Sitting of 3 August 1911

Preamble
The House met at a Quarter before Three of the clock, Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair.

PRIVATE BUSINESS.
Metropolitan Water Board (New Works) Bill [Lords],
To be considered To-morrow.
North British Railway (Superannuation Fund, etc.) Order Confirmation Bill [Lords],
Lords Amendments to the Bill, in lieu of Commons Amendments to which the Lords have disagreed, considered, and agreed to.
Gas Orders Confirmation (No. 4) Bill [Lords],
Reported, with Amendments [Provisional Orders confirmed]; Report to lie upon the Table.
Bill, as amended, to be considered Tomorrow, and to be printed.
Commons Regulation (Winton and Kaber) Provisional Order Bill,
Reported, with an Amendment [Provisional Order confirmed]; Report to lie upon the Table.
Bill, as amended, to be considered To-morrow.
Commons Regulation (Burrington) Provisional Order Bill,
Reported, with Amendments [Provisional Order confirmed]; Report to lie upon the Table.
Bill, as amended, to be considered To-morrow.
Pier and Harbour Orders Confirmation (No. 2) Bill [Lords],
Reported, with Amendments [Provisional Orders confirmed]; Report to lie upon the Table.
Bill, as amended, to be considered To-morrow.
Pier and Harbour Orders Confirmation (No. 1) Bill [Lords],
Reported, with Amendments [Provisional Orders confirmed]; Report to lie upon the Table.
Bill, as amended, to be considered Tomorrow.
Gas Orders Confirmation (No. 2) Bill [Lords],
Reported, with Amendments [Provisional Orders confirmed]; Report to lie upon the Table.
Bill, as amended, to be considered To-morrow.
Electric Lighting Provisional Orders (No. 4) Bill [Lords],
Reported, with Amendments [Provisional Orders confirmed]; Report to lie upon the Table.
Bill, as amended, to be considered To morrow.
Gas Orders Confirmation (No. 1) Bill [Lords],
Reported, without Amendment [Provisional Orders confirmed]; Report to he upon the Table.
Bill to be read the third time To-morrow.
Gas Orders Confirmation (No. 3) Bill [Lords],
Reported, without Amendment [Provisional Orders confirmed]; Report to lie upon the Table.
Bill to be read the third time To-morrow.
Electric Lighting Provisional Orders (No. 1) Bill [Lords],
Reported, without Amendment [Provisional Orders confirmed]; Report to lie upon the Table.
Bill to be read the third time To-morrow.
Electric Lighting Provisional Orders (No. 2) Bill [Lords],
Reported, without Amendment [Provisional Orders confirmed]; Report to lie upon the Table.
Bill to be read the third time To-morrow.
Electric Lighting Provisional Orders (No. 3) Bill [Lords],
Reported, without Amendment [Provisional Orders confirmed]; Report to lie upon the Table.
Bill to be read the third time To-morrow.
Tramways Orders Confirmation Bill [Lords],
Reported, without Amendment [Provisional Orders confirmed]; Report to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.
Bill to be read the third time To-morrow.
Paddington Borough Council (Superannuation and Pensions Bill [Lords],
Poplar Borough Council (Superannuation and Pensions) Bill [Lords],
Rhondda Urban District Council Bill [Lords],
Reported, with Amendments; Reports to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.

NAVAL PRIZE BILL.
Reported, with Amendments, from Standing Committee C.
Report to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.
Minutes of the Proceedings of the Standing Committee to be printed.
Bill, as amended (in the Standing Committee), to be taken into consideration upon Monday next, and to be printed.

SLAUGHTER OF ANIMALS BILL.
Reported, with Amendments, from Standing Committee A.
Report to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.
Minutes of the Proceedings of the Standing Committee to be printed.
Bill, as amended (in the Standing Committee), to be taken into consideration To-morrow, and to be printed.

CONGESTED DISTRICTS (SCOTLAND) ACT, 1897.
Copy presented of Thirteenth Annual Report of the Congested Districts Board for Scotland [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
IRISH LAND COMMISSION (PROCEEDINGS).
Copy presented of Return of Proceedings of the Irish Land Commission during the month of January, 1911 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
POOR RELIEF (ENGLAND AND WALES).
Copy ordered of statement of amount expended by boards of guardians for Poor Relief during the half-year ended the 31st day of March, 1911, and similar statement for the half-year ended the 30th day of September, 1911 (in continuation of Parliamentary Paper, No. 103, of Session 1911).—[Mr. Herbert Lewis.]
ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS.

  Albania.
  Mr. MacCALLUM SCOTTasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he is able to communicate to the House any further intelligence received from His Majesty's Minister at Cettinje, or from other sources, respecting the condition of the Albanian shepherds and their families now penned within the marshes south of Scutari; whether he is aware that the report that the sufferers had received permission to return to their homes in the mountains is not borne out by the testimony of the Austro-Hungarian Chargé d'Affaires at Cettinje in his report to the Vienna Foreign Office; and whether His Majesty's Government have received any information as to the arrival in Montenegro and at San Giovanni di Medua of Red Cross League representatives commissioned by branches in Europe to distribute food and clothing and medical aid to the women and children who have been driven from their homes by the Turkish troops?
  The SECRETARY of STATE for FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Sir Edward Grey): The answer to all the three points raised in the hon. Member's question is in the negative.

  Turkey.
  Mr. MacCALLUM SCOTTasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether, in view of the increasing public interest in Turkish affairs, he can promise that the reports of His Majesty's Consular representatives in the European and Asiatic provinces of the Ottoman Empire for the year 1910 shall be laid upon the Table before the end of the Session?
  Sir EDWARD GREY: I do not consider that any useful purpose would be achieved by the publication of the reports received

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  during the year 1910 from His Majesty's Consular officers in the European and Asiatic provinces of the Ottoman Empire in regard to political conditions in their respective Consular districts. The majority of the Consular trade reports for the Ottoman Empire for the year 1910 have already been issued and laid.

  Untenanted Land (County Limerick).
  Mr. O'SHAUGHNESSYasked the Chief Secretary for Ireland, if he can say whether the Estates Commissioners have agreed to purchase the untenanted land at Ballynorth, near Askeaton, county Limerick, from the landlady, Miss O'Grady; and, if not, can he say whether the negotiations for purchase have fallen through, and what was the reason why they did so?
  The CHIEF SECRETARY for IRELAND (Mr. Birrell): The Estates Commissioners are still in negotiation for the purchase of these lands.

  Evicted Tenants (County Limerick).
  Mr. O'SHAUGHNESSYasked the Chief Secretary for Ireland if he could say how many evicted tenants there are in the county of Limerick who have applied to the Estates Commissioners to be reinstated in their former holdings and who have not yet been provided for?
  Mr. BIRRELL: The Estates Commissioners have received 693 applications from persons seeking reinstatement in holdings in county Limerick. One hundred and fifty-three applicants have been reinstated in their former holdings or provided with others, and twelve have been noted for consideration in the allotment of untenanted land acquired by the Commissioners. In 394 cases the Commissioners decided after inquiry and consideration to take no action, and the remaining applications were not received within the period limited by the Evicted Tenants Act, 1907, and cannot therefore be dealt with under that Act.
  Mr. O'SHAUGHNESSY: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether, in view of the fact that there is a large number of evicted tenants in Limerick who are not yet provided for he does not think it time that the Estates Commissioners took active steps to reinstate these poor people, some of whom have been out of their homes twenty years?
  Mr. BIRRELL: The Estates Commissioners have a very difficult task to perform in considering what claims are to be considered. The discretion rests with them under the Act.
  Mr. O'SHAUGHNESSY: Having regard to the fact that the Land Act of 1903 has now been in operation for eight years, and that the Evicted Tenants Act was passed a couple of years ago, does the right hon. Gentleman not think it really time that the Estates Commissioners should make a clean sweep of all these cases at once and put all the evicted tenants back on the land?
  Mr. BIRRELL: No, we could not make a clean sweep of them at once and put them all back on the land.
  Mr. O'SHAUGHNESSY: Will the right hon. Gentleman lay the matter before the Estates Commissioners?
  Mr. BIRRELL: It has been before them for a long time.

  Sillies River, Fermanagh (Drainage).
  Mr. CRUMLEYasked the Chief Secretary for Ireland whether he has received a memorial from the neighbouring landholders requesting a Government grant towards the cost of drainage of the Sillies River, county Fermanagh; and whether, having regard to the damage suffered by these small landholders by the annual flooding of their lands and to the fact that they are not able to defray the cost of the necessary drainage, he will give the memorial favourable consideration?
  Mr. BIRRELL: The memorial referred to has been received. There are no funds at my disposal which could be made available for the drainage of the River Sillies, but the persons interested in the matter might apply to the Development Commissioners, if they have not already done so.
  Mr. CRUMLEY: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman if he will send down an engineer to inquire on the spot what benefit would be conferred by a very small outlay of money, and so encourage the people of the district to come to the assistance of the Government?
  Mr. BIRRELL: I do not think it would be a kind thing to send down an engineer unless I knew that the money would be forthcoming to carry out any proposal he might make.

  County Council Election, County Longford.
  Mr. HUDSONasked the Chief Secretary for Ireland if he was aware that, at a recent county council election for a member for the Division of Edgeworthstown, county Longford, the present rate collector, Mr. Owen McGarry, took a prominent and active part in the election by canvassing the electors, and on the day of the poll sent cars to bring in the voters; whether such action on the part of this paid servant from a public body is permissible; and what steps, if any, he proposes to take in the matter?
  Mr. BIRRELL: The Local Government Board have received a complaint regarding the conduct of this officer to the effect indicated, but the writer was informed that they have no jurisdiction to intervene although they considered such conduct undesirable on the part of any officer of the county council. A copy of the correspondence was sent to the county council, who are the proper body to deal with the matter.

  Signalmen's Hours and Wages (North British Railway).
  Mr. JOHN HOPEasked the President of the Board of Trade whether he was aware that the signalmen on the North British Railway main line between Berwick and Edinburgh, on the section between Reston and Drem, were working on a twelve-hours' shift for a wage of from 21s. to 23s. a week; and whether, in the interest of the safety of the travelling public he would take steps to compel the North British Railway Company to reduce these hours of labour?
  The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD of TRADE (Mr. Tennant): No complaint respecting the hours of labour of these signalmen has been made to the Board of Trade during recent years, but I will call for a return from the railway company showing the hours of work and the nature of the duties of the men at the signal cabins on the section of line mentioned by my hon. Friend. When the return has been received, the Board of Trade will consider whether any steps in the direction he suggests are necessary.

  Glasgow Corporation Telephone Staff.
  Mr. MacCALLUM SCOTTasked the Postmaster-General, whether he will consider the desirability of extending to ex-members of the Glasgow Corporation local
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  telephone staff now in his employ concessions with regard to the reckoning of service with the corporation for purposes of annual leave, sick pay, pension, gratuity, and superannuation, similar to the concessions proposed to be granted to ex-employés of the National Telephone Company in connection with the Telephone Transfer Bill?
  The POSTMASTER-GENERAL (Mr. Herbert Samuel): The telephone staff of the Glasgow Corporation have been in a better position than the staff of the National Telephone Company, seeing that, after a comparatively short period of employment under the Corporation on telephone duties they were taken into the service of the State more than five years before the transfer of the company's staff. I do not consider that they have any claim to participate in the special arrangements made with reference to the company's staff.
  Mr. MacCALLUM SCOTT: Will the right hon. Gentleman say whether he has taken into consideration the fact that a considerable number of the corporation employés were previously in the service of the National Telephone Company?
  Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL: Perhaps the hon. Member will give notice of that question.

  Letters to Pekin.
  Mr. STEWARTasked the Postmaster-General if letters addressed to Pekin, if they happen to be under-stamped or by inadvertance not to be marked viâ Siberia, are sent viâ Suez and thereby delayed several weeks; whether he will consider the possibility of sending such letters forward by the quickest route and collecting the extra charge at Pekin; and whether the letters to the British Legation only are given the penny postage rate, while the rest of the British community do not enjoy it?
  Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL: Letters for the Far East to be sent by the Siberian route must be fully prepaid and super-scribed "viâ Siberia." The conditions of transit viâ Siberia have been under my consideration, but I regret that at present I am unable to arrange for any relaxation of the regulations. The postage on letters for Pekin is 2½d. for the first ounce and l½d. for each succeeding ounce. Letters for the British Legation are sent to Tientsin, to which place letters are transmissible at the rate of 1d. per ounce.

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  The British Legation makes special arrangements for fetching its correspondence from Trientsin.
  Mr. STEWART: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that Great Britain is the only Power that is subject to the inconvenience of having correspondence to Pekin sometimes delayed for weeks?
  Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL: No; that is not the case.

  Telephone Transfer (Rating).
  Sir CLEMENT KINLOCH-COOKEasked whether, since the Telephone Transfer Bill contains no provisions as to the rating of the telephone undertaking after the same has been transferred to the Government, it is the intention of the Government to make a contribution in lieu of rates to the local authorities upon the part of the undertaking other than buildings occupied by the Grown; if so, upon what basis; and whether porvision will be made in the Bill to obviate, in the case of telephones, the effect of Section 22 of the Telegraph Act, 1868, which has prevented the telegraph undertaking being re-assessed since the passing of that Act?
  Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL: This question is under consideration, but I am not in a position to make a statement. No legislative powers are necessary in any case. The section of the Telegraph Act, 1868, which the hon. Member quotes, has no application in the present instance.

  Postage Stamps (Machinery).
  Mr. BENNETT-GOLDNEYasked the Postmaster-General what is the approximate value in English money of the German machinery already imported, and to be imported, into this country for the manufacture of the present postage stamps under the new arrangements made by the Government for their supply; whether the poor adhesive qualities of the new stamps is due to the inferiority of the substance used or to the fact that the German-made machines are inferior to English and American inventions; whether the German machines are constructed so as to distribute an even coating of vegetable mucilage with the same precision as a glaze of animal size prepared from hooves of horses or hide scrapings; and whether, in view of the prevalence of the habit of stamp-licking, he will not only give orders to have
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  the substance analysed from time to time, but will insist upon the quantity used on the backs of the stamps being sufficient?
  The FINANCIAL SECRETARY to the TREASURY (Mr. Hobhouse): I have no information as to the value of any German machinery imported or to be imported by the contractors under their own. private arrangements. As I pointed out the other day the contractors attempted, but were unable to obtain, British machinery. The analysis to which the stamps are from time to time submitted proves the adhesive substance used to be gum-arabic, as required by the contract, and the quantity present to be not less than the proportion which formerly obtained. The machines at present in use are not, so far as I am aware, inferior to any others obtainable. Enquiries are being made with a view to improving the adhesive properties of the stamps.

  Haulbowline Dockyard.
  Mr. CREANasked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether he is aware that the workmen at Haulbowline, who reside at Queenstown, are conveyed to and from the island free of charge on the Government launch; that the workmen residing at Ringaskiddy, Monkstown, and the western side of the harbour are compelled to pay a local company for a like service; and, seeing that frequent applications have been made by those men for similar treatment to that given to those residing at Queens-town and the eastern side of the harbour, will he say on what grounds those facilities have been refused?
  The FIRST LORD of the ADMIRALTY (Mr. McKenna): The Admiralty provides a ferry service between Queenstown and Haulbowline which is used by the majority of the men working in Haulbowline Yard. We do not recognise any obligation to provide free passages for men who find it to their advantage to reside at places where they are unable to make use of the facilities which the Admiralty affords.
  Mr. CREAN: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that for many years, up to a very late period, the men residing to the west of the island had the use of a boat to bring them to and from the island, and that they had only very lately been deprived of that, and can he see his way to give those people who have been residing there all their lives such accommodation,

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  or advance the slight amount of money necessary to enable them to provide it for themselves?
  Mr. McKENNA: I will look further into the question, but I am not able to make any promise.
  Mr. CREAN: Will the right hon. Gentleman consider it?
  Mr. McKENNA: Yes.

  Writing Staff (Admiralty).
  Mr. CHARLES DUNCANasked how many promotions from the writing to the directing staffs at the Admiralty and naval establishments have been made during the last ten years, and in which departments?
  Mr. McKENNA: The number of promotions made is fifteen in the Naval Ordnance Store Department and one in the Victualling Department.
  Mr. C. DUNCANasked when it is proposed to fill the remaining vacancies for senior writers in the professional departments at the Royal dockyards?
  Mr. McKENNA: This question is now under consideration, and it is hoped to make the appointments shortly.
  Mr. C. DUNCANasked what are the conditions of promotion of writers from the second to the first grade?
  Mr. McKENNA: The conditions are, the attainment of the maximum pay of the second grade and recommendation for promotion. The former may be waived in the case of vacancies at foreign yards. Preference is given to writers who signify their willingness to serve at any naval establishments at home or abroad.

  Board of Admiralty (Access of Employés).
  Mr. C. DUNCANasked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether, in view of the practice in other State Departments, he will grant facilities for representatives of organisations of Admiralty employés to have direct access to the Board of Admiralty at other than the occasions of official visits to the naval establishments?
  Mr. McKENNA: The Admiralty practice, whereby the Lords Commissioners in person visit the yards for the purpose of hearing petitions from the men's representatives, is of long standing, and
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  appears to us preferable to methods adopted by other Departments, whose organisation does not admit of their following our example. The Admiralty system gives the fullest opportunity to individuals and classes of men to have direct access to the Board without the officers of the yard being present.

  Devonport Dockyard (Works Department).
  Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKEasked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether he is aware that several men, who have been employed for periods ranging from one to five years in the works department at Devonport Dockyard, have received notice of discharge, the notice to expire on Friday, 4th August; and whether, in view of their length of servitude, he will consider the possibility of allowing these men to take their discharge on Tuesday, 8th August, so as to give them the benefit of the holidays, with pay, to which they would have been entitled had they been discharged a week later?
  Mr. McKENNA: The men referred to have already had their time of discharge extended from 29th July to the 3rd and 4th of this month. I regret that I cannot further defer the period of discharge as it would prejudicially affect other men.
  Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKE: Are we to understand that men who have been working in the dockyard for five years are to be discharged on the eve of a bank holiday?
  Mr. McKENNA: I have given the hon. Gentleman the full answer to the question, and he will understand what the words convey.

  Customs and Excise Assistants.
  Mr. HAYDN JONESasked the Secretary to the Treasury whether the Customs and Excise Amalgamation Committee have taken, or will take, into consideration the difference in the number and length of service of assistants promoted in the Customs and Excise branches, respectively?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: The Report of the Committee will be issued in a few days. I regret that I do not feel able to make any statement in anticipation of that Report.
  Mr. HAYDN JONESasked whether the assistants of Customs and Excise (new entrants), now employed continuously on clerical duties in the Customs Department,

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  receive at least £82 4s. in their first year of service, while assistants of Customs (old scheme), employed on similar duties for the same number of hours per day and days per annum, receive £80 only in their third year of service?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: I am afraid that I cannot add anything to the answer I gave to the hon. Member's similar question on 25th ultimo.
  Mr. HAYDN JONESasked whether, since the issue of the Excise transfer Order in Council, the number of promotions of assistants of Excise has been over three times that of assistants of Customs, although the former had little more than half the years of service of the latter; and, if so, whether this difference has been brought about by holding open for several months in 1909 a number of vacancies in the grade of second class examining officer, and by transferring assistants of Customs and appointing the majority of new entrants to the Excise branch in 1910, thus setting free assistants of Excise for promotion?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: I am informed that the answer to the first paragraph is in the affirmative, to the second in the negative. The number of higher posts open to Excise assistants in their organisation is nearly three times the number open to Customs assistants in their organisation.
  Mr. HAYDN JONESasked the Secretary to the Treasury whether, in order to meet the increase in pension work in the Excise branch, a number of new stations have been created, necessitating the promotion of a number of assistants and a considerable increase of staff; whether, to meet the increase of work in the Customs branch due to the introduction of the new system of accounts, examining officers are being employed on overtime and assistants of Customs are being employed, acting in a superior capacity, thus obviating the necessity of increasing the staff and promoting assistants to examining officers; and, if so, can he state the necessity for this difference in treatment which appears to operate to the detriment of the Customs officers?
  Mr. HOBHOUSE: The Old Age Pensions Act has been in operation for two and a-half years, the new system of warehousing accounts for three months only. Further experience of the latter is required before the necessity for permanent
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  increases of staff can be properly gauged; much of the work now being done on overtime will not recur.

  Closing Order (Palmerston Road, Hampstead).
  Mr. CASSELasked the President of the Local Government Board what were the special circumstances which disentitled Mr. Arlidge to state his case to the Board why an order should not be made confirming the closing order made by the Hampstead Borough Council in respect of 83, Palmerston Road?
  The PRESIDENT of the LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. Burns): Mr. Arlidge appealed to the Board against a closing order made by the Hampstead Borough Council under the Housing, Town Planning, etc., Act, 1909, and in the statement of appeal the grounds on which it was contended that the closing order should not be confirmed were stated. The Board arranged for the public local inquiry rendered necessary by the Act, and gave the appellant notice of it. The appellant informed the Board that he had decided not to appear on the inquiry, and stated that he did not see how on the inquiry he could tender any better evidence than that already in the Board's possession in support of his contention that the closing order should not have been made. The inquiry is, of course, intended to ascertain the facts of the case, and to give each party in the presence of the other party every opportunity of stating his position. Facts are elicited and statements tested by examination and cross-examination. The appellant was fully aware of the intention of the inquiry, and deliberately refrained from being formally represented. The procedure of the Board on the appeal was precisely that contemplated and explained when the Housing Bill was under the consideration of Parliament, and I hope that in view of this full statement of the special circumstances of the case the hon. Member will agree that the appellant's claim to a further hearing is untenable.
  Mr. CASSEL: Were there really the special circumstances which the right hon. Gentleman referred in his answer to me when he said, "If the hon. Gentleman himself knew of the special circumstances applying to this very special litigant I do not think he would press me to do what he asks me to do," when what he has stated now was the substance of what was stated in my question?
  Mr. BURNS: If the hon. Member is going to raise this on my Vote this afternoon he will have an ample opportunity of deciding for himself what are the special circumstances.

  Vaccination.
  Mr. C. DUNCANasked the President of the Local Government Board whether the calves that are used for providing lymph for vaccination purposes are afterwards sold as veal; if so, whether he can see his way to putting an end to such a practice; and, if not, what becomes of these animals after they are no longer used for lymph?
  Mr. BURNS: After slaughter each calf is carefully examined by a veterinary surgeon, and the veal from those animals which are found to be free from disease is sold. There is no reason to doubt that such veal is perfectly wholesome.
  Mr. C. DUNCAN: What proportion of the calves were not used for human food?
  Mr. BURNS: I could not say.
  Mr. C. DUNCANasked the President of the Local Government Board whether, since the Royal Commission on Tuberculosis have reported that bovine tuberculosis is communicable to human beings as well as animals, he will say whether any, and, if any, what, precautions are taken to prevent the danger that cancer and consumption may be spread by vaccination with calf-lymph, seeing that the calves used are inoculated from other calves, and anyone in the series may therefore transmit the germs of tuberculosis?
  Mr. BURNS: Each calf, after vaccination and abstraction of the lymph from the vesicles, is sent to be slaughtered, and is then carefully examined by a veterinary surgeon. The lymph is not issued for use unless the veterinary surgeon certifies that the calf was free from disease. In addition to this primary precaution, there is the further fact that the lymph is glycerinated; and it has been proved by the experimental addition of tubercle bacilli to vaccine lymph that the glycerine destroys such tubercle bacilli. Before issue all lymph is bacteriologically examined and tested. There is no evidence whatever pointing to the possibility that cancer—a disease chiefly of late adult life—can be spread by vaccination.
  Mr. HUDSONasked the President of the Local Government Board if his attention has been called to the rapidly chang-
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  ing conditions of vaccination officers by reason of the increase in exemptions from vaccination of children; and whether he will consider the whole question of payment, with a view of recommending the same payments to such officers for completing exemption returns as paid for vaccination returns?
  Mr. BURNS: I am aware of the increase in the number of exemptions from vaccination, and I have in various cases considered the effect which this has had upon the remuneration of vaccintion officers in respect of exemption certifi-officers, but I have not at present seen my way to authorise a fee being paid to vaccination officers in respect of exemption certificates.
  Mr. HUDSON: Arising out of the answer of the right hon. Gentleman, is he aware that the income of these vaccination officers is rapidly diminishing? Is it the intention of the Department to bring pressure through these officers upon the people to get vaccination as against exemptions?
  Mr. BURNS: What the hon. Member states only occurs in some cases.

  Deaf Mutes.
  Dr. CHAPPLEasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what are the numbers of deaf mutes in the United Kingdom at present supported by State or charitable funds; whether these numbers have been increasing; what percentage exhibit hereditary transmission of their defect; whether, in view of the frequent celebrations of the marriage of deaf mutes, he will cause these statistics to be sent to all authorities and guardians connected with deaf and dumb institutions?
  The SECRETARY of STATE for the HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. Churchill): This matter is not one which comes within the ordinary jurisdiction of the Home Office; but I have ascertained that figures relating to deaf children of school age will be found in Part 1 of the volume of statistics of public education. I have no information as to the number supported from charitable funds. It should be borne in mind that, if there be any increase in the figures, it is likely to be due to greater care in dealing with all proper cases, and not necessarily to an increase in the number of deaf and dumb children. The Census returns from 1851 to 1901 show a continuous decrease in the number of deaf and dumb proportionate to the population;

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  and I think it would be well to wait for the new Census figures before considering whether any action is required.

  Flogging Sentences.
  Sir WILLIAM BYLESasked whether the Home Secretary's attention has been called to the sentences of flogging passed on three prisoners at Swansea Assizes; and whether he intends to allow those sentences to be carried out?
  Mr. CHURCHILL: I have not received any representation from or on behalf of the prisoners referred to. If any representation is received, I shall, of course, give it my careful consideration; but the prisoners' proper course, if they are dissatisfied with their sentences, is to apply to the Court of Criminal Appeal.
  Sir W. BYLESasked whether the Home Secretary's attention has been called to the sentence by Mr. Justice Scrutton at the Leeds Assizes of twenty-four strokes with the cat, in addition to imprisonment with hard labour, passed upon two prisoners, Richardson and Conlon; and whether the division of the corporal punishment into two doses of twelve strokes each, with an interval of three months for the flesh to heal, is so novel a refinement of this form of punishment that he will use his powers as Secretary of State to prevent at least the second instalment of the flogging from being carried out?
  Mr. CHURCHILL: The Court of Criminal Appeal having given leave to these two prisoners to appeal against their sentence, I can say nothing about the case pending the hearing of the appeal. I may add, however, that in previous cases I have remitted a second instalment of a flogging for the same offence.

  Serpentine (Bathing).
  Captain WARINGasked the hon. Member for Southampton, as representing the First Commissioner of Works, if he will consider the possibility of erecting screens or planting shrubs around the bathing area at the Serpentine in order that adult bathers may be enabled to disrobe in greater seclusion than is at present possible.
  The TREASURER of the HOUSEHOLD (Mr. Dudley Ward): The First Commissioner is considering this question, which will certainly not be lost sight of.
  Captain MURRAY: May I ask what size of shrubs is considered necessary for the seclusion of the hon. and gallant Member?

  Education Department (Holmes Circular).
  Mr. KINGasked the President of the Board of Education how many resolutions of protest against the Holmes Circular, passed by public meetings during the last four months, have been received at the Board of Education?
  The PRESIDENT of the BOARD of EDUCATION (Mr. Runciman): I have received about 140 resolutions which may be said, directly or indirectly, to protest against the Confidential Memorandum referred to. The great majority of these are said to have been passed at meetings of local associations of the National Union of Teachers, and only in about twenty cases is it indicated that the meeting was public. The resolutions are chiefly concerned with what they describe as a prevailing practice with regard to appointments and promotions. The practice, so far as the Board of Education is concerned, is purely imaginary, as I recently pointed out in this House.

  Secondary Schools.
  Mr. GOLDSTONEasked whether the Incorporated Association of Assistant Masters in Secondary Schools, the Teachers' Guild, and the National Union of Teachers have jointly recommended that children should be transferred from elementary to secondary schools at about the age of twelve years; and whether the President of the Board of Education will refer the question of the age of transfer of children from elementary to secondary schools to the consultative committee of the Board for consideration and report?
  Mr. RUNCIMAN: I can trace no such joint recommendation. The only resolutions on the subject from the Incorporated Association of Assistant Masters in Secondary Schools and the Teachers' Guild, which I can trace, are to an effect directly contrary to that suggested in the question. I will consider the proposal contained in the second part of the question.
  Mr. GOLDSTONEasked how many secondary schools in receipt of grants from the Board have preparatory departments, and how many children aged eight, nine, ten, and eleven years, respectively, were on the registers of these departments at the date of the last return made to the Board?
  Mr. RUNCIMAN: It is not possible to answer the question with precision, because, as I endeavoured to explain in the answer I gave to my hon. Friend on 27th July, there is no definite connotation of the term "Preparatory Department" in relation to secondary schools. My hon. Friend will, however, find information as to the number of children under the age of twelve who are attending Grant-aided secondary schools in the tables on the subject published annually in the Statistics of the Board of Education.
  Mr. RAFFAN: Is the policy of the Education Department to encourage children who occupy free places to enter secondary schools at a lower age than twelve?
  Mr. RUNCIMAN: My desire is that children occupying free places should enter secondary schools at as early an age as possible.
  Mr. RAFFAN: Are we to understand that that is the policy of the Department?
  Mr. RUNCIMAN: I have expressed my own view, and I control the policy of the Department.

  NATIONAL INSURANCE BILL.

    MINIMUM BENEFITS.
    Mr. GODFREY LOCKER-LAMPSONasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what guarantee an insured person has under the National Insurance Bill that he will receive the minimum benefits for which he is to be compelled to pay?
    The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER (Mr. Lloyd George): The funds provided by the Bill from the contributions and from the State grant are applicable to the benefits and to the necessary expenses incidental thereto, and to no other purpose. The minimum benefits are the first charge before any additional benefits can be given, and the actuarial calculations show that there is a sufficient margin to secure that the full minimum benefits can be provided in practically all cases. The arrangements for valuation and for the timely dealing with a deficiency will be such as absolutely to secure the members of a society against the loss entailed by a financial collapse of the society.
    Mr. G. LOCKER-LAMPSON: Are we to understand that no actual guarantee for minimum benefit will be made?
    Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: There is the guarantee that the funds are more than
    574
    adequate for the purpose. There is a considerable surplus.
    Mr. WORTHINGTON-EVANS: Is it not the fact that there is no national guarantee or guarantee by the Insurance Commissioners that there will be sufficient, because that depends on good management?
    Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: I have pointed out previously that if there were a guarantee there would be no inducement to good management. The arrangement of the Bill is such that there is an inducement to good management on the part of the societies.
    Mr. BOOTH: Is it not a fact that if these managers are to give extra benefits there may be danger?
    Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: Certainly; as my hon. Friend knows, I have repeatedly pointed that out in Committee.

    CHRISTIAN SCIENCE EMPLOYÉS.
    MARQUESS of TULLIBARDINEasked whether employers will have to pay contributions for medical and other benefits under the National Insurance Bill for Christian Science employés who will not require the benefits; whether such employés will be bound to pay their contributions towards a scheme which is contrary to their faith; and, if so, whether Christian Science healers will be placed on the local health committees, and will generally be treated under the Bill as medical men?
    Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: The answer to the first part of the question is in the affirmative. With regard to the second part, I have no official information as to the tenets of the Christian Scientists.
    MARQUESS of TULLIBARDINE: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether, in this case, he considers it would be justifiable to have passive resistance?

    GOVERNMENT EMPLOYÉS.
    Mr. NEWMANasked whether a Government employé who by way of sick pay, medical attendance, and gratuity on discharge draws benefits equal to those proposed under the National Insurance Bill, but whose wages have been reduced by a certain sum weekly as a set off for the grant of such benefit, will or will not, either at the option of the War Office or himself, be held to fall within exception (b) of Part II. of the First Schedule of the Bill?
    Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: If the hon. Member will be so good as to specify the class of Government employés referred to, I shall be glad to answer his inquiry.

