LOCAL GOVERNMENT (CLERKS) BILL. [H.L.] (Hansard, 9 December 1930)

§ LORD STRACHIE
My Lords, in rising to move that this Bill be read a second time, I should like to remind you that the question with which this Bill deals was settled some forty years ago, when the Local Government Act, 1888, was passed. In those days Parliament, perhaps not very unnaturally, was inclined to be rather frightened of the county councils—new great democratic bodies elected by all the ratepayers. It was indeed a great change in the conduct and control of local government, which was taken entirely out of the hands of the squires and country gentlemen and put into the hands of a newly-elected body. Therefore it was not surprising that Parliament thought that in the first instance the clerks of the county councils should be the old clerks of the peace who were known so well in the counties; and ipso facto these clerks of the peace became the clerks of the county councils. But a great deal of water has passed under the bridges since those days and it seems right that there should be a revision of these appointments.
These county councils are very important bodies, and I think your Lordships will agree that on the whole they have done their work extremely well and very carefully. That they have done their 469 work very well is shown, I think, by the fact that one Parliament after another has seen fit to give them more and more important duties. This Bill, I should like to say at once, is an agreed Bill. That is to say, the people who are affected by the Bill—the clerks of the peace and the county councils—have agreed to this Bill through their organisations, the Chairmen of Quarter Sessions and the clerks of the peace and county councils. Therefore I hope your Lordships will be willing to give the Bill a Second Reading on the ground that it is an agreed Bill. I ought also to say that this Bill will not apply to Scotland or to Northern Ireland.
When the Local Government Act, 1888, was passed, the clerks of the peace were appointed by the standing joint committees to be clerks of the county councils, and it is very interesting to note that the clerkship of a county council—a very important office—is a freehold office. A man who holds that office cannot be dispossessed of it, even though he is too old or too infirm to carry on the work. He cannot be dispossessed of office in those circumstances. There is no age limit. Again, last but not least, he cannot be discharged for any misconduct on his part, unless that misconduct in some way affects his executive duties to the county council. That is to say, he can misconduct himself in any way he likes so long as that misconduct does not affect the business of the county council. You will see, therefore, that he is in a very exceptional position. I doubt if anyone else is in such a position in this country at the present moment. This Bill provides that in future the clerk of the county council shall be appointed by the county council and not by the standing joint committee. Quarter Sessions will appoint separately in the future the clerk to their own body. Therefore there will be a distinct division—a clerk of the peace and a clerk of the county council.
At the present moment, the position is rather curious in that a county council has no say in the appointment of their clerk, who comes in, as I have said, ipso facto. Although they have to pay the salary and emoluments of that clerk, they do not appoint him. It seems rather curious that the people who pay are not allowed to call the tune. That is rather contrary to our present ideas 470 of how things ought to be done. In the future, clerks of county councils will hold office during pleasure and will be liable to be dismissed by the county councils, subject to this provision, that the Minister of Health for the time being will have the right of saying that he does not approve of a dismissal. That will give protection to these officers. The Bill further provides that clerks of county councils will vacate office at the age of sixty-five ipso facto. As regards clerks of the peace, the provision as to holding office during pleasure will not apply, although the provision as to age does apply. These officials will hold office, not daring pleasure, but during good conduct. They are, therefore, in a rather different position from that of the clerks of the county councils.
Then the question has to be dealt with of what shall happen to the clerks appointed before this Bill becomes an Act. In the case of those clerks who have not accepted superannuation under the Act of 1922, they will not vacate office at the age of sixty-five ipso facto as do the others. Of course there are a large number of clerks—I believe the majority—who have not accepted superannuation under the Act of 1922, because the mere fact of accepting that would mean that their office would cease to be a freehold one. Another point is that at present it is rather curious that the clerks of the county councils, following the practice of the clerks of the peace in the past, appoint all the staff of their various offices, although, of course, the staff is paid by the county council. It is the clerks of the county councils who appoint, dismiss or control all the servants of the county council, who, to be exact, are servants of the clerks and not of the council. This does not apply to the clerks of the peace under this Bill, but I think your Lordships will agree that it is very proper in these days that the servants of a county council, who are acting under the orders of the county council, and are paid by the council, should be under their control.
There is also provision for compensation for clerks deprived of their office, and it is arranged that those clerks should be entitled to superannuation on payment of a pension based on one-sixtieth of the amount of salary for the last five years. I think it is generally 471 agreed that it is only right that men who nave willingly given up this very important right should have some compensation. I think I have said enough to show your Lordships what are the main objects of the Bill. It is, of course, a long and complicated Bill, but, as I have told your Lordships, it is an agreed Bill. I think you will feel that it is desirable that, if you are pleased to give it a Second Reading, the Committee stage should be put off for a considerable time. I propose, therefore, if you give the Bill a Second Reading to-day, that we should not take the next stage until practically the end of January. I beg to move.

