Lords Sitting of 1 June 1954

Preamble
The House met at half past two of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers
  ORPINGTON URBAN DISTRICT COUNCIL BILL [H.L.]
  Read 3a, and passed, and sent to the Commons.
LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL (HOLLAND HOUSE) AMENDMENT BILL [H.L.]
Read 3a, and passed, and sent to the Commons.

WIFE OF RUSSIAN POLICE AGENT
2.36 p.m.
THE LORD BISHOP OF CHICHESTER: My Lords, I beg to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they have made or are proposing to make any representations to the U.S.S.R. Government, in conjunction with the United States Government, or otherwise, or have taken or are proposing to take any other steps by way of declaring their attitude, in response to the appeal made by M. Nikolai Khokhlov (formerly a member of the Soviet secret police) on behalf of his wife Janina Khokhlov, after he had sought asylum from the United States authorities in Frankfurt.]
THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL (THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY): My Lords, there are no legal grounds on which Her Majesty's Government could make official representations in a case of this nature to the Soviet Government about a Soviet citizen. I should, however, like to make it clear that they hope most sincerely that the Soviet authorities will permit Madame Khokhlov and her young child to join her husband.
THE LORD BISHOP OF CHICHESTER: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Marquess for the latter part of that reply. The moral grounds are very strong indeed, and I hope that Her Majesty's Government will make all representations, directly or indirectly, that may be possible.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: I am quite certain that in this case there is no difference of opinion between the right reverend Prelate and Her Majesty's Government. The only question is, what is going to do the most good for Madame Khokhlov. There is a danger that official representations would only crystallise the Soviet Government in their present attitude.
VISCOUNT STANSGATE: Would Her Majesty's Government consider in due course making a statement about this growing tension over spies and counterspies, cases of which appear every day in the newspapers—and there is the N.T.S. case? Could the Government consider whether some considered statement could be made to throw light on this and other similar matters?
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: I am sure that the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, will not expect an answer today, but I will certainly transmit his remarks to my right honourable friend.

GUATEMALA AND BRITISH HONDURAS
LORD VANSITTART: My Lords, I beg to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they contemplate any measures to prevent further interference by the Communist Government of Guatemala in British Honduras.]
THE PAYMASTER GENERAL (THE EARL OF SELKIRK): My Lords, when the occasion has arisen Her Majesty's Government have always made it clear that they will not permit any interference by the Guatemalan Government in British Honduras. No action is contemplated at present, but if the noble Lord, Lord Vansittart, has in mind any particular instance of interference I should be very happy to have details.

EAST-WEST TRADE TALKS
VISCOUNT ELIBANK: My Lords, I beg to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they are in a position to report any matters of interest and of a favourable nature to British trade and industry which have arisen during the C.O.C.O.M. East-West trade talks which commenced in Paris on 12th April.]
LORD HAWKE: My Lords, we and the other countries which maintain security controls on East-West trade have made considerable progress in reviewing the present control lists. Agreement has been reached on a number of changes, but Her Majesty's Government have not so far persuaded all the other Governments concerned that it would be wise to remove particular items from the prohibited list in advance of others. Discussions are proceeding, and it remains the Government's policy to secure a substantial reduction of the strategic controls as rapidly as possible.
VISCOUNT ELIBANK: My Lords, I beg to thank the noble Lord for his Answer. May I ask whether Her Majesty's Government will bear in mind the very important fact that the Board of Trade's embargo list was neither started nor at any stage approved by the United Nations, and has always been different from the lists operated by other United Nations members? Further, will the Government bear in mind that there is no United Nations resolution or binding decision of any other authority to prevent the Board of Trade from making further adjustments at any time to what may be over-rigid schedules?
LORD HAWKE: Her Majesty's Government will certainly bear in mind all the statements which the noble Viscount has made.
VISCOUNT ELIBANK: Thank you.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
EARL FORTESCUE: My Lords, we expect to receive the Supreme Court Officers (Pensions) Bill and the Superannuation (President of Industrial Court) Bill from another place this afternoon, and with the agreement of noble Lords we propose to take these Bills through all stages on Thursday next. I have further to inform your Lordships that the Paymaster General will interrupt your Lordships Business about 3.45 p.m. to-day in order to make a statement on Uganda.

CIVIL DEFENCE (ARMED FORCES) BILL [H.L.]
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (LORD LLOYD): My Lords, I beg leave to introduce a Bill to provide for the training in Civil Defence of persons serving terms of part-time service under the National Service Act, 1948, and other members of the Armed Forces of the Crown, and to remove doubts as to the Civil Defence functions of members of those Forces; and for purposes connected with the matters aforesaid. I beg to move that this Bill be read a first time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 1a.—(Lord Lloyd.)
On Question, Bill read 1a, and to be printed.

STANDING ORDERS OF THE HOUSE
2.39 p.m.
Amendments reported (according to Order).
THE CHAIRMAN OE COMMITTEES (THE EARL OF DROGHEDA)THE CHAIRMAN OE COMMITTEES (THE EARL OF DROGHEDA) moved, after Standing Order 14, to insert the following new Standing Order:
"The printing or publishing of anything relating to the proceedings of the House is subject to the privilege of the House."
and a further Amendment to leave out Standing Order 74.
The noble Earl said: My Lords, the House will remember that when we last considered the Standing Orders, Standing Order No. 74 was left over, and it

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was agreed that the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, the noble and learned Earl, Lord Jowitt, and the noble Viscount, Lord Samuel, should meet and consider whether some satisfactory formula could not be arrived at. This Amendment is a result of their meetings with myself and the Clerk of the Parliaments, to whose ingenuity we owe the wording of this Standing Order which I now recommend to your Lordships. This wording seems to us to avoid the difficulty of the existing Order while still stating quite clearly that the printing and publishing is subject to the Privilege of the House. It was thought better that this new Order should appear as Standing Order No. 14, after the Order relating to Secret Sessions, instead of at the end of the Standing Orders. If the House accepts this new Order, the second Amendment will, of course, be consequential. I beg to move the Amendments standing in my name.
Amendments moved—
Page 14, after Standing Order 14, insert the following Standing Order—
"The printing or publishing of anything relating to the proceedings of the House is subject to the privilege of the House."
Page 50, leave out Standing Order 74.—(The Earl of Drogheda.)
On Question, Amendments agreed to.
THE EARL OF DROGHEDA: My Lords, I beg to move that the Standing Orders, as revised by the Select Committee on the Procedure of the House, and subsequently amended by the House, be the Standing Orders of the House for the conduct of Public Business.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to: the said Standing Orders to be printed.

SUPREME COURT OFFICERS (PENSIONS) BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1a, and to be printed.
SUPERANNUATION (PRESIDENT OF INDUSTRIAL COURT) BILL
Brought from the Commons, endorsed with the certificate from the Speaker that the Bill is a Money Bill within the meaning of the Parliament Act, 1911; read 1a, and to be printed.
ATOMIC ENERGY AUTHORITY BILL
Returned from the Commons, with the Amendments agreed to.

HOUSE OF LORDS OFFICES
2.40 p.m.
Order of the Day read for the consideration of the Third Report from the Select Committee.
The Committee reported as follows:
1.—LIBRARY
The Report of the Sub-Committee on the Library was laid before the Committee.
The Committee invited the Lord Great Chamberlain to take steps for the improvement of lighting in the Library.
The Committee authorised an extension of service to Mr. Charles Travis Clay, C.B., the Librarian, to October 31, 1955.
2.—REFRESHMENT DEPARTMENT
The Report of the Sub-Committee on the Refreshment Department was laid before the Committee.
3.—APPOINTMENT OF A CLERK IN THE PARLIAMENT OFFICE
The Clerk of the Parliaments informed the Committee of the appointment of Mr. Peter Gordon Henderson as a Clerk on the staff of the Parliament Office consequent upon the retirement of Sir Robert Overbury. The appointment dates from May 1, 1954.
The Committee sanctioned the salary payable to Mr. Henderson.
4.—REARRANGEMENT OF STAFF IN THE PARLIAMENT OFFICE
The Committee authorised the substitution of an executive post for a clerkship (administrative grade) in the Parliament Office; this would effect an economy on the Estimate.
The Committee approved the appointment of Mr. Clifford Keith Stevens to the post.
5.—REVISED SCALES OF PAY
The Committee authorised proposed new scales of salary that are under negotiation with the Treasury for the Clerk of the Records, Assistant Clerk of the Records, Editor of Debates, Assistant Editor of Debates and Reporters.
The Committee sanctioned the application of Treasury Establishments Circulars No. 8/54 (Messengerial grades) and No. 21/54 (Women Cleaners) to analogous grades of the staff of the House of Lords, and also consequential increases in superannuation awards to certain of the staff who retired recently.
The Committee authorised a further pay increase to the Custodian staff.
6.—SUPERANNUATION
The Committee sanctioned the application of Treasury Establishments Circular No. 18/54 (Pensions (Increase) Act, 1954) dated April 21, 1954, to such of the staff of the House of Lords to whom it applies.
7.—RETIREMENT OF A REPORTER
The Committee were informed of the resignation of Mr. Frank Watkins on the grounds of ill health.
The Committee sanctioned the payment of a gratuity and an additional allowance under the Superannuation Acts, 1859 to 1949, to Mr. Watkins after seven completed years' service.
8.—CUSTODIAN—DUE FOR RETIREMENT
The Committee sanctioned a pension and an additional allowance under the Superannuation Acts to Edmund Robert Ellis, who attains sixty-five years of age on September 9, 1954.
The Committee were informed that Mr. Ellis will be re-employed as an unestablished Custodian.
9.—HISTORICAL RECORDS
The Clerk of the Parliaments reported to the Committee on the latest developments in the preservation of the documents in his custody.
The Committee authorised the temporary appointment of two male cleaners to work in the Victoria Tower.
The Committee appointed a Sub-Committee to enquire into the whole question of the storage and preservation of the Records in the Victoria Tower. The following Lords were named of the Sub-Committee: The Marquess of Salisbury, the Lord Great Chamberlain, the Earl of Munster, the Viscount Samuel, the Lord Teynham, the Lord Amulree and the Lord Shepherd with the Clerk of the Parliaments.
10.—CIRCULATION OF PAPERS
In order to prevent wastage in the circulation of Parliamentary Papers, the Committee directed that at the beginning of every new Parliament a notice should be sent out to all Peers asking whether they require any Parliamentary Papers to be sent to them, and if so which.
THE EARL OF DROGHEDA: My Lords, I beg to move that this Report be now considered.
Moved, That the Report be now considered.—(The Earl of Drogheda.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
THE EARL OF DROGHEDA: My Lords, I do not think there is anything in the Report of the Select Committee to which I need draw your Lordships' attention. I therefore beg formally to move that it be agreed to.
Moved, That the Report be agreed to.—(The Earl of Drogheda.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