    FEMALE PIECE WORKERS.
    Sir CLEMENT KINLOCH-COOKE: asked if the Chancellor of the Exchequer will state what is the position of female piece-workers whose wages vary month by month; and on what scale will their payments be based?
    Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: I will refer the hon. Member to my reply to the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth on the 17th July.

  Postage Stamps (Issue in Rolls).
  Mr. ALLEN BAKERasked the Postmaster-General if he can now give the date on which postage stamps will be issued in rolls suitable for use in stamp-affixing machines, and if he can give particulars as to size and price of rolls to be supplied?
  Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL: Specimen rolls of several different types are at present being manufactured; and as soon as they are received I propose to ascertain from firms who sell stamp-affixing machines which types would be most suitable. I fear that some months will elapse before the arrangements can be completed and rolls placed on sale. My present intention is to issue both 1d. and ½d. stamps in rolls of two sizes, the larger containing 1,000 stamps and the smaller 500. The manufacture of stamps in roll form will involve additional expense, and it will be necessary to make a small extra charge for stamps sold in that form. A charge of 2d. in excess of the face value of the stamps will be made for the larger rolls, and a charge of l½d. for the smaller rolls.

  Woolwich Barracks (Fair Wages Clause),
  Mr. TYSON WILSONasked the Undersecretary of State for War whether the Fair-Wages Clause was inserted in the contract for the work at Woolwich Barracks, now being carried out by the firm of Messrs. W. J. Renshaw, builders, of Putney; if so, whether he is aware that the firm refuse to pay the proper rate of pay for overtime worked on the job; whether he is aware that the firm have sub-let a portion of the carpenters' work; and whether the names of the sub-contractors were submitted to and approved of by him?
  The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for WAR (Colonel Seely): A representation on this subject has been received within the last few days from the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners, and the complaint will be investigated. The contract contains the Fair-Wages Clause.

  London Dock Strike.
  Mr. CARR-GOMMasked the President of the Board of Trade whether he is aware that early this morning a private firm was allowed to draft in a number of their own men to remove cheeses and other goods from the cold storage warehouses in the Surrey Commercial Docks; whether it is a fact that special facilities were given to this firm by the officials of the Port of London Authority; and whether he can make any statement on this matter.
  The PRESIDENT of the BOARD of TRADE (Mr. Buxton): The Board of Trade have no information on this subject. As far as I can judge from the question, the matter appears to be one purely for the Port Authority, over which I have no control.

EXPULSION OF PRESS CORRESPONDENTS FROM AGADIR.
Sir GILBERT PARKER: I beg to ask the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, a question of which I have given him private notice, whether his attention has been directed to the expulsion from Agadir of Mr. Alan Osier, special correspondent of the "Daily Express," and whether he can state on whose authority this was done and for what reasons?
The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Mr. McKinnon Wood): I have received a telegram from the Legation at Tangier stating that the British Vice-Consul at Mogador had reported that the correspondents of the "Westminster Gazette" and the "Daily Express" had been expelled from Agadir by order of the Moorish Lieutenant-Governor. The apparent reason of the expulsion was that the correspondents refused to explain the reasons for their visit, and that they had brought no letters of recommendation to the local Moorish authorities. Representations on the subject are being addressed to the Governor by the Vice-Consul at Mogador. The captain of the German cruiser treated the correspondents courteously, and offered to remonstrate with the Lieutenant-Governor, but the offer was declined.
Captain FABER: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether those correspondents called on the Moorish Governor, and what reception they got?
Mr. McKINNON WOOD: I have no fur-there particulars than those which I have given.
Captain FABER: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether they did call?
Mr. McKINNON WOOD: No, I cannot say.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.

  AUTUMN SITTING OF PARLIAMENT.
  Lord BALCARRES: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer what is the business for next week?
  Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: I much regret to say that the Prime Minister, who is still suffering from loss of voice, is unable to be present to-day.
  The right hon. Gentleman, the Leader of the Opposition, has asked for a day for the discussion of the Vote of Censure. We are, of course, glad to acquiesce in his request, but, in view of the regrettable scene on Monday week, I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will not take it amiss if we ask him to give the undertaking, which he himself demanded from Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman under similar conditions in May, 1905, namely, "that the Debate shall take place under ordinary conditions of decency and fair play." We propose, therefore, to allot Monday for that purpose, and on the further assumption, of course, that the Lords Amendments to the Parliament Bill will be disposed of on Tuesday.
  On Wednesday we shall take the Second Heading of the Finance Bill.
  Thursday and Friday we shall give for the discussion of the Resolution on Payment of Members, the terms of which I shall put on the Paper to-morrow.
  For the convenience of Members I would take this opportunity of acquainting the House that we hope to bring this part of the Session to an end on Friday, the 18th instant. Before that date we hope that Members will be willing to make some sacrifice in order to enable us to pass—

  The Appropriation Bill,

  The Finance Bill,

  578

  The Expiring Laws Continuance Bill, and

  The Public Works Loans Bill,

  and to make progress with some of the other Government measures.
  This course will involve a Sitting later in the year to deal with the National Insurance Bill and other measures. We will resume on a date which will shortly be announced. It will probably be at the end of October or the beginning of November.
  Lord HUGH CECIL: May I ask if the right hon. Gentleman desires to make any imputation on the action of any Member of this House, will he move a Vote of Censure on those Members and give a day for its discussion?
  Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: I simply quoted the words which were used by the present Leader of the Opposition, without any alteration, under similar conditions on 23rd May, 1905.
  Lord HUGH CECIL: About your conduct, I think?
  Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: I think it is very probable I was there.
  Sir GILBERT PARKER: Would the right hon. Gentleman give the terms of the reply made by Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman on that occasion to the Leader of the Opposition?
  Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: My recollection is that an undertaking was given. It came later on, but as a matter of fact, an undertaking was given and carried out.
  Sir GILBERT PARKER: Do we understand from the right hon. Gentleman that this question was recorded in "Hansard"?
  Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: Yes; I was quoting from "Hansard" now.
  An HON. MEMBER: Not the answer.
  Mr. BUTCHER: May I ask whether he will give an undertaking on behalf of his followers that they will conduct the Debate under the ordinary conditions of decency and good order.
  Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: I think the best answer to that is to point to what happened upon last Monday week, when, at the end of that very regrettable scene, all the Members on this side of the House gave the calmest and most patient hearing to the Leader of the Opposition.
  Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKE: Is it not the fact that the Speaker adjourned the House because of the behaviour of hon. Gentlemen opposite?
  Sir GILBERT PARKER: As I believe the Government have the terms of the answer by Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, would there be any objection to reading it to the House?
  Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: I am sorry to say the episode ended by a question put by me—[HON. MEMBERS: "Read it"]—I think I had better not, after the Leader of the Opposition put that question:—
  "Mr. Lloyd George: Will the Prime Minister give that undertaking?"
  He does not seem to have been ready to give it.

BILL PRESENTED.
  PUBLIC WORKS LOAN BILL.
  "To grant money for the purpose of certain local loans out of the Local Loans Fund; and for other purposes relating to local loans," presented by Mr. HOBHOUSE; to be read a second time To-morrow, and to be printed.

SUPPLY [20th allotted day.]
(IN" THE COMMITTEE.)
[Mr. EMMOTT in the Chair.]

SUPPLY [20th allotted day.]
  CIVIL SERVICES AND REVENUE DEPARTMENTS ESTIMATES, 1911–12.

    LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Class 2).
    Motion made, and Question proposed, "That a sum, not exceeding £167,951, be granted to His Majesty to complete the sum necessary to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1012, for the salaries and expenses of the Local Government Board."—(NOTE.— £110,000 has been voted on account.]
    Mr. PETO: I beg to move to reduce, Sub-head (A) [Salary of the President of the Local Government Board] by £100.
    I rise with a great deal of diffidence to move the Motion. The hon. Member for Hoxton (Dr. Addison) and the hon. Member for Kingswinford (Mr. Staveley-Hill) were to have moved a similar Motion, but both of them are, unfortunately, unable to be here to-day. Therefore I would ask the Committee to give me their indulgence to enable me, as well as I can, to put before them the case of the vaccination officers. I am asked to bring this matter to the
    580
    attention of the Committee by the National Poor Law Officers' Association. Before I say anything else I desire, on their behalf, to assure the Committee—and I am quite sure it is unnecessary to make this assurance to the President of the Local Government Board—that there is nothing whatever antagonistic or of a party nature in bringing this matter before the Committee. The President of the Local Government Board is well aware that the grievance to which I am going to refer is one of pretty long standing, and that certainly for two or three years it has agitated the whole of the vaccination officers. Certainly in many cases, and in other countries, perhaps, it might have led to the less thorough and honourable fulfilment of their duties by a body of men who have been labouring so long under such a real and trying grievance. I desire to say whatever may be the outcome of this discussion, it is to be distinctly understood that always in the future, as in the past, it is their determination to carry out all the instructions of the Board. This is a question of principle, and it is a question simply of the basis on which they receive remuneration. They certainly take no part or side in the question whether the bulk of the people of the country do or do not believe in vaccination. The whole basis on which they have received their remuneration, although appropriate to the time when the basis was fixed, is not only in amount, but also in method, wholly unsuited to the present condition of affairs. Last year, when the right hon. Member for Wimbledon (Mr. Chaplin) raised the question, the President of the Local Government Board pointed out that one of the reasons why it was difficult for him to take any direct action in the mailer was the fact that out of 1,420 vaccination officers, only 400 gave their whole time to the work. He further pointed out that the officers were the servants of the local authorities, and that he could do no more than make representations to those authorities to meet the grievance by the grant of a special gratuity or by an alteration in the scale of fees. As a matter of fact, neither of these methods would effectively meet the grievance.
    An hon. Member pointed out at Question time that a fee for the registration of birth and a fee three times as large for each successful vaccination was not an equitable basis of remuneration, because it operated differently in various parts of the country. The right hon. Gentleman

    581
    replied that those conditions only obtained locally. Quite so. I want the Committee to realise what this basis of remuneration means. We do not want pressure brought to bear on the public to have their children vaccinated or to abstain from so doing. That is the position created by Act of Parliament. But I can conceive that in a locality where the grievance of the vaccination officer was well known, people might feel every time they objected to having a child vaccinated and availed themselves of the fight to exemption that they were doing the unfortunate vaccination officer out of a part of his already very much reduced income. I hold that it is undoubtedly a case in which the Local Government Board should lay down some new principle on which these officers should be remunerated. They do not mind how they are remunerated, provided it is on an equitable basis, favouring neither one course nor the other on the part of the parents. They could, for example, be given a fee for making the necessary inquiries as to whether parents wished their child to be vaccinated; there could be a fee for the registration of birth, another for each successful vaccination, and another for the registration of every child whose parents do not wish it to be vaccinated. I think that if such a scale were properly graduated in order to bring the income up to something approaching what the officers received in the years 1903–7 the grievance would be in a large measure met on businesslike grounds.
    What is the position with regard to the Vaccination Act and the Vaccination Order of 1907? I do not know whether the Committee are aware of the extent to which exemptions have increased. We make no complaint as to the increase, the only point in the figures is that it will become impossible for these officers to live. If people do not want their children vaccinated, and if at the same time, it is necessary that we should have the means of ascertaining whether they do or do not, and that those who believe in vaccination should have an opportunity of having their children vaccinated, it is absolutely necessary that some new scale of fees and a new basis should be settled at once. In the year 1907 there were 57,000 exemptions from vaccination; in 1910 the number had increased to 100,000, or by 160 per cent.. That increase is still going on, because the number is over 110,000 for the first half of 1911. At that rate the entire remunera-
    582
    tion of these people will go. In fact, it will become a minus quantity, because they are called upon to perform certain duties not only for which they receive no remuneration, but which cost them money, which money in most cases they have to pay out of their own pocket. It is their duty to call on parents with Form Q; in many cases they have to post Form Q and pay the postage. It seems to me that this is asking a man not only to hang himself, but to buy the rope with which to perform the operation. It is going beyond anything I should have thought possible in a public department in this country. Last year the President of the Local Government Board said he was prepared to receive from vaccination officers and boards of guardians statements with regard to cases in which loss of income had been sustained, and to meet them as fairly as he could in the interests of the public. I am instructed that the right hon. Gentleman has carried out that promise as far as he could, operating within the narrow limits of what he conceives to be the duty of his Department, Representations have been made to local authorities, and in some cases gratuities have been paid, but: I would like to point out what in some instances those gratuities have amounted to. In one case an officer lost in fees owing to exemptions £80 16s. 9d.; he received a gratuity of £7 18s. In another case the loss was £140 3s. 8d., and the gratuity £20. There are many more cases of that sort.
    The grievance is due to the fact that the whole basis of remuneration does not fit in with the existing condition of things. The Act of 1898 gave the conscientious objector the opportunity to avoid having his children vaccinated, but it laid upon him the somewhat onerous duty of going before two magistrates and setting forth the grounds of his objection. In consequence of that additional duties were undoubtedly thrown on, the vaccination, officers. That was fully recognised at the time, because a circular letter of the Local Government Board stated that under the Order additional duties would devolve on the vaccination officers, and provision had been made as to the mode of remunerating them. Before that time vaccination officers were not paid a fee for each birth registered, and in fixing the remuneration for the future the Local Government Board said that the fee for a certificate of successful vaccination should be three times the fee for the registration of birth. They laid down a fresh method by which the

    583
    vaccination officers should be remunerated. Therefore, we have an excellent precedent for dealing with the new state of affairs. It was then contemplated that that would be quite sufficient, because nobody had any idea at that time that the exemptions would be anything approaching what they have amounted to under the later Act. At that time it was thought that 90 per cent. of the children would be vaccinated.
    The Act of 1907 imposes a fresh lot of duties upon the vaccination officers, and hitherto, except such pressure as the President of the Local Government Board has brought to bear upon individual local bodies, no method whatever has been arranged for additional remuneration, or remuneration, to meet these additional duties. The Association of Poor Law Unions, and the National Poor Law Officers' Association have, I am aware, on several occasions brought these grievances to the notice of the President of the Local Government Board. The view of the officers shortly is this: that their loss is real and acute and in some cases they are practically altogether without the means of livelihood. But this is more than a question of loss of salary. The pensions of the officers depend upon the five years' average income prior to their retirement. Therefore they are not only being deprived of their salary, given more duties to perform for less remuneration, but the whole basis of their pensions is entirely altered. You have men who have served the local authority for eighteen or twenty years who are now within eighteen months or so of retirement, and yet who will retire, unless something happens, upon a pension calculated on a salary that has sunk to zero. That is a perfectly intolerable state of affairs. No letters of the right hon. Gentleman to the local authorities of Farnham or Croydon or anywhere else, asking them to deal with the question on the narrow lines of increase of fee for successful vaccination—which I think under the circumstances is probably an injurious method of dealing with the question, because it is invidious and does not fit the circumstances, or else a gratuity— are sufficient. I have already pointed out; to the House that such gratuities as have been paid after pressure exercised by the right hon. Gentleman in some cases, only have been one-tenth of the amount of the loss.
    There is another point the President of the Local Government Board made last
    584
    year. I remember it perfectly. He said in some cases of the rural districts there had positively been an increase in the fees received by the vaccination officers. I simply cannot understand that argument. If the right hon. Gentleman means anything it cuts this way. It only proves my case up to the hilt that the present basis of remuneration is entirely wrong, because the vaccination officers do not want put forward exceptional cases, where the population is increasing and, because there is no strong anti-vaccination feeling in the district, the fee receivable under the old system is inadequate. Such cases are practically untouched altogether by recent legislation, and should not be held to be a set-off. If a few people are still receiving adequate and reasonable remuneration under exceptional circumstances, that should not be held to be a reason that the question does not need to be gone into, especially when vaccination officers generally are losing their income all the time.
    Let me remind the Committee, in slightly more detail, as to what are the new duties that the vaccination officers have to perform. They have now to send out Form Q, reminding the parents when the child is four months and seven days old. If there is no exemption asked for the vaccination officer has to interview the parent. Before 1907 the vaccination officers were not allowed to communicate with the parents until the time of the exemption had expired. Now it is their duty to call the attention of the parents to the fact that they can take a course recommended which will deprive the officer of his fees. I need only point out that under present circumstances 90 per cent. of the statutory declarations of conscientious objection are made after the receipt of Form Q— therefore in every case the vaccination officer is positively required, under our present rules, to send out notices which in effect says, "Please do not allow me to receive any fee whatever for the vaccination of your child, no matter how little I am receiving at present." When the child has arrived at the age of four months the vaccination officer must call and inquire whether or not it has been vaccinated. That is no light duty. As I have already indicated, many vaccination officers are not paid their postages in these cases.
    Last year the President of the Local Government Board gave another reason why he could not act otherwise than he

    585
    had. He said that many of these vaccination officers acted in a dual capacity, and that therefore their remuneration for vaccination was very likely set off by the remuneration for their other duties performed for the local authorities. Again, I point out, that the salary for the other duties was in most cases settled at a time when the salary they received in respect of vaccination was wholly different from what it is to-day. Therefore that is no reason for saying the question should not be gone into, because if you assume that in certain cases two-thirds of the officer's salary is in respect of other duties than vaccination, that two-thirds was settled on the basis of the other third being something very much different to what it is to-day.
    We can go a little further than this, because when the guardians have asked the Local Government Board for permission to pay their officers a fixed salary or fee I am told that in several cases their application has been refused. So that it appears that the Local Government Board feel that they can, and have, interfered in this matter of the remuneration of officers when a local authority has asked for leave to pay on a reasonable basis, or a fixed fee, or fees other than those usually paid for a successful vaccination or registration, or both. I think, if there was no other reason, that is reason amply sufficient to show that the right hon. Gentleman can, and ought, to interfere in this matter. Of course there are several Boards that have refused to act upon the suggestion of the President of the Local Government, Board. They say that is wholly illogical.
    Farnham local authority say that they do not consider it a reasonable thing to be asked to increase the fees on a basis which would only be more inequitable than the present basis. So long as it was bound to be a steadily diminishing income, no matter what fee was settled, they would not take any action in the matter whatever until the President of the Local Government Board authorised them to pay their officer on a reasonable business basis. I think the position of these officers is a perfectly impossible one. They do not know where to go. They come to the President of the Local Government Board, and he tells them that he will write to the local authorities. They are being played "battledore and shuttlecock" with. They are told they are the servants of the local authorities, and a letter will be written. In cases where
    586
    the local authority is not satisfied with the advice given by the right hon. Gentleman, they are between the devil and the deep sea, and get nothing at all. Now there was a report by a Departmental Committee which was appointed in 1905, when there was a very great outcry at the enormous cost of vaccination, and the Local Government Board appointed a Departmental Committee to go into the matter. The committee consisted of four gentlemen, two officials of the Local Government Board, one was a Member of this House and one was an ex-clerk to guardians. In their report they stated:—
    "that although 189 boards of guardians forwarded memorials or resolutions to the Local Government Board urging a reduction in the minimum fees payable both to public vaccinators and to vaccination officers, no evidence was put before them in support of the reduction of the fees of the vaccination officers. On the other hand, witnesses did appear on behalf of the National Poor law Officers' Association. Incorporated, and the National Vaccination Officers' Association, and represented that the minimum fees at present payable to vaccination officers should be increased. Their attention had also been specially directed to the fact that the fees assigned to the vaccination officer are practically only payable in relation to the primary vaccination of children whose births are registered in his district, and that much of the work of the vaccination officer such as that of the registration of certificates of postponement, insusceptibility and exemption, deaths of children and the vaccination of persons over fourteen years of age, has no remuneration assigned to it. The evidence snowed that the duties of the vaccination officer were materially affected by the attitude assumed by the public and by the officer's board of guardians in relation to vaccination. Hence, whilst in a district where there is no serious opposition to the enforcement of the Vaccination Acts, the minimum lees prescribed by the Order in relation to vaccination officers may be adequate, they may be quite inadequate if he had, in the discharge of his responsibilities, to meet the hostility of the public and of his Board."
    The reason I read that extract is that that report was made in 1905, before the Act of 1907, and that it is the report of a committee appointed to consider this question, and if these remarks were justified in 1905, I say now six years later they are further justified, and that every one of these things is true and a great deal more besides. The position of the vaccination officers has very materially depreciated since that date. Beyond that it is pointed out by Article 30 (3) of the Order of 1908 that
    "The remuneration of vaccination officers shall be deemed to include any expense in respect of postage incurred by him unless otherwise agreed between him and the guardians."
    The officers, however, consider that in all cases postage should be paid by the guardians; that has never been carried out, and it is perfectly obvious that the more efficiently a vaccination officer carries

    587
    out his duty, the more he will have to pay in postage. The more exemptions, therefore, the less he will receive. I should also like to point out that when that report was made there was no such thing as Form "Q" in existence. The whole of the work in connection with the major part of the complaints was not in existence until after the Act of 1907. I have already given the Committee one or two examples of some very hard cases. I should like to trouble the Committee now with one or two more cases. Last year, when this matter was before the Committee, the President of the Local Government Board stated that he only had his attention called to three cases where the officer had lost a sum exceeding £50. One vaccination officer wrote to me, saying:—
    "I cannot pay my way and have warrants and summonses taken out against me, but my mother has always paid."
    I do not think it is a satisfactory state of affairs that a vaccination officer's relatives should have to keep him. This officer goes on to say:—
    "I have written two or three letters to the Local Government Board, but I only receive acknowledgments in reply, Taking the average from 1903–1907 I have lost over £400 since the commencement of the new Act, and I am now in the portion that I cannot keep myself without the assistance of my father and mother."
    Another officer writes, stating that he lost £80 16s. 9d. since the passing of the Act of 1907, and in March last the guardians gave him a gratuity of £7 18s., thus leaving him a loser of £72 18s. 9d. I have got here fourteen or fifteen selected cases, but, of course, I do not intend to trouble the Committee with the whole of them. What I ask is that a general Order should be issued and that the officers should receive just and fair treatment and remuneration, and that the Local Government Board should take the initiative and put this matter right and that they should issue a general direction, and that the amount to be taken in every union should be the earnings not since the 1st January, 1908, but what it was in the years between 1903 and 1907, and I ask that the Order should specially call attention to the question of pensions, so that the matter might be properly adjusted and that the question should be put right in regards to pensions as well. I shall read one more extract from the many documents which have come
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    to me for perusal in this matter. It is a typical example, and it relates especially to the question of pensions:—
    "Only on Friday last I was informed of the case of a brother officer who was appointed eighteen years ago and is now within eighteen months of superannuation age; his loss since the Vaccination Act and Order, 1907, is no less than £207, the total loss last year alone being £77 16s. 8d., or 80s. per week, and his exemptions are rapidly increasing in number and therefore every year his loss will become much greater, but the labour remains, also the same expenses; he has not up to the present received any practical sympathy from the Guardians in reply to his three applications, neither has the Local Government Board actively interested itself in the matter. This officer is in that unfortunate financial position that he has not the money for the postage of the 'Q' Notices required to be sent by the Order of the Local Government Board, and thus being quite helpless he is laying himself open to be called upon to resign on account of neglect of duty, and he has only escaped being served with summonses for ordinary household expenses by sacrificing the surrender value of his life policy. Put in a few words the injustice to this particular officer is, that if the appeal of Vaccination Officers to Parliament is not now granted, when he retires at the end of the next eighteen months his superannuation pay will be calculated, not on the average of his earnings from 1903–1907, but on the average of his actual income for the last five years of his service, that is, 1908–1912, and each of these live years will show a serious loss."
    4.0 P.M.
    I ask therefore that the President of the Local Government Board should not only intervene but that he should lay down directions that when dealing with the pensions of any officer retiring his pension should be calculated on the rates of income he received between the years of 1903 and 1907, so that his pension may not suffer diminution in consequence of the Act of 1907. As to the remuneration, opinions may differ, but there are many ways. The officers might be given a fixed salary for the work in consideration of the services they have to render to each district. They might be remunerated by an increased fee upon the births registered. When this fee was settled, in the year 1898, 90 per cent. of the cases were vaccinated. I think the fee paid upon birth might be made the fee for vaccination and the present vaccination fee the birth fee. If you reverse the process in this "way you would produce the same income as they had before. The officers might be paid according to the certificates of exemption granted. I think that is a basis of payment that deserves very serious consideration. The method of remuneration should be such that it does not make the slightest difference to the officer whether a child is vaccinated or not, and that is the proper basis upon which he should be remunerated. In addition to that a fee might be given for every notice sent out, and the postage ought to

    589
    be paid. That could very easily be done, because those notices have counterfoils which could be checked.
    The remedy for the grievance of these officers is long overdue. I do not think it is in the public interest that any class of public servants should be allowed to go on suffering under such a grievance as I have pointed out, trusting simply to their honourable sense of duty to get the necessary duties carried out. A grievance such as that I have indicated ought to have been removed certainly two or three years ago, and as it still exists it should not be allowed to continue a single day longer. These officers have lost thousands of pounds annually, and are continuing to lose more. They must perform their duties, and that makes it absolutely necessary for their case to be dealt with. Things are most unsatisfactory as they are. It is not in the interests of the public to go on in this way. I would remind hon. Members opposite that this is not a question of vaccination or anti-vaccination, but simply a question of these officers receiving a fair wage upon a reasonable basis.
    Mr. LANSBURY: I wish to join in the appeal which has been made to the President of the Local Government Board with reference to these vaccination officers. I come into contact with them in the administration of the Poor Law in the district which I represent, and there can be no question at all that these men are suffering a real grievance. I wish to point out that in every other case where the public official loses anything through an alteration in the law it has up to now been the rule that Parliament has safeguarded the interests of the person concerned. For instance, if the clerk to the London board of guardians has held, as many of them have held, the appointment of clerk to an asylum district or a school district in addition, and the time arrives when that district is dissolved and the clerk to the guardians would lose the £100 or £150 a year which he has been earning, it has always been the custom, and in fact it is the law, that although the man has another position such a person shall be compensated for the loss of his office. As a matter of fact, in the Poplar Union the clerk of the guardians is in exactly that position, and in addition to his salary today he receives the Grant year by year as compensation for the loss of an office of the kind I have described.
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    These vaccination officials, it is true, were paid so much for every child that was born and the notifications in connection with them, but there can be no reason because they were not paid a stipulated salary for not compensating them when you take away their means of earning the average amount of money which they have been earning for years. I understand that many of these officers are really in a very bad way, and that this change means actually taking their living away. I think the least the right hon. Gentleman could do, at any rate in the Metropolis, is to let the Common Poor Fund be used either to make up to these men a stated sum each year, or else compel the guardians to place them on a yearly salary for the work they have to do. In any case there is no reason for allowing the matter to remain where it is. The suggestions we have made may not be the best. Gratuities have been suggested, but I want to point out to the Committee that that is the very worst method of paying for public service. A man ought not to be dependent upon the mere goodwill of a board of guardians as to what his salary at the end of the year should be, and I appeal to the right hon. Gentleman not to put either the guardians or the officers in that position, but make some arrangement whereby this work can be remunerated in a different fashion.
    I think much of it is a gross waste of public money as it is done even now. There is much red tape about it, and a good deal that need not be done; but if all the regulations are to be carried out the Board must take the responsibility of seeing that the men are paid for carrying them out. We had an instance last night of the way in which the medical profession can take care of themselves, and I do not blame them. We believe in all people who work with their brains or with their hands getting the very best rate of pay they can. I think I can speak for all my colleagues when I say that we have never differentiated between brain workers and manual workers. When the Bill for granting exemptions in the case of vaccination was before Parliament the doctors took good care to safeguard their interests, and the doctor now gets payment upon birth, whether the child is vaccinated or not. It appears to me that the same measure of justice which has been meted out to the medical profession ought to be meted out to these men in a

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    much humbler position, and in some way this loss ought to be made up. That is all I want to say on that question.
    There are several other matters to which I wish to call the attention of the Committee. We have discussed the Poor Law on several occasions this Session— once at some length—and the right hon. Gentleman, in answering us, said practically that everything was all right with the Poor Law, that everything possible that could be done was being done, and that all we had to do was to leave this excellent department just where it is. That may be all very well for the right hon. Gentleman and his officials, but I want to bring him back to the actual facts. On the last occasion the right hon. Gentleman did what anyone does when in a tight place, that is, instead of answering the criticism levelled against the administration of the Poor Law, he rode off on something which no one had attacked. For instance, on the question of the children, no one had attacked the children in institutions; no one had said that the Poor Law schools did not turn out excellent men and women, and no one had said that the boys and girls who went to those schools were not very often in a much better position than hundreds and thousands of children in the slums up and down the country. We were all agreed about that, and therefore there was no necessity for us to be answered in the manner in which we were answered a week or two back.
    The point I wish to urge is that in the case of children on outdoor relief, the right hon. Gentleman's Department has no part or lot in seeing that those children are adequately relieved and not kept in a state of semi-starvation. At the present moment there are tens of thousands of children on outdoor relief. The Department issues circulars to boards of guardians telling them to do this, that, and the other, but there is no inspection to see that the guardians carry out the instructions contained in the circulars. In most departments when a board issues a circular, inspectors go round periodically to examine the institutions concerned in order to see whether the advice given in the circular has been carried out, but with regard to children on outdoor relief no such inspection is made. I ask the right hon. Gentleman to give the figures of the average amount of outdoor relief given to the children of widows and to children who are living in their own
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    homes. I think if we had these figures the Committee will be thoroughly astonished when they see the miserable amount which is paid to a woman to bring up her children.
    The point I wish to urge against the Department in this connection is that the auditor has now taken it into his head to surcharge boards of guardians for giving too much relief to the applicants who come before them, mainly in the case of old people. I know of several cases where there has been a surcharge. I protest against the auditor doing that after the relief has been given, because he cannot be in a position to judge so well as the guardians on the spot. Be that as it may, my point is that if the Local Government Board are going to enquire and attempt to regulate the giving of relief, they must at the same time insist that the woman bringing up her family should have adequate relief to bring her children up decently. The Board cannot claim on the one hand that they shall not give too much, without on the other hand seeing that they give sufficient. At the present time that is not being done, so far as I have been able to gather, and it is certainly not being done in the union which I represent. The only thing that has been done in my Constituency is that sometimes an inspector has been sent down, and I have sat with him at the board meetings. The Local Government Board inspector has sat at the same relief committees which I have attended, and on no single occasion have I known him ask that more relief should be given, and I have never heard him say anything else except that some of the cases which come up are probably cases that ought not to be relieved outside at all. This applies to the case of able-bodied men, but I have never known the inspectors visit the people at their own homes to see under what conditions the relief is being given and to ascertain whether it is enough or too much. I think that ought to be part of their business.
    There is another thing in connection with the children. We have just heard that we are all going off in a fortnight's time for our holidays. I want to put it to this House that there are 40,000 children at this moment in London who a week ago last Wednesday were getting meals from the education committees. Those 40,000 children in London are not being fed at this present moment. When this question was raised at the Coronation everybody's, loyalty bubbled up, and the right hon. Gentleman let it be known that the

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    children might be fed. May I remind the Committee that the children need to be fed whether it is Coronation week or holiday week in the middle of the summer, and I think the right hon. Gentleman, who knows as well as I do what the condition of many of these children, at least ought to see—if this House has not got time to pass a tiny Bill which would enable education committees to do this work— that the local authorities should be told that they may, if they wish, feed these children during this period. Some of the local authorities do this— Halifax and West Ham, I believe, are doing it. It may be said that some people are breaking the law, but within the county of London we are afraid to do it without the permission of the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board. I want to put it to him quite seriously. Last night I stood in front of nine or ten thousand men in very much the same kind of position, though not with the same authority in which he stood some twenty-five years ago. It was a meeting of the London casual labourers, and I could not help remembering that I was going to raise the question this afternoon of these men's children, and how they were to be fed during the summer holidays, and I want to ask him even now, late as it is, whether he cannot issue some kind of recommendation to the educational authorities throughout the country that they shall feed these children during the next three or four weeks. I do not know how any of us can sit down, as Ruskin says, to our meals with comfort, and take our pleasures, as we shall all try to do, and as I shall do with my children, when we know that there is in this one big City, tens of thousands of children who, to say the very least, have not got enough food. I do not want to be told that this is not the right way to do it. I know it is not the right way; I am not in favour of it. I think it is not the best way, but until society finds a better way, I want it to be done this way. Until somebody can show a better way, until men and women can earn sufficient to bring enough food to their children, and to bring them up wholesomely and decently at home, it rests upon society to see that these children are not made victims in that sort of way.
    I am taking this opportunity of calling attention to matters in connection with the Local Government Board which I think ought to be put right, and of trying
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    to convince the Committee that things are not so rosy as the right hon. Gentleman led us to suppose the other day. There are in this Metropolis twenty-eight boards of guardians, I believe, and the other day we had brought to our notice in this House—I do not know how many Members took much notice of it— that the money paid for certifying lunatics in a county area varied from £361 in one union to £3 13s. in another. In the East End of London it was the low figure, and in a union in the North, the higher one. I contend that this is a piece of business that with such a practical President of the Local Government Board as we have got, ought to have been put right long ago. Why in one union is it that the doctors should make very handsome salaries by certifying these people, and in another union men who are doing their work quite as efficiently should only get this tiny fraction. It is not a very big matter compared with the millions of pounds for which this House is responsible, or at any rate that we have to do with, but it is a very considerable sum in connection with the unions themselves, because it is only part of the business of dealing with lunacy. I want to ask the right hon. Gentleman what steps he proposes to take? He told me it was under consideration, and I shall be glad to know what has been the result of that consideration. Then I raised another matter by means of questions in this House, and the hon. and learned Member for the Brentford Division (Mr. Joynson-Hicks) also raised it later on. In one of the unions of London a gentleman pays people to go to his establishment to get vaccinated. I contend that if a person can do that and can afford to do it, he ought not at the same time to receive money out of the public funds. That matter also I was told was going to receive consideration, and as far as I know it has been going on for some time. What really happens is that a doctor runs a school for the purpose of teaching young men how to vaccinate people, and he draws people from all parts of the union to his establishment for the purpose of having sufficient material for these young men to experiment upon. I think it is time that sort of thing was put an end to. When I raised the matter here before, the right hon. Gentleman thought it was not of very great importance, but I want to point out that it is that kind of thing which in my opinion leads to very much of the corruption that we all know does exist in this kind of body.

