COUNTY COURTS BILL. [H.L.] (Hansard, 12 July 1934)

§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR (VISCOUNT SANKEY)

My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time. I need detain your Lordships for only a minute or two. This is a pure Consolidation Bill, and I need not describe its provisions in any detail at all. It does not seek to make any changes of substance in the existing law, but a much-needed improvement in its arrangement. The Acts relating to County Courts have not been consolidated since 1888, when a County Courts Act was passed which has 188 sections. During the last fifty years that Act has been drastically amended by the County Courts Acts of 1903, 1919, 560 1924 and 1934, and by several other Acts as well; and the time has come when its provisions as amended ought to be embodied in a single Act. To achieve that result is the primary object of this Bill.

The law as to County Courts is at the moment scattered over some twenty Acts of Parliament. Altogether this Bill enables eight Acts to be completely repealed and twelve others to be repealed so far as they relate to County Courts. But the importance of the consolidation lies not so much in the number of Acts to be repealed as in the complexity of the existing provisions relating to County Courts and the enormous number of persons who are obliged to thread their way among them in order to discover their legal rights. In the Bill these provisions are collected together and re-arranged as simply and clearly as the subject matter allows. I commend the Bill to your Lordships as a piece of consolidation which will be a great reform of the law and of real use to a great number of our fellow countrymen. If your Lordships give it a Second Reading, as I ask you to do, I shall move that it be referred to the Joint Select Committee of both Houses which has been set up to deal with Consolidation Bills.