§ Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
§ THE LORD CHANCELLORMy Lords, this Bill is one of considerable importance and has involved a great deal of hard work by certain members of your Lordships' House. I confess that I cannot recommend it as light or easy reading. The Herrings Bill may make your Lordships' mouths water, but the only effect this Bill will produce on anybody who is not a lawyer is one of profound thirst. It involves partly some amendment in the existing law and partly consolidation of a number of Acts and provisions. There are twenty Acts which 309 are concerned, and six of those Acts, which have been well known to lawyers for a very long time past, are in whole repealed. The law is in a state of great confusion and a great many of the provisions with regard to limitation were of a somewhat involved nature. Two of the Acts in particular, the Crown Suits Acts, were so worded that very few people in this country—I am afraid I cannot consider myself one of them—were able to understand them at all. This is a Bill of a purely legal character. It involves all Statutes of Limitation except certain special classes of action which have been separately dealt with in legislation, for instance, workmen's compensation and summary jurisdiction. Those are left to be dealt with by their own Statutes.
With regard to all the general Statutes in relation to limitation of actions there is now, if I may say so, a sensible and clear consolidation in a Bill far more perfectly drafted than any previous Bills and much less likely to cause trouble in the Courts. One particular advantage has been achieved by dividing the Bill into two Parts, one providing purely for limitation for different classes of action, and the other doing what was not done in any previous Acts, placing together the clauses extending the limitation period in cases of disability, acknowledgment, part payment, and cases of fraud and mistake. Your Lordships will appreciate that it is absolutely essential to have limitation of the period of action in cases of people who either have entered into a contract not performed or have committed some tort, who are delinquents of that kind and who are liable to be attacked by a common informer for a penalty. On the other hand, your Lordships will appreciate that, although you have to be very careful about the interests of persons liable under a contract or tort or otherwise, you also have to be careful that the person who has a right of action against them shall not be unduly deprived of his rights because in many cases—as, for instance, a loan—it often happens that it is only the kindness of the creditor which has resulted in the period of six years or thereabouts having gone by, and he ought not to be unduly deprived of his rights. That is only one example of many that might be given. The result is that anyone who is considering all these cases together must watch very carefully 310 the circumstances of both sides and come to a fair compromise as to how long a period should be allowed before the period of limitation should run out.
The matter was put before the Law Revision Committee, who reported on the matter in December, 1936, and I am glad to see here my noble and learned friends Lord Wright and Lord Romer, who were concerned with the hard work which was necessary before this Bill could attain to its present simple, or comparatively simple, form. I do not propose to go through the provisions of this difficult and complex Bill, because I am quite satisfied that those who have done the work and are here present can tell your Lordships with much more accuracy and ability the reasons why any particular provision in the Bill is to be found there and can explain any conundrum that your Lordships may wish to put to them. I will only add that having read the Bill with great care, and having myself in some minor matters been concerned in the present form of the Bill, I am satisfied to recommend it to your Lordships as a thoroughly useful legal measure which consolidates and improves a branch of the law which was previously sadly in need of it. I beg to move.
§ Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a".—(The Lord Chancellor.)
LORD STRABOLGIMy Lords, I waited to see if any noble and learned Lord was going to rise before I got up to explain my personal attitude to this Bill. It must be personal, because there has been no examination of it by those who advise my noble friends and myself on legal questions. I am sorry to say that amongst those who follow my noble friend Lord Snell in this House we have no one learned in the law who regularly attends. My noble friend Lord Parmoor is in the South of France, in rather indifferent health, and so we cannot have the advantage of his assistance. Therefore we are in difficulty and it is with great diffidence that I offer a few observations. These amendments of the law are recommended by the Law Revision Committee, whose members I understand are appointed by the noble and learned Lord Chancellor to undertake the work of overhauling our legislation, if I may use that expression. From time to time these erudite and weighty Bills come before your Lordships' House, and whatever else 311 they do they must at least affect the rights of the subject in many respects. You cannot repeal Acts going back to 31 Elizabeth without affecting somebody's rights or privileges or safeguards under the law.
What I want to say, if I may, with the least possible pain to the noble and learned Lord Chancellor, is that the fact that this eminent and learned Committee recommended these changes in the law does not mean that this Bill must be passed sub silentio. If I were learned in the law I would examine it with the greatest care, and I am sure it will be so examined before it finally reaches the Statute Book. Mistakes can be made but moderation and alteration of them rests on this and on the other place, and therefore the fact that we do not make any particular criticism of or observations on the Bill does not mean that we accept the principle that the Law Revision Committee, in spite of the eminence and learning of its members, has the right to decide how the law of the land is to be altered, revised or amended.
§ LORD ROMERMy Lords, as a member of the Law Revision Committee upon whose Report this Bill is founded, I would ask your Lordships' permission to say a few words in support of the Motion which is now before your Lordships' House. This Bill is not designed to effect any revolutionary or radical change in the law upon the subject of the limitation of actions. Its object is solely to simplify that law, to make it more uniform and, if I may say so, more intelligible. The present law on the subject is a mass of inconsistencies, of anomalies, of distinctions where there is no material difference. May I give your Lordships one or two instances of what I mean? Under the law as it stands at present an action for slander where the words spoken are actionable per se is barred after two years. An action in respect of any other slander is not barred until the expiration of six years. An action in respect of trespass to the person, as it is called, is barred after the expiration of four years; other actions of trespass are not barred until after the expiration of six years.