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    That brings me to another matter. The right hon. Gentleman and his Department have received a great deal of credit with regard to stopping what are known as scandals in the contract system in and Around the Metropolis. What I want to know is whether he does not think it is time to deal with the existing twenty-eight boards of guardians with their twenty-eight sets of officials and some hundreds of institutions governed by these officials, all with their own individual contracts, and open to every kind of temptation from a big ring of contractors? Has not the time come to adopt the suggestion made to him a long time ago and made to his predecessor by one of the boards that came into a good deal of obloquy, the Poplar Board, that instead of leaving every board an the Metropolis to make its own contracts he should issue an Order, as I believe he has power to do, forming one central store for the whole of London and letting each board of guardians draw from that store. At present the Metropolitan Asylums Board and the London County Council both have magnificent stores, and either body, I am certain, could supply these boards very much more cheaply and with very much less power for people to put their hands into the public purse in a manner that ought not to be done. The whole thing could be done very much better by having one central arrangement through either of those bodies than by leaving it to these twenty-eight different bodies, with their crowds of officials, to have the making of their own contracts. I am only saying what I think the right hon. Gentleman knows as well as I know, that, I will not say corruption, but the scandal in connection with these contracts is not at an end in London, and every one of us who cares anything for the purity of public administration would welcome anything that took the contracts away from the individual boards of guardians. All these boards of guardians have to do with a great variety of contracts and a large number of institutions. You never get to the bottom of these things except by the action of the public. The auditor never finds it out, he never knows anything about it. It is nearly always found out by some one or other discovering that the money is being spent, that the cost of things is going up, and then he comes to the auditor and makes complaint and an inquiry is set on foot, but whichever way you take it, the fact remains that very
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    little of it comes to the top. I am quite certain that the right hon. Gentleman has in the archives of the Local Government Board a mass of evidence which, though it may not be conclusive, must make him slightly uneasy as to what is going on in some parts of London. I do suggest to him, as a practical administrator—that is one thing the House considers him to be— that he could quite easily, if he could make up his mind to do it, do something. He would be opposed; he has been opposed in a good many other things, and he has done them. We have opposed him many times, but that does not deter him and he goes on in his own sweet way, and I think he could tell the boards of guardians that it is time that all these twenty-eight sets of contracts came to an end, and that instead we should have one central store from which all the boards could draw.
    There is another matter I wish him to take cognisance of. He and I are members of a certain organisation—I think he is a vice-president, but he is certainly one of the supporters of it—for securing one day's rest in seven. In the Poor Law system there is a great deal of room for bringing in that much-needed reform. I am a staunch believer in it for a variety of reasons, religious, social and physical. Two boards of guardians have appealed to the right hon. Gentleman to allow them to do something—there may be others, but I know of these two. One wants to allow the nurses and another wants the whole staff to have one day's rest in seven. The right hon. Gentleman has not seen his way up to the present to concede either of these demands. I understand that in one case he thought there was no public demand for it, at least the gentleman who wrote the letter thought so; but I venture to say that he and I know perfectly well that there is a public demand for one day's rest in seven, and the society he belongs to has been helping to create that demand, and I suggest to him that he ought not merely to preach this theory, but that he ought to put it into practice whenever he gets an opportunity, and certainly he never ought to hinder other people from putting it into practice as these two boards of guardians are trying to do. I have a letter here in answer to one of them when they asked him for that power. I hope he is going to reconsider the matter and that he will give to Poplar and West Ham the right to give their employés this one day's rest in seven.
    There are two other matters in connection with unemployment. We have all heard of Belmont. I put questions

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    to the right hon. Gentleman about it. I do not understand to this day why it is not in the public interest to hold a public inquiry into that outbreak. I do not know why the evidence upon which the right hon. Gentleman says that such inquiry was not needed should be considered to be of a private nature and that this House should have it withheld from them. The fact is that eighty men who were sent there have gone to prison; they were imprisoned because they preferred prison to the workhouse. I know the answer is that these men are only a lot of scallywags and that it therefore does not matter what became of them, but there was an interesting sequel to that outbreak. One of these officers in charge of these men had been dismissed from one union for indecent conduct and had been really punished for it. He got temporary work at this workhouse. After these eighty men had been imprisoned this officer, who was partly responsible, for the control of the men, was dismissed, but before he was dismissed, as I am told for bad conduct, although I have never been able to find out what that bad conduct was, during the week that he was working off his notice he had got drunk and had ill-treated one of the inmates. I think that is pretty good evidence that he was not the kind of man to keep this kind of men in a proper state of discipline, and that there was no wonder at all that there was insubordination and riots, and that finally eighty of these men had to go to prison. I protested at the time against no inquiry being held, and I now say again that these eighty men, even though they be paupers and were in a public institution, have a perfect right to have their case discussed here in the House of Commons, and that we have a right to ask the head of the Department concerned to put on the Table all the evidence that the State officials and the inspectors in his Department collected in regard to this matter. An inquiry was held, but we do not know anything of the evidence, and we do not even know what was the actual nature of their report. The right hon. Gentleman just told us that his inspectors went down and investigated the matter.
    I also want to raise the question of the administration of the Unemployment Fund. There is a labour colony called Hollesley Bay, which has cost, roughly, between £130,000 and £150,000. The right hon. Gentleman and his Department have thought fit to say the experiment there
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    should be strictly limited in its scope, with the result that it is, more or less, a glorified workhouse, and has been so since the advent of the right hon. Gentleman to the Front Bench. It is very nearly time the Department made up their minds what they are really going to do with that institution. I hoped against hope, when I was chairman of the committee, that we should, sooner or later, be able definitely to get large numbers of men trained and fit for work on the land. Hollesley Ray has trained a good many men to emigrate across the sea, and I am lunatic enough to believe that if a man can toil the soil in Canada or Australia he can here. I shall still hold that until it is proved to the contrary. I think I can give the right hon. Gentleman the facts about it. It is no use the right hon. Gentleman shaking his head and giving me that gracious smile.
    The PRESIDENT of the LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. Burns): The hon. Member must not misinterpret a smile when he does not understand what it is about.
    Mr. LANSBURY: I thought it was a gracious smile. I am quite sure the right hon. Gentleman would not scowl at me. I know numbers of these men who are now getting their living, and I shall be glad to gather their names and addresses together for the right hon. Gentleman. We have no right to spend public money on training people merely to send them across the seas when there are miles of our own land wanting to be cultivated. There are some 1,300 acres, and piles of money is being spent there. There would be some real justification for spending the money if we were creating a condition of things which would enable men to make a home market for other men working under other and industrial conditions. There is no justification for keeping the place merely as a workhouse, and I venture to ask the right hon. Gentleman to tell the House what he means to do with it. None of us can tell the future of the Unemployed Workmen's Act. I do not want to be told of the great things we are going to get from the Insurance Bill, from the Labour Exchanges, and from the Development Fund. Everybody knows that in London alone there were last year some 25,000 out of work, and of that number only something like 4,000 got employment. Facts like that take a good deal of getting over. It is all right for me; I have a fairly good living. It is all right for men on the Treasury Bench. It is

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    all right for most of us. We get our meals and our work regularly, such work as it is. We get our salaries anyhow. [An HON. MEMBER: "Not yet. "J Certainly we are going to get them all right; you wait and see. I have here the report for the place I represent. We got something like 374 out of the 4,000 places, leaving us with some 900 men and their wives and families, with whom we did not know what to do. If the President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Sydney Buxton) were here he would have to support the statement that the Distress Committee of that borough has appealed to him and to me and to my hon. Friend the Member for Woolwich (Mr. Crooks), who resides in the district, times out of number to do all we possibly can to get the right hon. Gentleman to find us more work.
    Every time we raise this matter he tells us he must teach us a more excellent way. We do not want to be taught a more excellent way. We know there is a more excellent way. I am under no delusions, and do not want to be told that relief works are demoralising. Starvation is much more demoralising. We have no right to condemn the methods of the Unemployed Workmen's Act unless we are prepared to do something different and better. The right hon. Gentleman on the last occasion could only tell us to wait for the Insurance Bill, and for this, that, and the other. While we are waiting for those things, these men and their wives and families require to be dealt with. It is no use thinking you can deal with them under economic conditions. I know even the Herne Bay scheme would probably have been economically unsound, but I also know it is no economy to leave men, women, and children to become physically weaker and weaker. It is much better to do an uneconomic thing and to prevent a further evil than to leave them as the right hon. Gentleman and his Department, very often want to leave them. There is only this in connection with the Herne Bay scheme that I want to say. When I spoke on the last occasion, the right hon. Gentleman flattened me out in his usual way by saying he had a much better way of spending the money. The hon. Member for Bow and Bromley wanted him to spend so many thousands of pounds on merely 500, but he had a way to give work to 2,000. I interrupted him in a disorderly manner, but that was no use. I was out of order, and down I had to go. I knew I was right all the same, and that he was wrong. He said
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    the proposition would have meant that 500 men would be continuously away from London for some forty weeks. I knew that was nonsense, because I knew his regulations better than he did himself. His regulations would not allow it to be done. I had no chance of answering him at that time. His own regulations would not allow them to be away more than sixteen weeks.
    Mr. BURNS: The hon. Gentleman, being a member of a public body, knows that I have been frequently asked to modify the regulation with regard to the sixteen weeks, and he knows on occasion being shown I have done so.
    Mr. LANSBURY: That has been when we wanted to train an individual for other. work in England.
    Mr. BURNS: The hon. Member is wrong. I have done it not only in the particular cases to which he now refers, but in general cases where the facts have warranted it.
    Mr. LANSBURY: I say no such permission has been given in general cases; it is only in particular and individual cases, t do not want, when I am right, to be told I am wrong. The Committee that had this matter in hand reported thus:—
    "The committee report that their attention has been directed to the fact that the President of the Local Government Hoard, when considering the scheme of works submitted to the Central Body in respect to Herne Bay, was under the impression it was the intention of the body to employ 500 men for forty-three weeks continuously. The committee report it was never their intention to employ men in this way. It was estimated that altogether 2.150 men would be employed for an average period of ten weeks."
    I think that is a sufficient answer to the statement of the right hon. Gentleman. I hope during the coming winter he will not merely condemn everybody else's scheme. He has an excellent and a highly-paid staff at the Local Government Board. I acknowledge their ability and their public spirit, and I want to suggest to the right hon. Gentleman that he should set some of them to the task of devising a plan to spend the £200,000, or whatever sum Parliament is going to grant, on the treatment of the unemployment problem during the coming winter. I am a little tired of being criticised and being shown I am wrong. I now suggest, the gentlemen whom we pay to do this sort of work should be turned on to do it and that they should tell us what schemes they propose for dealing with the unemployed during the coming winter. I am sure I shall be told, but I shall take no notice of the answer, that relief works are uneconomic

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    and that they have been proved to be wrong. Until the right hon. Gentleman can persuade his colleagues to give up enough time to pass such legislation as will till all the land of this country——
    The CHAIRMAN (Mr. Emmott): We are dealing with the administration of the Local Government Board and not with legislation.
    Mr. LANSBURY: I only want to say I do not want to be told the propositions we make for dealing with unemployment are uneconomic, and the rest of it, until the right hon. Gentleman himself has something more than words to give us on this very important subject.
    Mr. BUTCHER: I rise to appeal very strongly to the President of the Local Government Board to remedy the grievances of these vaccination officers. The grievances are long standing, serious, and wholly undeserved. The question seems to me to be summed up in one sentence. Is it right that public officials who have faithfully discharged their duties should by reason of legislation, which at any rate is supposed to be passed in the public interest, have more work and less pay? That is the simple issue. After all, the facts are not disputed in this case. Is it denied that in consequence of this legislation they have less pay? I hardly think that can be denied. The larger source of their income comes from vaccinations, and, inasmuch as the number of vaccinations has gone down and the number of exemptions has gone up in consequence of the Act, it is obvious their income must have suffered. My hon. Friend gave the figures of exemptions from last year's return compared with 1907. May I give the figures of vaccinations, showing how they have gone down. In 1907 there were 651,000 successful vaccinations in England and Wales. In 1909 they had gone down to 547,000, so that, on that fact alone, it is obvious that these men are suffering a serious reduction of income. I do not doubt that it varies in different parts of the country. But there are cases which have come under my knowledge where these men have lost very nearly as much as 20 per cent. of their income, and, in many cases, more than that. Ought these men to be made to suffer undeservedly, to this great extent, and in some cases to be placed in serious distress, not through any fault of their own, but simply because certain legislation has been passed. Their hardship is not merely con-
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    fined to loss of income; they will get a smaller pension when their turn comes to retire, because the pension will be calculated on the income of the last five years, and, if you steadily diminish that income during the five years previous to retirement, they will suffer accordingly in the matter of pension.
    In this state of things one would imagine that even where the work of a man was not increased the Government should make some provision to see that he is properly paid. There is a Parliamentary obligation lying on the right hon. Gentleman. In 1907, when this Bill was before the House of Lords, an Amendment was proposed with a view to safeguarding the interests of these vaccination officers, and the spokesman for the Government on that occasion said the Amendment seemed to be proposed in the interests of vaccination officers who felt that the Bill might diminish their income. But, said the Noble Lord, it was not anticipated that the number of persons who would obtain exemption certificates on account of conscientious objections would be materially increased. The Noble Lord went on to say that the vaccination officers were paid by fee, and he would remind Lord Camper-down (who moved the Amendment) that if their remuneration was inadequate their fees might be increased either by the guardians with the concurrence of the Local Government Board or by the Local Government Board itself. On the face of that statement the Amendment was withdrawn. It was thought that these vaccination officers were adequately protected by it. We are now asking the right hon. Gentleman to make good that promise, and, seeing that the loss has actually occurred, to put these men into a position in which they will not suffer. If no more work were thrown upon them they would be entitled to consideration;. But does anyone deny that a large amount of additional work has been thrown upon them by the machinery which they have to put in operation, in consequence of the increased number of exemptions. They have a large amount of additional correspondence to carry on. They have to pay visits to men who have not obtained exemptions from vaccination, and for that extra work they do not get one farthing increase of pay. I venture to think it will be admitted that they have a grievance, and that there is a necessity for some remedy.
    Indeed, the right hon. Gentleman has admitted it, because he has endeavoured

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    to remedy it. But in my judgment, at any rate, he has gone on the wrong line in asking the board of guardians to grant a gratuity. That is entirely a wrong way of paying men. If they are entitled to this money, if they have done work for it, why give it to them by way of gratuity? They are simply asking for that to which they are entitled. If they are not entitled, then why give them a gratuity? May I, with all deference, suggest to the right hon. Gentleman that the difficulty might be got over in this way. He should make the increased pay in some way commensurate with the increased work. If the officers have lost, owing to the increased number of exemptions, let there be increased pay commensurate with that loss. Why not give a fee for recording each exemption certificate? The loss might be balanced in that way. If the number of exemptions decreases then the officers will get less for vaccination certificates, and more for exemption certificates. If the number of vaccinations increases, they will get more for vaccination certificates and less for exemption certificates. It may be suggested that payment by way of salary would be better. I am not putting one plan forward in preference to any other. If the right hon. Gentleman will apply his mind to the problem I believe he will be able to solve the difficulty. For my part, so long as this undoubted grievance is met in some way from the public purse I shall be perfectly content. But that there is a grievance, that it has gone on a long time, and that it ought to be remedied I think is the general opinion of the Members of this House.
    Captain FABER: I am not without hope that my right hon. Friend will see his way to meet this distinct grievance. We all know the right hon. Gentleman is fair, to the best of his ability, in his dealings with these questions. We quite recognise not only his ability but his fairness, and we hope that, on this occasion, he will be able to meet a very great grievance. These men are actually being asked to commit suicide by sending out in the first instance Form Q. They have to send it to everybody concerned as regards vaccination, and it is only human nature that the men who receive, Form Q, when out of work, should claim exemption from vaccination. That being so, the wretched vaccination officers, in trying to do their best, are actually trying to kill themselves by inducing poor men, many of whom are out of work,
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    to claim exemption from vaccination. Not only are they committing suicide, but they are doing so by means of a very slow process, because their income is gradually diminishing. Perhaps quite as difficult as the question of diminishing salaries is the question of their pensions, if they are not starved to death before they become entitled to a pension. It is quite clear that by the time many of these men become entitled to pensions there will be very little pension for them, unless it is to be based on a scale for the years 1903 to 1907. I think the right hon. Gentleman, with his usual fairness, will be prepared to meet them on the question of pension, and that he will agree with us it is absolutely ridiculous to calculate the pension on the falling income of the last few years. The best way, indeed, will be for these officers to receive a salary. It would be much better for them to have a salary for what they actually do. As the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for York (Mr. Butcher) said just now, if a man does not work he should not have a salary. I think hon. Members on both sides of the House will agree that these vaccination officers have a very great grievance against the Local Government Board and the country generally for the way in which they are paid for work which is admirably done, and which they certainly do to the best of their ability. Cannot the right hon. Gentleman meet us in this question? We are prepared to leave it to him to deal with it in the best way he can, and I certainly resume my seat with some hope that our expectation that he may be able to do so will be realised.
    5.0.P.M.
    Sir ALBERT SPICER: I am glad it does not fall to my lot to-night to propose a reduction of the salary of the right hon. Gentleman. I am intervening on a subject in connection with which I desire to acknowledge the help we have already received from the President of the Local Government Board. It is because he has done something for us in the past that we hope he may be induced to do still more. The question on which I wish to say a few words is that of the removal of children from our workhouses. We desire to acknowledge the services of the President of the Local Government Board in removing the children from a good many workhouses, especially in the Metropolis. Personally, I wish to acknowledge his help and his influence in this direction on many of the inspectors, and I am glad that a good many boards of guardians through-

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    out the country are moving in the same direction in their own workhouses. But a great deal more requires to be done before this evil can be altogether removed. It may be asked, why is it that you want to remove children from the workhouses? Are they not well treated there? Are they not well looked after? My reply is, that these children are not responsible for the position in which they find themselves, and I maintain that the atmosphere of the workhouse is not an atmosphere that will give them in the future the best opportunity for using their powers aright. I know great improvement has been made in recent years by having the children educated in the ordinary schools of the country. That is, of course, all to the good, but those of us who feel strongly on this question feel that the children ought not to be left in the workhouses at all. Institutional training and living is not good for children. In the last century and in the earlier part of this, there were an immense number of philanthropists in this country who seemed to think an institution a sort of Divine arrangement. I think we are learning, slowly it is true, that after all, a poor home is better than even the best institution. Children brought up in an institution do not get a chance of mixing with others. They do not come in contact with the ordinary friction that occurs in daily homo life, and they go into the world far too wooden, if I may say so, and far less able to resist the temptations that come to them in their individual life as contrasted with the same temptations in the institution. They have to go out one by one and take their place in the world, but they do not get as many opportunities as is desirable of leading an individual life. A good many boards of guardians have already utilised this system of boarding out these children where it is possible to do so. Others are making use of small scattered homes which, after all, are more economical than big institutions, and where there are small scattered homes for ten or twelve children, with a wise foster-mother, it is all the better for the children, because it makes their surroundings more like what their surroundings would have been if they had had the advantages of ordinary home life. That is the reason why we want to get the children out of the workhouses and within their special circumstances, for which they are not responsible, we want to give them good opportunities for living their own individual life in future. A great
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    many boards of guardians have already moved in this matter, but a great many are very slow to adopt new methods. I admit readily that these individual methods of treating children mean more work to the individual guardians. They mean more inspection because you can inspect 100 or 200 children in a comparatively short time in one building, but if you have them divided up into homes of ten or twelve, even, if they are in the same neighbourhood, as I can say from experience, it takes a good deal of time.
    As the President of the Local Government Board has helped us in the past in connection with this question, I ask that he should, during this coming year, do even more than he has done in the past—and there is need for it. Let me give a few figures in connection with some of what I may call the backward boards. I am informed, for instance, that at Hartlepool they have about 100 children in the workhouse. They have been repeatedly urged by the Local Government Board to remove their children, but at present without avail. Then the Grimsby Board of Guardians have no fewer than 113 children in the workhouse. The guardians have been considering the question since 1905, and they have wished to leave the children where they are. I am glad to know that the Local Government Board have refused to allow this, but at present they have not succeeded in inducing the guardians to-act. Take, again, Kidderminster. There were seventy-seven children of school age in the workhouse, and I am informed the guardians will do nothing. Bury, in Lancashire, has about 100 children, and Ashton-under-Lyne about eighty. I am glad to see that here the guardians are at last seeking some information as to how other unions are bringing up their children, and I sincerely hope that the result of those inquiries will be that they will do what other guardians are doing. I will only give one other case, that of Whitehaven, where there are sixty or seventy children in the workhouse, and the inspector has already addressed the board on the necessity of removal. Then throughout the country there are other similar unions where they have perhaps fifteen to thirty children. If we could only create a greater public opinion in the matter, so as to help the President of the Local Government Board in exercising all the influence he can, I believe it need not be a very long time before we have cleared out

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    the children from the workhouses and given them better opportunities for living, as I say, their own individual life.
    Mr. CHAPLIN: As the author of the Vaccination Bill which passed through the House some years ago, and as my anticipation and hopes have not been realised by the subsequent action of the President of the Local Government Board, I wish to say a few words on this question. I interposed in the Debate last year, first, upon the ground of the hardships which have been brought on the vaccination officers by the Act of 1907, and, secondly, on the ground of the administration of this Act and the Vaccination Order, 1907, which tends directly to the discouragement of vaccination. As regards the officers, I wish to support the case which was put forward by the hon. Member (Mr. Peto). Under the present administration, especially since the passing of the second Act, they are constantly confronted with a great deal more work to do than they had before, and they get less remuneration for it. Under the present system they are called upon to send out a document, which is called Notice Q. The burden, either in labour or cost, of distributing that document is thrown upon them. I do not know how much that involves, but as it has got to be sent out to the parents of every child, unquestionably it must be a. very heavy burden; and we might ask the right hon. Gentleman to let the public know exactly what it amounts to. On the one hand, it imposes all this additional labour and cost on them, and at the same time the inevitable tendency is greatly to increase the claims for exemption, and to that extent, of course, to diminish their remuneration. I am told that since 1907 these claims for exemption have increased by 140 per cent. Surely that is a very serious consideration on a whole variety of grounds. It is serious in the interests of the officers themselves, but it is infinitely more serious in the interest of the health of the general public. It was upon that ground that I made an earnest appeal to the right hon. Gentleman last year. However, up to the present time little appears to have been done, though the hardship, I understand, was quite frankly admitted by the right hon. Gentleman himself. He has recommended the local authorities to make additional payments to the officers who have suffered from this great increase of exemption, but I do not understand that these recommendations are always accepted. On the contrary, I
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    am told it can be shown that many of them, in spite of the large loss which they have incurred, have had no substitute whatever. I want to ask the right hon. Gentleman why he cannot do something more directly by some order of his own. The powers of the Local Government Board are very wide. Orders of all sorts and kinds can be made. There are few Ministers who in some respects have more autocratic powers than the President of the Local Government Board. Cannot he take upon himself to do a little more in the interest of these deserving public servants, and also, according to my views, in the interests of public health.
    But the other branch of the question is the most serious point that we have to deal with. If the practice of vaccination is right and desirable at all it ought to be thoroughly carried out. There are differences of opinion, and in some quarters there are the greatest possible objections to vaccination, but so long as it is the law it ought to be thoroughly carried out. Can it be so when you have orders like this, which is neither more nor less than a direct encouragement and invitation to people to claim exemption? Orders of that kind are directly in contravention of the whole purpose and spirit of the Acts which have been passed. Of course, the administration of these Acts must be governed by the wishes and desires of the President of the Local Government Board himself. I am the last person willingly to criticise the action of the right hon. Gentleman for whose general policy since he has been a Minister no one has more respect than I have, but it is a very serious thing when year after year you see these claims for exemption increasing to such an extent that if they continue in the present ratio for another ten or fifteen years the exemptions will be the rule, and the vaccinated children will be only the exceptions. If there be any truth at all in the policy of vaccination or of the Acts which have been passed by Parliament that is a consideration which is becoming more and more serious every year, and if there should be in the future terrible outbreaks, which God forbid, of this horrible disease, the whole responsibility must be laid upon the shoulders of those who have the administration of the Act.
    Mr. LEWIS HASLAM: I wish to say a few words in reference to a subject than which there is no more important comes under the purview of the Local Government Board. I refer to the treat-

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    ment of Poor Law children. Hon. Members may not be aware how large is the number of children who are boarded out or otherwise relieved under the Poor Law system. There are about 130,000 children receiving outdoor relief, and in addition there are about 30,000 who are under the supervision of parents or guardians who are not capable, or not able properly to look after these children. These children are in many cases under the care of drunken or immoral parents and require close supervision. I wish to urge the President of the Local Government Board to use his authority in endeavouring to ensure better supervision for the children who are receiving outdoor relief. I know that this matter has had his attention, but I think a great deal more could be done in regard to increasing the supervision, and what I desire to suggest more particularly, is that there should be women volunteers, acting under the guardians, who will visit these children regularly, and by means of sympathy and attention to their wants, improve their physical and mental condition, and in that way enable them to be brought up as useful citizens. With regard to this matter, I understand that the Local Government Board have under consideration a boarding-out Order, which has not yet been issued. I wish to ask the right hon. Gentleman when that boarding-out Order will be issued.
    While on this point I desire to sympathise with the right hon. Gentleman as to the difficulty of dealing with this particular class of children. He was urged by the hon. Member for Bow and Bromley (Mr. Lansbury) to endeavour to get boards of guardians to increase the amount paid for outdoor relief. No doubt in some cases that is desirable. There are cases in which the relief which is allowed is very much too little. I will mention an instance which was reported to the Poor Law Commission. In that case a widow with seven children, none of them working, received 10s. a week from the Poor Law. The rent of her house was £5 10s., which was defrayed by friends. The visitor said, "I found the home in a. very dirty and filthy condition. I tried to get particulars of the way the money was spent, but found that impossible." He added that it was obvious such persons could not live on 10s. a week. I think the Committee will agree that the outdoor relief in that case was inadequate. There are cases in which money relief has a detrimental instead of a beneficial effect. Therefore I would ask the right hon. Gen-
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    tleman to urge the guardians to investigate those cases more closely and find out where money relief is given with beneficial results, and where it may be desirable that other means of giving relief should be adopted. In the case of the 30,000 children the Royal Commission Report states that the children are being brought up under conditions in which it is impossible for them to become properly educated. In such cases means should be taken by which the children may be separated from their parents, and either boarded out or in some other way taken entirely from their vicious surroundings. I wish to emphasise one point. It is only due to our country to say that great progress has been made during the last fifty years or so. Whereas in 1848 twenty-five per thousand of the children in this country were paupers, in 1908 only seven per thousand were paupers. I believe progress is being made at the present time in that particular. In 1849 sixty-five per thousand of the population were paupers, whereas now the number is about twenty per thousand. While I make that admission, I feel sure that the President of the Local Government Board will agree with me that there is much more to be done. I gladly acknowledge what has been accomplished, and I trust that the right hon. Gentleman will give all the attention he can to this matter.
    Lord H. CAVENDISH-BENTINCK: I wish to refer to a question which was very much before this House when the work of the Local Government Board was debated earlier in the Session. I hope the right hon. Gentleman will not consider that I am taking an unduly captious or critical attitude as to his Department. I should regret very much if he did so, for I am a sincere admirer of his work at the Local Government Board, and nobody could be more ready than I am to admit the good work he has done on behalf of children. But there are some curious lapses in his administration, and if Homer sometimes nodded, I believe it is true that the right hon. Gentleman is sometimes not so vigilant as he might be. There is no question on which public opinion is more sensitive than that of the treatment of children in the workhouses. There is no question on which both the Majority and Minority Reports of the Royal Commission are more insistent than on the necessity of getting them out of the workhouses. I cannot help thinking that it is regrettable that the Board should seem to follow the policy of pay-

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    ing lip service to this state of public opinion, while avoiding their undoubted responsibility to the children. What I suggest is that in providing accommodation for these children the guardians might easily arrange for boarding them out, or for hiring houses for them in towns instead of building institutions for them within the precincts of the poorhouses. It is impossible really for the children to escape the atmosphere of pauperism which is about a poorhouse if they are kept in such institutions. One of the places to which I refer is Frome. That is the policy which has been sanctioned there. At Redruth the Local Government Board went so far as to recommend the guardians to house their children in a separate portion of the workhouse. I do not know on what principle the Board acts in these matters, because at Hartlepool that policy has been vetoed by the Board, while at other places it has been allowed. At Doncaster for a long time the guardians refused altogether to take the children out of the workhouse, but lately they have agreed to build an institution within the precincts of the workhouse. I cannot say whether that proposal has been sanctioned by the Board or not, but if it has not, I hope the right hon. Gentleman will most decidedly veto it. When a Debate took place in the spring, I gathered from the tone of the right hon. Gentleman's speech that he resented very much being regarded as a bureaucratic dictator, and that he has no objection to being regarded as a benevolent despot. I wish to lay stress upon the benevolent part of his administration and to express the hope that he will take this matter into his serious consideration.
    Mr. CROOKS: I am rather sorry that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wimbledon (Mr. Chaplin) has left the House, for I think there is a good opportunity this afternoon of bearing testimony to the pioneer work which he did when President of the Local Government Board. I do not know whether the House is aware of an admirable Report which was issued by the Secretary to the Admiralty (Dr. Macnamara) when he was assistant to the President of the Local Government Board with reference to schools for pauper children. There are some observations in that Report which would have enabled the right hon. Gentleman to realise what is being done in this matter. I honestly say that it does seem to me an extraordinary thing that the right hon. Gentleman the Member
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    for Wimbledon, so far as I have been able to gather—and I have been associated with the Poor Law ever since I can remember anything at all—should have been the first to realise what the duty of the Local Government Board was. Officialism, as we knew it in the old days, was not what we know it to be to-day. It may be bending to public opinion, and it may be becoming more sympathetic. I remember the enormously human Order issued by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wimbledon in which it was urged that when relief was given it should be sufficient and adequate. I remember also the protest which was raised against that Order on the ground that it was likely to make paupers. The right hon. Gentleman's reply to that was that it is not the duty of the Local Government Board to make paupers, but to relieve pauperism. That seems, somehow or other, to be forgotten. He was the first man to say so.
    I do hope that the President of the Local Government Board will pay some attention to the need for a central establishment for the supply of stores. I know that the little tin gods in the shape of guardians will die hard in regard to this matter. After all, the contract system is open to very grave and serious scandals. Everybody is perfectly honest until they are found out. I know the amount of canvassing that goes on, and I think it might be limited to one instead of being practised by twenty-eight or more. About the unemployed I know perfectly well that the Act says, "Such schemes as may be approved by the Local Government Board." My hon. Friend the Member for Bow and Bromley (Mr. Lansbury) has been saying that since nearly all the schemes have failed that have been submitted, it is not unreasonable to let us try our prentice hands and see how much better we can do But there are a few people who think that a little more might be done, and that the time wasted in Parliament might be easily spent on organisation with better results. Then the right hon. Gentleman is asked that he should use his autocratic power. If he uses it benevolently I do-not mind. I am not going to argue about vaccination, though I think the way out of it is to have salaries for these men, and not fees. You have sufficient control over them owing to the method of legislation. Coming to the children, everybody in the House will agree that there are fewer degenerates in the country than there used to be, but very few people