§ LORD PARMOOR
My Lords, I think it would be convenient at the outset, to prevent unnecessary discussion, if I were to state what is exactly the attitude of the Government towards this Bill. I entirely assent to what the noble Lord, Lord Strachie, has said as to the question of tenure of office, emoluments and superannuation of clerks of the peace and clerks of county councils having been for a considerable time under discussion. It is quite true, as he says, that in the year 1888, when the county councils were first established, the clerks of the peace became ipso facto clerks of the county councils, and at that time clerks of the peace who had been appointed by the magistrates under the old system of county government took part not only in the sessions work in the ordinary sense but in all the local government work that was then carried on by the magistrates as magistrates, and not by a representative body. Accordingly, when the change was made, as I think was quite right at that time, clerks of the peace were maintained in their positions and took on the double duties of clerks of the councils and clerks to the magistrates.
As everyone knows, clerks of the peace have a peculiar tenure of office which is called freehold tenure—that is to say that, except for what is called a misdemeanour, they are not liable to be given notice or dismissed through incompetence or inability to fulfil their functions. This has naturally given rise to the question whether clerks of councils under the Act of 1888 have the same tenure as clerks of the peace, and a case 472 came up to your Lordships' House, known as the Leconfield case, and your Lordships held that, under the Statute, there was no doubt that the clerk of the council had the same security of tenure as the old clerks of the peace. This meant, not only that the council did not appoint him, but that they had no power to dismiss him or ensure that his duties were efficiently carried out.
Before I say one or two words on the Bill itself, I should like to say that I think that nobody with experience of county councils—I have had twenty-five years of it, beginning in 1888, which is a considerable time—would support this Bill merely out of a desire to show any want of respect for the work which the clerks of the peace have done. Although they had this freehold tenure, everybody who has knowledge of their work will bear witness that they have done it in an admirable and public-spirited way and generally to the satisfaction of everyone. Of course there may have been particular exceptions, but I am glad to say that in my own County of Buckingham there have been no such exceptions. I should like to read to your Lordships what was said by Mr. Neville Chamberlain when he was Minister of Health. In writing to the County Councils Association he used these words:— If the Government are returned to power and are assured that the Bill will receive the full and active support of the County Councils Association, they will be prepared either to adopt and introduce it as an agreed measure, subject to the general exigencies of public business, or to give facilities for its passage, as may be found most convenient. The present Government desire in every respect to give an assurance to the promoters of the Bill to the same extent.
Of course we cannot be responsible for the exigencies of public business if they come in the way of a Private Bill such as the noble Lord's Bill, but it is our desire to follow what was stated by my right hon. friend's predecessor and to give every assistance that we reasonably can towards the Bill becoming law within the present Session. I think it is very wise of the noble Lord to leave a long time between the Second Reading and the Committee stage. Perhaps I have rather a special knowledge of these things, and the Bill does not appear to me to be very difficult to understand or 473 difficult in its working, but it has a number of complicated phrases and it refers to a certain number of old Acts.
I think that there are only two points in this Bill on which any difficulty could possibly arise. I believe it is agreed on all hands that the time has passed when freehold tenure of such an office as is held by either clerks of the peace or clerks to county councils should continue, and in future, preserving, as I hope and believe, very fully their existing rights, those officers will be subject to ordinary dismissal by the authorities for whom they are working, subject to an appeal to the Minister of Health. I believe that this is regarded as satisfactory from every point of view, and has been agreed upon by all the authorities concerned, the local authorities on the one side and the officers on the other. There is one point to which the noble Lord referred as to which I might say just a word. I refer to the question of compensation. Without any intention of criticising the Bill, I would suggest that the terms proposed are unduly generous, or at least are on the generous side. I do not find fault with that in the least, and I think it is a right way of approaching a question of this kind, when you are dealing with men holding important offices who are trusted in matters of very great consequence and who, so far as I know, have hardly ever betrayed their trust. The Government desire to adopt the attitude that I have described, and I thought it would be convenient for your Lordships to know this at the outset, as it might shorten our discussion.

LORD RAGLAN
My Lords, you will probably agree that the time has now come when county councils should appoint their own clerks and clerks of sessions, but what this Bill provides, as I understand it, is something rather different. It seems to contemplate that the clerk of a county council and the clerk of the peace will in future normally be the same person, and will be appointed neither by the county council nor by the court of Quarter Sessions, but by private arrangement between the Chairman of the County Council and the Chairman of Quarter Sessions. The consultations and negotiations that are 474 provided for in Clause 2 (2) must obviously be of a private nature, and I am certain that the county council to which I belong, most of the members of which are the supporters of the present Government, would certainly not acquiesce in any such arrangement. The clerk of the peace is always a lawyer, at least I think so, and it is in my opinion essential that he should be a lawyer, and a man who has considerable knowledge of the working of courts of law. He has to act as adviser to the Quarter Sessions on questions of legal procedure. The work of the clerks of the county councils is now greater and more complex than it was, and I think it will probably happen that the county councils will wish in the future to appoint as their clerks persons having long experience of local government work. In this I think they will be reinforced by the Association of Local Government Officers, who will be unwilling to see the plums of their profession going into the hands of members of another profession. Therefore, I think in most cases this will happen, that one person will be appointed clerk of the peace and another clerk of the county council, and I think it would be more satisfactory if it were provided in the Bill that the clerk of the county council should be appointed by the council and the clerk of the peace by Quarter Sessions.
There are several other points of criticism in the Bill. Clause 5, subsection (4) states that— The clerk of every county council shall be, by virtue of his office, clerk of the joint committee. Of course the joint committee is not a committee of the county council, and it might be thought that the clerk of the peace should be appointed clerk of the joint committee, and not the clerk of the county council. There are other points of criticism, to which I will not now allude, but I venture to think that if this Bill is given a Second Reading it will need considerable amendment in Committee.