PUBLIC REGISTERS AND RECORDS (SCOTLAND) BILL. [H.L.] (Hansard, 5 July 1948)

§ LORD MORRISON

My Lords, in moving the reception of this Report, I should like to make some brief comments on two points to which the noble Lord, Lord Saltoun, referred at the beginning of proceedings in Committee on Thursday, July 1. The noble Lord will remember that he referred to the Department—I am quoting his words—"making a large income to the tune of at least £16,000." I am sure the noble Lord will agree that it is necessary to look at more than a single year. There are ups and downs in the balance sheet of the Sasines Office. A deficit was shown for several years up to 1922. After a revision of the scale of fees, a surplus was shown for the next three years, 1923 to 1925, followed by a deficit for the next seven years, 1926 to 1932. The scale of fees was again revised in 1934 and yielded a surplus until 1938.

During the war, as a measure of economy, the accounts of allied services between Departments—that is, of services rendered by, for example, the Ministry of Works and the Stationery Office to Government Departments generally—and apportionment of indirect charges such as superannuation, were discontinued, and the annual accounts of revenue and expenditure in the Sasines Office could not, therefore, be completed. But as I stated during the Committee stage, the issue of annual accounts will be resumed, and the balance sheet for 1947 is now in preparation. It is the practice to communicate the annual accounts to the profession and if, on a long-term view, a further revision of the fees appears to be desirable to secure a due balance of revenue and expenditure, this will certainly be considered in consultation with representatives of the profession. It will not be overlooked, in the consideration of the balance of revenue and expenditure, that (as pointed out in the report of Lord Macmillan's Committee) the staff is at present below requirements and the work seriously in arrear. As I said on July 1, it is hoped substantially to strengthen the staff of the Sasines Office in the immediate future.

374 The noble Lord, Lord Saltoun, referred also to the representative capacity of the General Council of Solicitors in Scotland. It is not for me to make any comment on the representative capacity of that Council, but I may say that it was constituted under the Solicitors (Scotland) Act, 1933, and comprises representatives elected by the three principal professional societies in Scotland—The Scottish Law Agents' Society, The Society of Writers to the Signet and the Society of Solicitors in the Supreme Court—as well as by thirty local faculties. As to the opinion expressed by the General Council on the proposals, which have now been dropped, my information does not accord with that of the noble Lord, Lord Saltoun. He said, in his speech on the Committee stage, that he had been told that the General Council of Solicitors themselves have said that they did not support the proposals in any way; that the only comment they made when the proposals were laid before them was that it was a highly controversial matter, and that they would prefer not to express any opinion on it at all. The Facts are on record in the OFFICIAL REPORT of the proceedings on February 5 last, when I said that the proposals in the form of draft instructions for the preparations of this Bill were reported to the General Council on June 23, 1947.

On August 6, 1947, a deputation from the General Council raised no objection to the proposals, and on the following day the Clerk to the General Council wrote as follows: As was indicated by the deputation from this Council which was received by the Secretary of State for Scotland yesterday, my Council have no representations to make regarding the proposals contained in your letter of June 23 last. I went on to say that no representations have since been made to the Scottish Office by the General Council, and the comment attributed to them by the noble Lord, Lord Saltoun, "that it was a highly controversial matter and that they would prefer not to express any opinion on it at all," appears to refer to subsequent proceedings within the Council in November, 1947, as reported in the Scotsman and the Glasgow Herald of January 26 last in a letter by the Clerk to the Council after the Second Reading debate. I thought it only right that I should make that statement for the purposes of record. I beg to move that the Report be now received.

LORD SALTOUN

My Lords, I do not wish to take up your Lordships' time very long on this matter, but there are one or two points I should like to make. In the first place, I am grateful to the noble Lord for what he has said, and I apologise to him for anything which I said that was wrong. With regard to the question of finance, to which I referred, of course I had not those figures, but they bear out what I said, that this is a self-supporting service. Even reckoning the allied services in the same proportion as in the years that are recorded, in the past ten years there should have been a surplus of something like £220,000, which would certainly serve to provide sufficient staff to deal with the present arrears. With regard to what the noble Lord said about the General Council of Solicitors, of course I entirely accept that. My information was the best I could gather. But it does rather bear out what I ventured to say about it not being very representative of the profession, because here you have a Bill which is approved in the way the noble Lord has described, by the General Council of Solicitors, and which raises the whole of the legal profession in Scotland up in arms against it. Therefore, I do not think that they could have represented the profession quite so well as they thought.

There is one other point which causes me a great deal of concern. This Bill was introduced by His Majesty's Government, and in reply to our objections they stated that they were quite determined on the Bill. We had the privilege of being received by the Minister in charge of the Bill in another place, and by representatives of the Department concerned. They gave us to understand that they were not going to move on this matter at all, and that the Bill had to go through and be put into operation. I put down my Amendment on the Committee stage, feeling very doubtful of the issue. It was a great privilege for me to be supported by the noble Lords by whom I was supported, and it was very fortunate for Scotland and for us all that they were able to be in the House that afternoon. The matter was then sent to a highly qualified Committee under the chairman- 376 ship of the noble Lord, Lord Macmillan, whose capabilities we all know and admire. When the matter was gone into carefully we realised, even those of us who do not understand the Scottish system, that had the Bill gone through in that form it would probably have had the effect of reducing the Writs of Scotland to inextricable confusion.

But, apart from that, the general question strikes me as of very considerable importance. Here is a Bill brought in, sponsored by the Department and backed by the determination of the Government to get it through; and it is stopped only by the merest fluke. Had it been carried through it would have led to disaster. The danger is so great that anybody living in Scotland and understanding the Scottish system knows the risk we ran and what we nearly incurred; and I think that on the general question we ought to inquire how a Bill like that comes to be presented. It might well have gone through, with the disastrous results I have indicated.