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    realise to what this change is due. I wish the House had a little longer memory about children. We live only for to-day; all our evils and troubles are just at this moment, and it is said that such things never happened before.
    Reference has been made to the boarding out system, and I might interject that Oliver Twist was boarded out, and though I will not say anything about Oliver Twist, yet the method was not a success. But, in spite of all that had gone on before, it is only within the last twelve years that you have a really better system. When you had the Poor Law Schools Committee of Inquiry, the Children's Committee, everyone had gone mad about scattered homes. Everyone thought that what you wanted were scattered homes with mothers; that you could get mothers just as you would take on dock labourers, and that you had only to go to the street corner to get a woman to take charge of twelve or fourteen children. In one Poor Law union I visited a scattered home with sixteen children. I said, "I do not think any workman has got sixteen children under fourteen years of age." They said I was a captious critic, and that I did not understand. I pointed out to the young woman that the children were perfectly clean, so clean that you could pick them out from anybody else's children. I said that did not seem quite like home, and that you could not get clean boys on a Friday afternoon in an ordinary working man's home. When you have learned social reform out of a book it is such a difficult thing for you to have to clean and dress kids after doing a hard day's washing. These little homes have become a kind of institution, with sixteen children for one woman. That is a great deal too much. I think four children, is about enough. But as lately as twelve years ago a conference was held in London on this very point, and a representative of the people got up and said: "It is no part of our duty to be discussing the education of these children. The law says you may not send them to work before they are eight years of age, and therefore it presupposes that you may send them to work when they are eight years of age."
    Less than twelve years ago that was said in this great city that you had no right to educate those children. Public opinion has gone a long way since then, owing to the terrible row that was made on that particular occasion—I will not say it was
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    quite so bad as the scene here last Monday week, but it was something like that— when we shouted out, "We are not here to listen to any one who is going to advocate child slavery." Then we pleaded that these children should have the same facilities to acquire technical and higher education as were given to children in ordinary elementary schools. They said that these were the children of drunken, thriftless, worthless parents. I have heard that said here. It seems to me a kind of high falutin, rhetoric which will carry people away who do not understand. I said "your higher and technical education are now paid for out of the wine and spirit duties. If there are any children in the world who deserve to have their share of it is these particular children." They never heard such a wild, revolutionary proposal in their lives.
    The end was that a resolution was carried by which these children were entitled to a share of the technical education of the country; and it is strange after what we have heard this afternoon about children being neglected in some places that one of the first county scholarships was won by a Poor Law child. I will undertake to say, as regards some of these schools, that I know that both for swimming, singing, and physical exercise the children will compete with any children in the country, and it has been said that they could even compare in buildings and equipments with Eton and Harrow, which is very shocking when you come to think of it. But, after all, these children of the State have the right to be looked after properly, and I am glad that these youngsters have got the advantage and that it is going to be kept up. The Poor Law child of to-day is not the Poor Law child of twelve or fourteen years ago. Certainly no comparison is possible. He is a bright intelligent child, and just as well able to take care of himself in any society or any company as any other child; and in physique and mental capacity he can fully hold his own. I want that to go on. But if there is any real desire in what has been said as to removing children from the care of the Poor Law I say that the day has now come when every child should be taken away entirely from the Poor Law and put under the education authority. They should have no association with the Poor Law.
    My mind always goes back to the day when I went with my mother to a board of Poor Law guardians, holding on to her skirt, and heard a homily read by the chairman, who sat in a big chair and

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    pointed at me, a giant figure of eight years old, and said, "It is time that that boy was getting his own living." I like to think of these things. I know how my little heart was terrified in those days, and I remember when my mother came out of the room big tears were rolling down her cheeks. I hate that board of guardians to this very day. Why should they have associated with it children in their misfortune? There was no question of drunkenness in that family? Why should we have gone there at all? Why should little children be asked to carry domestic burdens that belong to the man and the woman and not to the child? So I and my colleague on my right absolutely declined to allow children to go to boards of guardians at all. Since those days we have removed the control of education from the guardians. The examination of the education of these children is now under the Board of Education. The teachers are certified. Why not go a step further and say that all the children should be removed. A stroke of the pen could do it. But I do fear that these little tin gods, the guardians, will say once more, "Have not we looked after these children efficiently? Cannot we be allowed to control them?" I say, "No, their very association with you is detrimental to the interests of the children, and they should be transferred to the care of the State."
    You cannot say that cannot be done now, because every class of child is now under the Education Department. You have got even little criminals in reformatory schools under the education committees of some towns, and you have got industrial schools under an education authority. Surely the children who are in these places only because they are poor, or their parents are poor, are as much entitled to consideration as the other children. They are more entitled, because to me a child is the biggest thing in the world, and nothing else matters. As long as I see the children doing well and getting a fair chance I do not worry about anything else. I am not one of these men who talk about the children of to-day being the men and women of to-morrow. I realise that the children of to-day are going to be the citizens and the great administrators of a great Empire tomorrow. Therefore, it is all the more important that they should be trained with a strong, independent spirit. We may have to talk a year or two longer to get this done, but when I see what has happened
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    within the last fifteen years, and the enormous strides made and the better facilities given to Poor Law children, I do hope and believe that the day is not far distant when the State will realise its obligations to these children and see that they are not given to the Poor Law guardian at all, but that as they are the children of the State they shall be put under the educational authority of the State and have a square chance. It is not a wild dream to me to think that the boys who at this moment are in charge of the Poor Law authorities at Poplar may be playing some of these days at Lords against Eton, and I "will undertake to say that they will beat them too.
    Mr. WILLIAM BOYLE: In addition to the many grievances which have already been brought before the Committee, I regret to say that I have still another grievance. My object in rising to support the reduction of the right hon. Gentleman's salary is in order to enable me to bring before the attention of the Committee a case which affects very grievously one of my Constituents. Locally I may say that there is very great indignation owing to the harsh treatment that has been meted out by the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board. To give the Committee an idea how strong is the feeling in this particular locality I may mention that at a meeting of the board of guardians held two days ago it was decided, by twenty votes to thirteen, that until they got some satisfactory explanation of the conduct of the President of the Local Government Board they would refuse to attend any more meetings of the board of guardians. I will endeavour as briefly as possible to call the attention of the Committee to what has taken place. Last January, a certain unfortunate labourer living in a village named Whissonsett, attempted to commit suicide by cutting his throat, at about seven or eight o'clock in the evening. A doctor was called in, and at two o'clock in the morning this unfortunate man arrived at the workhouse situated at Gressenhall, in the Mitford and Launditch Union, and admission was demanded for him by two policemen in whose charge he was, and who were armed with the following certificates, which they presented to the master of the workhouse:
    "I have seen the man Barker, who is suffering from cut throat, but no vessel has been injured, etc., and us he cannot be looked after at home, I have given him this order for admission."

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    That is signed. In addition there was presented to the workhouse master the following:—
    "Please admit Robert Barker, a parishioner of Whissonsett, to the union infirmary."
    When the policemen arrived at the workhouse, they had a personal interview with the workhouse master, who for reasons which I will explain, refused to admit this unfortunate individual. The workhouse master was at that time aware that in December, 1900, the board of guardians found the very gravest fault with the admittance into the workhouse of a certain lunatic, and inasmuch as the workhouse is not in any way suitable to receive lunatics, on 24th December they adopted the following resolutions:—
    "Resolved, that the relieving officer be instructed not to bring lunatics to the workhouse, as there is no proper accommodation for them."
    On the 6th June, 1904, the question was again brought up, and the following resolution was passed:—
    "Resolved, that the clerk write to the Superintendent of Police at East Dereham, informing him that there is no proper accommodation at the workhouse for the reception of lunatics, and that if the police have to deal with lunatics they should be sent direct to the asylum."
    There may have been a want of judgment on the part of the workhouse master; that I am perfectly willing to admit. He possibly erred in judgment in not admitting this unfortunate person at two o'clock in the morning; nevertheless, you must bear in mind, before you come to a definite decision as to whether this workhouse master erred or not, that he is an officer of the board of guardians, and the permanency of his position more or less depended upon his having the goodwill of the masters whom ho served. Recollecting these two resolutions that were passed, and remembering that a man who has attempted to commit suicide in nine cases out of ten, if death ensue, is pronounced by the coroner's jury to have committed the act while insane, it could not be said that he did anything more than err in judgment when he refused to admit this man at that early hour of the morning. The result was that the man was driven back to his own home, a distance of five miles. No harm resulted from his having been brought to the workhouse and having been returned to his home, because within a week he was perfectly well and was about again. I want especially to draw the attention of the Committee to the certificate of the doctor, in which he distinctly stated that although the man had cut his throat, no vessel, etc., was injured. We should have heard prob-
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    ably nothing more about this case, and it would have been passed over, had it not been that the rector of the village, Whissonsett, wrote a letter to the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board on the 9th January.
    I must be perfectly candid with the Committee by stating that had I received the letter I should certainly have taken the view which the right hon. Gentleman took. But the statements in this letter are absolutely inaccurate, and what we complain of is that those statements have never been properly looked into and endorsed by the right hon. Gentleman. He has taken the word of the parson of Whissonsett, who wrote to the right hon. Gentleman immediately after the event took place. We all know that it is very often best before sending off a letter to sleep over it; but this gentleman refused to give himself a few hours' consideration, but at once wrote a most indignant letter to the right hon. Gentleman. I can perfectly well understand myself, if the right hon. Gentleman believed the statements this letter contained, that he considered he was justified in taking the action which he eventually took. I will not read the whole of the letter, though I am prepared to do so if any member of the Committee desires it; but among the various passages which this letter contains is a statement that the doctor wrote a strongly-worded memorandum as to the gravity of the case. Here is the certificate which he wrote, and which I have read to the Committee, and it shows that there was no urgency. On the contrary, it distinctly states that there is no vessel injured. From the certificate itself we can infer that there was no immediate danger to the man as the result of the attempt to cut his throat. Of course, when the right hon. Gentleman received a letter of that sort, stating that the workhouse master in my Division absolutely ignored the endorsement on the doctor's certificate marking the case as urgent, there appeared to be some reason for the very harsh treatment that the right hon. Gentleman meted out to one of my Constituents. But it was not so, and as far as that particular point goes, the certificate I have read is in itself proof that it was not urgent.
    The next paragraph of the letter complained that the workhouse master had not come downstairs to interview the policemen. We deny that. It is absolutely untrue. I myself have had an interview with the workhouse master, and I have seen members of the board of guardians, and

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    they all absolutely deny the statement. On the contrary, the workhouse master came downstairs, and had a personal interview with the policeman, and told them why it was he was unable to admit this unfortunate man into the workhouse. Then again, further down in the letter, the rector complained that in an interview with the workhouse master he was treated in an uncivil way. I do not want, however, to labour the question of the letter, but there is no doubt that a certain amount of ill-feeling existed between the workhouse master and this gentleman, the rector of this village of Whissonsett; and the result was that the rector went home and wrote this letter, which is the cause of the whole of the trouble and which has resulted in very great harm having been done to one of my Constituents. There followed various letters backwards and forwards between the board of guardians and the Local Government Board. With these I will not trouble the Committee. The right hon. Gentleman first sent a copy of the rector's letter to the board of guardians, and, to be as brief as possible, I will now turn to the letter which was written by the Local Government Board on the 21st March of this year. This is what the Assistant-Secretary of the Local Government Board wrote:—
    "The Board have caused further inquiry to be made into the circumstances by their inspector, Mr. Hervey, and have given the matter their careful consideration. It appears to them that Mr. Neville was most seriously to blame in refusing to admit Robert Barker, and they regard his conduct in the case as so unsatisfactory, that they would not feel justified in permitting him to retain the responsible position of muster of the workhouse. The Board have accordingly this day addressed to in. Neville a letter, a copy of which is enclosed, requiring him forthwith to place his resignation of the above-mentioned office in the hands of the guardians."
    6.0.P.M.
    What we complain of is that we have never been informed as to what this inspector, Captain Hervey, who is referred to in this letter, reported to the Local Government Board. We do not really know, and it is one of the grievances which we have against the Local Government Board that we have never been told, nor has it ever been in any way intimated to us, whether there is anything we do not know of that has been brought against this workhouse master, and marked against him at the Local Government Board. On 14th April, in spite of that letter, the board of guardians passed the following resolution:—
    "Resolved, that the guardians have heard with much surprise of the decision of the Local Government Board calling on the master to resign. They regret the
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    Local Government Board have taken such action, and are unanimous in asking the Local Government Board to reconsider the case. The guardians maintain that they themselves were equally responsible, and in the meantime the guardians do not advise the master to tender his resignation."
    The clerk, in forwarding that to the Local Government Board, pointed out that it was passed unanimously by the guardians at a meeting at which forty-three members were present out of a total of sixty-three. On the strength of that resolution I think the Committee would naturally infer that an investigation should have taken place. The inspector has not made a proper investigation. He has never attempted to interview the board of guardians. He has, on one or two occasions, had interviews, separately and privately, with one or two of the members of the board, but nothing official has ever been brought before the board of guardians, and altogether they have been ignored. The case does not end here. While all this correspondence was going on one can imagine that the workhouse master was feeling very much annoyed, and his wife was in very much the same condition. In May, his wife, through ill-health, broke down, and the doctor informed the unfortunate woman that she was no longer capable of carrying on her work in the workhouse, and, in consequence, the doctor recommended her to resign. Automatically, under certain rules, when a matron resigns the master has to go, and, consequently, the resignation which had been called for by the Local Government Board was ignored, because the resignation of the matron automatically completed the question as to whether the master should resign or not.
    I have not risen this evening to ask that resignation to be in any way considered, or to ask the Local Government Board to reappoint this man in the position of master of the workhouse. What I have risen to ask the President of the Local Government Board is this: Here is an unfortunate man who, possibly, I will allow, may have erred in his judgment in not admitting the man to the workhouse after he had attempted to commit suicide. But is it right that a man who has served the Local Government Board for no less than twenty years without a single mark against him should, because he has made one mistake, be dismissed without being told what he is dismissed for. This man has got a future before him; he is yet a young man, and to-day there is a sort of slur upon his character. He resigned because his wife became ill, but when he

    621
    goes to find new employment he will be told he has been dismissed by the Local Government Board or that his resignation was demanded by the Local Government Board, and naturally a new employer will ask what is the trouble. What we ask the right hon. Gentleman to do is this, to have a public inquiry. We do not say that we are right, but what we do say is that this action of the Local Government Board has been taken upon a letter written by the rector of the parish and that the information of that letter is absolutely incorrect. I appeal to the right hon. Gentleman, and very strongly, to consider whether the man is not entitled to a public inquiry in order that he may know and that the whole community may know, what there is against him. I cannot believe that the right hon. Gentleman, whose reputation for fair play is well known, both inside and outside the House, can possibly say that a man with twenty years' service, without a bad mark against him, should, because he makes one mistake, be forced to resign. It is incredible. We have all made mistakes. Is there a single man in this House who can get up and say that he has never made a mistake? If the workhouse master made a mistake, I say by all means reprimand him and tell him he is wrong. But for one single mistake to call for his resignation appears to me to be incredible. I cannot believe the right hon. Gentleman himself can be a party to such treatment.
    Local feeling on this matter in my Division is running excessively high. Nobody has any idea of the indignation that exists over the harsh treatment that has been meted out to this unfortunate Constituent of mine. I am bound to say I feel very strongly myself on the subject, and unless fair play is given to this individual the effigy of the right hon. Gentleman will be burned in the market place. [Laughter.] It is no laughing matter for the right hon. Gentleman. This man has never been allowed to hear what is against him, and if there is anything against him and if he has done wrong, then he must accept his punishment. We do not know what grievance there is against the man. We simply know that he made one mistake, and if he is to be punished in this way I think it is the most unheard of and cruel case that has ever been brought to the attention of a Committee of this honourable House. The board of guardians feel that they have been completely ignored; they have never been allowed to express an opinion, and they have gone so far as to
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    say that until they receive a copy of the Local Government inspector's report they will refuse any longer to attend meetings of the board. Consequently, the Poor Law will not be properly administered. I read the letter of the rector of Whissonsett on which the right hon. Gentleman acted. I am quite willing to say that I can understand his having probably jumped to the conclusion that, inasmuch as that letter was accurate, that he was justified in taking the step he took. Let him take my word for it that the statements I have made, as far as I believe, are absolutely correct and accurate. Let me beg of the right hon. Gentleman to see fair play carried out and to see that a public investigation is held at which both sides may be heard. If the result is such as that taken by the right hon. Gentleman then let this workhouse master take his punishment. If not give him a good clean conduct sheet in order that he may start his new life as every man has the right to do.
    Mr. ESSEX: I do not rise to invite the right hon. Gentleman to make provision for the burning of his effigy, but rather for the raising of a statue to him in some rural parishes. I am going to ask him to give his attention to an action of rural justices, which is extremely common, and which, I think, could be remedied at a very small cost indeed. I desire to call the attention of the Committee to the law dealing with the filial liability for maintenance of parents. The law at present allows the justices to decide whether or not an order shall be made on a son or daughter to contribute to the cost of the maintenance of their dependent parent or parents. The law is laid down in a statute dating back to the forty-third year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth. The justices in petty sessions may make an order for the relief of the parent on the child being of sufficient ability to do so. In Stone's Justices Manual there is the following comment:—
    "The meaning of these words is left to the absolute discretion of the justices in Petty Sessions The condition of the labouring class was such in A.D. 1601 that it cannot be considered labourers were included or were intended to be included as of 'sufficient ability' in the statute of Elizabeth which imposed a penalty of one pound a month (the equivalent of five pounds a month of our present money) in case of failure to perform the order. We doubt whether persons of that class, earning the ordinary weekly wages of thirteen shillings or fourteen shillings a week, are within these statutes which ought to be strictly interpreted."
    On 5th July, 1906, I put a question to the right hon. Gentleman:—
    "Whether, in view of the fact that in many Poor-Law districts, sons, whose weekly wages are thirteen shillings or less per week, are compelled to contribute to

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    the cost of Poor-Law relief to their indigent parents, he will issue recommendations to such Poor-Law authorities discouraging such demands? or whether he proposes to presently introduce legislation fixing a minimum scale of income below which a son or daughter may not legally he called upon to contribute to parental support?"
    The reply of the right hon. Gentleman was:—
    "Children are only liable to contribute to the maintenance of their parents when, being of sufficient ability to make a contribution, they are required by an order of the justices to do so. Any question of the ability of a son or daughter to contribute is at the decision of the justices."
    He finished up his reply by saying that the question of the ability of a son or daughter to contribute was in the decision of the justices. That I felt was by no means satisfactory, and I set to work to provide the right hon. Gentleman with cases of what I considered serious hardship which might fortify him in giving expression to the sympathy for the cause of struggling and oppressed labour which he has entertained through a long and honourable career.
    I have a case here which is only one of many. I quote it as a typical case, neither better nor worse than many such cases which have come under my observation. It is that of an old Gloucestershire carter, seventy-four years of age. He brings up a family, while never earning more than about 13s. or 14s. a week; he lives respectably until seventy years of age, and at last, his body giving out, becomes hopelessly infirm, goes to the parish, and asks for relief. After the manner common until the present Government came into power, there was nothing for it but for him to get the charity of the Poor Law authorities, who decided that in his case they would give 2s. 6d. and a loaf of bread per week. This they did. The Poor Law authorities, having let themselves go in this wild and extravagant generosity, sorted out the poor man's children, and found that one was a wealthy person in receipt of 16s. per week, out of which he had to provide for himself and his family. They naturally went for him. A man with such a large income ought to be taxed fairly heavily for the extravagant outlay which the authorities were incurring. They went for him to the tune of 1s. a week. He got hopelessly into arrears, and a summons has been issued against him in respect of them. There was another son with a large income, though not so large as that of his more fortunate brother, but he had a larger family—two children—to provide for out of it. He received 12s. a week net for his
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    labour, and this capitalist, the Poor Law authorities thought, should make some contribution towards the support of his aged parent. They went for him at petty sessions, and compelled him to pay 1s a week. In the meantime the old man, unable to live on 2s. 6d. and a loaf per week, seems to have been bandied about from pillar to post, getting lodging where he could, sometimes with a daughter, sometimes with a son. When it was with a son, the 2s. 6d. went down to 1s. 6d., and the son was expected to make up the other shilling.
    In 1910 the arrears accumulated, and these two wealthy men had arrears amounting to £2 12s. against them. The relieving officer was on their track at once, and these iniquitous persons were brought up before petty sessions. I and others are ready to speak of the shortcomings of the petty sessional business of the country, but on this occasion the common sense and justice of the magistrates forbade their laying this iniquitous burden upon these poor men, and the case was sent back to the guardians for further consideration. A little while after, the relieving officer returned to the charge, and in November got a verdict for 10s. to be paid out of the £2 12s. A distress warrant was issued, but conscience seems to have been at work, and it was not executed until the following March. The wife had to go up and down the village borrowing a shilling here and 2s. 6d. there as best she could from her poor neighbours. Twelve shillings were scraped together to satisfy the order and costs, and the man thought he was free, but he forgot that there had been arrears of a shilling a week accumulating in the interval between August, when the distress warrant was applied for, and March, when it was executed, and the relieving officer turned up for these further accumulated arrears. The whole sorry story need not be lengthened. It is a typical case, which can be paralleled by scores and scores up and down the country. What I plead for is that there should be fixed a limit below which it should not be possible for any bench of magistrates or other authority to say that a man or woman shall be liable to make any contribution whatsoever toward the support of their parents. I do not want to weaken that proper sense of liability and obligation which in the moral state in which most of us are does not need to be insisted upon. But you ought not to allow it any longer to be possible for a body of gentlemen to be able to put the screw on a poor man to contribute to the

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    support of his parents simply on the information that he is earning 12s. or 14s. a week. The old man to whom I have referred, like many another, had lived a useful hardworking life for a long stretch of years.
    The CHAIRMAN: Does the hon. Member suggest that the alteration he desires can be made by order of the Local Government Board?
    Mr. ESSEX: I was going to show how that could be done. In July, 1906, I asked the right hon. Gentleman whether he would be able to issue instructions to the various local authorities under his control impressing upon them the desirability of taking a modern interpretation of the words of this old-fashioned Act, and, if necessary, to bring in a short Act modifying the older enactment. The late Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman said that something would doubtless be done, but nothing has been done. It is my duty, on behalf of the labouring class, who, under a wrongful interpretation of that Act, are constantly persecuted, to bring forward this typical case and to appeal to the undoubted good heart of the right hon. Gentleman to do what he can, and—if you suggest that the law at present is the stronger—to set to work, with the general support of the Committee, to make the law more humane.
    Mr. RUPERT GWYNNE: It is possible —indeed, probable—that when the right hon. Gentleman gets up to reply to the various and varied criticisms which have been levelled against him, he may claim that the scanty attendance shows that there is a very general feeling of satisfaction on both sides with his administration of the Local Government Board. That may, or may not, be the case. At any rate, in regard to certain criticisms which have been made this afternoon, it would be difficult to lay the blame directly at the door of the President himself or of his Department. My object in rising is to support my hon. Friend (Mr. Peto) in calling attention to the grievance of the vaccination officers. In reply to the appeal last year that something should be done to remove the hardship under which these officers are suffering, the right hon. Gentleman said that there were very few cases of real hardship. I think he said that he knew of only three cases where officers had lost more than £50 a year. But I submit that it is impossible for the Local Government Board or for the right hon. Gentleman to know where these cases of hard-
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    ship arise, because out of 1,420 vaccination officers no fewer than 1,020 hold other offices, and it is perfectly obvious that a man holding another office under a board of guardians would be hardly likely to bring forward a grievance against that board in regard to his services as vaccination officer, knowing full well that he might incur the displeasure of the board in regard to his other office. It is perfectly true that during the last year or two the right hon. Gentleman has expressed sympathy with these officers, but he has failed to put on, in regard to this matter, the pressure which the Local Government Board are so well able to use when they want to. I cannot help feeling that if these officers had been more in number and had been able to exert greater influence their grievance would perhaps have been dealt with earlier. The right hon. Gentleman, in reply to a supplementary question not long ago, told me that he was doing what he could to bring about a better state of affairs, and to remedy the grievance by urging boards of guardians to meet the case by gratituties. But he added that it was impossible always to have an adequate salary. I suggest that the right hon. Gentleman himself, at any rate, should be in sympathy with the idea of giving all men an adequate salary for similar work. It was a matter with which the House dealt in regard to himself, and certainly on that occasion he agreed that it was right that if a man was doing similar work he should be given a similar salary to that paid to his colleagues. I trust that this matter will be dealt with, and that when the right hon. Gentleman replies he will give us an assurance that adequate steps will be taken to deal with these cases of undoubted hardship.
    Mr. MORRELL: I rise not for the purpose of criticising the President of the Local Government Board, but really to invite him, when he comes to make his reply, to give us some information on a question which has not yet been touched upon—a very important question—the administration of the Housing Acts, especially the Housing and Town Planning Act passed in 1909. In making that request my mind goes back to an afternoon in May, 1908, when the right hon. Gentleman was engaged in introducing the Second Reading of this Bill to the House. I remember he was then in what we may describe as one of his most exuberant moods. He drew a very rosy and attractive picture of what this Bill, when

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    it became an Act, was going to do to improve the housing conditions of the people of this country. Its object was, as he said, to secure for the working classes more homes, better houses, prettier streets. He told us how he was going to provide "the house beautiful, the town dignified, the city magnificent, and the suburb salubrious." I listened with great interest, and in great hope, to the very eloquent speech of the right hon. Gentleman. In all seriousness I say that on that occasion I was particularly glad that he stated frankly that it was his intention most of all, in producing that Act, to remedy the condition of housing in the rural districts.
    I therefore want him to tell us how far the hopes which he then held out to this House as to the improvement of housing have been realised during the two years In which that Act has been in operation. I remember he justified the introduction of the Bill by giving us some figures as to the state of rural housing in 1908. He told us that seventy-eight villages contained over 4,000 cottages, and of these latter 25 per cent. were "bad" or "extremely bad." In 240 more villages, with 10,000 dwellings, 50 per cent. of the cottages were in a "bad" condition. In thirty villages into which they had inquired there was gross overcrowding. He told us that everywhere there was great deficiency in these matters, and he quoted the "Estates Gazette," which, as he rightly said, was not inclined to exaggerate in a matter of this sort. The "Gazette" said:—
    "There is not a spare cottage to-day in England."
    This was quoted as illustrating the shortness of houses in the rural districts. I do not suppose that everything has been put right in the short time that has elapsed since then, but I would like him to be able to tell us what has been done, at any rate, in that direction. Of course, it is not necessary for me to point out to the Committee that the rural side of this question especially is of enormous importance; it is to all, to those who are engaged in the towns, to the artisans, to the agricultural classes. Everyone knows the state of things that is due to the fact that people simply cannot get cottages to live in in these villages.
    I know a case that occurred only the other day in the village in which I live. A man earning good wages as a carpenter was obliged to give up the cottage for which he was content to pay 3s. 6d. a week
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    and to drift into the town of Reading to pursue his living there in order to make way for the week-ender who was going down to take his cottage. It is quite impossible in the present state of things to persuade the rural district councils, or the local landlords, to do anything to provide more cottages for this sort of man. More especially would I call the attention of the right hon. Gentleman to this case, for sometimes when we draw attention to these facts, he says: "I wish hon. Members, instead of endeavouring to stimulate me would stimulate the local authorities." I think he said that at the beginning of the Session. I am sure he will agree with me that he is in a better position than I am to stimulate the local authorities when they fail in their duty under this Act. We all recognise that in these rural districts the public opinion is necessarily very weak. The population is so scattered that it is very difficult to get men to serve on these local authorities. On the presumption, therefore, that these Acts are to be carried out we must depend a great deal upon the action of the Local Government Board. Therefore, I would like to ask the right hon. Gentleman to tell us whether the Board have received any complaint under Section 10 either from a local authority or from four inhabited householders. With regard to Part II. or III, I would ask whether any orders have yet been made either upon a rural district council or a county council with regard to carrying out of this Housing Act? I would like to know whether the Local Government Board have yet found that any local authority has failed in its district in inspection under this Act; failed, that is, to inspect the houses which is one of the most important parts of its duties, and one which is, in my experience, easily neglected by local authorities?
    With regard to the question of town planning, I hope also that the right hon. Gentleman will be able to give us some information. Again I would recall his speech and the pictures which he drew of the excellent arrangements that were being made at Bournville and Hampstead, which he contrasted with the suburbs which are going up all around our great towns. I have got his words here. He called it:—
    "The intolerable meanness and squalor which comes from the unregulated plans for building around our towns."
    The right hon. Gentleman went so far as to express the belief that when the Bill had been in operation for two or three

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    years we might hope for better results. I would like to ask, after two years, how many local authorities have already applied for orders for town planning schemes? How many schemes are in process of being carried out? And altogether what information he can give us as to the working of this part of the Act? I agree it is a very difficult and experimental piece of legislation. One cannot hope to have very quick results. But I am sure the House will welcome, both with regard to housing and town planning, any information which the right hon. Gentleman is able to give us of the efforts which have been made to the Local Government Board to carry out this great measure.
    Mr. CASSEL: I also rise to call the attention of the Committee to a matter under the Housing Acts, but it is of a very different character from that raised by the hon. Member who has just sat down. The point I wish to raise is the question of appeals to the Local Government Board against closing and demolition orders. I claim to be second to none in regarding it as a most serious offence for houses tenanted by the working classes to be in such a condition as to be dangerous to health or to be uninhabitable. I think it is a serious offence, and one which does, and ought to, entail serious consequences. It is just because I consider it a serious offence and because I consider that it ought to involve serious consequences that I also think that a man ought to have a fair trial before he is convicted of that offence. That trial ought to take place under judicial conditions. I do not wish in the least to accuse the right hon. Gentleman personally of any unfairness. Nothing is further from my mind. What I do want to attack is the arbitrary system of administration under which these appeals are working. The right hon. Gentleman has been called this afternoon a "bureaucrat" and a "benevolent despot." It may be that in matters of administration a benevolent despotism may be the best form of government, but in matters judicial neither a benevolent despot nor a bureaucrat is in the right place. Let me mention two actual cases which have arisen.
    The first was in Camberwell. The borough council had made a closing order in respect of certain premises. When a closing order has been in operation for three months it is followed by a demolition order involving the destruction, in this case of premises of considerable value.
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    There is a right of appeal to the Local Government Board. The owner in question did appeal, and was successful in his appeal. But it was a Pyrrhic victory in the method under which this Act is administered. The first thing that happened was that notices, such as are posted up at the police stations, were placarded on the door of every church and on the town hall doors, stating that an order had been made against this owner as having premises which were in an uninhabitable condition. In fact, it was subsequently found that they were not so! Anything more serious both for the man personally and for the value of his property can hardly be conceived. The three days' trial took place before the inspector. It was a most expensive affair. Fortunately, this man was a well-to-do owner. If he had been a poor man he could never have stood the racket of the inquiry. Being a well-to-do owner, and a fighter, he fought the Local Government Board and the local authority, and the Local Government Board was forced to come to the conclusion on the report of their inspector that they could not confirm the closing order. What did the Board do in regard to the question of costs? They ordered the borough council to pay the costs of the Local Government Board, but they let the owner whistle for his costs, or pay them himself.
    Though he won the case it was almost more than the property was worth. For in the first place he was placarded as a man who had property unfit for human habitation, and having won his case he has lost more money than his properly is worth. He has had no opportunity whatever to go to any judicial tribunal. Moreover, the party who decides this question ultimately is the Local Government Board, and he never had an opportunity of going before that tribunal at all. He went before the inspector, and the inspector made his report to the Local Government Board. That report was treated as a confidential document, and though he asked to see it he was not allowed to see it, so that he does not know what was the evidence or what were the facts placed before the tribunal which ultimately decided his case. I will give another case in which the owner was unsuccessful. It was the same owner, but in this case the property was situated at Hampstead. An order was made in this case also. Having had the Camberwell experience before him, the owner said, "I would sooner not go before the local inquiry at all: if I win, they will not pay my costs." He wrote to the Local