PLOUGHING GRANTS DRAFT SCHEME, 1954
2.42 p.m.
THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE AND FISHERIES (LORD CARRINGTON)THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE AND FISHERIES (LORD CARRINGTON), rose to move, That the Ploughing Grants Draft Scheme reported from the Special Orders Committee on the 20th of May, be approved. The noble Lord said: My Lords, this is the fourth Ploughing Grants Scheme to be presented. It is exactly the same as the one which was presented last year. As was promised in the White Paper which was published after the Annual Review, the amount of the ploughing grants is to be exactly the same as last year—that is to say, £5 per acre for ordinary pasture and £10 in special cases. I think your Lordships will agree that in the circumstances it is right to go on with these grants, and that to take any other course at a time like the present, when agriculture is going through a rather difficult period of adjustment, would be very dangerous. I feel sure, therefore, that your Lordships will agree that the draft instrument now laid before the House should be approved so that these schemes may be continued without change. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Ploughing Grants Draft Scheme reported from the Special Orders Committee on the 20th of May, be approved.—(Lord Carrington.)
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: My Lords, I should like to say just two or three sentences to support very warmly the proposal to renew these grants for the coming year. I said in our last agricultural debate just before Easter—and I think other noble Lords said the same thing—that I very much hoped that the Government would continue the ploughing-up grant this year. I am extremely glad to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, that they have decided to do so, and to do so without reducing the amount of the grants or making the conditions which have to be fulfilled by farmers in order to obtain grants more difficult than they have been hitherto. I should like to add one comment—though perhaps the noble Lord opposite will not agree. In spite of this ploughing grant, this subsidy to arable farmers, and in spite of the price

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guarantee, I do not believe that the increase in the tillage acreage which the noble Lord wants to see, in order to reach his production target, will be obtained. So I do not support renewal of the grant because I think it will enable the Government to get the increase in the tillage acreage and the tillage yield which they want, and which they need in order to reach their production target. But I do support it, and support it very strongly, because I am quite sure that if this grant were reduced, or, still worse, removed, at the present time, the increase in our tillage acreage, which, of course, diminished last year compared with the year before, would dwindle even more and might even result in the loss of tillage to grass—something which we saw in the years which followed the war. I should like to endorse what the noble Lord said in commending this Order to the House.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

AGRICULTURE (PLOUGHING GRANTS) (SCOTLAND) DRAFT SCHEME, 1954.
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, this is the comparable Scheme for Scotland, and on behalf of my noble friend Lord Home I beg to move that it be approved.
Moved, That the Agriculture (Ploughing Grants) (Scotland) Draft Scheme, 1954, reported from the Special Orders Committee on the 20th of May, be approved.—(Lord Carrington.)
LORD MATHERS: My Lords, I am sure the House will be ready to agree to the continuation of this Scheme of ploughing grants. May I ask the noble Lord whether there are any statistics to show the effects of the grants, and whether the acreage is being increased or what the position is? Are any details of that kind available?
LORD CARRINGTON: It is a little difficult to give up-to-date statistics about tillage acreage, because the June 4 returns are now the only comprehensive returns which we get. As the noble Lord will realise, June 4 is nearly with us, so we cannot say yet what the figures are. In the last two years in which these schemes have been operated, the tillage acreage has increased quite considerably—though rather less last year than in the year
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before, I am afraid that I have not with me the exact figures for Scotland, but in England and Wales the tillage acreage rose by 145,000 acres in the year before last and by about 65,000 acres last year. I am afraid that I cannot say at this particular moment what the figures will be for this June.
LORD MATHERS: My Lords, I realise the difficulty in which I have placed the noble Lord in asking for information of that kind without notice. But I am quite satisfied with what he has said.
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: My Lords, I do not want to quarrel about figures, but I should be obliged if the noble Lord could look into the figure of 65,000 acres which he has just given. He was, I understand, speaking from memory, and I think that his memory was perhaps at fault, because my own recollection was that the figure was rather smaller. Still, the noble Lord may be right.
LORD CARRINGTON: As a matter of fact I was not speaking from memory. I was reading out the actual figure, which was 65,000 acres.
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: Thank you.

RUTHERGLEN BURGH ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL
Read 3a (according to Order), and passed.
METROPOLITAN COMMON SCHEME (HAM) PROVISIONAL ORDER BILL
Read 3a (according to Order), and passed.

POOL BETTING BILL
2.49 p.m.
Order of the Day for the House to be put into Committee read.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord Burden.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly:
[The EARL OF DROGHEDA in the Chair]
Clauses 1 to 9 agreed to.
Clause 10:
Legalisation of ready money pool betting carried on by post
10.—(1) The Ready Money Football Betting Act, 1920, shall cease to have effect as respects any pool betting business carried on by post by a registered pool promoter.
(2) Section one of the Betting Act, 1853, so far as it relates to the opening, keeping or using of houses, offices, rooms or other places for the receipt of money, shall not apply in relation to pool betting business carried on by post by a registered pool promoter.
LORD AMMON LORD AMMON moved to leave out Clause 10. The noble Lord said: I am sorry to interfere in the smooth running of things, but the Amendment which I submit to your Lordships was to have been moved in another place and owing to some confusion with regard to Standing Orders, it got overlooked. That is why I now put it forward here. I am not going to touch upon what might be termed the moral and economic aspects of betting. What I am going to contend is that this clause is bad in law. I submit that to introduce a new legal principle as a secondary issue in a Bill dealing with another aspect of gambling practice is to bring the law into contempt. That is what happens in this instance. Under the Betting and Lotteries Act, 1934, there are certain exemptions in what would be regarded as an offence under the Act. Section 23 stipulates that small lotteries held in connection with bazaars, sales of work and fêtes in connection with institutions and organisations should be exempt. The section says:
"The entertainments to which this section applies are bazaars, sales of work, fêtes and other entertainments of a similar character, whether limited to one day or extending over two or more days."
Section 24 of the same Act exempts private lotteries restricted to
"members of one society established and conducted for purposes not connected with gaming, wagering or lotteries; or persons all of whom work on the same premises; or persons all of whom reside on the same premises."
It was not long before it was shown that it was impossible to enforce that Act. Since the war, advantage has been taken of Section 24 of the Act to organise lotteries that have ignored the conditions laid down in the section, with the result that the number and size of lotteries have far outrun the provision made in the Bill for these organisations, to the extent that
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it is estimated that £1 million a week is contributed to such lotteries.
Your Lordships cannot be unaware of the considerable correspondence that has taken place in The Times and other news, papers concerning the evasion of the law and the contempt into which it is being brought in this respect. Among the contributors was a specialist printer who stated that he prints no fewer than 90 million lottery and other tickets a year far supporters' and other clubs. That shows that the holding of these lotteries has outrun the limited number of people embraced by the organisations to which the Act applies. That correspondence brought the chief constables into action, and they started to take action against those who had broken the law in this respect. So nation-wide did their action become, that counteraction was taken by the organisations affected. The Chief Constable of Shropshire found himself in difficulties because he took action with regard to a supporters' club running a lottery, with the result that the club, which had a membership of 115,000, had radically to revise its constitution in order to come within the provisions of the Betting and Lotteries Act; and its membership fell to something like 6,000. All this brought the accusation that the chief constables had entered into some kind of conspiracy. This was indignantly denied by the Chief Constable of Gloucestershire, who said:
"There is no truth whatever in the suggestion that the Chief Constables have a plan of this kind. We are bound by the 1934 Betting and Lotteries Act."
In The Times of March 13 of this year there was an editorial entitled "The law is a gamble." In reply to that editorial the Chief Constable of Shropshire pointed out that he was simply carrying out the law, and therefore was discharging his proper duty. It should be noted that the Daily Telegraph also gave prominence to correspondence on this question.
I submit this Amendment to your Lordships because I think that Clause 10 is altogether wrong. It is at variance with other Acts, and if this question is to be dealt with, it must be dealt with by a revision of the whole Betting and Lotteries Act and not hidden in this manner in this Bill. This will open the door to the abuses that have already arisen under the 1934 Act. It will lead to possibilities of ready money betting in small pools

