Lords Sitting of 13 November 1934

Preamble
The House met at a quarter past four of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR On the Woolsack.

EXPIRING LAWS CONTINUANCE BILL.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
THE UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (EARL STANHOPE): My Lords, by a curious coincidence it is, to-day, exactly a year since I presented the previous Expiring Laws Continuance Bill to your Lordships. There is very little I need say, but perhaps I may point out that three Acts have been dropped out of the Bill this year which appeared last year—namely, the Dyestuffs (Import Regulation) Act, 1920, and two Poor Law Emergency Provisions (Scotland) Acts, 1921 and 1927. On the other hand, two Acts appear this year which were not in the Expiring Laws Continuance Bill last year—the Statutory Undertakings (Temporary Increase of Charges) Act, 1918, in so far as it affects tramways only, and the Canals (Continuation of Charging Powers) Act, 1922. I should point out, however, that these are not additions to the Measures that appear normally in the Expiring Laws Continuance Bill. They were in the Bill in 1931, and then they were continued for three years, so that it was not necessary for these Bills to appear in either the Expiring Laws Continuance Bill of 1932 or that of last year.
The House will see that we have been able to reduce the number of Acts appearing in this Bill. That, I know, is in accordance with what your Lordships have constantly stated to be your desire, but I am afraid that even now the Lord Chairman may not be entirely satisfied. I understand he is going to raise again the question of the Public. Works Facilities Act, 1930, appearing in this Bill, and that he wishes to make some remarks about it. I told the House last year that I would find out from the Ministry of Transport, the Ministry of Health and other Departments whether it was possible for them

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to drop this Act out of the Expiring Laws Continuance Bill when it came before your Lordships again. I have done so, and I am sorry to say that they still find this Act of very real value and are very unwilling to let it go. It is the only measure, as I think I told your Lordships last year, by which the local authorities can acquire land compulsorily for civil aerodromes. The Air Ministry have only so far confirmed four orders under this Act, but there are about twelve more in which they think it is quite possible the powers may be brought into use. I understand that the Secretary of State for Air is likely to introduce a measure next year to establish these powers in a permanent form, so that argument will, I hope, have lapsed before another Expiring Laws Continuance Bill appears before this House. But, as your Lordships are well aware, there is a mass of legislation awaiting us in the next Session of Parliament, and whether that particular Bill will be brought before Parliament it is of course impossible for me to say.
There are, however, other reasons in addition to that of aerodromes which make this Act, I will not say necessary, but very desirable. Over 350 Orders have been made under Clause 2, of which 267 have been made by the Ministry of Transport and seventy-two by the Ministry of Health. The Orders made by the Ministry of Transport, I understand, have been of considerable value in shortening procedure and in endeavouring to cope with the heavy casualties on the road, which is a subject that your Lordships have constantly discussed during this Session. Moreover, Clause 3 of the Act is a very convenient way of enabling highway authorities to acquire easements for the construction of bridges over railways and canals, and its terms were agreed between the highway authorities and the railway companies. It would seem a pity to bring that to an end, and, therefore, that, too, is quite a useful provision.
My noble friend the Lord Chairman of Committees is naturally the watchdog of your Lordships' Select Committees, which all of us feel have immense value, and none of us wish to try to dodge the procedure which is followed by Committees
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upstairs, but this is a shorter and cheaper way of enabling these various steps to be undertaken by local authorities and others. Although I cannot pretend that this has a great deal to do with unemployment, which was the reason for which the Act was originally introduced, it is nevertheless a useful measure and one that probably will in due time find its way on to the Statute Book in permanent form. But with the congestion of public business it is, as your Lordships know, difficult to get a Bill of that kind through Parliament. I hope I have given sufficient reasons to have softened the stern heart of the Lord Chairman, and that he will not deal as severely with this Bill as I think he did last year. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Earl Stanhope.)
THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (THE EARL OF ONSLOW): My Lords, I cannot help regretting that my noble friend, who promised last year to make representations to the various Ministries concerned, and has done so, has not been more successful in obtaining a revision of the position as it was last year. As he has told your Lordships, Section 2 of this Act, which is now being renewed, was brought in for the relief of unemployment primarily; and it is now being used for other purposes. It would be far more satisfactory, I am sure your Lordships will agree, if an Act of Parliament is necessary for these purposes, that it should he drafted and passed for them alone, and exactly for them, and that an Act passed for something totally different should not be made use of for the various necessities which my noble friend has mentioned. I am glad to hear that the noble Marquess the Secretary of State for Air is hoping to bring in a Bill to deal with the acquisition of civil aerodromes. I hope the other matters will also be dealt with next year. I do not suggest that your Lordships should refuse my noble friend his request, but I would ask him if he would again address himself to the various Departments as he did last year and try to get this matter put on a more regular basis than exists at present.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

INCITEMENT TO DISAFFECTION BILL.
Order of the Day for the Third Reading read.
THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (VISCOUNT HAILSHAM): My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be now read a third time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 3a.—(Viscount Hailsham.)
LORD PONSONBY OF SHULBREDE: My Lords, before this measure leaves your Lordships' House finally I should like to make a very few remarks. Although we, from a personal point of view, were very much inclined to vote against the Second Reading of this measure and, therefore, against the Third Reading this evening, we do not feel that it justified our departing from the principle that we have laid down that it is not the function of this House to reject any measure that has been passed by a majority of the representatives of the people in another place, and, therefore, we have not sought to oppose the Bill in the Division Lobby. We, however, endeavoured to the best of our ability last Thursday to amend the Bill, and if we did it with a certain, persistence it is because we consider that this is a Bill which is undesirable.
Let me epitomise in a very few sentences our reasons. We do not think either in your Lordships' House or in another place was any excuse brought forward by the Government which would justify the introduction of this Bill. We consider that the original way in which it was drafted is a measure of the inability of the Government to understand what an infringement of liberty means. We believe that by this Bill a new offence is created, and we consider that that is most objectionable. We foresee that when, as an Act of Parliament, it is administered, it will be, or may be, administered very differently from what the Government pretend or even from the Government's intention. We foresee that in times of panic, or should the cloud of war appear on the horizon, this measure will be used for the suppression of what has been hitherto considered perfectly legitimate opinion. We think that the resentment caused by the harsh administration of this measure may prove to be far more dangerous
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than the offensive propaganda which it is ostensibly framed to prevent, and we think that it is very likely to engender amongst the members of His Majesty's forces some indignation by the supposition which has been put forward that they need protection, which is another way of saying that their loyalty is under suspicion.
Finally, we consider that the debates and the speeches of His Majesty's Ministers have given a most splendid advertisement to the Communists in the declarations that have been made, that Communist propaganda is really dangerous. At a time when the National Government are saying that their task is recovery and national reconstruction, it is deplorable that they should display this nervousness and this peevish apprehension by forcing through with their large majority, and by the consumption of a great deal of Parliamentary time, a measure which is unpopular, which has received very little support, and which has roused widespread indignation throughout the country, a measure which is ill-devised, badly constructed, wrongly drafted and one which, I very much fear—we on this side of the House are of that opinion—does distinctly constitute an infringement of that liberty which has hitherto been the cherished possession of the British people.
LORD STRICKLAND: My Lords, if I have rightly understood the noble Lord who has just sat down, there is reason for amazement at the suggestion that, because this Bill has been passed in another House, it is fortunate not to have suffered Amendment or danger of rejection in this House. Had it been a Money Bill that suggestion would have had weight, but this House should not admit of any challenge of its duty to revise legislation that comes from another House. I appeal to this House to hold the view that it has duties, not only to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and what remains of sovereignty in Southern Ireland after disastrous experiments with safeguards, but also towards the rest of the Empire.
LORD PONSONBY OF SHULBREDE: If the noble Lord would forgive my interrupting him, I might perhaps shorten his remarks. I did not say that

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this House should not have power to revise, but should not have power to reject.
LORD STRICKLAND: That remark only makes the suggestion much worse from the point of view of those who respect constitutional law. If this House is no longer to enjoy the privilege and the right to reject Bills, how are your Lordships to defend this House and the Constitution from early or immediate abolition? I do not know.