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    Government Board, saying he would not go to the inquiry, but he sent reports of experts of very high standing. He sent a report from the president of the Sanitary Institute (Dr. Wynter Blythe). That report said:—
    "I unhesitatingly state that the houses at the present time are fit for occupation, and the action of the sanitary authority is inexplicable."
    He sent in also the report of Messrs. Potter, surveyors, who stated: "We are astounded to find that the council think it worth their while to pay an inspector to set out specifications containing such trivial complaints." Some of the complaints related to the papering of the houses and to the window sills and matters of that kind. As I said, this man will not agree to incur further expenditure in coming before the inquiry, so he sent these reports to the President of the Local Government Board and asked him to give him an opportunity of being heard. He said: "I am not going to incur again the cost of going before an inquiry and of being mulcted in costs, even if I win and therefore as the Local Government Board is the tribunal I asked to be heard by the Board, and I send you evidence which I had and which, therefore, you will be able to examine as well as if I went before the inquiry." His letter, asking for that right, was merely acknowledged, and the next communication he got—he did not attend the inquiry, and therefore I am not in a position to tell the Committee what occurred at the inquiry—was a letter intimating that an order was to be issued confirming the decision of the local authority, and the result would be that the premises would have to be closed, and would be subject to demolition. Whatever the rights or wrongs of the case may be is not the point. The point is whether a man ought not to have an opportunity of at least stating his case before the tribunal by whom he is to be judged. The inspector reports to the Board and, therefore, I submit, the man has a right to go before that tribunal, which is before the President of the Local Government Board, and state his case to him.
    Upon these fact I asked the right hon. Gentleman on the 17th of July "whether he would give this owner the right of stating his case to the Local Government Board?" I stated the facts that he had refused to attend the inquiry, and I asked the right hon. Gentleman whether in spite of that he would not give the man an
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    opportunity of being heard. What the right hon. Gentleman said in reply was this: "If the hon. and learned Gentleman himself knew all the special circumstances applying to this very special litigant I do not think he would press me to do what he asks me to do." I cannot conceive any special circumstances which would not entitle this man to be heard. The right hon. Gentleman suggested that there were circumstances in this case of which I was ignorant, and which if I knew I would not press that this man should get a hearing. I asked to-day what the special circumstances are, and the answer I received simply contained the facts which I stated in my own question. The right hon. Gentleman assents to that. Then why did he in his answer say that "if the hon. Gentleman himself knew the special circumstances," when he was alluding to special circumstances, which from the nature of my question at that time he was aware I did know. I now ask the right hon. Gentleman this. The owner in this case feels that the answer of the right hon. Gentleman was capable of being interpreted in some way as a personal reflection upon himself. I am quite sure the right hon. Gentleman did not intend it in that sense, and I ask him in his reply this afternoon to give expression to that view publicly, as the question and the answer have been published, and in addition I press the right hon. Gentleman to give an opportunity to this gentleman of stating his case to him in view of the fact that in the first case, notwithstanding his victory, he was mulcted in costs.
    With regard to this procedure, which is an appeal to the Local Government Board and not to a judicial tribunal, may I point out that there have been thirteen borough councils in London and thirty-nine local authorities in the Provinces who have passed resolutions strongly disapproving of that form of procedure. Of course on this occasion it is impossible for me to discuss any legislative proposal, but I do certainly think that where it is shown that there is a case where there are really questions of a judicial nature relating to property and involving serious questions to property owners to be considered, that the time has come when it would be useful to bring forward some amending Act. This particular owner is a well-to-do man, and is not afraid to fight the right hon. Gentleman or the local authority. He has a great deal of property in something like twenty or twenty-

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    one boroughs in London, and there have been a good many cases in which he fought the local authorities and has nearly always won. But I ask the right hon. Gentleman to remember how many cases there must be of men who cannot afford to fight, and that is the serious matter. I put it again to the right hon. Gentleman that as a result of the expression of opinion from the local authorities upon this matter whether the time has not come when there ought to be an appeal to a tribunal which is a judicial tribunal and which could hear the facts and decide upon them. As to the right hon. Gentleman himself, I would accept him as the most fair-minded man in the world, and I will assume that the President of the Local Government Board for the time being is as fair-minded a man as could be found, but I do not think it right that he should have the final decision upon a report which is a confidential document and prepared for him by his own inspector.
    Mr. LEACH: Unlike most of those who spoke to-day upon both sides of the House, I have neither a grievance to air nor a complaint to make. I want rather to speak a few words of earnest commendation of the right hon. Gentleman who presides over the Department whose affairs we are discussing, assisted by his excellent staff. For a long time in the past the Local Government Board was not very popular, and outside this House, as well as inside it, it was always easy to get a cheer if you made an attack upon that Department. I am not quite sure that I did not often do that myself, but under the rule of the present President there has been introduced into the Department of the Local Government Board a more humane spirit than characterised it for a long time previous. I think the Department has softened the rigours of the life of the poor, and is teaching guardians to regard themselves as guardians of the poor rather than merely as guardians of the rates. And if only for what the Local Government Board has done on behalf of the children I should be very willing to give them commendation. They have made great efforts and are still making great efforts to keep the children who come under the care of the poor system, apart from the taint of the workhouses. That is a most excellent thing. In my judgment the Poor Law children ought to be kept entirely separate from the workhouse.
    If I may say a few more words—I never speak for very long, and I think in that way I am an example to Gentlemen on
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    both sides of the House—I would refer to the complaints that have been made about vaccination officers. I am in favour of good wages for good work. I have for a great many years past, and am still, of opinion that men who do good work should be well paid for it, and I hope the President of the Local Government Boar3 will approve that sentiment. But I cannot bring my mind to think it is right to pay out of the rates money for work that is not done, and it seems to me that the appeal on behalf of those officers is to pay them for work they do not do. It is admitted that the work they have been accustomed to do has declined owing to the operation of certain Acts of Parliament with which I am quite at variance, because I do not believe in exemption from these Vaccination Acts. I have experience in that direction, and anything that would help, as I believe these Acts do, to save men from small-pox would have my hearty support. I do not understand why such a strong appeal should be made on behalf of using the ratepayers' money to pay big stipends for work which it is well known has declined.
    In the early hours of this morning, before the House rose, we had a most eloquent and impassioned appeal from the other side not to put burdens upon the rates, when we were asked to delete Sub-section (4) from the Clause of the Insurance Bill then under discussion. Now almost before the echoes of these eloquent speeches have died away we have Gentlemen opposite appealing to put burdens upon the rates. It seems to me the conversion is very sudden, and I cannot understand it. I am very sorry for any man whose business has declined and whose income is not equal to enabling him to live comfortably. May I call attention now to another matter which the right hon. Gentleman may expect me to be interested in, that is the moral and spiritual provision which is made for inmates of workhouses. I am very glad that there are clergymen of the Church of England to administer to the spiritual welfare of members of their flock who are inmates of workhouses, and that where there are many Roman Catholics there are Catholic priests to perform similar duties. That is very proper, but I should like to say from actual knowledge that the inmates of workhouses ore not all members of the Church of England or Roman Catholics. There are large numbers who are Nonconformists, and they equally should have the right of

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    religious instruction, and of having religious instructors appointed, to administer to their welfare just as much as the Churchman or the Roman Catholic. I should like to ask my right hon. Friend to encourage the guardians in different parts of the kingdom to appoint religious instructors for Nonconformists when it is known that considerable numbers of them are inmates so that they also should have the benefit of such ministrations as they were used to having. I make no complaint against Churchmen or Roman Catholic priests or Jewish rabbis. I know they are all doing good work. What I plead for is that there should be more generous use of the law which permits religious instructors to be appointed in those large institutions where there are many Nonconformist men and women, so that they may receive such religious instruction as they have been used to all their lives. I am very glad to have this opportunity of expressing my hearty approval of the great improvements introduced into the working of the Poor Law system in the last few years, and I hope that the new spirit will be further greatly extended.
    7.0 P.M.
    Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKE: I do not in any way desire to censure the President of the Local Government Board. On the contrary, I recognise to the full the great work he has done for the nation since he has occupied the high office he now fills. But, as he is the Minister responsible for the Department which controls assisted emigration, I feel it my duty to press upon him and, through him, upon the Government the urgency of debating the wider policy of emigration within the Empire, a policy in which the Motherland ought to be prepared to take her part. The right hon. Gentleman told the Imperial Conference in 1907 that it was the settled policy of the Government not to vote money for the purposes of emigration. He has repeated that statement to me in this House on many occasions. I do not deny the correctness of the assertion, but I would remind the right hon. Gentleman that on several occasions between 1820 and 1878 money was voted annually by Parliament for the purpose of emigration. At that time our population was very much smaller than it is to-day, and we heard very little about the question of unemployment.
    While the continuity of policy has been followed with regard to State grants towards emigration, it has been different
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    with regard to rate-aid—at any rate, as far as powers are concerned. No one can complain that powers are not given in Acts of Parliament to enable money to be spent out of the rates for emigration purposes. In the year 1834 we had an Act of Parliament passed enabling parishes to mortgage their rates to the extent of the sum not exceeding £10 per head of the emigrants. In 1887, when the Local Government Act was before this House in the form of a Bill, a Clause was inserted empowering county councils to advance money for emigration purposes. In the year 1905 we had the Unemployed Workmen's Act, in which powers were inserted to give to distress committees opportunities of using the funds collected from the rates and also from voluntary sources for the purpose of emigration. Except as regards the powers given under the Unemployed Workmen's Act of 1905, I do not think that rate-aid has been very much used for the purpose of emigration except perhaps in the case of those orphans and deserted children who come under the Poor Law—at any rate, the powers of the county council in that respect have never been put into force.
    During the last twenty-one years we have been told by the President of the Local Government Board that some 9,300 State children have been sent to Canada by boards of guardians. The right hon. Gentleman seems very proud of this result, but I would like to ask him whether it would not have been quite as easy during that period to have sent to Canada 50,000 of that class of children, a course which would have benefited the children themselves as well as our Dominions oversea. These children were not directly emigrated by the State. They were handed over by the boards of guardians to various philanthropic societies who undertake emigration, and who undertake to send returns to the boards of guardians. I noticed the other day that the President of the Local Government Board said he had nothing but praise for the Dominion Government of Canada for the kindly care they take of the child emigrants who come directly from the right hon. Gentleman's own Department. I join with the President in this praise, but I would remind him that the work done by the Dominion of Canada is not paid for out of Canadian money, but out of funds supplied from this side and sanctioned by his own Department.

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    Again we learn from the President that 120 distress committees during the last five years have sent 16,000 people to the Dominions. I think that is a mere bagatelle when you consider that in this country we have a population of over 45,000,000 persons. But my object is not so much to deal with proportions as to bring home to the right hon. Gentleman that, if the Government can sanction the use of the ratepayers' money for purposes of emigration, why should they not sanction grants for this purpose from the Exchequer. Emigration, after all, is a national and not a local movement, and as such, if the principle of assistance is conceded as it is, then assistance should come, not so much from the rates as from the Exchequer. The Commonwealth representative, who moved the amended resolution on emigration at the recent Imperial Conference, asked whether any action had been taken by the President of the Local Government Board to carry out the resolution passed at the last conference. To this question the right hon. Gentleman vouchsafed no reply, and naturally so, seeing that the statement he made in 1907 about the Emigrant Information Office—which he said was about to be reconstructed—appear, from answers given to me in this House, to have been made without due consultation with his colleagues. At any rate, he will admit that nothing has been done as regards that office, and he held out no hopes to the Dominion Premiers that anything was going to be done in the future. No one will deny that the President of the Local Government Board made a very important and encouraging statement at the Imperial Conference with regard to emigration, but he entirely avoided the question of assistance. He said:—
    "State aid was not asked for at the last conference and I do not think the members of this conference desire it."
    I do not quite know what the President of the Local Government Board meant by this, seeing that Mr. Deakin, who proposed the original resolution in 1907, certainly suggested some pecuniary contribution from this side, while Sir Wilfrid Laurier said:—
    "Of course, it goes without saying, that if the Imperial Government were prepared to help and assist us financially, we would only be too glad, to co-operate with them."
    By a very ingenious method of special pleading, the President of the Local Government Board induced the Premiers to believe that when they asked for assistance
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    they did not want it. These gentlemen fell an easy prey to the persuasion of the right hon. Gentleman and his able colleague the Colonial Secretary, who himself suggested the deletion of the word "assistance" from the resolution before the conference. This the Premiers accepted, and after the word "assistance'' was left out there was not very much left in the resolution itself. If I understand the President of the Local Government Board aright he considers that the Government are doing all they possibly can to help immigration to the Dominions by means of the present machinery. Indeed, it would almost seem that the President is desirous that this House and the public at large should consider that the great increase which has taken place in immigration to the Dominions during the last two years is the direct result of his own handiwork, and that of the Government, whereas the actual facts do not admit of that interpretation. The rise is mainly due to the executive work carried on by the Dominions themselves in this country, and the voluntary agencies who spend large sumsannually in assisting persons to emigrate. Both systems are good, but the withholding of State Grants by the Motherland is unsound from the standpoint of Imperial economy, and unsafe from the standpoint of Imperial defence. What we require is an Imperial system of immigration, fostered and financed by all the Governments directly interested.
    What is the position at home which the right hon. Gentleman has to meet? All the while that he is refusing to give State-Grants to emigration and refusing to stimulate rate aid, the population is increasing and the pauper bill is higher than ever. Competition has become so keen in every walk of life that it is no uncommon thing to see two hundred or three hundred persons applying for a post which if it fell vacant in the Colonies no person would be found to take up for the money offered and the hours of work required. There is unrest in the labour world, as hon. Members below the Gangway know. There is not enough work to go round. Boys are entering into competition with their fathers and their grandfathers, and the expectant mother is often asked to provide food for her husband and children. It is not to be wondered at that in the struggle for existence the weakest has to go to the wall. What remedy do the Government offer? They place on the Statute Book laws which, in my opinion, only pauperise the people and destroy individualism. By this kind of

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    legislation they hope to preserve the virility of our race and bring about what we all desire, the greatest good for the greatest number.
    I join issue with that, and I ask the President of the Local Government Board to remember that the British Empire is the natural birthright of every British citizen, whether domiciled in the Homeland or the Dominions oversea. And if he would devise some Imperial system of emigration and immigration he would be doing a real national work, as to which he might be able to say the public money has been well expended. Instead of that we find the Government spending millions of money annually assisting able-bodied men and women to eke out a miserable existence without a chance of employment for themselves or their families, and without an opportunity of being able to live comfortably in their old age. The only boon they have to look forward to is an old age pension of a few shillings per week, and under the Bill now before Parliament certain sick and unemployed benefits, which under other conditions of domicile would never be required. In conclusion, I would like to point out that the Report of the Departmental Committee on Emigration recommended that Grants should be given by the Government towards emigration, and that those Grants should be given through the Emigrants Information Office to the voluntary societies. I would like to point out that, the cost of emigrating children on the right hon. Gentleman's own statement is only £11 per head and that the cost of emigrating those persons who have been emigrated through the Distress Committees averaged only £8 per head. In these circumstances I venture to think the right hon. Gentleman cannot deny that it would be far better to spend more public money on emigration than to spend it on manufacturing paupers and destroying individualism.
    Mr. JOHN BURNS: I am very much obliged to the hon. Gentleman for enabling me to comply with the undoubted request that I should reply at this moment to the various speeches which have been made. If he will allow me to say so, I will be rather brief in reply to him, not on account of any discourtesy, but because only a month ago at the Imperial Conference I submitted, on behalf of the Government, our views with regard to emigration, State-aided or otherwise. The hon. Gentleman
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    must realise that there are many schools of thought in this country with regard to emigration. There are many people who think that the total number of people whom we are now sending mainly to the Dominions beyond the Seas is sufficiently large already, and that to stimulate that exodus by State funds and by grants now indirectly given would not only be financially wrong but a mistake from the social and political point of view. I ventured to give the facts to the Conference, and it is just as well that some of the facts have been recalled to the mind of the House-by the hon. Member who has just sat down. I may roughly say this on the matter. This year we expect some 300,000 men, women and children to leave the United Kingdom for countries outside Great Britain and Ireland. Whereas ten years ago from 20 to 30 per cent. of them went to the Dominions, this year there will be nearly 80 per cent. So that from the point of view of the volume of emigration it has reached a number nearly large enough, and from the point of going to the proper destination, as expressed by the figure I have given, it is everything that we could regard as satisfactory. The hon. Member went further than that, and said that now that pauperism and its bill was getting higher and higher there was greater need for emigration than there was previously. In view of the birthrate, and other circumstances, to which I need not allude, particularly one, this State has made up its mind for fifty years that State-assisted emigration should not take place. When you have 300,000 people who are leaving the country this year and 80 per cent. are going to the Dominions, and the Dominions themselves are spending a tremendous lot of money in getting people from this country whom they want and whom primarily they have a right to pay for by grants, it seems to me there is no call or justification for State-aided emigration. The hon. Member should have said with regard to the children that the 650 boards of guardians had done something. The 130 distress committees have sent 16,000, at a cost of £8 per head, in the last six years. The Labour Exchanges are increasingly becoming, as opportunities offer, a means of providing correct information. When we take into consideration that some fifty private and semi-private associations, all of which are engaged in this particular work, the Government think, as I expressed it for them at the Conference, that there is no cause

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    proved or need justified for further State or rate money to be expended in sending our people away. My hon. Friend also wanted to know in what sense the Emigration Office is working to-day better than it had previously done. My answer, as expressed by the letters, is that in 1907 our Emigration Office had a total number of letters sent out in connection with this subject of 86,777, and in 1910 it had grown to 132,000.
    Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKE: That is not due to the Emigration Office.
    Mr. BURNS: If not, who was it due to? The Emigration Office has improved its methods, extended its organisation, and, as I have just said, its letters have nearly doubled in the last three years. That is evidence that its machinery, so far as is necessary, has kept pace with what is required in the circumstances. I am very glad to say that the War Office has consented that the Army reservists, who serve in His Majesty's Dominions beyond the seas, should be allowed to draw their reserve pay there, a thing they could not do until three or four years ago. That was a wise and good thing to do. It gave great relief to the reservists themselves and enabled sons to join their family, and it has not in any sense interfered with Imperial defence or the patriotism of the reservists who have gone there. On the contrary, in my judgment the reservist is more likely to respond to the call, if unfortunately it should ever come, if he is in good work and getting good food in our own Dominions than if, perhaps, he is out of work or in a casual ward at home, or in damaged health. We all know that in the last war 90 to 98 per cent. of the reservists who got the call responded to the colours, and there is not the least fear that if there was a similar need, the reservists abroad, small in number as they are, would respond equally as well as they did ten or twelve years ago. I must not allow the hon. Member to ride off in his appeal for State-aided emigration, for that is what it amounted to, on the ground that pauperism is getting higher and higher. That is not true. At this moment we have 130,000 fewer paupers in England, that is to say, in June, 1911, than in June, 1910.
    Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKE: What about the bill?
    Mr. J. BURNS: That does not at all dispose of the fact. He said that both the paupers and the bill were getting higher
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    and higher. But the bill is getting higher because wealth is increasing, our humanities are expanding, we are treating the smaller number of paupers, as we have a right to do, better than we did. That is one of the reasons why the bill is increasing although the total number of paupers is going down.
    Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKE: Was I not right when I said that the pauper bill was increasing?
    Mr. J. BURNS: That is not due to the reason which the hon. Member alleged. It is not due to poverty, misery and pauperism increasing. It is due to the increasing wealth of the community, which allows it to be increasingly generous to the children and the old people who come under its care. If the hon. Member wanted a local instance, I should be able to tell him that in London during the last five years outdoor pauperism diminished by 37 per cent., and in an East End parish it diminished by as much as 56 per cent. Therefore this charge that pauperism is increasing hardly holds good. I come from that to another point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Mr. Essex). He brought forward for the attention of the Local Government Board the question of men who have low wages in rural areas being compelled to contribute towards the support of their parents when their wages were not sufficient to justify that deduction. I agree that the particular case made out is a very serious one, but my hands are tied in this matter. The justices have the discretion either to enforce the deduction or not as the facts of the case warrant, and the local justices are very often in a better position to know the local facts than is the President of the Local Government Board at the centre. Where their discretion does not come in, and I am glad it has come in increasingly, when we find a hard case the discretion of the guardians can be exercised. I am glad to say these hard cases are diminishing. My hon. Friend suggested that it would be possible for me to alter this by an order of the Local Government Board. The only way in which I could intervene, and I have before expressed my readiness to do so, is to consider the question of a circular from the Local Government Board to the guardians about these particularly hard cases. If that can be done, I repeat, I shall be willing to do it.
    The next point submitted to me was the question of vaccination officers, which seemed to me to be the chief point of the

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    discussion. The hon. Member for Wilts (Mr. Peto) made a speech in which he set out the facts from his point" of view. As Robert Burns, the poet, said: "Facts are chiels that winna ding." And my facts do not correspond with the facts as submitted by the hon. Member. My Department is responsible for this, and it is so easy for a Minister's statement to be challenged at any time, at the very moment he makes it and afterwards, that I hope the House will pardon me if I state what I consider to be the facts with regard to vaccination officers. There were last year 1,420 vaccination officers. Only 400 of them gave their whole time to the work. The other 1,020 hold other appointments such as relieving officers or assistant registrars, or are engaged beyond their vaccination work in clerical work of many descriptions. It has been said we have done nothing to justify our promise last year to see whether in the hard cases that have been brought before us we could mitigate by some assistance the loss of income of some of these officers, not all, by any means, through the increase of exemptions. What have we done since the Act was passed enabling exemptions to be more consistently, and I think more easily and honourably, obtained?
    Between 1907 and 1911, a period during which we have been told little has been done, mainly at the instigation of the Local Government Board, gratuities have been sanctioned to 331 vaccination officers, increased fees have been given to 279, and in thirteen other cases compensation in some form or another has been given. The Local Government Board, instead of looking at the vaccination officer's grievances with a cold eye and a lack of generosity, has helped them, either through gratuities, increased fees, or in some other form of compensation, in 623 cases out of 1,420 cases.
    Mr. PETO: Would the right hon. Gentleman tell the Committee quite clearly whether in every case whore gratuities and extra fees have been given they have been given to a different officer.
    Mr. BURNS: Certainly, I am giving the cases. Six hundred and twenty-three out of 1,420 is not bad in a little over three years. The total number of vaccination officers who have complained to the Local Government Board is only fifty, and in forty-three cases the Local Government Board urged the guardians to give com-
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    pensation in some form or another. In seven cases the Local Government Board itself thought compensation was unnecessary. In nineteen out of the forty-three cases the guardians yielded to the suggestion of the Local Government Board, and in twenty-four cases only the guardians refused. I venture to say these facts put an entirely different light upon the statement made by the hon. Member for Wilts, and it disposes, first, of the indisposition of the Local Government Board to look at this thing fairly and generously, and, secondly, of the suggestion that we have done nothing to persuade the guardians to undertake what some hon. Members in this House want. I have been advised by the Mover of this Motion not to pledge myself as to precise reforms, particular suggestions, or particular forms of compensation, but to deal with individual cases.
    Mr. PETO: I asked, particularly, for a general principle to be laid down.
    Mr. BURNS: That is not quite so easy as the hon. Member imagines, as I shall be able to demonstrate. He asks that one general principle should be laid down. It is impossible. The fact that 400 out of 1,420 give their whole time to the duties indicates that one general principle, uniform in its application, is impossible. It is also impossible, because a large number of the remaining 1,020 have not had their total remuneration reduced. Any general alteration of the forms of compensation would have to apply to those who have not had their remuneration reduced, as well as to those who have, and to those whose loss or gain is small. The matter could not be dealt with as the hon. Member suggests. I would like to point out another thing. Hon. Members speak as if these vaccination officers were, like the clerks of the Local Government Board, directly the servants of the Board itself. They are not. I have no more direct or absolute power to order and direct different forms of remuneration for vaccination officers than I have to order town councils to vary the form of remuneration of their engineers, their surveyors, their town clerks, or the Parliamentary counsel whom they employ by fee. I do say, however, that my peculiar relationship to the guardians indicates that perhaps there is something that must be done in the light of the remarkable increase of exemptions that has occurred in the last year or two, and I am going to say, without defining the actual steps to be taken, that if further persuasion of the

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    guardians is not productive of fair treatment in these twenty-four cases and some others, then we will consider what other steps are necessary to secure reasonable treatment for the vaccination officers. You cannot dispose of the matter in the way suggested by the hon. Member. Payment of their postage would be ample compensation for one set of vaccination officers; in other cases payment for their offices would perhaps be the best form of compensation; and in some cases where the reduction is only temporary, I gather some of the officers are inclined to agree that a gratuity would suit them better than one or two of the other suggestions that have been made.
    There are at least a dozen ways in which with fairness and with due regard to the public purse the Local Government Board would be able to do something, and, if the House will not pin me to one or two definite ways, I shall be only too pleased to give my mind immediately to the consideration of the case that has been brought before me. Although I have not absolutely statutory power to direct the guardians to do this, that, or the other quite so easily as some hon. Members suggest, I am willing to go into this thing again in a fair and, I hope, reasonably generous spirit, to meet the cases that have been submitted to me this afternoon. The hon. Member for York (Mr. Butcher) said that owing to the pension being based on the average of five years before retirement, the officers lose superannuation by reduction of increment. That is not absolutely true. The Local Government Board are willing and have been willing to allow gratuities to be included in the estimate for superannuation, and beyond that, the Board can allow years to be added to actual service. I only mention the latter point to show it may be advantageous to compensate these men in the meal in one case and in the malt in the other. It would probably do more harm to the vaccination officers than good to pin us down this afternoon to one precise method. It has been lightly suggested that it would settle this difficulty to pay all the vaccination officers an inclusive yearly salary. Ideally, I am in favour of that. Theoretically, it looks very well; but the House would not sanction, and I am sure the ratepayers would not allow, the guardians to give a fixed salary for a very small amount of work in certain instances.
    Mr. LANSBURY: I think the right hon. Gentleman has made a mistake. I claim for them compensation for loss of income.
    Mr. BURNS: One hon. Member said abolish the fees and pay by regular salary. If I were to adopt that the present districts of vaccination officers, owing to the increased number of exemptions, would have to be made larger for the ratepayers to get value for their money, and it would be very unjust to 600 or 800 existing officers who have this intermittent work with other local duties if their salaries were taken from them, and if their districts were added to larger areas, and men at regular salaries were appointed to supersede them. That is another reason why this thing should be looked at from a broad and generous point of view. It has also been suggested that the fee for vaccination should be the same as for birth, and that in other ways the officers should be saved some amount of time and some amount of expense. May I say that I am keeping to my promise in this matter, and the figures I have given are a proof of that. Perhaps these officers are exaggerating their grievances at this moment, and it may be that on further investigation some compromise consistent with what is fair and just as between them and the ratepayers may be possible, and, if the House will be content, my officers and I will look into this in a fair and broad spirit, with a view to remedying the gross grievances from which a few suffer, and with a view of adopting a standard of remuneration which is fair and reasonable, and to which these public officers are entitled. I am glad that is generally endorsed, and I ask the House on this particular subject to adopt my advice.
    Mr. BUTCHER: When does the right hon. Gentleman anticipate he will be able to make a statement as to his recommendations, with a view of removing this grievance?
    Mr. BURNS: The hon. Member is a skilled Parliamentarian, and he never loses an opportunity of pinning an opponent, and especially a Minister, to a point. My answer is I had better go into this again. I had better look at it from the point of view of 25 per cent. of the births having exemption certificates. My officers and I will look into it as soon as we can, and I think with our usual promptitude. I think hon. Members, in the interests of the officers themselves, had better let me look into their case from the broad point of view.
    Mr. PETO: Do not the exemptions amount to 35 per cent.?
    Mr. BURNS: No, 25 per cent. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wimbledon (Mr. Chaplin) endorsed some of the criticisms made by some of the previous speakers, and he complained very strongly about the Act of 1907, which only carried his Act of 1898 a stage further. The right hon. Gentleman by his Act allowed the conscientious objector to open the door, and I went through it. The hon. Member for Central Hackney (Sir A. Spicer) never loses an opportunity of referring to the condition of the children in and out of the workhouses. It is only fair, I should inform the House, that so far as London is concerned this problem is rapidly approaching a solution. I am glad to say that in London we have got 23,000 children in institutions, and we have 13,000 on outdoor relief, or a total of 36,000 children under the jurisdiction of the guardians and the Local Government Board. Out of those 36,348 children, I am glad to say there are only 1,000 within workhouse walls at this moment, and of that 1,000, 749 are under three years of age, and in many cases are better with their mothers than they would be outside the workhouse, because a child of less than three years is not susceptible to workhouse taint or influences.
    What is more, the mother is considerably a better mother, a better woman, and a better citizen, in that she has not been deprived of her child at that tender age, and both mother and child are better together in wards separated from the worst of the workhouse population. Sixty-eight were in receiving wards for one night only and that leaves me roughly in London with only 183 children over three years of age in ordinary workhouse walls. These are in three unions. One is making arrangements for the transfer of its children. Another has put its children temporarily into a cottage in the workhouse grounds away from the workhouse, and, with regard to the third union, I am doing my best to stimulate it to follow the example of the other unions in London, and to remove all children over three years of age from within the workhouse walls. Not to the same extent, but to an increasing extent, a similar thing is happening in England and Wales, and I propose to enjoy part of my holidays by issuing a new Boarding-out Order that will stimulate this being done in England and Wales, so that the rest of the country will next year be up to the high level of London in this
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    particular. I come to another question that is not quite so satisfactory, in the opinion, at least, of one Member of this House, as the statement I have made with regard to Poor Law children, and that is the case raised by the hon. Member for Mid-Norfolk (Mr. Boyle), which is known as the Launditch workhouse master's case. I am not influenced by the statement made by the hon. Member, in perfect good temper, I am glad to say, and as such as I received it, that my effigy is going to be burnt in East Dereham market place for my conduct in this particular instance.
    Mr. BOYLE: The right hon. Gentleman misunderstood me. What I said was that if nothing happened, such a thing might take place.
    Mr. BURNS: That is making a statement and suggesting intimidation, which rather worsens the hon. Member's position. If there is one thing I do not yield to it is intimidation. If there is one thing I am ready to listen to it is persuasion. Whether the facts warrant the burning of my effigy and whether, bearing the name I do, that would be an appropriate exhibition I will leave the Committee to judge. I will simply state the facts. They are these. This is a very serious case. Two police constables found an old man—he was seventy-two years of age—with his throat cut, and in a destitute condition, in a poor cottage. One policeman administered first aid; the other policeman went for the doctor. When the doctor came he gave an order to the overseer and to the policeman for this old man who had attempted to cut his throat at eight o'clock at night, in a remote country district, to be taken to the workhouse infirmary. The overseer gave the policeman an order for admission to the workhouse and an order for a carriage. The local clergyman, the vicar, happened to be near, and I presume that the doctor, the overseer, the policeman and the clergyman were all agreed, as their conduct proved, that this was a case which should be removed to the infirmary of the workhouse, seven miles away. The policemen got the carriage, and, with the son of the old man, who was so seriously injured that he had to have ten stitches put in the wound in his throat by the doctor, reached the workhouse infirmary at two o'clock in the morning.
    Mr. BOYLE: It was only a distance of five miles.
    Mr. BURNS: I should be sorry to see the hon. Member with ten stitches in a wound in his throat arriving at a workhouse at two o'clock in the morning, five miles away from the place where the injury was inflicted.
    Mr. BOYLE: Will the right hon. Gentleman——
    Mr. BURNS: I decline to give way. I listened to the hon. Member with patience and attention. It is important that these facts should be known. Two police constables found this man at eight o'clock at night with a wound in his throat which required ten stitches, and, with the approval of the doctor and the clergyman, they took him, with his son, in a carriage to the workhouse infirmary, reaching there at two o'clock in the morning. When they arrived at the workhouse they knocked up the porter, and when he opened the door the constable said, "We have a case for you." The porter replied, "I do not think he will be admitted." The kindly policeman, not content with that, said, "I want to see the master." The porter went for the master, who was upstairs in bed and at first did not come down. The kindly policeman, to his credit, insisted on seeing the master, and when the latter did come down, he told the constable that he was not going to admit the man because he was a lunatic, and he sheltered himself behind that very technical defence by saying that six months before the guardians had decided not to admit lunatics. In passing, I may say this man was subsequently decided not to be a lunatic. It was a Poor Law case. The man was brought before the magistrates and charged with attempting to commit suicide, but he was acquitted and released and sent back to his house. The fact remains, the master would not admit him. He did not even go to the gate to see the man, the result was that the kindly policeman, at 2 o'clock in the morning, took the old fellow back to his cottage. The conduct of the police was most exemplary. They gave the old fellow some beef tea and bread and butter which they had provided for themselves. The man was seen to subsequently by the guardians and the relieving officer in the usual way.
    The hon. Gentleman himself admitted that this was a serious error of judgment. Of course it was, and how can I, who have nearly 800,000 men, women and children to look after, or how can the guardians and the kindly hearted people who administer the law on behalf of the general public,
    650
    allow things of this kind to happen? This sort of conduct has been too frequent in the past, and I put it to hon. Members, supposing a man seventy-two years of age had fallen down outside their country house or their town residence, is there a single one of them who would not at once have taken him in, rendered first aid to him, sent for his own doctor, and done everything within his power to see that a man, nearly in extremis, was properly looked after? If it is true that this would have been done had the thing happened outside any hon. Member's door, it ought to be doubly the duty of one who is proxy for the community, who is paid a salary and is well looked after to do this precise thing. The clergyman wrote me that the police did their work admirably. The doctor did his duty and so did everybody concerned, except the man who should have done it. I thought that this official must either be too stupid for his post or, if not too stupid, he was too callous to have this kind of case within his jurisdiction. I therefore sent an inspector down. Everybody knows that Local Government inspectors invariably are kind men, rather too prone, perhaps, to take the side of the workhouse master and matron. He inquired into the circumstances, and made his report to me, and, as one responsible for the humane and kindly treatment of the very young and the very old particularly, and indeed of everyone, whether they be young, middle-aged, or old, I deemed it my duty, in the interests of the public, to give this man the punishment which I think he deserved for his serious error of judgment, as an example to others, and as a warning that such conduct must not be repeated. I called upon him for his resignation. He will have to go. His wife has rendered that absolutely necessary by resigning on account of ill-health, only a month or so ago. They both will get their pensions, and, under the circumstances, I consider I was more than justified in taking the action I did. I have nothing to extenuate or explain away. I simply lay the facts before the House, and I believe hon. Members will say I should have been unworthy of my post if I had not discharged my duty in that particular way.
    I come to another aspect of our work which has been referred to this afternoon by my hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Mr. Morrell) who has asked me to deal at length with what has been done under the Housing and Town Plan-