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and lotteries. In view of the nationwide extension of these lotteries and the necessity of strengthening the hands of magistrates and chief constables attempting to interpret and execute the law, I submit that it is unwise to introduce into this Bill a clause which may weaken rather than strengthen their hands. We have already had sufficient proof that their hands have been weakened in the fact that the chief constables have been forced into print to explain the difficulties they are in. This clause will increase their difficulties. If it remains in the Bill, it will spoil what is otherwise a useful piece of legislation.
Amendment moved—
Leave out Clause 10.—(Lord Ammon.)
LORD ROCHESTER: My Lords, I do not wish to detain your Lordships unduly, but I should like to associate myself with the noble Lord, Lord Ammon. I want particularly to put on record that the Churches' Committee on Gambling are very apprehensive about the inclusion of this clause in the Bill. Their feeling is that it may be creating a precedent for ready money betting. Legislation on gambling in Great Britain has been based on the general principle that gambling is not in the national interest and should be discouraged, rather than encouraged, by the Government of the day. In the financial crisis following the First World War, in 1919, Sir Austen Chamberlain warned the nation of the gambling habit and mentality. He said:
"At a time when the one lesson that we need to teach everybody is that there is no salvation except by work, we are teaching people to expect salvation by luck."
It is because this clause, which the noble Lord seeks to delete, further opens the door and lessens the restraints on the gambling mentality, especially if a new precedent is set, that I believe it to be undesirable. I confess that I am not at all sanguine that at this late stage we shall secure the deletion of this clause, especially in view of what transpired in another place. However, I feel it essential, because of the objection felt to this thin edge of the wedge and the fear that this clause may be quoted as a precedent for a general introduction of ready money betting, that we should make our protest here on this occasion.
2.59 p.m.
LORD LLOYD: My Lords, perhaps it may be convenient to the House if I give the Government's view on this issue at an early stage in the debate. In moving his Amendment, the noble Lord, Lord Ammon, tied the whole of his argument to the question of illegal lotteries. I think that is totally irrelevant to the matter we are considering.
LORD AMMON: I did not tie my case to that. I indicated that the evasion of the law on lotteries was an indication of what would happen under this clause.
LORD LLOYD: So far as I can see, and I have taken the best advice I could, there is no connection whatsoever between the question of pool betting and that of illegal lotteries. The number and size of illegal lotteries has been growing for some years, and the fact that action by the police in various parts of the country has coincided with the consideration of the Pool Betting Bill is a pure coincidence. Nor are these lotteries relevant in a discussion of the legality or otherwise of cash betting. The noble Lord must be aware that all lotteries must by law be conducted on a cash basis. Section 24 (2) (e) of the Betting and Lotteries Act, 1934, specifically provides, as one of the conditions of a lawful private lottery, that,
"no ticket or chance shall be issued or allotted by the promoters except by way of sale and upon receipt of the full price thereof …"
So far as that is concerned, the noble Lord has, I feel, been confusing the issue.
I turn now to the question of pool betting and what this Bill will do. I do not know whether your Lordships are conversant with the way in which the pools are run. I do not know whether the noble Lord permutates the treble chance, or goes in for the various other permutations—I do not myself. However, I understand that, owing to the fact that betting off the course is illegal, competitors on football pools are enjoined not to send their stakes with their coupon, but to pay their debts later. The usual practice is for money staked on a coupon to be sent with the next week's coupon, and the great majority of those who take part in football pools do send their money week by week. I submit to your Lordships that, in practice—and, after all, we are concerned with what happens in practice—the result is virtually indistinguish-

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able from cash betting. It may not be cash betting legally; if you wish to split hairs, of course, it is not cash betting; but in its practical effect it is much the same thing as cash betting. There is nothing in this clause, therefore, which is particularly revolutionary. The noble Lord talked about contempt of the law. I submit to him that, in one sense, this clause will put the law on all fours with the actual position.
I am not quite clear what is the noble Lord's objection to the clause. I do not know whether he shares the view of his noble friend, and objects to all betting on principle, and to betting on football pools in particular. If that is his objection, then I think he has stated it at the wrong moment. He should have put down an Amendment prohibiting the use of the post for this form of betting, and this would have meant the abolition of foot-ball pools, because there is no other means by which they could be conducted. However, I do not think that is what the noble Lord wants. Is his objection to the clause that, if it becomes law, it will be legal to bet in cash by post on pools, but not at fixed odds? The noble Lord did not mention that, but it is a point that has been raised by various people, and it is a valid point. But this Bill is confined to pool betting and I do not think the anomaly created is an objection to the clause or to the Bill as a whole. However, unless that point is developed at greater length—and in that event I shall have an opportunity of speaking further on it—I will not go into it now.
The real objection which the noble Lord seems to have in mind is that he, together with the noble Lord, Lord Rochester, feels that if this form of cash betting by post is legalised it may be regarded as a precedent for the establishment of licensed betting offices, to which persons would be permitted to resort for the purpose of betting in cash. He feels that to agree to cash betting by post would mean that you would throw open the door to cash betting in all its forms. But I must emphasise the words "by post"; there is a great difference in betting by post and betting in a betting office. The Government do not accept that this clause would be a precedent, and this was made clear in another place by my honourable friend, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State. Our
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view is that if cash betting by post on pools becomes legal, this decision could not be regarded as in any way committing the Government or Parliament to legislation on cash betting at licensed betting houses. That is a matter which raises different issues, because it would undoubtedly involve the creation of new facilities for betting. The present clause raises no such issue, but is confined to the question of pool betting—the main thing we have in mind is, of course, betting on football pools.
This clause does not afford any new facility for betting; in fact, I feel that it may well be that it will reduce the amount of betting on the football pools, rather than increase it. My reason for saying that is that, under the present system, a pool bettor must tend to get into the habit of sending the same stake week by week, in order to avoid making a mistake as to how much he owes. In this way you get chain betting, which is very much like chain smoking. If cash betting is legalised, there is no reason why he should stake more than he stakes at present, and, on the whole, it is unlikely that he will send in a coupon if he finds on any particular week that he is short of money. I should have thought that the effect of this clause would have been almost precisely the opposite of what the noble Lord fears.
There is one other point that I feel I must make. The noble Lord, Lord Ammon, said that this Bill would be quite unaffected if this clause were removed. With great respect to the noble Lord, I cannot accept that at all. As those of your Lordships who have studied the Bill will have seen, it lays upon the promoters of football pools a number of obligations in regard to accounting, giving figures to the public, and so on. Although it might conceivably be possible to make the Bill work on a credit system, it is obvious that the possibility of bad debts, and the fact that the cash included with each coupon does not relate to that coupon, but to some previous entry, would make the whole burden on the football pool promoters, in satisfying the other obligations imposed on them by the Bill, excessively onerous, if not impossible. Therefore, on that practical ground alone I could not advise your Lordships to accept this Amendment. This matter was fully discussed in another place, and the

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clause was sustained, after a proposal to delete it, by 69 votes to 6. I do not think it would be wise for your Lordships to excise this clause from the Bill. I cannot share the apprehensions of the noble Lord, and I am certain that the removal of this clause would make the whole working of the Bill, which is in every other way a good Bill, extremely difficult, if not impossible.
3.8 p.m.
EARL JOWITT: I agree with the noble Lords who have spoken, that there is a vast amount of betting to-day; and, in my view, too much betting. It is not a vice in which I indulge, and therefore I must be charitable in judging other people's vices. I think the apprehension which the noble Lords feel shows into what a chaotic state our betting laws have got—everybody knows that. It is a big job to get the whole thing right. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd: I do not see how it will be any worse if you send your money with your coupon than if you send your coupon one week and your money for that coupon the following week. But it does show that we ought to try to get our betting laws into some order. Not long ago, we had a Committee presided over by Mr. Willinck, but I do not think anything has been done about the matter. I do not blame the Government for that; I know from my own time in office what a thorny topic this is. However, I do ask the noble Lord to use his great authority with the Government to try to get them to bring in some legislation to clean up this Augean stable, and I hope he will be successful in those representations.
LORD BURDEN: After the very full explanation by the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd, there is little with which I need trouble your Lordships. I should like to thank my noble friend Lord Ammon for bringing this clause to the attention of your Lordships, because I think it is as well that we should realise its implications and not have any misapprehension as to the extent of its operation. I would submit to my noble friend Lord Ammon, with great respect, that, as the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd, has said, most, if not all, his arguments were quite irrelevant to the clause. So far as the point made by my noble friend Lord Rochester, respecting the Church Commission on Gambling, is
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concerned, may I say that I had the honour to be a Church Commissioner for five years, and I am still connected with organisations in the Church of England. I have not received one single communication from the Anglican Church in regard to this particular clause. I venture to doubt whether there is any committee of the Anglican Church which, as a committee, has pronounced against this particular clause.
I think I should tell your Lordships that I have received one communication pressing for the abolition of this particular clause. Curiously enough, it is from a firm of credit bookmakers which calls itself "The Friendly Firm." It calls its document, which it was kind enough to send me, an "investment form." From my limited knowledge of these things, I gather that the gentleman who invested on this particular form got 13s. 6d. back for his 5s. That is the only communication I have received in connection with this clause. I would emphasise the point that while the Bill would probably be workable without this clause it would be with very great difficulty indeed that the purposes of the Bill could be achieved if this particular clause were deleted. It is a clause for the protection of the public and to bring the pools under a measure of control in the interest both of the pools and of those who "invest their money"—I believe that is the phrase for it.
There is a good deal in what my noble and learned Leader, Lord Jowitt, has said in regard to the chaotic state of our betting laws, but we need not develop that at the moment. I am certain that this clause will not in any way increase or foster pool betting, but may have a deterrent effect, as indicated by the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd. My final words are these. In another place, as good an Anglican as Mr. Attlee and as good a Nonconformist as Mr. Chuter Ede were in favour of the clause, and so signified their approval. I must not omit, of course, the members of the Government Front Bench, who were also in favour of the clause. In those circumstances, I hope that my noble friend, having put his point to the House, will be prepared to withdraw his Amendment.
On Question, Amendment negatived.
Clause 10 agreed to.
Remaining clauses agreed to.
House resumed: Bill reported without amendment.