To go back to the Third Reading debate, it is very regrettable that we have not heard in this House arguments for reinstating at previous stages of the discussion on this Bill the much more efficient provisions contained in the form in which this measure was introduced in another place. Not a single argument has been brought forward to make this Bill really efficient against and to meet the well known facts and dangers and the circumstance, throughout the Empire, of the expenditure of incredible sums of foreign Secret Service money that are being spent in an endeavour to undermine, not merely Imperial rule but the foundations of British civilisation, and not only to destroy British culture but also what is called "Atlantic culture." It is necessary to deal promptly and effectively with this matter unless we have already lost courage and are resigned or determined to surrender to disintegration. And I speak with some experience, after having been responsible as Minister of Police for administering similar search and sedition legislation in Malta and after having in opposition had to suffer from the application and administration of similar legislation against myself and my friends. Your Lordships may rest assured that if the element of surprise and rapidity of action is taken away from the safeguard of well founded search, the value of search for such objects, search which is delayed, is very slight for practical purposes.
I may say that I feel much more than noble Lords opposite their objections and the heavy weight in practice possible at times against the innocent of the insolence of the proceedings of the Police when searches are improperly carried out. I have protested against the action of the King's Representative and of the Imperial Government myself and against injustice that is still continuing against
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a former Secretary of the Labour Party in Malta, now President of the Trade Union Council, who has been unjustly subjected to search, unjustly fined, unjustly sent to prison, farcically given an incomplete pardon at the gate and unjustly deprived of the right of appeal against a magistrate's sentence. Notwithstanding all that, I say that it is better to submit individually to all that is necessary to uphold reliance on the forces of order rather than to have the safety of the Realm and of the Empire endangered, or have the possibility of honourable, honest Parliamentary government nullified. This Bill is absolutely necesary, but it ought to have been made more efficient. The situation reminds me of a beautiful crop of golden wheat, with, in the middle thereof, a scarecrow so subjected to watering as to limp beyond recognition, not even able to flutter in the wind. That is my appreciation of how such legislation may be operated after long experience of the value of a Bill similar to this. Notwithstanding that, it may be better to have, I will not say half a loaf, let me say even a few crumbs from the table of those who wield the power in another place, and because anything is better than nothing in order to protect law and order, I welcome this Bill.
I welcome it simply in the spirit that for the maintenance of government hardship must at times be suffered by all who are loyal. I say that, knowing from experience what can be said about the misapplication of the power of Police search, and that sanction is necessary to prevent it. The practical course is that if the Police search unreasonably and unjustly there should be redress by withholding promotion or punishment, and not by delay and inefficiency. Those who do wrong should be punished whether they be Police constables or inspectors or Generals, or Governors or anybody else. Discipline is better than inefficiency. Let it not be said or repeated that after another General Election in England, the Party opposite might come into power, and that they will repeal this Bill, and that therefore it should not now be passed. Conservatives, one after another, are being tempted to join the Fascists because the present majority is so great that grievances are not listened to by an unsupervised bureaucracy. You will not have a repeal of this Bill by the Socialist Party when in power: they will ad-

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minister it much more stringently than can be imagined now. More than that, it may be anticipated that Socialists will immediately propose legislation to make the law more stringent, because Socialists, when responsible, will know perfectly well that if they do not do so their opponents will apply force and money to oust them; the so-called "Fascists" will very soon take the place of Socialists who may be weak.
If I may be allowed to liken the Socialist Party in the present circumstances to anything, I would liken them to the wheat about to be ground between the upper and the nether mill-stone—the upper mill-stone being one-man government, whether in the form of Fascism or any other form, and the nether mill-stone being Parliamentary government weakly administered. But to use that simile may perhaps be inaccurate or too uncomplimentary. Perhaps Socialists when responsible may be likened to the jam between the upper crust and the lower crust of the sandwich. They will be bound in self defence to administer this Bill stringently. It is now a duty to vote for the Third Reading of this measure, although it be a very inefficient Bill. The opposition to it has for the most part been merely propaganda for Party purposes, and has not been supported by experience or logic or knowledge of the Common or Statute law.