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    ning Act. I find, upon looking at my notes, that very substantial progress has been made, and it seems to me that, instead of occupying the time of the House by giving the facts and figures connected with that progress, I had better select some other opportunity for dealing with the subject, putting it in the form of a White Paper, so that hon. Members during their holidays may have an opportunity of seeing the way in which the Act has worked. I pass from housing in general to a case raised by the hon. Member for one of the Divisions of St. Pancras. He asked that the jurisdiction of the Local Government Board in the matter of housing appeals should be transferred from the Local Government Board to the Courts of Justice. I can only say we had that out ad nauseam when the Housing and Town Planning Bill was under discussion here. We cannot comply with the suggestion underlying the hon. Member's remarks. We think he has not made out any case in support of the views he expressed, or of the allegations that his informant conveyed to him. We consider that both the Hampstead case, in which the local authority won, and the Camberwell case, in which the local authority lost, have been dealt with by the Local Government Board in an inexpensive, just, and almost generous way, when all the facts are taken into consideration.
    8.0 P.M.
    The hon. Member for Bow and Bromley (Mr. Lansbury) raised the question of lunacy fees. On the surface there appears to be something to justify what he wishes, and if it is possible for a step to be taken in that direction, and if I have an opportunity, I can assure him that, in the matter of lunacy fees, I am not indisposed to adopt the suggestion that he has put forward. But, as he knows, it cannot be brought in at once. It will have to be done gradually. The guardians and medical officers can only agree to forego the existing fees authorised by the Lunacy Acts by special agreement. Secondly, the justices are not bound to call in (he guardians' medical officer, whether he is paid by salary or fee. Some justices resent their discretion being interfered with, but, speaking broadly and generally, I am not indisposed to adopt this system of paying for the certification of lunacy by salary, making it one of the many inclusive duties of medical officers, and as soon as an opportunity pre-
    652
    sents itself I shall be only too pleased to work that way. Then the hon. Member also dealt with Poor Law children, on which I believe I have satisfied him by my previous observations, though if I have not we will do our best between now and next year so to do. With regard to out-relief, I can only say that the guardians, through their relieving officers, are increasingly attending to out-relief cases. My hon. Friend did not do justice to the Local Government Board inspectors nor to the spirit of the guardians and relieving officers, all of whom, I am very glad to say, have been stimulated by the controversies which have waged over the Poor Law problem during the last three or four years, and if we could still further extend the attention given to the children on out-relief, and if we could carry out what is practicable and reasonable, I can promise him that we will do what we can.
    My hon. Friend made a suggestion with which I have been very sympathetic for some time. I am very glad to say that in co-operation with the Metropolitan Asylums Board we have been able to centralise the stores and co-ordinate their distribution from a common centre. It has been of advantage to public policy and to the officers, and I think there is no complaint to be made against it. If I could see my way to do it with regard to the boards of guardians in London I should welcome any opportunity which would enable me to do it. As regards out-relief to children, I would ask the hon. Member's attention to a circular I issued in March, 1910, specially directing boards of guardians to do this particular work, and see that the relief was adequate. If I were to take the boards of guardians by the throat the hon. Member himself would be the first to complain. When I took action in one particular case just short of grasping them by the throat, there was no one who complained more loudly on behalf of the guardians than my hon. Friend.
    Mr. LANSBURY: Give the other lot a turn.
    Mr. BURNS: I have jailed or dismissed some sixty-three members and officers of local authorities, and if there are any others who want it, I shall be prepared. I am glad to welcome my hon. Friend as an apostle of reform. There is more joy in Heaven over one sinner who repenteth than over ninety-nine just persons who need no repentance. The hon. Member asked me something about Hollesley Bay.

    653
    He wanted to know what was going to be done with it. Considering that Hollesley Bay will have at least another year of life, I think it is premature for me to determine what is going to be done in regard to it. On that, others beside myself have to be consulted, but nearly six thousand men have passed through this colony, and they cost about 30s. 7d. per week.
    Mr. LANSBURY: Wives and children.
    Mr. BURNS: I know. An agricultural labourer earns 14s. or 15s. for his work and keeps his wife and children with him. The hon. Member said Hollesley Bay was worth having, if only to prepare men for work on the land. Hollesley Bay all told has had spent upon it in six years £143,000. The sale receipts have been £32,000, and the net cost has been £110,000. As a school for training men to get work on the land, it has not been a distinct success, because I find in the six years only nineteen men from the colony have obtained work on the land in this country, and of the nineteen only four were between the year 1908 and December, 1910, and it cannot be said that the Local Government Board has been inconsiderate as to the period of training, because the average of the nineteen men who got work on the land was twelve months and not eight, fourteen, or sixteen weeks, therefore the less we think of Hollesley Bay as a training school for making town labourers fit for land occupation at that cost the better.
    The next point with which I have to deal is the arrangement to be made under the Unemployed Workmen Act for next winter. My hon. Friend said I sometimes criticise schemes submitted by the Central (Unemployed) Body. Perfectly true. I am employed to criticise, I am paid to supervise and I exist to correct certain people who are not always pursuing the straight and narrow path. I should not be worth my salt if I did not do it. But the hon. Member asks what I am going to do next year with regard to the unemployed workmen. I have conducted preliminary negotiations with the Central (Unemployed) Body, and I have seen my officers with a view to providing the greatest amount of work for the sum I have to spend upon it. I have answered his point upon Herne Bay. I think I was justified and he was not. I thought money could be better spent. I thank the House for the way in which they have heard only a portion of the work undertaken by my officers and myself, and
    654
    I thank them for their kindly consideration and great attention. I think we have defended ourselves against the charges which have been brought, and I think I am justified in appealing to the hon. Member to withdraw his Motion to reduce my salary on the broad and simple ground that I have done my best to earn it.
    Mr. FORSTER: I wish to confine my remarks to the question of the vaccination officers. I was rather surprised to find that an hon. Gentleman like the hon. Member (Mr. Leach), who expressed warm sympathy for the grievances of these officers, should have had such imperfect appreciation of the facts of the case as to allow himself to speak of their being paid for work which they do not do. He drew a picture of the enormity of calling upon the ratepayers to provide remuneration for these officers for work that they do not perform. The whole grievance of these men is that they are not paid for work that they do perform. I think I can put the case in a nutshell. Fees are paid for vaccination. In respect of those cases where the parents conscientiously object the work that these men do is doubled, and they get no pay for it at all. That is a considerable part of the grievance that these officers feel. The effect of the policy of the President of the Local Government Board is to diminish vaccination. The effect of the Bill which he carried has been largely to increase exemption, and he has called upon these vaccination officers to assist him in the policy which he is carrying out. They have to assist him at their own expense. The position is almost grotesque. If you take the position of the vaccination officer who in pursuit of his duty issues Form Q, what is the effect of issuing Form Q? It is very much as if the vaccination officer said to the people to whom he sent it, "In pursuance of my duty, I have to send you a notice, and if you act upon it you will not have to pay me a fee," and, in taking steps to deprive himself of his fee, he has to pay his own postage. The grievance under which these men suffer has been admitted by, I think, everyone except the hon. Member (Mr. Leach). Even the right hon. Gentleman himself admitted it. He told us he had approached the local authorities and done everything he could by persuasion to get them to attend properly to the grievances of the men they employed, but we want him to do something more than merely to endeavour to persuade these local authorities. When we bear in mind

    655
    that it is not only the pay but the pensions which these men get that are reduced owing to the effect of an Act of Parliament, Parliament ought to take into consideration the grievances under which they labour and we ought to see to it that they are not injuriously affected by Acts which we have passed.
    The President of the Local Government Board said if we leave it to him he will give his mind to it, and direct his energies to remedying this grievance. These men have been waiting a considerable time. Some of them, no doubt, have had their grievances to a certain extent considered and redressed. When he says, the Local Government Board have been approached by only fifty out of this great number we
    are entitled to ask whether he expects every public officer throughout the country to bear his grievances direct to the Local Government Board. No one would think that a practicable suggestion. It is time a remedy for that grievance was found. It is time that Parliament should settle, and the Local Government Board should secure that public servants should no longer be penalised by an Act of Parliament, and we press the right hon. Gentle man very strongly that no further time should be lost in finding a remedy.
    Question put, "That a sum, not exceeding £167,851 be granted for the said Service."
    The Committee divided: Ayes, 42; Noes, 139.

    Division No. 304.]

    AYES.

    [8.15 p.m.

    Agg-Gardner, James Tynte

    Chaloner, Colonel R. G. W.

    McNeill, Ronald (Kent, St. Augustine)

    Amery, L. C. M. S.

    Chambers, James

    Mills, Hon. Charles Thomas

    Balcarres, Lord

    Eyres-Monsell, Bolton M.

    Pease, Herbert Pike (Darlington)

    Barlow, Montague (Salford, South)

    Fetherstonhaugh, Godfrey

    Pollock, Ernest Murray

    Bathurst, Charles (Wilts., Wilton)

    Flannery, Sir J. Fortescue

    Pryce-Jones, Col. E.

    Bigland, Alfred

    Gibbs, George Abraham

    Salter, Arthur Clavell

    Boyle, W. Lewis (Norfolk, Mid)

    Gordon, John (Londonderry, South)

    Sanders, Robert A.

    Boyton, James

    Gordon, Hon. John Edward (Brighton)

    Spear, Sir John Ward

    Bridgeman, W. Clive

    Hills, John Waller

    Tobin, Alfred Aspinall

    Bull, Sir William James

    Hope, Harry (Bute)

    Touche, George Alexander

    Burn, Colonel C. R.

    Houston, Robert Paterson

    White, Major G. D. (Lancs, Southport)

    Campbell, Rt. Hon. J. H. M.

    Larmor, Sir J.

    Williams, Col. R. (Dorset, W.)

    Campion, W. R.

    Lonsdale, Sir John Brownlee

    Carlile, Sir Edward Hildred

    Lyttelton, Hon. J. C. (Droitwich)

    TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—Mr. Peto and Mr. Kohler.

    Cave, George

    M'Mordie, Robert

    NOES.

    Abraham, William (Dublin Harbour)

    Dillon, John

    King, Joseph (Somerset, North)

    Adamson, William

    Donelan, Anthony Charles

    Lambert, Richard (Wilts, Cricklade)

    Agar-Robartes, Hon. T. C. R.

    Doris, William

    Lansbury, George

    Allen, A. A. (Dumbartonshire)

    Duffy, William J.

    Lawson, Sir W. (Cumb'rld., Cockerm'th)

    Allen, Charles Peter (Stroud)

    Duncan, C. (Barrow-in-Furness)

    Leach, Charles

    Baker, Joseph Allen (Finsbury, E.)

    Edwards, Enoch (Hanley)

    Levy, Sir Maurice

    Balfour, Sir Robert (Lanark)

    Edwards, John Hugh (Glamorgan, Mid.)

    Lewis, John Herbert

    Barry, Redmond John (Tyrone, N.)

    Elibank, Rt. Hon. Master of

    Logan, John William

    Beauchamp, Sir Edward

    Ffrench, Peter

    Lundon, Thomas

    Benn, W. (Tower Hamlets, St. Geo.)

    Flavin, Michael Joseph

    Lynch, Arthur Alfred

    Bentham, G. J.

    Fletcher, John Samuel (Hampstead)

    Macdonald, J. R. (Leicester)

    Bethell, Sir John Henry

    Gill, A. H.

    Macdonald, J. M. (Falkirk Burghs)

    Birrell, Rt. Hon. Augustine

    Goddard, Sir Daniel Ford

    Maclean, Donald

    Booth, Frederick Handel

    Goldstone, Frank

    Macpherson, James Ian

    Bowerman, C. W.

    Greenwood, Granville G. (Peterborough)

    MacVeagh, Jeremiah

    Boyle, Daniel (Mayo, North)

    Griffith, Ellis J.

    M'Laren, Walter S. B. (Ches., Crewe)

    Brigg, Sir John

    Hackett, John

    Marks, Sir George Croydon

    Brunner, John F. L.

    Hancock, J. G.

    Marshall, Arthur Harold

    Bryce, J. Annan

    Harvey, W. E. (Derbyshire, N.E.)

    Meagher, Michael

    Burke, E. Haviland-

    Haslam, James (Derbyshire)

    Millar, James Duncan

    Burns, Rt. Hon. John

    Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth)

    Molloy, Michael

    Burt, Rt. Hon. Thomas

    Havelock-Allan, Sir Henry

    Molteno, Percy Alport

    Byles, Sir William Pollard

    Haworth, Sir Arthur A.

    Mond, Sir Alfred Moritz

    Carr-Gomm, H. W.

    Henderson, Arthur (Durham)

    Mooney, John J.

    Cawley, H. T. (Lancs., Heywood)

    Henderson, J. M. (Aberdeen, W.)

    Morton, Alpheus Cleophas

    Clough, William

    Herbert, Colonel Sir Ivor

    Muldoon, John

    Collins, Stephen (Lambeth)

    Howard, Hon. Geoffrey

    Nicholson, Charles N. (Doncaster)

    Compton-Rickett, Rt. Hon. Sir J.

    Hudson, Walter

    Nolan, Joseph

    Condon, Thomas Joseph

    Hughes, Spencer Leigh

    Nuttall, Harry

    Cotton, William Francis

    Jones, Leif Stratten (Notts, Rushcliffe)

    O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)

    Crooks, William

    Jones, William (Carnarvonshire)

    O'Connor, T. P. (Liverpool)

    Crumley, Patrick

    Joyce, Michael

    O'Donnell, Thomas

    Dalziel, Sir James H. (Kirkcaldy)

    Keating, Matthew

    O'Dowd, John

    De Forest, Baron

    Kelly, Edward

    O'Shaughnessy, P. J.

    Delany, William

    Kennedy, Vincent Paul

    O'Sullivan, Timothy

    Devlin, Joseph

    Kilbride, Denis

    Parker, James (Halifax)

    Pearce, Robert (Staffs, Leek)

    Roberts, George H. (Norwich)

    Thompson, Robert (Belfast, North)

    Phillips, John (Longford, S.)

    Roche, Augustine (Louth)

    Wadsworth, John

    Pointer, Joseph

    Rowlands, James

    Walton, Sir Joseph

    Price, C. E. (Edinburgh, Central)

    Samuel, J. (Stockton-on-Tees)

    Ward, John (Stoke-upon-Trent)

    Pringle, William M. R.

    Scott, A. MacCallum (Glas., Bridgeton)

    Whittaker, Rt. Hon. Sir Thomas P.

    Radford, George Heynes

    Sheehy, David

    Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)

    Rainy, Adam Holland

    Shortt, Edward

    Young, William (Perth, East)

    Rea, Rt. Hon. Russell (S. Shields)

    Simon, Sir John Allsebrook

    Yoxall, Sir James Henry

    Rea, Walter Russell (Scarborough)

    Smith, Albert (Lancs., Clitheroe)

    Reddy, Michael

    Strauss, Edward A. (Southwark, West)

    TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Mr. Gulland and Mr. Dudley Ward.

    Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln)

    Summers, James Woolley

    And, it being a Quarter past Eight of the Clock, and there being Private Business set down by direction of the Chairman of Ways and Means, under Standing Order No. 8, further proceedings were postponed without Question put.

PRIVATE BUSINESS.

  BELFAST CORPORATION BILL (By Order).
  Lords Amendments considered.
  Lords Amendment, after Clause 94, to insert Clause 94a:—
  (As to Satiny of Hallways.)
  For the purpose of any rate (other than Poor Rate and the Borough Rate) to be made and levied by the corporation under the provisions of this or of any other Act within the City at any time after the passing of this Act all lands used as a railway belonging to or leased or occupied by any railway company and constructed under the powers of any Act of Parliament for public conveyance shall be assessed and liable in the proportion of one-fourth part only of the net annual value of such lands respectively.
  Mr. M'MORDIE: I beg to move, "That this House doth disagree with the Lords in the said Amendment."
  By this Bill it is proposed to make a great many improvements in the City of Belfast. It is proposed to spend on these a sum of £1,250,000. The Bill itself did not attempt to deal in any way with the question of rates. It did not seek to alter the general law as to railway rating in Ireland, and, accordingly, I consider that the intrusion of the railway companies into this matter requires a little explanation which it has not yet received. The corporation did not seek to interfere with the railways, but the railways are seeking to alter the general law as to the rating of railways without proceeding in the proper way by a Bill in Parliament. They are proceeding as they have done in other cases when they get a corporation in a difficulty. When they find a corporation
  658
  which is anxious to get a Bill through they avail themselves of the opportunity to seek to interfere with the general law relating to railways. A course like that suggests a process which in war is called sniping, I have little or nothing to say as to the interferences of railway companies on this side of the Channel, though I understand that they have interfered in that way when corporations were asking for powers to do certain things. The only case that I would like to deal with is a case in Ireland, and that is the case of the city of Dublin. The law in Ireland is not the same as the law in England. With regard to corporate towns in Ireland the railways have no privileges whatever.
  About a dozen years ago the corporation of Dublin were promoting a Bill. The railway companies took action in the matter. The position of the corporation of Dublin was more unfortunate than ours, because they were bound to get their Bill through, and accordingly they were not able to resist the onslaught made on them by these great corporations. They were obliged to submit, and the result was that a burden was placed on the ratepayers of the city of Dublin, which went to increase the income of the railway shareholders to the extent of £8,000 a year. Capitalising that sum, it works out that the railway companies saddled the corporation of the city of Dublin with about £200,000. Corporate bodies have enough trouble to carry on their operations and to protect the ratepayers. They have seldom a surplus, and if they had I think probably the last purpose to which they should go would be to swell the dividends of bodies such as railways, who enjoy a monopoly and pay large dividends. What they ask does not benefit the railways as such. It benefits certain shareholders. The railways on the average are paying 6½ per cent. They are properly equipped; they are fitted for their work, and their stock sells in the open market at from 20 to 75 per cent. above par. Their dividends are beyond the average of what traders can make in their trade, and yet they now seek to saddle the City of Belfast with a sum of about £2,300 a year in order to increase

  659
  their dividends. If you capitalise £2,300 a year it will represent a sum of £57,000 at twenty-five years' purchase.
  The ability of the railway company is exercised in many directions. It so happens—they draw attention to it themselves—that their properties in Belfast are-valued at about half of their real value. We shall endeavour later on to get those valuations corrected. When those valuations are corrected the amount to be saddled on the City of Belfast, if this Amendment is adopted, will be £4,600 a year, equivalent to a capital sum of £114,000. As they have victimised Dublin to the extent of £200,000 it may seem not unreasonable that Belfast should be put in for this smaller sum; but, as I have said, we are not seeking to alter the general law with regard to railways, which is different in Ireland from what it is in England. With regard to corporate towns there are no privileges granted to railway companies at all under the provisions of any Act of Parliament. Dublin was not embarrassed until it was forced to embarrass itself: neither are Belfast, Cork, Limerick, Londonderry, Drogheda, and, I think, Enniskillen. But having ground the City of Dublin into the dust, they are making their next effort on the City of Belfast, and if they succeed in that I submit that Cork, Londonderry, Limerick, Drogheda and Enniskillen must also go under as opportunity offers. And after all that has been done these greedy monopolists, having once made a start, will then come to the rural districts all over Ireland. What makes the thing particularly absurd is that they appeal to the instance of the City of Dublin as a reason why Belfast should be victimised in this way. One of the most skilfully misleading documents I ever read —and I have read many misleading documents during twenty-five or twenty-six years of legal practice—has been placed in my hands in support of the case of the railway companies.
  They state that the principle of the differential rating of land used for railways has been recognised by Parliament, and so on, by the Towns Improvement (Ireland) Act, 1854, and the Public Health (Ireland) Act, 1878, the reason being that the land used for railways did not derive the same benefit from municipal expenditure as other property, and that the exemption was only in respect of land used for railways, while the full rates were paid as regards the remainder of the property of the railway company. With regard
  660
  to the effects of municipal enterprise in producing an increase of population and of business, there are no bodies in the community who get such a large return from increased manufacture and increased trading as the railway companies, while they do absolutely nothing to promote any improvement in these directions. If you come to the question of lands used as railways that is represented as if it were a small item. The valuation of the railway properties in Belfast amount to £25,000 per annum. The exemption is only in respect of lands used as a railway. But that applies to £18,000 out of the £25,000, which is by far the larger portion. Then they refer to the exemption of the provincial towns with which we have nothing to do. We are dealing only with the corporate towns. They say that the exemption is now enforced in Belfast for reasons of an occidental character, and in no way because the Legislature has determined that the circumstances in Belfast differ from those of other towns. That is not so. Belfast is exempted, as Dublin was, as Londonderry, Cork and Limerick are, under statute, and these towns can only be got in by efforts such as this when they are promoting Bills. We were exempted under the Towns Improvement (Ireland) Act of 1854, and now by this side effort they are endeavouring to do to us what they have done to Dublin, and what I gather they have done to a considerable number of towns in England.
  In Belfast the valuation of the railway property amounts to only about 50 per cent. of the real value and it represents 1.58 per cent. of the total valuation. In Dublin it represents 3.1 per cent. But when the Belfast valuations are corrected —and I shall endeavour to bring that about—the amount, instead of being 1.58, will amount to about 5 per cent. As I explained, this document was sent to Members, and it says:—
  "Belfast have, by some of their special Acts, admitted the equity of differential rating in respect of certain classes of property."
  The only differential rating is a rate of 2d. in the pound. They have got a fourth of 2d. in the pound, and they pay, instead of the 2d. paid by the ordinary ratepayer, the sum of l½d. The matter is so wholly insignificant that it ought not to be referred to in a document of this nature. It goes on to say:—
  "In 1898 the railway companies applied to the Corporation of Belfast to allow them one-fourth rating in the terms of Section 226 of the Public Health (Ireland) Act, 1878."

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  They say that this was granted. But this concession was made through very great ignorance of the law, or if it was not ignorance of the law, it arose through accountancy; in any case they escaped £600 or £700 a year for a period of eighteen years. In justice they ought now to return to us £12,000 or £13,000. It was merely a blunder, and there was no concession, nor was it anything to which they were entitled. They further say in this document:—
  "It will be seen, therefore, that the railway companies are not desiring in any way to depart from the general law, but, on the contrary, to get rid of an anomaly in Belfast by applying the general law."
  It is not Belfast that is interfering with the general law at all; it is they who are endeavouring to coerce us into submitting to this imposition. Under the circumstances we ought not to submit to this contribution of £2,300 a year; we ought not to be put under the imposition of presenting a capital sum of over £57,000, which, on later valuations, will increase to £150,000. There will be great alterations within the next ten years, so that what is apparently an imposition of £57,000 at present will grow to a sum of £150,000, and to a still greater amount, when certain events have taken place. This is a most improper attempt on the part of this great monopoly to interfere with the development of the city of Belfast. We are here as representing the taxpayers, and our first duty is to look after their rights. Certain representations have been made as to this Bill, but where persons are in the position of public trustees, representing and protecting the interests of the taxpayers in the Legislature, there should be nothing in the nature of a personal canvas.
  Mr. MULDOON: I beg to second the Motion.
  Mr. HILLS: I must at the outset complain of the somewhat imperfect statement of the facts of the case made by the Mover of this Motion. May I just go back and show first of all the principle upon which the claim for exemption rests, and then go to the actual law that applies to Ireland now. It has been settled for many years past that railway companies, in respect of certain properties, should not pay rates on the full annual value. As far as concerns the railway line itself, it was felt that they did not get the full benefit of the expenditure of the rates. They pay for the lighting of their stations and lines, they pay for street sweeping, water and
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  police, and all that expenditure did not benefit the railway companies. As far back as 1828, Parliament recognised that certain exceptions were due to the railway companies. The principle has been that they have been rated on one-fourth of their annual value in respect of the land that is used for the railways. As far as concerns the land that is used for buildings, warehouses, and so on, they pay rates on the full annual value. As far as concerns the land used for the line itself they pay rates on one-fourth of the annual value. That has been the settled principle in England. It has been the law for many years past, and still is the law established for the whole of England, with one small exception, the central part of the City of Manchester, where there still exists the right to rate railways on the annual value. I turn to Ireland. The mover of the rejection of the Amendment spoke as though the claim of the railways for exemption in the past was wholly exceptional. The contrary is the case. Over nearly the whole of Ireland the railways are rated at one-fourth of their annual value in respect of so much of their land as is used for the railway only. Of 124 towns in Ireland, 104 have got this exemption, and the reason the exemption does not exist in Belfast is rather curious, and is perhaps worth explaining to the House. The Public Health Act of 1854 was the first which gave exemption to the railways. This Act expressly excluded certain towns of which Belfast was one. That was followed by the Act of 1874. The Act of 1878 was assumed to apply to all towns, but was held by the Court of Appeal in Ireland not to apply to the towns which were possessed of a sanitary authority before the passing of that Act. Therefore all the towns which possessed a sanitary authority before 1878 were still excluded. But so much was it believed——
  Mr. M'MORDIE: Those exclusions were stated expressly in the Act. It was not a matter of judicial decision.
  Mr. HILLS: I think my hon. Friend is not correct. The exclusions were stated in the Act of 1854, but the exclusion under the Act of 1878 was a matter of judicial decision. We shall hear that when the Attorney-General for Ireland speaks. It was believed that in the city of Belfast the railways were entitled to this exemption. Twelve years ago they applied to the corporation for exemption. That was granted, and they were repaid the excess that they had over-paid in past years. That

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  state of things continued up to the present year. Then on the strength of this old decision of the Court of Appeal the corporation refused the exemption and put the railways on the full rate. I do ask the House to consider that here you have an exemption that is perfectly fair on principle; it is perfectly fair that a railway-company which does work which is charged for in respect of rates should be given an exemption, for it is quite clear that a large amount of the services which are rendered do not benefit the railways. It is in respect of those services that the exemption is given. The position of Belfast and two or three large towns is quite exceptional, and stands outside the general law. Here again I do quarrel, and rather strongly, with the statement of my hon. Friend. He spoke as though we wanted exceptional treatment in Belfast. We want nothing of the sort. We ask that Belfast should be brought into line with the ordinary law that prevails over England, with a small exception, and over a very large part of Ireland. I believe there are only about six towns in Ireland which do not grant exemption either in whole or part. I feel that I have to meet rather an unusual opposition. I have the somewhat unnatural alliance of my hon. Friend on my right and my hon. Friend on my left, and when I look towards this opposition and feel that the cause of that strange combination is an attack upon that unpopular body, a railway company, I confess I feel somewhat nervous about it.
  I ask the House to consider this as a case of ordinary common justice. It will do no more than bring the city of Belfast into the same position as nearly all the towns in Ireland. May I call attention to the fact that the Committee was a very strong Committee. Its chairman was Lord Welby, a well-known public servant, and, I believe, a life-long Liberal. The Committee carefully considered this question, and upon the request of the railway companies, and for their protection inserted the Clause which is objected to. This Bill is to raise a sum we are told of £1,250,000. It is perfectly clear that must impose a very heavy charge on the railway companies. At 4 per. cent the charge would come to a sum of £70,000 per year, which will mean a very heavy charge on the ratepayers of Belfast. Is it fair that the railway companies which do their own work should bear the full amount of that charge? It is a perfectly well settled law that in respect of those charges that are beneficial charges the
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  railway ought to get exemption. That has been settled over and over again for sixty years past, and it is entirely by accident that Belfast has been outside that law, owing to the fact that before the Act of 1878 was passed Belfast possessed the sanitary authority, and the courts held that such towns did not come within the scope of the Act. The fact as to whether a town possessed a sanitary authority before 1878 or not ought not to settle that a railway is to be rated at three-fourths value or at full value. Either the charge is right or not, and the mere chance of possessing a sanitary authority ought not to settle the question. I do not say this is a very big question, but still it is a very substantial question. It will impose a heavier charge on the company from which on principles of law it ought to be exempted. I would like to explain to the House, if I might, that it is possible to defend a railway company without being corrupt. The Mover spoke as if anybody who made a perfectly fair case for a statutory corporation was actuated by corrupt motives. In fact, he went out of his way——
  Mr. M'MORDIE Mr. M'MORDIE made some observations which were inaudible.
  Mr. HILLS: I accept the correction. I ask the House to believe that it is perfectly possible to state fairly a case even for a railway company, and I hope that even on the face of the severe attack that has been made and the severe attack that possibly will be made by the hon. Member who sits on my left that the House, in spite of that and in spite of the fact that it is a railway company which is concerned—and they are well known to be the most unpopular of all bodies in the House of Commons—will do an act of simple justice.
  Mr. DEVLIN: I can assure the hon. Gentleman who has just spoken that he need not be alarmed in the least degree by the combination which somewhat scared him when he arose to address the House. He will recognise that, at all events in Belfast, and I hope it will be so in Ireland in the future, that we can unite in great municipalities like Belfast to defend the city which we represent, irrespective of politics, on a matter so vital as that which is before the House for consideration. The position in regard to this Bill is that when it was before the Committee of this House the railway company was represented by counsel. They put their case before the Committee of the House of Commons, and the Committee unani-

