§ Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
§ LORD THANKERTONMy Lords, I think I shall be able to explain in a very few words the object and purpose of this Bill, which has already passed the other House and which is in fact in identical terms with the Bill passed by your Lordships' House in the year 1928. A glance at the Schedule of the Bill will show you that there are portions of some sixty Acts of Parliament relating to Scotland which will be repealed as the result of this Bill. It is really a measure of Statute Law revision. In every one of those Statutes there is some provision relating to a penalty for taking a false oath or making a false declaration or drawing out some false statement, with varying penalties in the various Acts, and the purpose of this Bill is to put into one measure, with one standard of penalty, all those provisions, and to repeal some sixty provisions with regard to varying penalties in different Statutes.
This Bill reproduces for Scotland in almost identical terms the Perjury Act of 1911 which did exactly the same thing for England. I confess I am not able to explain why in this matter, quite unusually, Scotland has lagged behind England. It is generally the other way round in my experience. The clauses of the Bill, which I do not think I need go through in detail, relate first of all to the question of false oaths—there is no need for us to deal in this part with perjury in Scotland, because that is dealt with by the Common Law—false oaths taken for any purpose. Then we turn to false statutory declarations of abstracts, accounts, balance sheets and things of that type which are required to be made 972 by some Statute or other; and, thirdly, false declarations for the purpose of getting registered for some particular profession or something of that type. The rest of the provisions are executorial for the purpose of carrying out this measure, and they are, I think—except where it is necessary to have a special application for Scotland—almost without exception identical with the English Act of 1911. I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time.
§ Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Thankerton.)
§ On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the whole House.