LORD ALLEN OF HURTWOOD: My Lords, I can promise not to detain you for more than a few minutes, because I fully realise that when a Bill has reached the stage of Third Reading there is very little that we can do except to offer a final word of caution to His Majesty's Government as to the manner in which they administer the Bill when it becomes an Act of Parliament. I feel that it is important even at this late stage to use this further opportunity for discussion to try to bring out as clearly as I can the way in which a Bill of this kind provokes an unhappy union of the Government and the Opposition for the purpose of endangering democracy. I cannot help but feel that the Opposition, when discussing Clause 1, created, as I pointed out to them in the Committee stage, dangerous precedents which may be followed by other minorities when perhaps they themselves become the Government of the day. They there
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moved Amendment after Amendment which suggested that it was legitimate in these rather explosive days for minorities to extend propaganda from the mere desire to change a social system to a direct appeal to the forces of law and order to disobey legitimate instructions when those instructions were given. It seems to me that His Majesty's Opposition, in dealing with this Bill in the Committee stage, set a very dangerous precedent which they may find used to their own disadvantage when a day comes when they are His Majesty's Government instead of His Majesty's Opposition.
But I am anxious to use the few minutes which I shall occupy to appeal once more to the noble Viscount who leads this House to realise, when he comes to take part in the administration of this Act, that he has not adequately met the criticism which many people have expressed, that under this Bill there is unquestionably provided the beginning of the principle of the general search warrant as applied to political opinion. He tried to defend the Bill by indicating that the general search warrant was a technical matter and that we were not entitled to accuse this Bill of bringing that technical kind of warrant into play, but I would beg the noble Viscount to realise that when the phrase "general search warrant" is used, it is not necessarily used with capital letters—a capital "G," a capital "S" and a capital "W." We who are critics of this Bill and who fear that it may jeopardise liberty, feel that the method of the warrant which is here sanctioned is of a general kind. I think it was the noble Marquess, Lord Reading, who pointed this out with some vigilance in the early stages of the Bill.
When this Bill comes to be administered as an Act it will be perfectly open to an inspector who has received a search warrant in respect of a specified piece of evidence which he has brought before the attention of a Judge in Chambers, to enter a private house and there to extend his searches to dealing with anything that he may find in that house which appears to him to provide evidence for a case which may subsequently be brought. It is that general right to take anything which may now be found in our private houses for the

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purposes of a political prosecution which made the critics of this Bill feel that at last we had in British law the idea and principle of the general search warrant brought into the area of political opinion; and I should feel that we were lacking in our duty even in the debate on this last stage of the Bill if that matter were not made as publicly and as widely known as possible and impressed upon the noble Viscount before he seeks to administer this Bill in practice.
May I say in conclusion that, although we have failed to cause the Government to withdraw this Bill, there may perhaps still be a hope that they will never employ it. During that all-night sitting, when I had the opportunity of hearing varying points of view in private conversation with members of your Lordships' House, I detected how very little support for this Bill there really was behind the Government. There were many noble Lords in this House who were casting their votes for the Government which they supported, but they were doing it with heavy hearts because they did not believe that the Government had proved to their satisfaction that there was any substantial evidence which justified its introduction. I think the argument which convinced many noble Lords that this Bill was really not urgently required now was a remark made by the noble Viscount himself when he referred to an experience of his own ten years ago while he was Attorney-General. The noble Viscount said that ten years ago he wished to start a prosecution but that he found that the law of the land at that time did not enable him to put the process of law into operation, and from that time onwards he had felt that the law was insufficient. Personally I believe that the Government have been misled by their advisers in certain of the Departments with regard to the need for this Bill. There has been a desire to tidy up the law. It has been the feeling that the law was not entirely adequate to deal with all possible cases which might arise, which enabled those who were advising the Government to cause the Government to operate in a way which has been subsequently seen to open up grave dangers to civic liberty.