LAW REFORM (ENFORCEMENT OF CONTRACTS) BILL
3.16 p.m.
Order of the Day for the House to be put into Committee read, and discharged.

ARMY AND AIR FORCE (ANNUAL) BILL
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR AIR (LORD DE L'ISLE AND DUDLEY): My Lords, in moving the Second Reading of this Bill I feel that I ought to point out to your Lordships that it has reached the House in exactly the same form as it did last year. I then explained that the Government did not propose to introduce any Amendments, since a Select Committee of another place was sitting to consider the eventual amendment, in a rather radical way, of this legislation. The Committee appointed by another place had not completed its work when the Session ended last November, and another Committee has been appointed to continue the task. I believe that your Lordships will agree that it would not be in the public interest if the position were confused by any Amendments which might now be proposed, pending fuller consideration of the whole Bill. Although we cannot, I suppose, take cognisance of the work of a Committee in another place, successive Committees have published their reports, and from that fact we can glean that they have carried out a very extensive task, one which is still in process. In fact, I think they have sat over sixty days and their Report runs to 650 pages, which gives some idea of the scale of the task. I quote that only to show that there has been no unnecessary delay on the part of Her Majesty's Government in dealing with this matter, and because I felt that, in recommending that the Bill be read a second time, I owed the House an explanation of the form in which it is being presented. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord De L'Isle and Dudley.)
LORD JEFFREYS: My Lords, may I express what I believe to be the opinion of the greater part of the officers of Her Majesty's Services, that it is an extremely good thing that the Government
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have not seen fit to introduce any Amendments to this Bill this year. I believe that it will be generally agreed that the Bill should pass in its present form.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

PROTECTION OF ANIMALS (AMENDMENT) BILL
3.20 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
LORD BURDEN: My Lords, I am sorry that the timetable has compelled me to trouble your Lordships again this afternoon, but I beg to move the Second Reading of this Bill. The object of the Bill is to extend the powers of the courts to disqualify from having the custody of animals persons convicted of cruelty to them, and to increase the maximum fine for offences for cruelty to animals. As the law stands at present, proceedings for causing unnecessary suffering to animals are taken mainly under the protection of Animals Act, 1911. The maximum penalty under this section is a fine of £25 and/or three months' imprisonment. Under Section 3 of the 1911 Act, courts are given power to deprive a person convicted of cruelty of the ownership of the animal, and may make such order as to the disposal of the animal as they think fit. Under another Act, the Protection of Animals (Cruelty to Dogs) Act, 1933, courts before which a person is convicted under the Protection of Animals Act, 1911, of an offence of cruelty to a dog, may order him
"to be disqualified for keeping a dog and for holding or obtaining a dog licence for such period as the court thinks fit."
It will be noted that whilst, under the 1911 Act, courts may deprive a convicted person of the ownership of the animal or animals concerned in the case, they have no power to prevent him from keeping any other animals. The only exception is in the case of dogs, under the Act to which I have just referred, and it will be seen that this applies even for a first offence. It is an interesting point that, within a very short time of the 1933 Act coming into force, magistrates began to make use of the powers given to them under this Act, and have continued to

1047
do so in quite a large number of cases right up to the present time, frequently ruling that the person shall not own a dog during the whole of his or her lifetime. During 1953, no fewer than 120 persons were disqualified from owning a dog and, of these, in 33 instances the disqualification was for life.
There is no doubt that there are some persons who, it may be, due to their brutal and callous nature, are quite unfitted to own any animals. This is abundantly clear from the records which the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals have carried over a number of years. I will not trouble your Lordships with the details of the cases which I have here because many of them are too horrible for us to go into to-day, but, if it is necessary at a later stage, the Committee stage, I shall be quite prepared to lay this evidence before your Lordships.
I would suggest to your Lordships that the clause in this Bill which provides, first of all, for the courts to order that a person convicted of cruelty to any animal may be deprived of, or may not have the right to own, that animal in the future is very desirable. In regard to the maximum amount of the fine, which is increased from £25 to £50, I would point out that when the £25 penalty was fixed in 1911 the value of money was entirely different from what it is to-day. It was felt in another place, after most careful consideration, that the penalty should be a maximum of £50. Your Lordships may well note that the Bill does not seek to increase the maximum prison sentence of three months laid down in the 1911 Act. That is done deliberately, because the courts, I think, have been very reluctant to send people to prison for long sentences of that kind. On the other hand, I suggest that the fact that the penalty is increased from £25 to £50 will go a long way towards acting as a deterrent in these cases. I believe that, in all quarters of the House, there is an abhorrence of cruelty of any kind to animals. The kindliness which is shown to animals, I venture to say, is one of the tests of Christian civilisation. I hope that your Lordships will agree to give this Bill a Second Reading to-day, leaving over to the Committee stage any points which may require further elucidation. I beg to move that the Bill be read a Second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Burden.)
3.26 p.m.
LORD SOMERS: My Lords, I hesitate to speak on this subject because I know there is a strong feeling among some that all those who defend humanitarian legislation come rather under the label of sentimentalists. I certainly do not look upon this matter from a sentimental point of view, however. There is nothing which I dislike more than that, but I do feel that all unnecessary suffering, whether by humans or by animals, should be avoided. In this case there is no doubt that the legislation which we have had up to date has not achieved that, because anybody who can cause really intense suffering to an animal in his possession, possibly even to the point of its having to be put to death, is not going to worry very much if he has only to pay a fine of about £2 or £3. And such cases, I may say, are absolutely without number. Therefore, the increase of the maximum fine is essential if we are to avoid this sort of thing, especially as the people among whom these really abnormal cases of cruelty are to be found are often the people with plenty of money who do not notice whether or not they are paying out £2 or £3. The increased penalties will not only make them less likely to commit such offences, but will also bring home to the nation as a whole the fact that one should not cause this unnecessary suffering. It has been going on now for a good many years. The R.S.P.C.A. have been doing what they can: they have been searching the country for cases and prosecuting where they have been able. But it is not in the magistrates' power to impose any penalty which will prevent these people from doing these things. I certainly support the noble Lord who has spoken in thinking that the increase of these fines is necessary and essential if we are to protect our animals at all.
LORD LLOYD: My Lords, I am sure that this is a Bill which will commend itself to your Lordships in all parts of the House. On behalf of the Government, I welcome it. We are grateful to the noble Lord for having introduced it, and I hope that your Lordships will give it a speedy passage.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