Whether there was or was not any legitimate reason for drawing those distinctions in the days when the old Acts were passed—and the oldest of them goes back 312 to the time of James I—I do not pretend to say, but no one, I think, could advance any valid reason for continuing those distinctions. Plainly it is very much better that there should be one term limited for actions founded on simple contract and on tort. This Bill proposes that there shall be one such period and one such period only. When one is selecting one term that shall apply to all such actions, the question of what term shall be selected is no doubt a more controversial one, but it seemed to us, the members of the Law Revision Committee, that on the whole it would be advisable to take the period of six years. After all, that is the period of years which ninety-nine people out of a hundred associate with the Statute of Limitations. It is the period after which people are in the habit of tearing up their receipts and their returned cheques, and after which people less honest than your Lordships tear up their unpaid bills. At any rate, that is the term which this Bill has adopted.
May I give another instance of a glaring inconsistency? As your Lordships may be aware, when time has begun to run under the Statute, its expiration is stopped and it begins to run all over again when an acknowledgment of the claim is given by the person in whose favour the Statute has begun to run. But, for some reason or other which I have never been able to grasp, in some cases it is sufficient that the acknowledgment be signed by the person against whom the claim is made or his agent. In other cases signature of the acknowledgment by the person himself will alone satisfy the Statute. In some cases the acknowledgment must be given, in order to be effective, to the person who can make the claim or his agent. In other cases, again for reasons that I have never been able to grasp, the acknowledgment will be effective if given to a third person who has no connection whatever with the transaction.
There is another inconsistency in the law as it stands at present. A charge of money on land is not barred until after the expiration of twelve years. In the case of a mortgage of personalty, there is no Statute applicable at all. All these matters are dealt with by the present Bill. Of course, I readily agree with the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, that, merely because the Law Revision Committee has made certain proposals, those proposals 313 should not necessarily become part of the law of this country. Our proposals are merely suggestions for the way in which the law should be altered. Of course it is for your Lordships to consider, and for the other House later to consider, whether those proposals should have the force of law or should not. My noble and learned friend on the Woolsack has said that the provisions of this Bill might be explained by either myself or my noble and learned friend Lord Wright. I confess that I shrink from the task. The Bill is long and very complicated; the subject-matter with which it deals is, it must be confessed, a dreary one and not one calculated to excite interest in the breast of anyone who is not a lawyer. But I have indicated to your Lordships generally some respects in which we propose to simplify the law relating to this subject, and I can only assure your Lordships, having read the Bill, I may say, with considerable care, that this Bill does represent a genuine attempt to produce some kind of order out of the present chaos, and as such I trust your Lordships will see fit to give it a Second Reading.
§ LORD WRIGHTMy Lords, I do not wish to detain your Lordships after what has fallen from my noble and learned friend Lord Romer. I desire to associate myself with everything he has said, and I am sure you would all regret if either of us embarked upon a detailed examination of the very technical provisions of this Bill. I only want to say one thing, and that is about the functions of the Law Revision Committee. The members of that Committee do not desire, or claim, to dictate to Parliament what the law should be, or how it should be altered. Their functions are much simpler. Their functions are simply to examine a particular question of law submitted to them, to consider whether it is capable of improvement, and to make a report stating what in their considered opinion that improvement should be. I may say at once that the Committee—a highly qualified Committee, if I may say so, excluding myself, of course—spent many anxious days and weeks examining this question, but they are no more infallible than any other mortals. Their Report is published, and it is open to everyone to consider it. The Report on which this Bill 314 is based has been before the country for a considerable number of months, and surely if it is to be criticised, if it has blemishes, it is for those who are concerned to point them out. We have done our best, and it is for Parliament to decide whether effect should be given to our recommendations, and what form that effect should take. Our duties are concluded when we have made our Report to the best of our judgment.
§ THE LORD CHANCELLORMy Lords, I only wish to add my statement in answer to the noble Lord, Lord Strabolgi, that the last thing that any noble Lord here, or I am sure the last thing that the Revision Committee, would desire is that a Bill of this sort should go through without criticism and examination, and that for my part I am only too glad to think that there are noble Lords who are willing either to consider the whole of such a Bill as this for themselves, or to obtain advice upon it, and then to put forward Amendments at a later stage. In this case, we are not, as was pointed out by Lord Strabolgi on a previous occasion, amending Magna Charta, but we are taking action concerning an Act of Elizabeth, relating to informers. If the noble Lord does not like that it is open to him to put down an Amendment in Committee. But I am really only anxious to say that I feel very strongly that it would be a very great pity if, because this Bill or any Bill of this kind is of a complex character, it should not be scrutinised and, if necessary, amended, for such a measure might very well result in a first draft being put before your Lordships containing clauses which might possibly be ill-advised. I hope I have not said anything—I did not intend to say anything—in moving the Second Reading which might suggest that I thought your Lordships were to take anything contained in this Bill for granted, merely because it was the fruits of the work of an eminent Committee.
§ On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.