No evidence has been produced that there is in this country any really formid-
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able threat to loyalty at this moment. What has happened is that in order to tidy up the law we are now taking a risk with civic liberty which may be a very grave matter under future Governments. I therefore believe that we are now about to place upon the Statute Book a Bill which may ultimately prove to be the doom of the whole principle of political liberty. I would beg the Government to realise that, though they have doggedly and persistently pushed this Bill stage by stage through the House of Commons, almost re-writing every line of it, and have forced your Lordships to sit through a whole night in vain attempts to revise it and to exercise the function of this House as a revising Chamber, they have finally produced a Bill which nobody wants, the need of which is not substantiated by evidence, and which will provide future Governments with an opportunity of doing evil things which may not be in the contemplation of this Government itself.
LORD RHAYADER: My Lords, I had a very good opportunity in the early hours of last Friday morning to explain my opposition to this Bill, and I do not intend to trouble your Lordships with a repetition of what I then said. I really am brought to my feet by a sentence which occurred in a speech made on Tuesday last by the noble Viscount who leads the House. He said:
"We do not accept the view that we have to prove the existence of an emergency before we ask for these powers."
I join issue with that view. I think these powers should not have been asked for unless the Government were able to prove the necessity of them. I and those who think with me regard liberty as a good and great thing in itself. The liberty which we in this country enjoy has been won for us by struggles through the past centuries, struggles which shook the State. Unfortunately it does not flourish of itself; it must be preserved by the watchfulness of those who enjoy it.
When a Government proposes to limit the liberty of the subject we are bound to ask why it wishes to impose these limitations. No cause has been shown for this Bill. Again and again in the House of Commons and here the Government have been asked to tell us where is the imperative necessity of passing this Bill. We have been utterly unable to

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find anything. Before a Bill of this kind is passed, it seems to me that a definite and certain evil should have been shown which the present law is inadequate to deal with. No proof of the inadequacy of the present law has been offered to us. The Bill creates a new offence. It extends powers to the Executive over large numbers of people who were not in danger of the law from this cause before, and it has in itself, however limited may be the scope which the Government apply to it, the potentialities of great mischief if it is ever misused by the Executive or the Government of the day. It is for that reason that some of us have felt so strongly against this Bill. We have no desire to deny to the Executive powers which they can show us to be necessary to the keeping of order and the prevention of crimes which we all recognise, but we do require proof, and we have not got it.
Therefore it is that we view the passing of this Bill as a danger, lest there lurk in it the possibilities of misuse in the future which are not yet discerned. It enlarges the powers of the Executive, and all over the world Executives are trenching on the liberties of individuals in different countries. Liberty as we understand it is unknown, to-day, in a good many European countries. I will not give the names; they are known to all. But ours is the country which stands throughout the world as the defender of liberty and democracy, and it is a thousand pities that our National Government of to-day should have gone out of its way to press forward a Bill for which there is no demand by the nation, and for which the Government has been able to offer no real justification. With the world as it is to-day it appears to me to be a desperately wrong step for the Government to have taken, and therefore I have opposed this Bill from the beginning, and shall continue in my opposition to the end.
VISCOUNT HAILSHAM: My Lords, I desire to say comparatively few words, because, as you will realise, this Bill has been discussed at considerable length at various stages, and as Lord Ponsonby pointed out, his Party have said what they intended to say again and again and again, and it is of no use my repeating, again and again and again, the same arguments which we have used across the
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floor of the House for so many hours. I would only say this with regard to the noble Lord's speech. It is full of gloomy predictions. He foresees the use of this Bill to suppress the expression of legitimate opinion, and he holds that it will arouse great resentment and produce most damaging results. I am content to see whether his predictions are fulfilled, and I shall be very content if we are able to judge the accuracy and truthfulness of Socialist predictions on other matters by the accuracy and truthfulness which this one ultimately proves to possess.
Lord Strickland was good enough to support the Bill, but he came with predictions on the other side. He thought the Bill did not go far enough, and would be ineffective because we had not been sufficiently bold in our legislation. I admit at once that we have done our best to meet any misgivings which we thought were aroused, not only by the Bill, but by the statements made about the Bill, which were quite a different thing. We have gone to the very limit of concession in order to meet those criticisms, but I do not take the view which my noble friend takes, when he says that the Bill will no longer be effective. I believe, on the contrary, that it will be a very useful power.