LAW REFORM (LIMITATION OF ACTIONS, &c.) BILL
3.30 p.m.
Order of the Day for the House to be put into Committee read.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Viscount Hailsham.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly:
[The LORD TERRINGTON in the Chair]
Clause 1 agreed to.
Clause 2:
Amendment of Limitation Act, 1939, as respects personal injury actions.
2.—(1) At the end of subsection (1) of section two of the Limitation Act, 1939 (which subsection provides, amongst other things, that there shall be a limitation period of six years for actions founded on simple contract or on tort) the following proviso shall be inserted—
"Provided that, in the case of actions for damages for negligence, nuisance or breach of duty (whether the duty exists by virtue of a contract or of provision made by or under a statute or independently of any contract or any such provision) where the damages claimed by the plaintiff for the negligence, nuisance or breach of duty consist of or include damages in respect of personal injuries to any person, this subsection shall have effect as if for the reference to six years there were substituted a reference to three years."
LORD SILKIN LORD SILKIN moved to add to subsection (1):
"Provided however that where any action referred to in this subsection has not been brought within the period of the said three years, an application may be made, after the said period of three years but before the expiration of six years from the accrual of the cause of action, to a judge in chambers or to the judge of the court in which action is proposed to be brought (if not the High Court), after notice to the intended defendant, for leave to bring such an action notwithstanding the aforesaid period of three years has expired. The judge hearing the said application shall have a discretion to grant the said leave if satisfied that it is reasonable in all the circumstances so to do."
The noble Lord said: I beg to move the Amendment standing in my name. I realise that I am not going to get much assistance or encouragement from the noble and learned Lord who sits on the Woolsack, because on the Second Reading he said that if the proposals of the
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Tucker Committee were incorporated in this Bill he personally would be opposed to it. And I realise that I am not going to get much assistance from the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, who gave cogent reasons and statistics for objecting to this particular Amendment. I had hoped that I should have got some support from the noble and learned Lord the Chairman of the Committee, Lord Tucker, but he seems to have had second thoughts and actually spoke against the principle of this Amendment. Moreover, this Amendment was discussed in another place and was defeated—not even on a Division. It is against this very chilly background that I persist in moving the Amendment which, on the whole, I think is right. I do not pretend that the matter is free from difficulty—of course it is not. The very fact that the noble and learned Lord who sits on the Woolsack is opposed to the Amendment indicates that there must be strong reasons against it. But, in my considered view (I have considered the matter further since the Second Reading), the reasons in its favour are stronger than those that are against it. I still have hopes, though somewhat slight, that the question may be reconsidered.
Now what is the case for this Amendment? As your Lordships know, the present period during which one can bring an action for damages in respect of personal injuries is six years. Stripped of all refinements, the Bill proposes to reduce that period to three years. It is my submission that that may involve certain people in hardship. The type of person I have in mind who may suffer hardship is one who, through no fault of his own, possibly through the negligence of some other person, has not brought his action within the period of three years and, therefore, as the Bill now stands, is absolutely barred. He may be a person who is so ignorant (there are such people) that he has never heard of the Statute of Limitations, and has entrusted this matter into other hands; and, through some carelessness, neglect or omission of some kind, the action has not been commenced within the three years. However serious the injury may be, he is for ever barred from obtaining any remedy. That is one type of case.
The other is the kind of case where the seriousness of the injury does not manifest itself within the three years—the individual may not even know that he has a claim. As your Lordships learned in the law will know, there is the case of Archer v. Catton & Company Limited which was decided this year. That was a case where a person suffered injury by inhaling fine dust over a period of years. It was only after some years that he was advised that the injury from which he was suffering was caused as a result of his work and as a result of negligence on the part of the employers in not preventing his inhaling the dust. Apparently, if the action had been brought in proper time, the injured party would have had a perfectly arguable case—I will not put it higher than that. He was not able to bring the action in proper time because he never realised, within the period of the Statute of Limitations, that he had an action to bring. Now, under this Bill, the period is going to be still further curtailed. That is the type of action that I feel we ought not, by a limitation of the kind imposed in the Bill, to prevent from being taken. Let me say at once that I realise that it is not going to affect a large number of cases—I think the noble Viscount said that under existing law the number of cases at issue after three years was only one per cent.
VISCOUNT HAILSHAM: Less than that.
LORD SILKIN: Less than that; I accept that. Let me say as well—because if I do not, the noble Viscount will—that in the Report of the Tucker Committee it was proposed to reduce the period to two years, not three, and there would have been even more justification for granting a discretion than there is when the period is three years. I recognise that. But, with all that, I still say that there will be a residuum of hard cases whose hearing by the courts this Bill will prevent, and a number of people will be affected. I do not know what "less than 1 per cent." represents in terms of the number of litigants, and I do not know whether all of them will be affected by this Amendment; I do not think they will. But if there are fifty people per annum, even if there are only twenty people per annum, who will otherwise be denied justice through no fault of their
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own, I still say that this Amendment will have been worth while.
What is the case against it? It is the somewhat academic point (I say this with all respect) that it is essential at all costs to have certainty; that it should be known for certain at the end of three years that if you have not brought your action you are doomed—nothing will avail. Certainty has its advantages in the law. But we talk about the glorious uncertainty of the law, and one certainty more or less will not make very much difference. All law is really a gamble, and we are chasing a will-o'-the-wisp if we think we can secure certainty by and large. Certainty in this one respect is not going to make any difference whatever.
The other serious objection put forward to the Amendment was that it would put an intolerable burden on Her Majesty's Judges to ask them to exercise a discretion. I am astonished that the noble and learned Lord who sits on the Woolsack should put forward that particular argument. After all, he is responsible for selecting the Judges and, on the whole, the vast majority of them are wise and experienced men who are certainly capable of exercising a reasonable discretion and who are doing it every day. In all sorts of ways they have to exercise discretion. I am thinking of one which I think is a fairly good analogy. Judges who try divorce cases have not only to exercise discretion on the question of whether a petitioner who may have been guilty of misconduct himself should receive relief. Where proceedings have been unduly delayed the Judges have discretion as to whether they will deal with the petition or not. As your Lordships know even better than I, if the petitioner has grounds for divorce he has to take his proceedings without unreasonable delay, and if there has been unreasonable delay he has to satisfy the court that there were good reasons for the delay, and the Judge exercises his discretion. I have never known Judges feel that this exercise of their discretion is an intolerable burden upon them. They take it lightly. In many other respects, as your Lordships will know, Judges and even masters of the Supreme Court have to exercise discretion about time for certain operations having been exceeded. They do it and I have never known that it was a heavy burden upon them.

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I do not suggest that this discretion should be completely unfettered. I realise that in exercising discretion they have to take two things into account; and if my Amendment does not say so, and if it were thought that that was the only weakness of the Amendment, then, of course, I should be happy to discuss with the noble Viscount who is in charge of this Bill a suitable form of words. There are two things to be taken into account. One is whether the delay in taking the proceedings is due to any fault of the proposed plaintiff. He must show that he himself has not been guilty of any delay but that delay is due to circumstances over which he personally had no control. The second matter which a Judge would have to take into account is whether the proposed defendant would be unduly prejudiced if the proceedings were allowed to continue. I suggest that for a Judge to inquire into and decide upon those two matters would not be unduly burdensome. I recognise that this is one of those matters which one has to balance, and the fact that the Committee which considered it reported—I do not know whether unanimously or not—in favour of some such measure as this indicates that there is a good deal to be said in its favour. I think the arguments in favour of granting this extension are much weightier than those against, and therefore that, even though a number of noble and learned Lords have committed themselves to opposing this proposal, they will not mind saving face, on reconsideration, by agreeing to this Amendment or at any rate to the principle of this Amendment—because I am never difficult about accepting the exact words. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 2, line 21, at end, insert the said proviso.—(Lord Silkin.)
3.45 p.m.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD SIMONDS): My Lords, if noble Lords will permit me I will say the few words I should say before the noble Viscount behind me defends his Bill. I do so because I have to absent myself in a few moments. There is, of course, something to be said for the Amendment which the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, has moved: that has always been recognised, and, as he said, it is a balance that has to be weighed. It was weighed in 1937, when
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another Committee considered this very matter, and that Committee, whose Report resulted in the Limitation Act, 1939, said this—and it gives full weight to the considerations which the noble Lord has raised. You will forgive my reading it, but it is exactly the argument I will put before your Lordships' House. The Report says:
"We recognise the obvious advantages of giving a discretion of this kind to the court to extend the period of limitation. It would obviate the cases of hardship which are bound to occur under any rigid system of limitation, however well devised. And it would enable shorter general periods to be prescribed, without the danger of increasing those cases of hardship. There are, however, formidable objections. The exercise of such a discretion would no doubt present difficult problems to the court, and it is not easy to foresee how it would operate. In so far as it came to be exercised along well-defined principles, its chief merit, flexibility, would tend to disappear. On the other hand"—
and this is my point—
"if it were made more or less impossible to predict from one case to another how the discretion of the court was going to be exercised, the fundamental benefit conferred by statutes of limitation, namely, the elimination of uncertainty, would be prejudiced."
If I may be forgiven for saying this, it is a matter upon which judicial experience is entitled to have a great deal of weight with your Lordships. I do not pretend that I have consulted all my brethren, but I am specifically authorised by my noble and learned colleagues, Lord Oaksey, Lord Morton of Henryton and Lord Cohen, who cannot be here—they are sitting in the Judicial Committee—and whom I consulted, to say that they take the view strongly that this is a discretion which ought not to be inserted in the Bill. I thought the argument which the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, put forward exemplified in the most emphatic way the truism that hard cases make bad law. I do not deny that there may be such cases but I am sure There will be more if it is left to the court—and I repeat the words used on Second Reading—because you say, "Do what is reasonable in all the circumstances" but you do not and cannot define what are the circumstances. There is the hardship which might be entailed for a plaintiff if a solicitor has been negligent, but that is not a matter you are really entitled to take into consideration when you are considering the hardship to a possible plaintiff when an action is being brought by him after a term of years.