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  mously rejected it; but the Clause which they rejected was subsequently incorporated in the Bill in the House of Lords. As the hon. Member seems to be a disinterested advocate of the case which he represents here, I should have been glad if he had stated to the House what are the precise reasons why the railway companies in the city of Belfast should be exempted from the payment of rates. The amount of the rates which railways are compelled to pay is something like £2,500. If the railway companies do not pay it, who will? The amount will have to be paid by the other ratepayers of the city. I think that is a somewhat strange demand to come from great and wealthy corporations who enjoy great monopolies in the city of Belfast and in the country. They have not only a monopoly, but they enjoy all the civic privileges. They use the streets for their vast traffic, they have not merely running powers, but stations, they have officials in the streets, they have hoardings, refreshment rooms, and hotels.
  Mr. HILLS: They pay full rates on the hotels.
  Mr. DEVLIN: And yet all these huge undertakings compete with private citizens who have to bear the ordinary burdens, and now they want the additional advantage of being exempted from the local rates also. All I have to say is that it would have taken a more powerful advocate than the hon. Gentleman who has addressed us to commend a proposition of that sort to any democratic assembly in the world. My second objection to the insertion of this Clause and my second reason for its deletion by this House: is that this Bill of the Corporation of Belfast did not affect the rates of the city at all. The rating question did not arise in any of its provisions, and therefore I submit that is was ultra vires for such a question to be raised before the Committee of the House of Commons or subsequently in the House of Lords. I do not know if there is anything to be said for the exemption of railways from the payment of local rates. If there is, why do not the railway interests introduce a Bill and let us discuss the question on the broad principle, and not take advantage of a great measure of this character for the purpose of sneaking their proposal through the House of Lords, After the proposal has been rejected by a Committee of the House of Commons, who sat day after day giving
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  laborious thought to all the considerations placed before them, they go to the House of Lords, and use their powers, not canvassing in the Lobbies, not using such eloquence as we have heard to-night, but simply by the privileged process of wink and nod, they get the House of Lords to insert this Clause in the Bill. The hon. Gentleman stated that this is the general law in Ireland. It is nothing of the sort. It may be the law in England, but it is certainly not in Ireland. In Derry, Cork, Limerick, and Waterford and all the other principal cities in Ireland, the railway companies have to pay rates. Let me take the case of Dublin. The railway interest in the statement which they have issued to Members of the House have quoted the precedent of Dublin. I think they ought to be ashamed to mention it. They actually blackmailed the Corporation of Dublin. When the Dublin Corporation were promoting a Boundaries Bill, they had to face and fight huge interests, and in order to break down one of the greatest of those interests they had to concede this blackmail—for it is nothing else. That blackmail has gone on from that time until now, and the citizens of Dublin have been compelled to bear the burden of local rates which rightly belongs to the railway corporations.
  9.0 P.M.
  In the printed document it is also pointed out that the valuations in Belfast are considerably lower than the valuations in Dublin. The railway companies have the advantage of the low rating in Belfast, and now they want the dual advantage of being relieved of rates altogether. That is the proposition which they put to Members of this House, who are supposed to apply ordinary common sense to the consideration of these questions. The general purposes rate, which is one of the principal rates, was first imposed in Belfast in the year 1865, and was extended in 1867. If the railway companies had any ground for asking for exemption from rating, that was the time when they should have done-it, as they were properly entitled to be1 heard when new rates were being imposed. Apart altogether from the fact that I represent the city whose interests are involved in this proposal, I say that it is not the business of this House to give any preference to the railways in Ireland. Those railways are practically the enemies of all progress in the country. They are huge monopolies living on self-interest. They do nothing either to develop industries on

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  to promote enterprise. They put obstacles in the way of communities and individuals and of everything that can make for the general prosperity of the country. I trust that this House will reject the Clause, in the first place, because the House of Lords had no right to insert it after it had been rejected by a Committee of the House of Commons; secondly, because it gives privileges to railway companies which would enable them successfully to compete against merchants, shopkeepers and business men in the city who have to bear the heavy burden of local rates; and, finally, because in my judgment, not only should they not be exempted from rates, but they should be made to pay a larger share than they are compelled to pay at the present time.
  Mr. J. H. CAMPBELL: Personally, it is a matter of supreme indifference to me whether or not the corporation succeed in this Motion. Both the corporation and the railway companies concerned have, I am pleased to say, been for many years good clients of mine. But it is just as well that the House should really understand what it is they are called upon to decide, because I do not think that they could possibly understand from the speeches they have heard what exactly is the point in dispute. I am not going to quarrel with the somewhat characteristic observations of the hon. Member for West Belfast (Mr. Devlin) about speaking things through the Upper House, and the policy of wink and nod. I will assume that this matter was discussed as carefully and as honestly in the Upper House as it was by the Committee of this House. They differed, as they often do, but it does not necessarily follow that the one was right and the other wrong. Let us see what exactly is the point that they had to determine. The hon. Member for West Belfast has referred to the fact that the railway companies in Belfast have hotels, refreshment rooms, advertisements, and other matters. But he omitted to state that in respect of every one of those possessions they pay full rates. If he suggested that they have the benefit of certain exemptions in regard to that property, he is entirely in error. As regards every portion of it, they pay full rates, municipal, local and Imperial.
  But the hon. Member behind me who moved this Motion was also entirely in error when he said that the general law in England and Ireland imposed this lia-
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  bility upon the railway companies, and that it was only by occasional force or pressure on the English railway companies that these companies got this relief in respect of taxation. It was the general Acts of Parliament 11th and 12th Viet., which gave by statute, in respect to the general district rate in England general exemption to all railway companies as regards three-fourths of the rateable value of their property. In other words, Parliament enacted as regards railway companies in England that for the purposes of the general district rate they should only be rated in respect of one-fourth of the total valuation of their premises.
  Mr. M'MORDIE: If I may interrupt the hon. and learned Gentleman, what I was pointing out was that the corporate towns in Ireland were——
  Mr. CAMPBELL: I was talking about a statement that was made that in England the general law imposed this liability upon railway companies to the full extent, and that it was only by taking advantage of the local necessities of the various towns in England that they could get this exemption. I wish to point out here that that is entirely an error. Parliament, by general legislation applicable to railway companies, and not as the result of the pressure which has been described—by an Imperial Act of Parliament applicable to England—exempted the railways in England in respect of the general district rate with reference to three-fourths of their total valuation. How does this matter stand in respect of Ireland? Here again hon. Members were entirely inaccurate. I do not know which was the worse of the two. First of all, what is the law in Ireland as regards railway valuation? Under the Towns Improvement Act of 1854 every town in Ireland that took advantage of it and came under it was put exactly in the same position as all towns in England in respect of railways; that is to say, they were only entitled to levy taxation upon one-fourth of the total valuation of the railways. And this House of Commons, this Imperial Parliament, in 1854, so far as in its power lay, endeavoured to place Ireland and the railways of Ireland in this matter of taxation in precisely the same position in which they have placed the English railways by 11th and 12th Viet.
  Mr. CLANCY: The towns were not obliged to adopt that Act?
  Mr. CAMPBELL: The hon. Member can reply, and I will not interrupt him. I suppose he does not contradict what I say.

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  I do not wish to waste the time of the House, but I suppose they want some information. In 1854, I repeat, Imperial Parliament in the Towns Improvement Act, endeavoured, so far as that Act could do it, to put Ireland and the law in Ireland as regards the rating of railways on the same basis as in England.
  Mr. MOONEY: Does the right hon. Gentleman wish the House to believe that the Act relating to England was on the same level as the 1854 Act in Ireland?
  Mr. CAMPBELL: There again I would submit to the hon. Member that that is a matter for reply. If he had done me the honour of listening to me he would have heard that I did not say that the Towns Improvement Act of 1854 is compulsory. But I say that it conferred such benefits that 104 out of 120 towns took advantage of it. As a result of the adoption, the law in these 104 towns as regards the rating of railways became identical with the law existing in this country. Therefore we come to this, that out of 120 towns 104 took advantage of the Towns Improvement Act of 1854, and as a consequence the law regarding the rating of railways became in respect of these 104 towns uniform and identical with the existing statute in England. So much for that as enacting the policy of Imperial Parliament. I suppose the hon. Member will agree that it was in consequence of legislation from England that that came in 1854. But the matter does not stop there. In the Irish Public Health Act of 1874—the Act of 1878 was what the hon. Member behind me referred to, and he was wrong—there was a provision inserted that in the case of every sanitary authority, and every urban council that came into existence after 1874, no power should be allowed to assess the rateable value of railways except to the extent of one-fourth of the valuation. There again Parliament took another opportunity to assert for Ireland the same principle of exemption in regard to railway companies, which was already the general law in England.
  So far from it being an exception to have railway companies exempted in the way in which railway companies have been in Belfast the general principle and rule is to exempt. There are only four towns— perhaps five—in the whole of Ireland that are free from the exemption that has been inserted in another place in this particular Act of Parliament. Therefore, it is a ridiculous misrepresentation to state that the whole scheme and policy of Parliament
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  has been to make railway companies as regards all their property rateable and liable in the same way as owners of other property. On the contrary, throughout the whole of England, except one small portion of Manchester where the contrary is the case, every time that Parliament, in public Acts of Parliament applying to Ireland, has got the chance, it has endeavoured to make the law in Ireland uniform with that in England. Well, now, a very curious thing happened in Belfast. The Public Health Act of 1874 enacted that as regards every new urban sanitary authority, and every new set of town commissioners, they were to be deprived for all time of the power of taxing the railway companies beyond one-fourth of the actual rateable value of the premises used for the railways. What was the result? Although that did not apply to the urban districts which were in existence before the Act of 1874, yet the Corporation of Belfast, recognising the justice of it, adopted the principle. And from 1874 to last year the Corporation of Belfast exempted these railway companies in regard to three-fourths of their total valuation. That is the matter, I think, that requires some other explanation beyond the statement that the accountant overlooked it. That is a ridiculous explanation. In face of the fact that the question came up in the court in regard to the city of Dublin as far back as 1880, and it was fully argued, and the cases were reported in the Irish Law Reports. The Court of Appeal in Ireland decided that the railway companies in towns, and in the case of urban sanitary districts that were in existence before the date of the Public Health Act they were liable in respect of the whole of their valuation. That decision given in 1880 was public property, and was known to every solicitor and corporation in Ireland, and notwithstanding that the Corporation of Belfast refuses to act upon it because they did not think it fair, and until last year they followed the principle which is now universal in all urban districts created since 1874, and they only rated or taxed these railway companies in respect of one-fourth of their total valuation. Yet, in face of these facts the hon. Member for East Belfast says these railway companies are claiming something they never had any right to and the principle of which was never admitted.
  Mr. M'MORDIE: I stated as a fact, and I state it again, that it was only on the appointment of a new accountant in the city of Belfast that attention was called to it.
  Mr. CAMPBELL: Does the hon. Gentleman think that imposes upon anybody? He says that the Corporation of Belfast, who had the advantage of having one of the ablest solicitors in Ireland, and who have had the assistance, as I know, of a succession of the ablest counsel at the Bar of Ireland, advising them, did not know it. The innocent suggestion of my hon. Friend behind me is that it was only owing to the accidental discovery of an accountant that the Corporation of Belfast found that they were violating the law which had been decided thirty years ago and which had been carried throughout the country and was as well known to the Corporation of Belfast as the details of this Bill.
  Mr. M'MORDIE: It was not known to the corporation.
  Mr. CAMPBELL: I will assume that the Corporation of Belfast, as represented by their worthy lord mayor, were entirely unconscious of it. That certainly is not very creditable to the corporation. In order to show I am right I will take a case with regard to this very Corporation of Belfast itself. In 1887 they came to Parliament to get powers for main drainage, and actually in that very Bill they inserted a provision giving exemption to the railway companies from this main drainage tax and from the charges and taxes which it became necessary to raise under that Bill. They did that in 1887 which admitted that for fifteen years they had been giving that same exemption in regard to the rates under the Public Health Act. Yet I am told all this was through lack of knowledge on the part of their accountant.
  The ATTORNEY-GENERAL for IRELAND (Mr. Redmond Barry): It was not decided for two years after in the Kennedy case.
  Mr. CAMPBELL: Does my right hon. Friend think that that in the least bit assists the Committee? It was not decided until 1889, but what is the fact. Notwithstanding the decision of the Kennedy case the Belfast Corporation have been allowing exemption from 1889 to 1910. Then what point is there in interruption? The Belfast Corporation knew of the Kennedy case as well as anybody. It was published at the time; it was discussed in every paper and discussed in every corporation, yet with their knowledge of the Kennedy case they continued for twenty years to allow this claimant in respect of three-fourths of the rateable value of these premises. Let me come to what occurred in
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  1890. In 1890 the Dublin Corporation came to this House to seek extended borrowing powers and extended areas. The railway companies opposed them with a view to getting concessions. Their opposition was not in any hostility to the Bill. It was only opposition with a view to enabling them to get something out of the corporation; it was in no way injurious. The corporation had no reason whatever to fear them, because the corporation was not attacking them, but the corporation took every opportunity of bringing the railway law in Ireland into line with the general law in England, and they had no trouble whatever. The Corporation of Dublin gave the railways situated in Dublin the same concessions which the House of Lords has given to the railways situated in Belfast, and now, because this has been done, we are asked to believe that some terrible injustice is done to the ratepayers.
  What are the facts. There are three rates in Belfast. One is the police rate, which is a 1s. 1d. in the £; the second is what is called the General Purposes Rate which is 2s. 6d. in the £; and the third is the municipal rate, which is, I believe, 4s. 8d. or 4s. l0d. in the £. In regard to the latter, the railway companies have not got exemption to the extent of one brass farthing. They pay every penny of the 4s. l0d. What they have got exemption from is in respect of the police rate and the general purposes rate, and that is obviously right. The general purposes rate applies to cleansing, paving, sewage, etc., in the City, but there is not a shilling expended by the corporation on any of these things for the railway companies. They do it all for themselves. [HON. MEMBERS: "It is spent on the adjoining streets."] It is said the corporation expend the money on the adjoining streets, but that might be said in the case of any manufacturer. It might be said that a manufacturer should pay not merely for the streets in front of his own premises, but for all the adjoining streets. He pays his share, and in his case he gets the value of the expenditure near his own premises, whereas the railway companies get no expenditure upon their premises. As I said they get exemption, but they are not exempted entirely. They are only exempted in respect of three-fourths of the valuation. The whole sum is £2,500, and for that the defenders of the corporation are going to wreck their Bill. Having regard to the precedents I have given and

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  the whole tendency and course of legislation in this country and in Ireland, I respectfully submit to the Committee that the House of Lords, in doing what they have done, were simply acting in accordance with well settled principles, and were bringing the law in the few isolated cases in Ireland into line with the law in the rest of Ireland and the whole of England, and in so doing they were acting wisely and well.
  The CHIEF SECRETARY for IRELAND (Mr. Birrell): Whatever may be said for or against preferential treatment of railway companies in this matter, this is not a Bill in which to introduce a special benefit in favour of Belfast. I do not think the right hon. Gentleman opposite did his duty to all his clients.
  Mr. CAMPBELL: I have no clients in this case.
  Mr. BIRRELL: The right hon. Gentleman made a great point that the early legislation which settled the principle of English legislation was not dealing with a particular corporation or altering the law as it was before in respect of that particular corporation, but dealt with the whole subject, whereas now the Belfast Corporation desire to secure a money loan, and when they introduce that Bill, down pops the railway company and seeks to obtain protective Clauses to protect their own property, and those protective Clauses they have obtained. Now they wish to seize this opportunity of altering the law at Belfast, although they wish to leave it in the same condition with regard to a great number of other towns in Ireland.
  Mr. CAMPBELL: Four.
  Mr. BIRRELL: Even if there are only four, are we to wait until the corporations of those four towns introduce a Bill of their own for the railway company to take an opportunity to get this benefit and come and threaten the wrecking of the Bill. That is not the way it is done in England.
  Mr. CAMPBELL: I did not threaten. What I said was that I thought the course that was being taken would lead to the wrecking of the Bill.
  Mr. BIRRELL: What is the point of that that interruption? That is the situation of the matter. The right hon. Gentleman
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  tells us that the 104 towns out of 124 towns under municipal government under the adopted Act are entitled to be rated at one-fourth. I do not ask for a list of the 104 towns, as he has been good enough to call them, but there are twenty towns which are exempted from the operations of the Towns Improvement Act, of 1854, and they are important places. Anybody having a knowledge of Ireland knows that Dublin came under the Act of 1900. Cork, Limerick, Waterford, Belfast, and Londonderry are not subject to the present law. So far as towns are concerned these 104 places to which the right hon. Gentleman refers would not be what are called towns in England. They include non-county boroughs, like Sligo and numerous other towns under special Acts. I want to know why Cork, Waterford, Limerick, and Londonderry should be left free from what he considers the equitable rule that they should be exempted so far as their works are concerned from three-fourths of the taxation?
  Why should you single out Belfast on this occasion? There is a good deal to be said on both sides, but people are not absolutely persuaded, because it is the law of England, that it is a principle of equity which everybody will recognise without argument. It is not the general law of Ireland. I know there is a good deal to be said from the point of view which has been put forward, although I do. not think the railway company can distinguish so nicely all parts of its property and say a certain portion of it gets no benefit from expenditure in the town. It must get the benefits which accrues in any civilised community from the flow of passengers and goods to the line. You cannot distinguish between railway companies in this way. At any rate, these are questions which ought to be considered for the whole country, and not for Belfast only. I hope the House will not agree to this Clause.
  Mr. DILLON: There is no counsel at the Irish Bar I would rather have if I were in a tight corner than the right hon. Gentleman, and I never heard him plead a case with greater astuteness than he has done on the present occasion. This Bill came before a Committee before which the railway company and their interests were represented by counsel. They were heard by the Committee of the House of Commons, and afterwards the House of Lords put in a special Clause which is really a taxing clause. That is an aspect of the

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  case which I wish to commend to hon. Members. Somebody has got to pay these rates. This Clause proposes to put a burden of £2,500 on the ratepayers, and if this sum was to be lifted off the shoulders of the railway company it will have to be paid by the general ratepayers of Belfast. This Clause has been put in by the House of Lords, and the right hon. Gentleman, who is so impartial in this matter, knows what is going on behind the scenes, and yet he declares that if the House of Lords is disagreed with on this point, the Bill will be wrecked.
  Mr. CAMPBELL: I must again correct this misrepresentation. What I said was that I was afraid that the action and the course taken by hon. Gentlemen who are supporting this Motion would wreck the Bill.
  Mr. DILLON: I can see nothing in that interruption, except a confirmation of what I said. What action are we to take? According to what has been said, we are entering into an unnatural alliance with the Lord Mayor of Belfast to defend the ratepayers of Belfast against the unjust claims of this railway company. If that is a monstrous proceeding, I hope it will be an omen of what will occur in Ireland. It has been described as an unnatural alliance. I hope it is an alliance that will last and that it is symptomatic of much that is going to occur in the near future in Ireland. Let me deal with some of the general considerations which were touched upon in the extremely able speech of the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. J. H. Campbell). He spoke about the injustice of making the railway companies pay for these services, which he attempted to show are not enjoyed by the railway companies. A more mistaken representation of the case, a greater misrepresentation of the merits of the case could not possibly be imagined. The hon. Member (Mr. Hills) supported the case of the railway company as representing the railway interest. I am myself in a sense a representative of a railway. I am a shareholder in the Great Northern Railway Company of Ireland, and I may be accepted, therefore, as having an interest in it. I believe it is the best-managed railway in Ireland and one of the best-managed concerns in the whole of Ireland. It is as well managed as any railway in this country, and it pays as good dividends as any of them. But if it enjoys that prosperity, what does
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  it owe it to? In a large measure to the enterprise of the merchants of Belfast, and therefore it is a fair and natural thing that it should bear its due proportion of the burdens of that most progressive city. The right hon. Gentleman went on to make a great appeal, which I am afraid fell on unsympathetic ears, to hon. Members opposite and to Members in all parts of this House as to the great desirability of bringing the law in Ireland into harmony with the law of England on this particular question of dealing with railway companies. I think the railway companies have always had too good treatment from this House.
  During the many years I have sat in this House, whenever a question concerning railway companies comes on, the usual expression has been that which we frequently hear as to the methods of our statesmen in foreign politics—the matter is brought out of the mire of party politics. The railway directors on that side of the House generally agree with the railway directors on this side, and they lift it into a higher sphere. The railway companies in this House have obtained more than justice. What I want to direct attention to is that it has been a recognised principle, which has been very rarely departed from, that no public law—and particularly that no public law affecting taxation— should be altered by a clause in a private-Act. I think that is against the general policy of the House of Commons. What does the right hon. Gentleman say? He told us to look at the case of Dublin. I could hardly believe my ears. I thought I was transported behind the looking-glass, like "Alice in Wonderland," when I heard the right hon. Gentleman calmly assert that the City of Dublin consented to this clause from a pure desire to bring the law of Ireland into harmony with the law of England, and from no other motive but that and the justice of the case. The fact is that the unfortunate city of Dublin brought up bill after bill, and was blackmailed hero and in the House of Lords, with the result that over £100,000 of costs fell upon the city in buying off that blackmail and the opposition of railways and others. He says they consented to that clause, but it was not by consent, it was not after a hearing in the House of Commons, it was an agreed clause, what I may describe as a blackmailing clause. If the City of Belfast had been intimidated by threats such as the right hon. Gentleman has now used, and had agreed to pay £2,500 a year as blackmail, we should also have been told that the City of Belfast

  677
  desired nothing else but to bring the law of Belfast in. harmony with the law of England. Belfast is a very loyal city, but I think the loyalty of Belfast will stop at that. We have the best proof of that in the person of the Lord Mayor of the City of Belfast, we have proof that the loyalty of Belfast does stop at that point, and that the citizens are not likely to pay £2,500 a year to the Great Northern Railway Company in their great desire to harmonise the law of England with the law of Ireland. This is an attempt against the best practice and precedent in this House to blackmail the Corporation and the City of Belfast in the interests of a railway company. The railway companies in Ireland are very prosperous institutions, and they are well able to pay their share of the general burden. The Great Northern Railway is one which we are all proud of. It is a very prosperous concern, and it pays those of us who are fortunate enough to have shares very good dividends. But that prosperity is based upon the commercial enterprise of cities like Dublin and Belfast, and it is a mean thing to hold up this Bill in order to enable them to shirk and shift this burden from the railway company to the city. It is not a question only of exemption, because somebody must pay if the railway company does not. It is a question of taxing the ratepayers of Belfast. Therefore, I most heartily support the Motion which has been made by the Mayor of Belfast, and I trust it will prove to many men in this House that if the temperature of politics was a little lower in Ireland, as I trust it will be soon, even the people and merchants of Belfast and those of us who represent the south of Ireland will be quite willing and able to co-operate for the best interests of our country.
  Mr. BOOTH: I hope this question will be settled by the vote of this House, and those of us who represent constituencies in England must make up our minds one way or the other. I do not think any Radical can hesitate for any moment as to which side he is on. We have an opportunity of standing by the united representation of Ireland, and as I understand, the great metropolis of Belfast and the people there are desirous that we should do that. I would like to speak from the standpoint of a commercial man trying to look at this question impartially. I have been utterly astonished as one who has had something to do with local government and rating to
  678
  hear the doctrine laid down from the Front Opposition Bench. The principle of rating of this country is not as he says, that because you have some streets adjoining your property therefore you must pay rates. I never heard of any rating authority laying down a rule of that kind. Is it really to be suggested that if an owner of a valuable property does not happen to have an opening on a main street he is exempt, and another unfortunate individual happens to have a large amount of streetage around his premises, he is the person who ought to pay. Looking at it from a common-sense standpoint, it will not hold good. The railway companies are traders in common with their neighbours, and we have never recognised such a difference as that described by the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Campbell). Those of us who usually look sympathetically upon the large railways of this country and desire to further their enterprise are amazed at this action which is proposed by the railways of Ireland. Surely a municipality should be encouraged when it comes forward with a "Bill for the improvement of its own area," and to seize that opportunity to try and wring from a great city like Belfast that which they cannot get in a general Act seems to me totally unreasonable. I understand these railways—particularly the Great Northern—try to be above the law. It does not want to comply with the law as it is now, and it takes advantage of this Bill to try and get it altered. This is the railway which has a great deal of manure near the town of Lurgan, and which was prosecuted by the public authority of Lurgan, who considered it a menace to the health of their district. The company fought them in the law courts, and, unfortunately, succeeded, and I believe the public health of that town has suffered. If the railway companies of Ireland are going to rely on the support of commercial men in this House, I want to warn them about the policy they are pursuing. They are presenting themselves to-night in an exceedingly unfavourable light. I hope, if they bring in a Bill of their own, we shall try and treat it without prejudice, but it will be most difficult after the speech of their spokesman in this House
  I am rather inclined after that speech to look forward to the time when there will be a nationalisation of the railways in Ireland, because, if this is the way this rail-

  679
  way company regards its duty in an important city like Belfast, it seems to me to be proving unworthy of its trust. Although, as the hon. Member for Belfast pointed out, it has refreshment rooms, hotels, and all the paraphernalia of a great railway company in Belfast, it does not want to associate itself with the general life and with the merchants of Belfast. It is something superior when it comes to paying its proper share of the rates, but I venture to say it dare not, when seeking either passenger or goods traffic, suggest it is a thing apart from Belfast. It seeks to show then it is quite in with the whole of its life and is participating in it. When it comes to paying its first share of the rates, it seems to me to want to contract out of its liabilities. That is a weak and a paltry position for a great railway company to take up. I say, as one who has some considerable connection with the railway companies of this country, that I should be ashamed if they took up such a selfish attitude as that. I cannot understand it, and I would urge the House not to encourage a railway company paying high dividends to take an opportunity like this of extorting such a concession. I say they ought not to seek to detach themselves from what is a recognised custom in Ireland. They have made out no such case. I therefore appeal to the House, and particularly to those who usually act with me, to stand by the great municipality of Belfast on this occasion.
  I think it is about twenty years since there was a definite issue of this kind between the two Houses over a Private Bill. I have tried to look at this as impartially as I can. Earlier in our proceedings there were several Amendments which came
  down from the other House to Amendments of the Commons. We passed those Amendments. Some of us had scrutinised them, but the great bulk of Members had to take them on faith. Still, as a rule, if an Amendment from the Lords is an improvement, we pass it by general consent. I myself in the last few months have gone over scores of them, and I freely admit that, at any rate, in the great majority of cases, they improved the measure. I hope, therefore, no hon. Member opposite will hesitate from any fear of offending the other Chamber. We pass them, as a rule, without any discussion, and I think it is about twenty years since this House was invited, as it is now invited by the Lord Mayor of Belfast and his colleagues, to dissent from an Amendment inserted by the House of Lords. If this were an Amendment to improve the working of the Bill or if it were a drafting Amendment, I think we should receive it with pleasure, but it is a deliberate insertion, of a Clause which our own colleagues on a Committee of our own House deliberately rejected. That is a very important thing. It is not something they overlooked or something upon which evidence can be brought to bring it in a better light. They examined it faithfuly and well, and rejected it as being against the interests and unfair to the city of Belfast. Under those circumstances, I think we may one and all on this unique occasion decide to stand by the Committee of this House, and to uphold the privileges of the ancient city of Belfast.
  Question put, "That this House doth disagree with the Lords in the said Amendment."
  The House divided: Ayes, 134; Noes, 42.

  Division No. 305.]

  AYES.

  [9.55 p.m.

  Abraham, William (Dublin Harbour)

  Clancy, John Joseph

  Fletcher, John Samuel (Hampstead)

  Adamson, William

  Clough, William

  Gill, A. H.

  Allen, Arthur Acland (Dumbartonshire)

  Collins, Stephen (Lambeth)

  Glanville, H. J.

  Allen, Charles P (Stroud)

  Compton-Rickett, Rt. Hon. Sir J.

  Goldstone, Frank

  Baker, Joseph A. (Finsbury, E.)

  Condon, Thomas Joseph

  Griffith, Ellis Jones

  Balfour, Sir Robert (Lanark)

  Cotton, William Francis

  Gulland, John William

  Barry, Redmond John (Tyrone, N.)

  Cowan, W. H.

  Hackett, J.

  Benn, W. W. (T. Hamlets, St. Geo.)

  Crooks, William

  Hancock, J. G.

  Bentham, G. J.

  Crumley, Patrick

  Havelock-Allan, Sir Henry

  Bethell, Sir J. H.

  Dalziel, Sir James H. (Kirkcaldy)

  Haworth, Sir Arthur A.

  Birrell, Rt. Hon. Augustine

  De Forest, Baron

  Henderson, Arthur (Durham)

  Booth, Frederick Handel

  Delany, William

  Herbert, Col Sir Ivor

  Bowerman, C. W.

  Dillon, John

  Hope, John Deans (Haddington)

  Boyle, D. (Mayo, N.)

  Donelan, Anthony Charles

  Hudson, Walter

  Brady, P. J.

  Doris, W.

  Hughes, S. L.

  Brigg, Sir John

  Duffy, William J.

  Illingworth, Percy H.

  Bryce, J. Annan

  Duncan, C. (Barrow-in Furness)

  Jardine, Sir J (Roxburgh)

  Burke, E. Haviland-

  Edwards, John Hugh (Glamorgan, Mid)

  Jones, Leif Stratten (Notts, Rushcliffe)

  Burns, Rt. Hon. John

  Esmonde, Dr. John (Tipperary, N.)

  Jones, William (Carnarvonshire)

  Burt, Rt. Hon. Thomas

  Ffrench, Peter

  Jones, W. S. Glyn- (Stepney)

  Cawley, Harold T. (Heywood)

  Flavin, Michael Joseph

  Joyce, Michael

  Keating, M.

  Moiteno, Percy Alport

  Rea, Rt. Hon. Russell (South Shields)

  Kennedy, Vincent Paul

  Mond, Sir Alfred Moritz

  Rea, Walter Russell (Scarborough)

  Kilbride, Denis

  Mooney, J. J.

  Reddy, Michael

  King, J. (Somerset, N.)

  Morton, Alpheus Cleophas

  Redmond, John E. (Waterford)

  Lambert, Richard (Wilts, Cricklade)

  Muldoon, John

  Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln)

  Lansbury, George

  Munro, R.

  Roberts, G. H. (Norwich)

  Lardner, James Carrige Rushe

  Nicholson, Charles N. (Doncaster)

  Roch, Walter F. (Pembroke)

  Lawson, Sir W. (Cumb'rid, Cockerm'th)

  Nolan, Joseph

  Roche, Augustine (Louth)

  Levy, Sir Maurice

  Nuttall, H.

  Rowlands, James

  Lewis, John Herbert

  O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)

  Samuel, J. (Stockton)

  Logan, John William

  O'Connor, John (Kildare, N.)