Then Lord Allen, who has all through expressed, here and outside, his doubts and criticisms of the Bill, began by telling us that this was the introduction of the general search warrant, and knowing, as he no doubt knows, that it has none of the characteristics of what is known as a general search warrant, he said he was using the words in small letters instead of capitals, and that made all the difference. Anyone listening to that would imagine that this Bill was introducing some new principle, but I was able to give your Lordships some instances during the Committee stage, and they could be multiplied if necessary, showing that the words of the Bill and the powers given by it are precisely reproduced from other Statutes, which had never produced the same gloomy anticipations or such lamentable results.
LORD ALLEN OF HURTWOOD: Does not the noble Viscount realise that those other Statutes did not deal with political opinion, but with something entirely different?
VISCOUNT HAILSHAM: In the first place this Bill does not deal with political opinion, but with some more definite and identifiable fact—namely, a document which on the face of it incites the forces of the Crown to disobey orders and seduces them from their allegiance. It is not in connection with politics, but with an attempt to subvert law and order by seducing the forces of the Crown from their duty. The noble Lord himself, at an early stage, was good enough to point out that under modern conditions there was only one way in which our liberties can be effectively overthrown by any form of violence or revolution and that was by first seducing the loyalty of the forces of the Crown. So long as the forces of the Crown remain loyal then the Government can be trusted to deal with revolutionary activities. Once seduce them from their duty, and the whole of our liberty falls in ruins.
Lord Rhayader told us just now that liberty was unknown to-day in many countries in Europe. I agree with him. Why is it unknown? For the very reason which we hope to prevent by this Bill—namely, because the forces of the Government in those countries were seduced from their allegiance to lawful authority, and once they were won over to the cause of revolution, then tyranny followed very quickly. These things ought to teach us a lesson—namely, that it is not by such easy-going as he would desire, by sitting back in the armchairs and saying, "All is well," because we cannot prove that the forces of the Crown have become disloyal, that we shall protect them from this kind of assault.
Lord Allen said that many were passing this legislation with heavy hearts. I do not know where he gets his information from. All I can say is that at the end of the lengthy discussions in Committee I never saw those who were good enough to stay in better spirits and better heart than at the end of that long sitting. The fact that many of your Lordships thought it right to stay and defend the proposals in this Bill seems to me pretty strong evidence that you approve of the proposals contained in the Bill. The fact is that this Bill, so far from being an assault on liberty, is a defence of liberty. The subversion of the forces of the Crown is a method by which liberty can be successfully attacked, and if we have
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first to prove that those forces have been seduced before we can ask you to protect them—
LORD RHAYADER: The noble Viscount will pardon me, but I never said we must first wait until the forces of the Crown were seduced from their allegiance. What I said was that the present law was sufficient to deal with the attempts that had been made, and that the troops were not in the least in danger of being seduced from their allegiance. And may I point out to the noble Viscount that our country, in which there has been most liberty, is the one where it is now proposed to curtail it? Those countries which have had little freedom have had that little freedom diminished. The greater the freedom the greater the chance of keeping freedom.
VISCOUNT HAILSHAM: I do not think that the noble Lord's interposition shows that I misrepresented him. He said we must prove that an emergency has arisen. We have proved that attempts at seduction have been going on. I gave details to the extent of many thousands of copies of these pamphlets which have been distributed for years past. We have proved that this has consistently gone on. We have shown that under the existing law we can only take steps to prosecute the individual who is actually found to be still in possession of the pamphlet, which means that you can prosecute nobody; and we have shown in the debate on the Second Reading that by this Bill you will be able to get at the person who is organising these assaults on the loyalty of our troops and you will be able to attack, not the mere, comparatively harmless tool, but the criminal instigator of the plot. The noble Lord says you must prove an emergency. He cannot mean that you must prove that attempts have been made to subvert loyalty. That we have done. He must mean, therefore, that you must prove that troops are in fact being subverted from their loyalty. That is the very thing which I said was the mistake in his speech. For those reasons I ask your Lordships to say that this Bill is a defence of the liberties of our people and that it is a useful measure which will have no such extravagant consequences as its critics seem to imagine, and which will turn out a valuable safeguard to those

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liberties which the noble Lord, equally with myself, desires to see established and maintained.
On Question, Bill read 3a, and passed.