1055
The noble Lord, Lord Silkin, has quite properly referred to instances where a Judge has to exercise discretion. Of course, we are all familiar with that, and from the earliest days a large part of equitable jurisdiction was based upon the discretion vested in the courts. But in time that came to be paralysed in rules as rigid as the rules of Common Law; and that might very well be the result here. As to the examples given of discretion being exercised by the courts, I do not think one can base anything upon the discretion vested in the Divorce Court. That stands on a special footing of its own. In other cases where discretion is exercised—extending the time for the registration of a mortgage or whatever it may be—an order is always made without prejudice to the rights of any other persons. Now that you cannot do where you are extending the period of limitation, for by doing that very thing you will be prejudicing the legal right of the proposed defendant. I do not think it is useful to argue from other cases where discretion is exercised. Therefore, with what weight I may carry from long experience of the Bench and from the assistance which I have obtained from the advice of my colleagues, I can only advise your Lordships that this is not an Amendment which ought to be accepted. May I conclude by asking your Lordships' indulgence if I now leave the House.
3.50 p.m.
VISCOUNT HAILSHAM: My Lords, I must say that the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, who moved this Amendment, opened his Bible at the Book of Lamentations. He complained bitterly of the lonely position in which he found himself. I think it was even worse than he supposed, because one noble Lord who put his name to the Amendment—I refer to the noble Lord, Lord Chorley—seems to have deserted him altogether, whilst the noble and learned Earl the Leader of the Opposition was not only against him on this issue but expressed himself in the Second Reading debate in favour of a firm period of two years as against the more generous period of three years which the Bill, as drafted, gives. Therefore the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, is in splendid isolation on this matter, and I certainly do not envy him.
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In my submission he is mistaken about this particular matter, and the first witness I would call against him is himself. During the Second Reading debate it is true that he declared himself in some sympathy with the principle underlying the Amendment, but his chief complaint about the Bill was—I quote his own words (OFFICIAL REPORT, VOL. 187 (No. 73), col. 820):
"I still wonder, … whether it is right that it should be possible for an action to be brought against a public authority within three years."
His concern was for a specially privileged class of defendant. But now, by a feat of mental agility which it is almost impossible to exaggerate, the noble Lord feels himself compelled to propose an Amendment the effect of which would be to leave those same public authorities open to attack for six years if a Judge in his unfettered discretion proposed to allow it. This is, of course, a feat of intellectual contortionism which, I suppose, is logically possible, but I confess that I find it a little difficult to follow.
At the outset I was not strongly prejudiced against the proposal embodied in the Amendment. Indeed, when I originally read the Report of the Tucker Committee some time ago I felt a certain attraction towards it. But I must say that I have now come to the conclusion that there is nothing in the Amendment at all. To begin with, we have now had several years' experience of the three-year period of limitation: the great new nationalised corporations, I think, almost without exception—certainly this applies to coal, gas, transport and electricity—come under the three-year period of limitation. I have never heard the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, complain that there are even fifty people a year who might have brought actions against the National Coal Board but who are debarred from doing so by the three-year period. There is no evidence in front of anyone that this period of three years has done any injustice against the great nationalised corporations. The truth is that, with the best will in the world, the noble Lord fundamentally adheres to his prejudice in favour of privileged defendants; and it is, in fact, the purpose of this Bill to destroy the position of privileged defendants.

1057
Now what is the politics of it? The politics of it is this. The real purpose of the Bill is to put all potential defendants in actions for damages for personal injuries, whether they are the Crown—which has consented to it—or public authorities, or insurance companies, or railway companies, or nationalised corporations, or individuals, in the same boat. We do not think there ought any longer to be privileged classes of defendants. And, as numerous noble Lords said during the Second Reading debate, that does away with what those of us who have been practising in the law for years have recognised as a very great injustice, not to fifty but to hundreds and possibly even to thousands of people, who were affected adversely by the protection enjoyed by public authorities over a period of years. The fact of the matter is that the consent of the Crown, as we heard from the Lord Chancellor, or of the public authorities would not have been forthcoming to this Bill if it contained a proviso such as that which the noble Lord proposes. This Bill would not survive for an instant if I were to give way to the noble Lord in his Amendment. It would be opposed both by the Government and by the local authorities. The truth of this matter, the politics of this matter, is that, for the sake of an imaginary less than 1 per cent. of potential plaintiffs, for the sake of an imaginary fifty people, the noble Lord is prepared to perpetuate injustice to hundreds and possibly even thousands because he wants to retain his class of privileged defendants.
I beg him, with all respect, to see the light in this, because there is no real advantage, so far as one can tell from statistics or evidence, in the two-tiered or double-decker system of limitation which he proposes, and which reflects the recommendations of the Tucker Committee, but there will be a great deal of disadvantage in losing the Bill. The Lord Chancellor has already reminded your Lordships that the Law Reform Committee before the war examined precisely this proposal and came to an adverse conclusion—so did the Monckton Committee on Alternative Remedies. Lord Tucker, who may be
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described as the father and mother of the two-tiered proposal of which the noble Lord makes himself the sponsor in your Lordships' House, expressly disavowed his offspring in the Second Reading debate and told as, in effect—I paraphrase his words—that he really put in this proposal only in order to get an agreed Report as between two divergent groups in his Committee. There remains the noble Lord, who once thought it was too much to give in the case of local authorities a longer period than one year, and who is apparently unmoved by the spectacle of national industries with a three year period, yet who now wishes, at the Committee stage of this Bill, to make provision for a period of limitation of six years, subject to the unfettered discretion of a Judge. I ask your Lordships not to accept the Amendment.
3.58 p.m.
LORD SILKIN: My Lords, I am not going to press this Amendment to a Division. I will only say to the noble Viscount, with all respect, that he has hardly addressed himself at all to the merits of the Amendment. He has sought to show that I have been inconsistent by referring to arguments which I put forward about local authorities on the Second Reading, but he has not addressed himself to the merits of this Amendment. I suppose his strongest point is that if this Amendment were accepted it would mean an end of the Bill. I do not want to kill the Bill because I think there is a good deal in it. I am sorry about this Amendment, but I do not object to its being negatived.
On Question, Amendment negatived.
Clause 2 agreed to.
THE EARL OF SELKIRK: My Lords, may I interrupt the proceedings of the Committee to move that the House do now resume, so that I may make a statement? I beg to move that the House do now resume.
Moved, that the House do now resume.—(The Earl of Selkirk.)
On Question, Motion agreed to, and House resumed accordingly.

BUGANDA: STATE OF EMERGENCY
4.0 p.m.
THE EARL OF SELKIRK: My Lords, I should like to read a statement which my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Colonies has just made in another place. The statement is as follows:
"As the House will be aware, the Governor of Uganda yesterday re-imposed a state of emergency in the Province of Buganda. This step has been taken because an attempted trade boycott is now being intensified by threats and intimidation to the public in Buganda. Towards the end of April the Uganda National Congress called for a three-months' buying boycott of everything but 'bare necessities.' The boycott started fairly peaceably but during the last week members of the public have been forcibly prevented from selling and buying goods; cases have been reported of people being compelled to return goods which they have bought, and coffee trees belonging to people who have ignored the boycott have been cut down. Intimidation has greatly increased and criminal elements have been taking advantage of the situation.
"The measures which the Government of Uganda have decided to take have the unanimous support of the unofficial members of the Legislative Council, both Africans and others. The Governor has decided under the Emergency Regulations to suspend the issue of three newspapers which for many months have been consistently stirring up disaffection against the Government and the Regents of Buganda and which have contained articles stirring up racial hatred. The Special Constabulary have been called up and troops are available should they be required, but at present the situation remains calm and my right honourable friend has received no report of disturbances.
"Finally, I should like again to emphasise that the Governor's action, the necessity for which my right honourable friend greatly regrets, has been taken solely to enable the Government to carry out its first duty of maintaining law and order and to protect the
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law-abiding public from the activities of a comparatively small number of irresponsible agitators."
THE EARL OF LISTOWEL: My Lords, I do not think any of us would wish to express an opinion at this stage about the noble Earl's statement, but I should like to ask him three questions. If he cannot answer them, because, through no fault of his, he lacks the background of information possessed by the Colonial Minister, perhaps he will be good enough to reply in writing. First, will he place in the Library of the House for the benefit of noble Lords who may wish to study it, a copy of the regulations which the Governor will make under his emergency powers? Secondly, has the Lukiko of Buganda consented, or at least acquiesced, in this action, and, if not, will the willingness of its members to meet Professor Hancock when he goes out for the discussion of constitutional changes this summer be in any way affected? My third question is this: were the editors of the three newspapers which have been suspended given a warning by the Government of Uganda before this suspension took place?
THE EARL OF SELKIRK: My Lords, I am grateful for what the noble Earl has said. So far as a copy of the regulations is concerned, that will be made available, in due course, to Members in the Library. In regard to the Lukiko, I am not aware that they have been consulted. I am given to understand that matters of law and order are not their concern and are a matter for executive action by the Uganda Government as such. I understand that the Uganda Government take full responsibility for what has been done. I very much hope that nothing which has happened will in any way affect the position of Professor Hancock. The noble Earl is aware that he will not be leaving for a few weeks, but it is certainly hoped that his departure will not be delayed in any way by the events which have taken place.
VISCOUNT STANSGATE: My Lords, could the noble Earl confirm or deny what has been stated in the Press, that it is possible that newspapers in the vernacular will also be suppressed?
THE EARL OF SELKIRK: My Lords, I have no reason to add anything to what has been said at the present time.

