is possible, no doubt, for persons of wisdom and consideration to alter their opinions. But that there is nothing to be said against the Bill and against the Second Reading of the Bill, no one will say who has read the debates in another place. If I were to follow the example that we have had this evening I might occupy your Lordships for the next three quarters of an hour or more in expatiating upon the technicalities of the Register House in Scotland and the practices that have been followed there for many years.
I have referred to the debates on the Third Reading in another place chiefly as showing that there are strong objections to this Bill. I do not propose to trouble your Lordships at any length. I only wish to say to the noble Duke that Clause 1 is surely very much more elaborate than that in the Bill I had to do with four years ago. I have only read it rapidly through but it seems to me to be over-elaborated. I should have thought, speaking rather offhand, that there was a great deal in that clause that might be covered by the Orders in Council mentioned in the clause. But I would not go so far as to say that of Orders in Council of the kind mentioned in another clause in the Bill, I forget which now. That clause contains a provision which I venture to call most objectionable, though I regret to say it
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is done now and then nowadays. It is a provision that an Order in Council—sometimes rules of court—may modify an Act of Parliament. That is a most objectionable thing, and I regret very much that it should be in this Bill. I do not think I need say anything more with regard to Clause 1, except that the noble Duke must not be surprised if I ask him one or two questions upon it in Committee, and for some further explanation of it.
There has been placed in my hands, and I imagine it has been placed in the hands of many of your Lordships, a representation from the Institution of Civil Servants, as I think it is called. It has regard to the position of technical assistants, and it seems to think that it is a bad thing for them to be put too precisely under the head of a Department. I have often heard objections of that kind made before and I know that those who understand administration recognise that there is force in that view. Supposing that the noble Duke has received that representation, I should be glad if he would be good enough to make some reference to it in Committee on the Bill. After those observations I am not going to move the rejection of the Bill. I know it would be of no use to do so, and I think it would put me in too difficult a position even in the kind consideration of your Lordships.
VISCOUNT YOUNGER OF LECKIE: My Lords, I hope this Bill will receive a cordial acceptance at the hands of your Lordships. It has been a very long time on the carpet and it is very desirable that the Secretary for Scotland should be relieved to a certain extent from the responsibility he has in regard to certain matters mentioned in the Bill. Those of your Lordships who are familiar with the position will be glad that a change is at last to be made. I cordially support the Motion for Second Reading.
On Question, Bill read 2aand committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

MR. SPEAKER'S RETIREMENT BILL.
House in Committee (according to Order): Bill reported without amendment.
CHILD DESTRUCTION BILL [H.L.]
Read 3a(according to Order), and passed, and sent to the Commons.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.
LORD PARMOOR: My Lords, before the Motion for the adjournment is put, I want to ask the noble Marquess whether it will be convenient, when the House meets to-morrow, for him to let us have
1058
a forecast, if he can, of the course of our business before the Prorogation.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: I will make as good a forecast as is possible. I cannot put it more definitely, I am afraid, than that.
LORD PARMOOR: I should not wish you to do so.
House adjourned at seven o'clock.