POOR LAW BILL.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
VISCOUNT GAGE: My Lords, in contradistinction to the Bill which has just been passed, I hope I may describe this Bill as a non-contentious Bill. It has the object, as no doubt Scottish Peers will observe, of assimilating certain items in the English Poor Law procedure to the Scottish procedure. Under the Scottish Poor Law certain considerations are taken into account, that is to say, certain items of income must be disregarded in assessing need under the Poor Law. In the Scottish Poor Law procedure the first 5s. of trade union and friendly society sick pay must be disregarded. Also the first £1 of any wounds or disability pension received by any person whose resources are taken into account must be disregarded. The whole of any maternity benefit in respect of the applicant or his wife, exclusive of any increase by way of additional benefit or any second maternity benefit must be disregarded. All these three "disregards" are now being incorporated in this Bill. Up till last Session Scotland was behind England in these respects. Now Scotland is in front of England, and we are putting ourselves into the same position as Scotland.
Perhaps I might make one or two remarks on the arguments in favour of these "disregards" being incorporated in this Bill. Roughly the trade union sick pay is really very much the same as friendly society sick pay. In regard to disability pensions, it is obvious that those are not intended for maintenance entirely, but in part as a recognition of services rendered and injuries sustained owing to the War, and the maternity benefit is paid at a time which is necessarily one of special need, and local authorities should have no opportunity of disregarding that need. This is a Bill which passed Second and Third Reading in another place without a Division, and perhaps I may hope that your Lordships will now give it a Second Reading.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Viscount Gage.)
THE EARL OF KINNOULL: My Lords, we on this side of the House have no desire whatever to hamper the passage of this Bill. In fact, we like the Bill very much, as far as it goes. As the noble Viscount has said, its object is to bring the English Poor Law into line with the Scottish Poor Law. I think it is true to say that the whole tendency of the Poor Law to-day, under this Bill and under the Scottish Act, is to try to bring it into the same category as the Unemployment Act of 1934, which brings in certain applicants for additional payments. The only criticism I have to make on the Bill is that, whereas under the Unemployment Act of 1934 workmen's compensation is taken into account, under the Scottish Act and under this Bill no provision is made for it. With regard to war disability pensions, where a person has lost a limb or an eye or something of that kind during the War, the amount of money that he receives per week is given to him to compensate him and to put him on the same footing as his fellows who have suffered no such loss. It is therefore only reasonable and just that that amount of money, or at any £1 of it, as under the Scottish Act and under this Bill, should be disregarded where such persons have the misfortune to have to apply for outdoor relief.
But I cannot see the difference between this and the case of a man who has been working for the good of his country in industry. If he has been maimed or has lost an eye in that way, I cannot see why he should not be treated in the same way as the man who was maimed during the War when fighting for his country. One is a soldier in the trenches, the other is a person working for his country in industry. Under the Unemployment Act, as I have said, where we granted transitional payment, there is that provision made with regard to compensation, and I cannot see why the Government should not have included in this Bill some clause to that effect. The Government have drawn this Bill very cunningly, and I understand that it would be outside the scope of the Bill if we were to move an Amendment to the effect that I have indicated. But I would like to ask the Government why that is—why they have not included workmen's compensation in the Bill. There is also a small point.

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I do not understand why the Bill does not apply to Northern Ireland. I ask for the sake of information. Does Northern Ireland come under the Scottish Act?
VISCOUNT GAGE: My Lords, I am very much obliged to the noble Earl for the favourable reception that he has given to this Bill. He has asked a question which was also asked in another place in reward to workmen's compensation, and he will forgive me if I make very much the same reply as was made there. This is a Bill which is designed to remove certain discrepancies between the Acts relating to the Poor Law in the two countries. That is all it sets out to do.
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There may be great objections in various quarters to the original Scottish Act, but that is not a matter with which we are concerned in this Bill. The whole purpose of the Bill is the removal of discrepancies and that is what this Bill does. On the question of Northern Ireland, I understand that they have entirely separate legislation for dealing with these matters. It is one of the subjects which come within the province of the Northern Ireland Government.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.
House adjourned at ten minutes past five o'clock.