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I think the newspapers to which reference was made were in the vernacular. I am not aware that warnings were given to these newspapers, but I will confirm this and endeavour to let the noble Earl know.

LAW REFORM (LIMITATION OF ACTIONS, &c.) BILL
4.7 p.m.
House again in Committee.
Clauses 3 to 5 agreed to.
Clause 6:
Further provisions as to limitations of actions in Scotland
6.—(1) No action of damages where the damages claimed consist of or include damages or solatium in respect of personal injuries to any person shall be brought in Scotland against any person unless it is commenced—

(a) in the case of an action brought by or on behalf of a person in respect of injuries sustained by that person, before the expiration of three years from the date of the act, neglect or default giving rise to the action or, where such act, neglect or default was a continuing one, from the date on which the fact, neglect or default ceased;

(b) in the case of an action brought by or on behalf of a person to whom a right of action has accrued on the death of another person in consequence of injuries sustained by that other person, before the expiration of three years from the date of that death;

Provided that for the purposes of paragraph (b) of this subsection a right of action shall be deemed not to have accrued to a person on the death of another person by whom injuries have been sustained if that other person or someone on his behalf was not immediately before his death, himself entitled to bring an action in respect of the injuries.
LORD GREENHILL LORD GREENHILL moved, in subsection (1) (a), to substitute "one year" for "three years." The noble Lord said: In moving the Amendment which stands in my name, I should first of all apologise for the lateness of its presentation, but, as your Lordships will remember, on the Second Reading of the Bill on May 20 I was not quite sure of my facts and based my case on my own impressions. This morning I received a letter containing information which makes my position clear and therefore I put down this Amendment. Whatever charges the noble Viscount may be able to make against me, I hope that, after hearing what I would say, the charge of inconsistency will not be one. Indeed, I have been so consistent that, whereas on
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Second Reading I suggested that there was no need to alter the period of six months' limitation now in operation in Scotland, I will now come a little his way by suggesting that it be altered to twelve months and that the provision in the clause be amended from three years to one year.
I do so on the ground of the experience of the Transport Department in Glasgow. I agree with the noble and learned Lord that it is not a matter in which any principle is involved. As he himself said, there is always an element of the arbitrary in matters affecting limitation of action. It is a practical question rather than one in which abstract principles can be involved. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Reid, himself a Scottish lawyer, said this in the course of the Second Reading debate (OFFICIAL REPORT, Vol. 187 (No. 73), col. 822):
"I would agree at once that two years is ample—and, indeed, more than ample—for 95 per cent., or even 99 per cent., of the cases that can be raised."
Therefore, in asking that the period be altered from three years to one, I do not seem to be asking for much of a concession. In our proper anxiety to do no injury to a person who has, or thinks he has, a claim against a public body there is a danger that we may be imposing a hardship upon public bodies; and it is in order to strike the necessary balance that I put forward this Amendment.
The experience of the Glasgow transport undertaking—the largest in the country, I think—is that they have been faced with difficulties in trying to rebut claims where there has been a considerable lapse of time between the accident and the time of the claim. Moreover, at the present time we are faced with a large turnover in our employees, drivers or conductors, and it often becomes difficult to trace their whereabouts when a case is raised. Then I am told that witnesses of an accident who are asked, a considerable time after the event, to give evidence are often somewhat hazy in their recollection and not so reliable as when they are examined some short time after the actual event. A further difficulty is that in the tracing of accidents the authority are dependent upon the production of the fare ticket to prove that the claimant—or the pursuer, as we call him in Scotland—was, in fact, one of those

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involved in the accident. The mere storage of the tickets takes up an enormous amount of space and is hardly worth the extra amount of trouble involved. For those reasons, I think there is a good case for extending the period as at present, but limiting the period to no more than one year. I hope that I can persuade the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, to accept the Amendment. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 3, line 44, leave out ("three years") and insert ("one year").—(Lord Greenhill.)
VISCOUNT HAILSHAM: I hope that I can persuade the noble Lord to withdraw the Amendment. It is a very startling Amendment—indeed, it is one of the most startling Amendments I have ever seen. But, first of all, let me deal with the arguments of the noble Lord. Of course difficulties face any defendant seeking to prove his case after the lapse of a year. What the noble Lord has not said a word about, however, is why Glasgow Corporation are any worse off than any other public authority in this respect. The effect of the Amendment would be to give potential defendants in Scotland a privilege which English public authorities do not ask for themselves, and which, so far as I know, no other Scottish public authority than Glasgow have suggested. Why should the Glasgow Corporation be in greater difficulty with regard to tracing their employees than, for instance, British Railways? I do not or the Corporation of Birmingham? I do not know. Why should it be more difficult for the Scottish corporations, as a whole, to trace the employees than, for instance British Railways? I do not know. Why should witnesses be hazier when they are called on behalf of public authorities than when they are called on behalf of private employers? I do not know. Nor have we been told. Why is it more cumbersome for an organisation run by a local authority to store fare tickets than for a body owned by the British Transport Commission, or the London Passenger Transport Board? I do not know.
Therefore, I am left completely baffled as to why the noble Lord should have proposed an Amendment which has the effect of giving Scottish public authorities a protection which has been withdrawn
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from English public authorities after three Committees have reported that it should not be given to anybody. Why is it so much more difficult for Scottish public authorities to defend actions than it is for the Crown in Scotland, which has consented to this change? I do not know. It seems to me that the case which has been made for this particular Amendment falls to the ground of its own inanition.
I must tell the noble Lord, however, that that is the smallest part of the objection to the Amendment. In his anxiety to relieve Scottish public authorities of liability for their own negligence after a year—because all these actions are based on negligence, or breach of statutory duty—the noble Lord has proposed a total revolution of the Scottish law regarding limitation of action. Apart from public authorities, in Scotland, so I apprehend—although I do not claim to speak with authority on Scottish law—there never has been a law of limitation at all. Now the noble Lord comes to this House and suggests that all defendants in Scotland—because that would be the legal effect of the Amendment—should be given the protection of a one-year limitation period, which is shorter than anything else that the Scottish defendant has ever enjoyed in history. As a matter of fact, I should submit that the three or four Committees which have examined this subject have come to a perfectly legitimate conclusion in saying that three years is a proper period of limitation, both in Scotland and in England. There is really no logical reason for a differentiation between the law of Scotland and that of England in this respect. The Tucker Committee heard evidence from Scottish public authorities. My noble and learned friend Lord Reid spoke as a Scots lawyer on this matter. I cannot for the life of me see what there is in Scotland which makes public authorities so anxious to have a privilege which no other public authority is to be given under this Bill, or why Scottish defendants should be singled out for treatment which they have never enjoyed in the history of either English or Scottish law.
These things lead me to say that the Amendment certainly does not meet with my approval, and, if necessary, I shall ask your Lordships to reject it. However, I hope that the noble Lord will not

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persist in it. I am left to remind the noble Lord of something of which I reminded him on the Second Reading of the Bill; that is, the experience, not of a public authority in Scotland, but of a well known bus company, Scottish Motor Traction, Limited, which I apprehend is not all that smaller in its activities than even the Glasgow Corporation Transport Department. That bus company had the public spirit—which the Corporation Transport Department, I believe, had not—to offer evidence to the Tucker Committee. The evidence which it offered was something quite startling—and the noble Lord, Lord Silkin, will bear me out in this, because he referred in his own Amendment to the statistic that I quoted. The evidence was that over five years only 10 per cent. of the actions brought against the company were raised within nine months of the accident, and 50 per cent. between nine months and one year. That means, assuming that a greater degree of haste is not shown by other plaintiffs, or pursuers, that the noble Lord's Amendment would shut out from the Scottish courts, I think it is, 60 per cent. or 50 per cent. of the potential litigants in actions for personal injuries. This would be a most shocking result to achieve.
I earnestly ask the noble Lord to remember that, when we are talking about this particular Bill, we are talking about people who have been badly hurt in their bodies—so hurt, in fact, that many of them may never be able to work or walk again, and will certainly suffer from incapacity for life. When we talk about the difficulty of storing tickets, in order to make quite certain that the right person has made a claim, because he was there at the time of the accident, we are weighing the inconvenience of storing tickets and the haziness of the recollection of witnesses—hardships which other defendants have had to bear since 1623, in England, at any rate—against the suffering endured by people as a result of negligence of the employees of the Corporation. I am shocked to know that, of all the great cities in the Kingdom, Glasgow should want a privileged position in circumstances of this kind. I hope the noble Lord will not persist in his Amendment.
4.20 p.m.
LORD GREENHILL: Before I attempt to answer the eloquent argument of the noble and learned Viscount, may I, on a question of fact, say this? According to information that I received this morning, the Corporation of Glasgow Parliamentary Bills Committee did, after consideration, recommend that one year be the period of limitation. That recommendation was communicated to the Association of City Councils who, in turn, recommended that period to Parliament. I do not pretend to possess any legal knowledge, and certainly not the skill of presentation of the noble Viscount. Nevertheless, I feel compelled to say that, in so far as there is any difference between the local authority and other public bodies, that difference is often seen in the fact that, because it is conscious of the need for public support in any action it may take, a local authority considers very carefully before doing anything which would annoy any claimant against it. Therefore, the treatment that an injured person would receive from a local authority would, I suggest, be more generous than that which he would receive from a public body. The noble Viscount drew my attention to the fact that in Scotland there was no law of limitation. Again, if I may refer to the speech made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Reid, he said (OFFICIAL REPORT, Vol. 187 (No. 73), col. 822):
"But it is apparent that in Scotland the effect is much greater than in England because in Scotland the period for prescription at present is twenty years."
It is true that he goes on to say:
"Of course, it is unheard of that an action should, in fact be brought after any delay of that kind…."
I am saying this in order to try and modify the effect of the noble Viscount's arguments. I will only express my regret that he will not agree to, or, shall I say, reconsider, my Amendment. I beg leave to withdraw the Amendment.
Amendment by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 6 agreed to.
Remaining clauses and Schedule agreed to.
House resumed: Bill reported without amendment.

