POOR LAW BILL. (Hansard, 14 November 1934)

THE LORD CHAIRMAN
There are no Amendments to this Bill in print, but the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, has handed me a manuscript Amendment, so that I am afraid I must take the Bill in the ordinary way.

§ LORD RANKEILLOUR
I am not sure whether I fully appreciate the effect of this Amendment, but it appears to me that it is undoubtedly a Privilege Amendment, and I submit to noble Lords opposite that they should be very chary of running counter to the Privileges of the House of Commons. This House, I think, will always be careful, unless it has very strong convictions on the matter, not to run the risk of conflict with another place, and I should think that that would appeal to the noble Lord who leads the Opposition.

VISCOUNT GAGE
We have just listened to an expression of opinion from a very experienced noble Lord on the question of Privilege, and I have to point out that whether or not this is a Privilege Amendment, in another place it has been ruled out of order, though I notice that the noble Earl has slightly changed the Amendment, and reduced by one-half the amount of compensation which is to be regarded. The principle, however, would remain the same as was considered in another place to be out of order. Mr. Speaker said he had carefully considered the reports of speeches made by representatives of the Government in introducing the Bill, and was quite clear that the Bill was one to bring the English law into conformity with the existing Scottish law, and that if he allowed the instruction he would be allowing the House to consider in Committee a Bill which was not the same Bill as that to which the House had given a Second Reading.
As I explained yesterday, this Bill was designed to remove certain discrepancies between the procedure for the application of the Poor Law in Scotland and the Poor Law in England. The noble Earl wants to take this opportunity to amend both the English and the Scottish procedure and—I will not say that this House has not rules of procedure in this matter, but at any rate it is less strict than the rules of another place. Nevertheless, I think it could hardly be considered that any Amendment of this character was within the four corners of the Bill. I do not know whether it is necessary for me to argue this matter on 464 its merits. Your Lordships realise that public assistance committees have discretion in these matters. At present they can take these things into consideration, or not, as they choose, but the principle which generally is taken to apply to the Poor Law is that where the local authorities administer the Poor Law they should have, excepting in unusually important matters, the discretion to take these assets into consideration, or not.
It is quite true that we did make the disability pension to which the noble Earl has referred an exception. Perhaps it may be argued that we were wrong in so doing. It may be argued that it does offend the strict principle of Poor Law procedure. Nevertheless, there is considerable sentiment attaching to the disability pension, and it was allowed to pass. But if we are to consider every aspect in which this Bill does not definitely correspond with the Unemployment Act we should have to consider many other items beside this. I can only repeat that this Bill was never intended to have that effect. I hope that, in view of the fact that if the Amendment were passed it would necessitate some slight struggle between the two Houses, the noble Earl will not see fit to press it. That is a hope in which I am reinforced by observing that on the original Scottish Act, introduced only last July, the noble Earl did not see fit to propose such an Amendment.