EARL ST. ALDWYNMy Lords, your Lordships will have noticed that two Consolidation Bills which were down for consideration to-day in the name of my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor are not now on the Order Paper and have been deferred unlit Tuesday, February 2. My noble and learned friend has asked me to explain to your Lordships why this has been done and why he has not been able to make the explanation himself. Yesterday my noble and learned friend found that an urgent appeal to your Lordships' House in its Judicial capacity, an adoption matter, would have to be postponed, with consequent hardship to the parties involved, because one of the noble and learned Lords of Appeal in Ordinary was indisposed. He has therefore decided to sit in the Appellate Committee himself so that the appeal may be heard without delay; and this hearing is now taking place. He has asked me to apologise to the House on his behalf for his absence from the Woolsack until the conclusion of the hearing of the appeal, which I gather is likely to be some time next week.
§ LORD GARDINERMy Lords, I am sure that the whole House will sympathise with the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor in his difficulties. All Lord Chancellors are pressed by their colleagues from time to time to spare a judge for something, such as to take the chair at a Committee or a Tribunal, as in the case of the electricity workers' dispute. I do not think that our colleagues always realise the difficulties that this creates. I have not forgotten that I spared Mr. Justice Scarman to take the chair at a Tribunal in Belfast which I understood from the Northern Ireland Government would take about three weeks. This was in August of the year before last; and the Tribunal is still sitting.