JURIES BILL
4.24 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
VISCOUNT HAILSHAM: My Lords, I must apologise for taking up your Lordships' time on a second Bill in the same afternoon. This Bill, however, is much shorter and, I hope, almost without controversy. It has come up from another place and it has, I think I am right in saying, the blessing of the Government. The purpose of the Bill, which is set out in the short Explanatory Memorandum, is to amend the provisions of the Juries Act, 1949, as to payments in respect of jury service. As the law stands, those payments are of two types. There is payment for travelling and subsistence, and there is compensation for loss of earnings and additional expenses. Whereas the payments for travelling and subsistence are prescribed without limit under regulations made by the Secretary of State, subject only to the consent of the Treasury—which, I understand, is not always readily obtained—there is a statutory maximum imposed on the compensation for loss of earnings and additional expenses.
The object of this Bill is to remove the statutory maximum on this latter type of payment. That is necessary because for some time—it may be for the whole time—since the Juries Act was passed, the regulations have provided for those expenses to run at the statutory maximum. The statutory maximum has, in practice, been found to be insufficient, and rather than put a higher statutory maximum upon it, it has been thought desirable to remove the statutory maximum altogether and to substitute a provision for regulations comparable to that for the other type of payment under the Juries Act. In my submission, that is a reasonable step to take. It also has the merit that in this respect it brings the payments to jurors into line with payments to members of local authorities. There is, however, this difference, which I must point out to the House, between the payments to members of local authorities and the proposed payments to jurors—namely, that the regulations for the payment of local authorities have to be laid before Parliament, and under the terms of this Bill the regulations do not have to be laid. That might be thought a subject of criticism, but I believe the answer is as follows, and I hope your
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Lordships will find it a satisfactory one. This payment brings all payments to jurors into the same category as payments to witnesses; they come under regulations made by the Secretary of State. It would be an anomaly by this Bill, which affects only compensation for loss of earnings and additional expenses, to put them in a special category that is not applicable to payments to witnesses and not applicable to the other payments to jurors.
It may be argued in this connection that payments to local authority representatives could be differently regarded, since they are payments repeatedly made, in respect of repeated attendances at local authorities' meetings by the same people, and that they might therefore be subject to abuse. Payments to jurors are not often made to the same persons—indeed, if they were, I imagine that the jurors concerned would be the first to complain. So the juror is more in the position of the witness where it has not been thought necessary to provide for the regulation to be laid and approved. As a further argument, I would suggest to your Lordships that, as this matter has come up to your Lordships in this form from another place, which is more concerned with finance than we are ourselves, and as it is subject to the consent of the Treasury and is concerned solely with the amount of money payable subject to that consent, we might let it go through as it stands. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Viscount Hailsham.)
4.29 p.m.
LORD OGMORE: My Lords, I think both the subject-matter of the Bill and the explanation given of it by the noble Viscount are satisfactory, and his explanation was a very clear one. I am not altogether convinced, however, by the last part of his argument. I agree with him that it is desirable to have the same procedure followed with regard to both types of payment to jurors; it is obviously a desirable feature which should be embodied in this Bill. But I cannot see why both classes of payments, or the orders relating to them, should not be laid before Parliament. It may be that this is not the correct Bill in which to meet that problem, and I think that the Government might consider, perhaps in a subsequent Bill, making the neces-

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sary alteration so as to provide for the laying of regulations relating to both classes of payments to jurors before each House of Parliament.
I do not think the point about payment to members of local authorities is quite in the same class—first, because, as the noble Viscount says, the payments to members of local authorities are made frequently, but mainly because the juror is in a very different category from that of a member of a local authority. After all, trial by jury is one of the bulwarks of the liberty of the subject, and so on. I think it is right and proper that Parliament should have an opportunity of viewing, and if necessary reviewing, any regulations that are made with regard to payments to be made to jurors. Apart from those comments, I wish the Bill every success in its passage through this House.
4.31 p.m.
LORD LLOYD: My Lords, my noble friend, as always, has given your Lordships a brief and extremely lucid exposition of the merits of the Bill. I have no more to add to what he has said than to assure him that what he told your Lordships is true—namely, that the Government support this Bill and that he can count upon us for any assistance that he requires in its passage through Parliament. With regard to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Ogmore, I am, of course, always ready to consider anything he says, but I think that the arguments put forward by my noble friend for the procedure that has been adopted are sound. We have to remember that if every single set of regulations had to be laid, the Tables in Parliament would be knee-deep in paper. We have to consider a little carefully, therefore, what should and what should not be laid. There is no principle that I know of which binds us as to what regulations should, or should not, be laid; but it is only fair to point out that in the case of expenses for witnesses, which have been considered by both Houses of parliament, it has not been thought appropriate that the regulations involved should be laid. Clearly, if that is the case with witnesses, it seems only logical that it should apply to jurors who are in a similar position; in both cases they are doing their duties as citizens. What is sauce for the witnesses should also be sauce for the jurors. I
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am, of course, very ready to consider what the noble Lord has said and to bring what he has said to the attention of my right honourable friend.
On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.

AGRICULTURE (MISCELLANEOUS PROVISIONS) BILL
4.33 p.m.
Order of the Day for the Third Reading read.
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be read a third time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 3a.—(Lord Carrington.)
LORD GLYN: My Lords, I beg to ask the Minister whether he can give some assurance to the House, before this Bill receives its Third Reading, that some real attention will be paid to the risk to the agricultural industry of foot-and-mouth disease through lifting the regulations in regard to swill. Could he make some statement about that and give an assurance to the agricultural community?
LORD BURDEN: My Lords, may I follow up that comment—because I ventured to intervene on the Second Reading debate—by calling the attention of the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, to the fact that it was the Ministry of Agriculture's veterinary advisers who asked for the sterilisation scheme to enable them to control foot-and-mouth disease during the war, and who pressed for more and more sterilisation plants throughout the war. It was the Ministry of Agriculture representatives who reported to the Waste Food Board, at their regular and frequent meetings held during the war, first, the number of primary outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease since the previous meeting, due to the feeding of unprocessed swill, and, secondly, the number of secondary outbreaks which had arisen from the primary ones. The Waste Food Board were also told that the virus of foot-and-mouth disease had been found in the untreated salvage from Argentine meat. That was confirmed by the Ministry of Agriculture Research Station at Weybridge. Further, the Board were informed that there was no record of a

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single case of foot-and-mouth disease having occurred in a pig or other animal fed on sterilised swill. That emphasises the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Glyn. I hope the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, will not take this as a debating point, but he suggested that, because there is an Order, the whole thing would be controlled. With due respect, I think that is like arguing that there is no crime because there is a law to prevent crime. I will leave it at that.
LORD CARRINGTON: My Lords, I hope the noble Lord, Lord Burden, will not take this as a debating point if I say that he is quite out of order in raising this point at this stage of the Bill. There is nothing in this Bill about the processing of kitchen waste other than that it allows local authorities to do so. Strictly speaking, I think the noble Lord was quite out of order, but I am quite prepared to answer his point and that of my noble friend. I know that both of them are interested in this question and the animal health repercussions which devolve from it.
As I said, I think, on Second Reading, and as I certainly said in a Written Answer to a Question which the noble Lord, Lord Glyn, asked me about a week ago, the Report of the Gowers Committee will be published some time towards the end of this month, and I am quite certain that part of it will deal with the collection and treatment of kitchen waste. We propose to continue the system of licensing of collectors of kitchen waste in the scheduled areas until there has been an opportunity of considering the recommendations of the Gowers Committee. Licences will be granted if the collector's plant has been approved by the Ministry's veterinary officers, and subject to compliance with certain conditions for safeguarding animal health. As I also said on Second Reading, I think this is a question of balance between animal health considerations and the amount of waste food which can be collected. In my view, until such time as we have read the Gowers Committee Report and have made up our minds on it, we have struck the right balance.
On Question, Bill read 3a with the Amendments, and passed, and returned to the Commons.

CAERNARVON CORPORATION BILL [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons, agreed to with Amendments: the said Amendments considered and agreed to.
TYNE IMPROVEMENT BILL [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons, agreed to with an Amendment; the said Amendment considered and agreed to.