  Scott, A. MacCallum (Glas., Bridgeton)

  Lundon, T.

  O'Connor, T. P. (Liverpool)

  Sheehy, David

  Lynch, A. A.

  O'Donnell, Thomas

  Smith, Albert (Lancs., Clitheroe)

  Macdonald, J. R. (Leicester)

  O'Dowd, John

  Stanley, Albert (Staffs, N.W.)

  Macdonald, J. M. (Falkirk Burghs)

  O'Shaughnessy, P. J.

  Verney, Sir Henry

  McGhee, Richard

  O'Sullivan, Timothy

  Walton, Sir Joseph

  Macpherson, James Ian

  Parker, James (Halifax)

  Ward, John (Stoke-upon-Trent)

  MacVeagh, Jeremiah

  Pearce, Robert (Staffs, Leek)

  Ward, W. Dudley (Southampton)

  Marks, Sir George Croydon

  Phillips, John (Longford, S.)

  White, Patrick (Meath, North)

  Marshall, Arthur Harold

  Pointer, Joseph

  Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)

  Martin, J.

  Power, Patrick Joseph

  Young, W. (Perthshire, E.)

  Meagher, Michael

  Price, C. E. (Edinburgh, Central)

  Meehan, Francis E. (Leitrim, N.)

  Pringle, William M. R.

  TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—Mr. M'Mordie and Mr. Devlin.

  Molloy, M.

  Radford, G. H.

  NOES.

  Agg-Gardner, James Tynte

  Chaloner, Colonel R. G. W.

  Salter, Arthur Clavell

  Ainsworth, John Stirling

  Eyres-Monsell, B. M.

  Sanders, Robert A.

  Amery, L. C. M. S.

  Fetherstonhaugh, Godfrey

  Spear, Sir John Ward

  Balcarres, Lord

  Flannery, Sir J. Fortescue

  Talbot, Lord E.

  Barrie, H. T. (Londonderry, N.)

  Forster, Henry William

  Thompson, Robert (Belfast, North)

  Bathurst, Charles (Wilton)

  Gordon, Hon. John Edward (Brighton)

  Tobin, Alfred Aspinall

  Boyle, W. L. (Norfolk, Mid)

  Hall, Fred (Dulwich)

  Touche, George Alexander

  Boyton, J.

  Hope, Harry (Bute)

  Tullibardine, Marquess of

  Bridgeman, William Clive

  Horne, W. E. (Surrey, Guildford)

  Valentia, Viscount

  Brunner, John F. L.

  Houston, Robert Paterson

  Wheler, Granville C. H.

  Burn, Col. C. R.

  Locker-Lampson, O. (Ramsey)

  Williams, Col. R. (Dorset, W.)

  Campbell, Rt. Hon. J. H. M.

  McNeill, Ronald (Kent, St. Augustine)

  Wortley, Rt. Hon. C. B. Stuart-

  Campion, W. R.

  Pease, Herbert Pike (Darlington)

  Carlile, Sir Edward Hildred

  Peto, Basil Edward

  TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Mr. Hills and Sir. Pollock.

  Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor)

  Pryce-Jones, Col. E.

  Original Question put, and agreed to.

  Remaining Lords Amendments agreed to.
  Committee appointed to draw up reasons to be assigned to the Lords for disagreeing with one of their Amendments to the Bill.
  Ordered, That Mr. Devlin, Mr. Hills, Mr. M'Mordie, Mr. Muldoon, and Mr. Robert Pearce be Members of the Committee.
  To withdraw immediately.
  Order, That three be the quorum.— [Mr. M'Mordie]

SUPPLY.— [20th Allotted Day]
Considered in Committee.
(1ST THE COMMITTEE.)
[Mr. EMMOTT in the Chair.]

SUPPLY.— [20th Allotted Day]
  CIVIL SERVICES AND REVENUE DEPARTMENTS ESTIMATES, 1911–12.

    LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD.
    Postponed proceeding resumed on consideration of Question, "That a sum, not exceeding £167,951, be granted to His
    682
    Majesty to complete the sum necessary to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1912, for the salaries and expenses of the Local Government Board." — [NOTE. —£110,000 has been voted on account.]
    Question again proposed. Debate resumed.
    Mr. CHARLES ROBERTS: Previously to the interruption of the discussion on the Estimates the President of the Local Government Board had made a statement which we had all listened to with great interest. But there are one or two other points to which I will venture to draw attention. In the first place, in the last Report of the Local Government Board I find these words:—
    "We received several complaints during the year under Section 299 of the Public Health Act, 1875, of default by local authorities in the matter of providing these districts with sufficient sewers or proper supply of water."
    and then comes the unsatisfactory statement, that
    "No orders were made by us under the Section."

    683
    Probably during the drought a number of the local authorities which have made default in respect of the water supply in their districts have been feeling the effects of that default. I desire to draw the attention of the Local Government Board to the real necessity of doing something more in this matter. It is thirty years since a Select Committee of this House reported on certain clauses in the Public Health Act, 1875, under which these local authorities found it exceedingly difficult to remedy these defects. It is not really their own fault; it is very largely the fact that the expenses of getting Parliamentary sanction for their schemes are very heavy. We know the great efforts that are being made by the municipalities and town councils all up and down the country, to secure a proper supply of water, but when it comes to rural district councils, where there is really great need for a proper supply, we find that they are hampered by the great expense of Parliamentary procedure. I know the Local Government Board have done something to remedy this evil. As a matter of fact this Bill has not been pressed with any great vigour by the Local Government Board. It would, of course, be out of order to allude to it, but I believe it is a very admirable Bill, and I was interested in it, and it has been a long time in getting actually printed.
    The CHAIRMAN: The hon. Member is now dealing with what he has said is out of order.
    Mr. C. ROBERTS: I was only dealing with what appears to me to be some default on the part of the Local Government Board in pressing on a particular Bill. I was not referring to the details of the Bill.
    The CHAIRMAN: That is equally out of order, as referring to the details of the Bill.
    Mr. C. ROBERTS: It was merely a passing reference and I did not intend to pursue it. Anyhow, I hope, whether by legislation or administrative action, something more can be done to remedy what is a real grievance, which is very seriously felt in these districts. There is another point on a different aspect of the very multifarious duties of the Local Government Board. The President of the Local Government
    684
    Board took credit, and it is deservedly due, for making efforts to take children out of the workhouse. We all want that, and we listened to what he had to say on that point with a great deal of interest. But there is one other class of person who ought to be taken out of the workhouse, and that is the insane. You get, no doubt, a class of harmless and sometimes incurably insane persons in the workhouses, but their presence there is very undesirable. They are kept there because the guardians think on the whole it is a more economic policy, but it is very undesirable, and if you could get, not merely the children, but these lunatics out of the workhouses I am sure it would be advantageous. Guardians are always paying visits to these workhouses and finding there people who ought to be certified but are not, and I think myself it is a bad policy on the part of boards of guardians, and I hope the Local Government Board, by a little extra pressure, will induce the boards of guardians to make this change.
    Then the President of the Local Government Board told us that he could not go to-night into the working of the Housing and Town Planning Act of 1909. I cannot but think it would be of great interest if he could tell us a little more of the work which is being done under that Act. The Act, of course, has not been very long in force, but he told us that he was going to issue a White Paper, and he was sure it would be interesting, and no doubt he will be able to give us many more statistics and facts which would interest us beyond what might be stated tonight. But I cannot help thinking that this would be a good opportunity to tell us, at all events, some points where action is being taken. In the first place under the Act of 1909 I think it was provided under Section 17 that there should be a systematic inspection of each district with a view to discovering how many insanitary houses there are. No doubt that must have been going on in most districts, but possibly the Local Government Board has some information which it could communicate. I think the authorities have to report to the Local Government Board on that matter, and I imagine that a great deal of light must have been thrown upon the number of houses which are really not fit for human habitation up and down the country.

    685
    I think we ought to have seen, as the result of the Act of 1909, evidence of much greater local activity in the work of demolishing insanitary houses. I do not know if the right hon. Gentleman could give us any particulars about that. Of course it is one thing to pass an interesting and important Act and another thing to see it administered, and what we want to know is how it is being administered. In the last Report of the Local Government Board of course we have absolutely nothing, except I think circulars which were being issued under the Act, but what we want now is to have a little statement as to the progress that is being made. We also want to know to what extent the local authorities have been stimulated in providing new schemes. Everyone Who followed the Bill when it was before the House remembers the way in which rural district councils in the past ten years absolutely failed to provide any extra accommodation in rural districts where that extra accommodation is seriously required. I trust that the President of the Local Government Board will be able to tell us that a considerable number of new loans have been taken out by local authorities with a view to providing this accommodation the lack of which is a crying scandal throughout large parts of rural England.
    Turning to the other side of the Act, I think we should like to know something about the schemes of town planning, some of which have appeared in the papers. So far as I have been able to judge from the papers various local authorities have not been remarkably active or vigilant so far. But it takes a long time for local bodies to move, and I suppose many more schemes are being concocted or thought over, and the preliminary steps are being taken with a view to working out these schemes which we hope and trust the Act will lead up to. These are some of the points on which, if the President of the Local Government Board would give us information, I am sure it will interest the House and also the country. They are only small points in the very multifarious duties of the Local Government Board, but if he could throw some light upon them it would be of real interest to many Members of the House.
    Mr. JOHN WARD: I am delighted that this Debate has been far different from some of the Debates when the Estimates for the Local Government Board have been
    686
    under discussion, and just as on occasions the action of the President of the Local Government Board has called forth criticism from these benches I think it is only proper that I should offer a word or two of praise for at least a part of the administration that has been prominent during the past year. It is about three years ago since a friend of mine was fortunate enough in the ballot to be able to discuss the question of the housing of navvies upon public works, and also to discuss the question of hospital accommodation and the treatment of disease amongst those men who are collected together in waste places occasionally to perform works of great public utility. After the Debate had gone on for some time, the President of the Local Government Board promised that he would give his very best attention to this subject. He proceeded, I am delighted to say, to appoint a commission to inquire into the subject, or at least to send a medical officer of the Board to investigate the question in different parts of the country, and I must say that the report of Dr. Farrar, inspector of the Board, on the question of housing men engaged on public works was unquestionably one of the best, most useful, and exhaustive treatises on the subject which has ever come under my notice. It is rather remarkable that it was only during the last four or five years this House paid any attention to the matter, though it has been a pressing evil and difficulty for considerably over half-a-century. A Committee of the House, in 1847, reported as to the conditions under which these men lived at different public works in the country. A Select Committee was appointed, and for about eighteen months witnesses were collected from all over the country to describe the conditions under which these men were obliged to live. The Select Committee made a very important Report to the House, and I may say that it proposed very drastic reforms in relation to this question. It is strange, however, that from 1847 right down to 1906, so far as I have been able to ascertain from the records of the House, not a single effort has ever been made to rectify the grievances of which these men complain.
    It is true that great public authorities like corporations and others, which occasionally perform large public works, did, on their own initiative, greatly improve

    687
    the conditions of life as regards the housing of these men. I am bound to confess that the most important step forward was made in the case of the Birmingham Corporation, when it carried out its water scheme in Wales some years ago. But that work has always been left largely to the goodwill of the particular body that happened to be engaged in an enterprise of that nature. No definite laws or regulations of any description compelling such an observance were ever embodied in a public Act of Parliament until the Derwent Water Bill was brought forward. I must say that what was done there is an illustration of the way in which it is possible at a very low cost to supply decent housing and hospital accommodation for this class of men. I think one cannot get a better illustration than is to be found in connection with the Derwent Water scheme of the kind of dwellings which ought to be provided for the men engaged in such undertakings. You have there clean streets and decent houses, constructed with due regard to sanitation. Some of the homes of these men are unquestionably little palaces. That was a special case. Others have attempted to do something. With the assistance of the President of the Local Government Board, when the Bill for the Birkenhead Water scheme was recently passing through the House, a Clause was inserted insisting upon proper housing and hospital accommodation being secured to the men; and recently, on the initiative of the President of the Local Government Board, a medical officer went down and inspected the conditions provided for these men, and the report shows very satisfactory progress in this direction.
    The President of the Local Government Board, I am delighted to say, has been able to put this business largely on a permanent basis. Previously one had to object spasmodically to Bills that came before the House, and the matter had to be investigated merely by moving Amendments to these Bills when they came on for consideration. Yesterday, I am pleased to say, without the slightest debate or discussion, a rule was passed putting this matter for the future on something like a satisfactory basis. I hope that the House understood what they were doing yesterday afternoon when the Speaker merely asked the House to consent to a proposition by my right hon. Friend the President
    688
    of the Local Government Board that a new rule to this effect should be embodied in the Standing Orders of the House. If hon. Members will look at the OFFICIAL REPORT they will see that it amounted to a great public Act of Parliament. For the future, in the case of any great public works to be executed in a rural district where there is not sufficient house accommodation for a large influx of the population to do the work, the Committee before whom the Bill comes must satisfy itself before it passes the Bill that proper provisions are made under the Clauses of the Bill to meet the requirements of the men who may be brought to the works by the contractors or the authorities executing the works not only to supply proper housing accommodation for the men and their families, but also hospital accommodation to deal with accidents that may occur and eases of infectious disease, and generally to look after the health of the men.
    Unknown to the great majority of the House of Commons, I suggest that they did an act of justice to this class of man for which I certainly thank the President of the Local Government Board. I am often a critic of the President of the Local Government Board. I hope it is always friendly criticism. I am, therefore, the more disposed to be thankful for the effort that he must have put into this business, because I notice it is agreed that this should be a Standing Order of the House of Commons for the future with reference to Private Bill legislation. But the President of the Local Government Board has also persuaded their Lordships House to make the Standing Order at the other end of the building, so that we may hope, even if no housing reformers are returned at a future great election, that at least the influence of this Session, as far as the housing of these men is concerned, will be permanent. I hope that during the year the right hon. Gentleman will go a step further and ensure that public or private corporations, when executing large works, shall provide proper housing and hospital accommodation, with all the necessary appliances, in the interests of the workmen employed. Most certainly I hope that the Committees will see to this matter when they are called upon to consider these works promoted by public or private companies. There is still another class of works to whom this Standing Order should apply. For instance, the

    689
    War Office and the Admiralty, or other Departments of the Government may undertake great public works, but they have not to go before a Committee with their projects; all they do is to put a sum on the Estimates and get the sanction of the House. I suggest that the President should go a little step further by making it a condition that where any Government Department has decided to execute public works it should come under the same regulations as are imposed upon other people. I am afraid that at present there are one or two Government works where the housing of the men is probably as bad as anything in the country in connection with the employment of men on various works. Now that this Standing Order has been sanctioned, I think it is only proper that the Government should keep up to the same standard as it imposes upon others. I thank the President of the Local Government Board for the kindly interest he has taken in the body of men with which I am associated, and of which I happen to be one, and for his having, not only obtained this Standing Order, but persuaded the other House also to adopt it. I have much pleasure in supporting the action of the right hon. Gentleman.
    Mr. C. BATHURST: I should like to take this opportunity of asking the President of the Local Government Board what has happened in regard to his promised Milk and Dairies Bill. Two years ago we had a Milk and Dairies Bill containing very drastic provisions for the control of milk production in the country districts and the milk supply of the large urban centres. That Bill did not get beyond the stage of the Second Reading, and repeatedly since then the President of the Local Government Board himself has declared this to be an urgent matter, and that he intended to bring in again his Milk and Dairies Bill. Several times in the course of last Session——
    The CHAIRMAN: That is a question of legislation with which we have nothing to do now.
    Mr. C. BATHURST: I am bound to bring the matter forward, but I am prepared to do it in a different way. At the present time, as the right hon. Gentleman is aware, that by administrative action the various local authorities are endeavouring to deal with this problem as an
    690
    isolated problem which affects them, without reference to other local authorities. The result is that there is lack of uniformity in the matter, and there is an increasing tendency to differentiation in. the treatment of those who provide the large industrial centres with their supply of milk. Repeated efforts are being made to put milk clauses into various Bills emanating from different urban——
    The CHAIRMAN: That is legislation.
    Mr. C. BATHURST: The difficulty is this that we have seen how unequal and drastic are the administrative measures adopted by various local authorities under the powers they possess under the Public Health Act, and it is therefore absolutely essential to introduce legislation dealing with the milk problem.
    The CHAIRMAN: That is entirely out of order. If the administration of the local authorities is a matter over which the President of the Local Government Board has control that administration can be criticised. Everything that the hon. Member has said leads up to the question of the necessity for legislation, and that does not arise.
    Mr. C. BATHURST: I bow to your ruling. I think I am entitled to ask the President why it is that he has repeatedly announced in this House that he proposes to introduce legislation and why such legislation has not yet been forthcoming. I desire to deal with another matter which seems to me to be of great importance. About four months ago two reports were presented to the Local Government Board, by two of their most expert officials, one upon the presence of sulphate of lime in baking powder and self-raising flour, the other was bleaching of flour and so-called improvers of flour; and the chemical changes produced in flour by bleaching. The President admitted the importance and the seriousness of the subjects with which those reports dealt, and I should like to ask him what steps, if any, he proposed to take to act either in the way of administration or legislation upon the reports so presented. He has told us repeatedly in this House that there is yet another report which has been, or is about to be, presented to the Local Government Board upon the nutritive value of foods. I should like to ask whether that report has actu-

    691
    ally been presented to his Department, and whether he proposes to take action upon that report, together with the other reports I have referred to, particularly in relation to the important question of the constituents of what is called the loaf of bread. I do not know whether I should be in order in mentioning it, but, as you must be aware, there has been a campaign carried on in the Press during the last few months on the subject of bread. It was hoped that the Local Government Board would show either their sympathy or their disapproval of this campaign, and show what was the view which was officially held by the medical officers of the Local Government Board in regard to this most important National subject. The Local Government Board has taken no action in the matter so far, in spite of the fact that these very important and rather damnatory reports have been issued upon this and similar subjects. I should like to ask the President whether he does regard the subject matter of these reports with the seriousness with which many members of the medical profession in London and elsewhere have regarded them, and what action he proposes to take in the matter? With regard to the bleaching of flour by nitrogen peroxide, the President may remember that in this report it is pointed out that other countries have taken drastic steps in the interests of the health of their populations to put a stop to the practice. That is particularly the case in regard to the Swiss Government, the United States Department of Agriculture and various Australian States. It is to my mind a most important matter, and one upon which the great public health department of this country might be expected to give public opinion a lead. I sincerely regret that, owing to your ruling, I am unable to develop the subject with which I was most anxious to deal, but perhaps the President of the Local Government Board will be good enough to give a more precise answer on the question of milk than he has hitherto given, because there are so many persons, both members of the farming community and consumers in the big industrial centres, who are interested in this most important subject.
    Mr. ARTHUR ALLEN: I should like to congratulate the President of the Local Government Board on the very satisfactory figures that he gave in regard to the removal of children from workhouses in
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    London. He also expressed the hope that he might be justified in his anticipation that a great move forward in that direction will be made in the country unions during the coming year. There is one point in regard to children in workhouses upon which I should like further information. From time to time I receive information from different sources to the effect that workhouses are being used as remand homes for children who have been before magistrates. I should be glad if the right hon. Gentleman could give some information as to the number of cases in which workhouses are being used for that purpose. It is very disadvantageous that workhouses should be so used. It can only be done with the right hon. Gentleman's consent. A considerable number of local authorities, who can well afford to provide either remand homes of their own or to make arrangements with boys' and girls' refuges or other institutions of that character, instead of doing so are inclined to make use of the workhouses. So long as the right hon. Gentleman gives his consent in these cases, so long these local authorities will not do their duty in providing proper remand homes. It may be that the evil has been exaggerated, but during the last two years a great many cases have been brought to my notice. Possibly the right hon. Gentleman has refused his consent, but we have no information on the point. It is impossible for us to know in how many cases consent has been given and in how many refused. It would be a satisfaction to many people who are keenly interested in child life if the right hon. Gentleman could give us some information as to the number of cases in which workhouses are being used for this purpose.
    Mr. BURNS: I willingly accede to the request of my hon. Friend that I should give some information as to the use of workhouses as places of detention for children under remand. He was good enough to praise the action of the Local Government Board in reference to the general treatment of children; he is therefore justified in asking what the Board are doing in co-operation with the Home Office in regard to this particular matter. My hon. Friend knows that under the Children Act, 1908, it was the duty of the police authorities to provide places of detention for persons under sixteen who were awaiting trial—remand homes that were neither workhouses nor prisons. The police were in a very great difficulty in

    693
    carrying out this new Act—which I am very glad to say has received the general consent of the community—and to know what to do with the relatively large number of children whom they had to provide for. It was inadvisable that children under sixteen should be sent to prison, but some place had to be found, and the only place available was the children's wards of the workhouses, that were infinitely better than prison. The hon. Member will admit that these were in some cases better than some of the remand homes arranged where a small number of cases existed. The Local Government Board consulted with the Home Office, and the Board reluctantly gave their consent, under a particular section, as there were obvious objections to the workhouses being used for this particular purpose if a better place could be secured. On the other hand, the police said it would involve a tremendous expense if at once they were called upon to build all the remand homes that were necessary. As frequently the Local Government Board is the refuge of some of the Departments and a sanctuary for others, and as "Barkis was willin'," we reluctantly agreed to certain workhouses being used for the purpose of these children temporarily. We stipulated the conditions under which the children should be temporarily detained in these workhouses, that there was proper accommodation, that the children were kept apart from the other inmates, and that the guardians should undertake to provide proper supervision for them.
    I am glad to say that the accommodation that the Local Government Board has, through the various guardians, been able to place at the disposal of the police for this particular purpose is as satisfactory as it can be, seeing that it is temporary, unobjectionable in character, is as pleasant as it possibly can be, and that the associations are in keeping with the environment—to which all children, whether good, bad, or indifferent, ought to be subject. We are grappling with the temporary difficulty in the best way with the means at our disposal. These are the figures the hon. Member has asked for:—"Consents" up to December, 1910, 158, but twenty-seven of these were withdrawn. Consents continued up to March, 1911, fifty-seven; to May, 1911, five; to March, 1912, nine; and without limits, seventeen. The refusals were ninety-nine. Refusals to continue consent be-
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    yond 31st March, 1911, were also only twenty, so that the hon. Member will see, both by the "consents" and the "refusals," that we recognise this as a temporary difficulty. The hon. Member is aware of the facts that would support us in this particular work that we have been doing. I hope they are satisfactory to him. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Lincoln spoke very kindly about what had been done, and expected to be done, under the Housing and Town Planning Act. He amplified the suggestion made earlier in the day as to the issue of a White Paper giving facts with regard to housingmatters, and said that it was my duty to give some facts. Let me take closing orders, which, as a rule, are a test of the activity of the local authorities in dealing with houses unfit for human habitation. In 1908–9, before the Act came into operation, 1,840 local authorities closed 587 houses. In 1909–10 that number grew to 1,511; and in 1910–11, 1,046 local authorities issued closing orders with regard to 2,678 houses, as against 587 orders issued two years previously. That, I think, is very satisfactory. It justified what we expected the Act would do, and the speed with which the closing orders are carried out will be accelerated as the local authorities warm in their work and know the means by which they can be put into operation.
    With regard to representations as to houses not being fit for human habitation, I find that in 1908–9 6,312 representations were made; in 1910–11—two years after the Act came into operation—the figure was 10,796. This increase was mostly in urban districts, but rural districts also showed a substantial improvement. There were 12,900 houses dealt with under Section 15, and 392 were closed by the landlords, and of the 12,400 notices served 4,540 were, in rural districts, which is a tremendous increase upon what happened before. The hon. Member also asked me about loans. Applications for loans for the erection of dwellings for the working classes for the six months ending June, 1910, in urban districts amounted to £47,000, and for the six months ending June, 1911, £132,000. That is very satisfactory progress. There were no applications from the, rural areas in the first six months of 1910, when the Act came into force, but I am glad to say in the six months ending June, 1911, there were applications for

    695
    £9,625. That shows the rural authorities are beginning to keep pace with the urban both in the matter of closing orders and putting houses in a satisfactory condition, and, better still, in building new houses in those areas of the country that want them very badly. In twenty years, from the year 1890 to 1909, there were only eight loans for housing in rural areas; but I am pleased to say that since the Act of 1909 has been in operation there have been thirteen applications for loans, or more than in the whole of the previous twenty-years.
    With regard to loans sanctioned to urban authorities, there were in the first six months of 1910 four amounting to £14,000, whereas in 1911 the amount was £20,000. Rural authorities also have had similar advances, and since I have had the honour of being President 178 loans for rehousing schemes have been sanctioned amounting to £1,200,000 in five years. That is more rapid progress than in any previous five years, but we do not rest content with that. We want to accelerate that progress, and I appeal to hon. Members who represent constituencies in mining counties like Durham and Northumberland and many parts of Wales to help me to stimulate local authorities to put the housing conditions in their districts into much better order than they are at the present time. It is not sufficient to make Closing Orders and Demolition Orders here and there, and declare a few houses unfit for habitation. All over the United Kingdom there are opportunities in small rural areas and urban districts for scores of thousands of decent cottages to be built not at charity rents but at a rent sufficient to cover the cost of erection, maintenance, and repair, and I know of no side of social activity that would do more good to mankind than that private persons should avail themselves of the advantages of this new Act.
    Failing private enterprise doing this, I think the local authorities should step into the breach and do what private enterprise is indisposed to do. It is all very well to talk about the poor reforming themselves. I believe that when poverty comes in at the door love and the finer feelings often go out at the window; and when poverty comes into a one-roomed tenement in a crowded slum or dirty street in a mining village it induces on the part of women and children, and particularly on the part of the men, habits which are bad, physi-
    696
    cally, morally, and mentally, and which better housing conditions would do away with altogether. I would suggest to those people who are in the habit of spending so much on libraries and similar things that if they would take my advice and wish to spend the money better than they are now doing, they should devote it to rural and urban housing or to the creation of small parks, gardens and open spaces of half an acre or an acre in many of the poorer districts in our large cities. That in many respects would do much more good than a library of beautiful fiction to be read by sentimental people.
    I come from housing to town planning. Here, again, I have perhaps more hopeful and better news than I had in the case of housing. I never thought, even with that optimism I am accused of displaying almost to the extent of Mark Tapleyism, when I introduced the Housing and Town Planning Bill, that town planning would have made the progress it has made during the last two years. The preparation under the Act of four large schemes of town planning has been definitely sanctioned, and these schemes are now being prepared under the Town Planning Act. Birmingham, to its credit, has led the United Kingdom in this matter. One scheme at Harborne covers 2,320 acres, Aston is 1,442 acres; another at Bromsgrove is 554 acres. At Ruislip and Northwood there is a magnificent scheme for 5,906 acres, and the four schemes amount to over 10,222 acres. Applications have been received since the beginning of the working of the Act, a very short time, for authority to proceed at Rochdale and Oldbury, both combined being 2,000 acres. In ten other cases preliminary notices have been given, and in eleven other districts the local authorities have decided to proceed with schemes. In forty or fifty other cases a scheme is being considered by the local authority, and at this moment some seventy town planning schemes ar tbing prepared or are being considered under the new Act by the various local authorities.
    May I say, in conclusion, and I am sure the House will allow me, that apart from the local authorities, who are moving in the right direction, and are receiving every support from the Local Government Board, I wish to thank most sincerely the Royal Institute of Architects for the magnificent conference they held at the Guildhall in October last. The Royal Academy must

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    be most thankfully congratulated for giving the use of their magnificent building for the finest exhibition of town planning and garden city schemes that has ever been revealed in any city in the world, and I can assure the House, for I have seen them all, that I never thought that in so short a time any movement could produce such a bibliography, not only in books but magazines and pamphlets and various other forms of literature, as the town planning movement has produced during the last two years. I am additionally pleased to say this because I have been prominently identified with this movement for the last twenty-five years, and the progress made has exceeded my most sanguine expectations, and I hope every Member, both in town and country, whenever they have the opportunity to help this movement, will do so by every means in their power.

    ART AND SCIENCE BUILDINGS, GREAT BRITAIN.—(Class 1.)
    Resolved, "That a sum, not exceeding £59,900, be granted to His Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1912, for expenditure in respect of Art and Science Buildings, Great Britain."—[NOTE.—£40,000 has been voted on account.]

    REVENUE BUILDINGS.—(Class 1.)
    Resolved, "That a sum, not exceeding £467,063, be granted to His Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1912, for Customs and Excise, Inland Revenue, Post Office and Telegraph Buildings in Great Britain, and certain Post Offices abroad." — [NOTE. —£230,000 has been voted on account.]
    And, it being Eleven of the clock, the Chairman left the Chair to make his Report to the House.
    Resolutions to be reported upon Monday next; Committee to sit again upon Monday next.

MOTION FOR ADJOURNMENT.

  PARLIAMENT BILL.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now Adjourn."— [Master of Elibank.]
  11.0 P.M.
  Mr. ARNOLD WARD: I wish to put a question with regard to a matter affecting the Yeomanry which I addressed to the right hon. Gentleman the Under-Secretary for War the day before yesterday. I thought I had made an arrangement with the right hon. Gentleman by which he would be in his place on behalf of the War Office to answer me to-night. I am very anxious to get a reply. May I ask if there will be an answer to-night?
  The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the TREASURY (Master of Elibank): In the absence of my right hon. Friend it will be impossible to give a reply this evening, but we will make arrangements for an answer one evening next week.
  Mr. ARNOLD WARD: Then I will postpone my remarks until a representative of the War Office is present.
  Mr. OLIVER LOCKER-LAMPSON: I wish to raise a question of some importance in referring to a statement which appears in a letter in to-day's "Daily Express" and "Morning Post," quoting part of a speech by the hon. Member for East Tyrone (Mr. W. A. Redmond), delivered in New Zealand on 5th June, and reported in the "New Zealand Herald." The extract reads:—
  "The King of England had joined the fight against the reactionary gang in the House of Lords, and he had promised that, if need arose, he would create 500 new Peers and swamp the House of Lords to prevent a repetition of the blunder it had made in rejecting the Budget. Not only was the King allied with the party, but his representative in Ireland, the Lord Lieutenant, was an ardent Home Ruler."
  Personally I greatly regret that an hon. Member of this House should take advantage of the difficulties of the King at the present moment in order to promote his own political opinions. It may be argued that the hon. Member for East Tyrone, as a Member of this House, is not sufficiently conspicuous to justify one in paying attention to his remarks. I dare say he may be a private Member, but he is now in New Zealand as the accredited evangelist of the most militant party in the State at the present moment. He has gone there as the missionary of the Nationalist party to collect cash, and he has got it.
  Mr. PATRICK O'BRIEN: There's the rub.
  Mr. O. LOCKER-LAMPSON: Yes, and lie has apparently got it by degrading the name of the King. The point I would urge is this: that, not in any private capacity, he has gone out representing a party. He bears the name of a well-known and famous English politician. Leaving out of the question the fact that he happens to be the son of the virtual dictator of this country, these phrases of his were not the phrases that an hon. Member of this House should have used even in New Zealand. There is a second point. The hon. Member made the speech two months ago. He makes a bold and a bald statement which could only have been made upon secret information. I should like to ask whether the Prime Minister got the leave of His Majesty the King to give that information to the hon. Member, and if he did not get leave, how can he justify that action?
  MASTER of ELIBANK: Perhaps the hon. Member will allow me to reply in the absence of the Prime Minister. I have not seen the speech to which the hon. Member refers, but I am glad to have this opportunity of giving an emphatic denial to the suggestion that the Prime Minister, or indeed any of His Majesty's Ministers, has communicated to anyone what passed between the Sovereign and himself.
  Mr. JOHN REDMOND: I have not risen for the purpose of making any comment whatever on the speech of the hon. Gentleman, or of attempting to defend a speech which none of us have read—a speech from which a single quotation has been made—the authenticity and truth of which I for one gravely doubt. I have risen for this simple purpose. The hon. Gentleman's object is perfectly plain. It is to convey the suggestion—he has not stated it; I think it would have been more manly if he had—that this speech was made on information supplied to the hon. Member (Mr. W. A. Redmond) by me, and supplied to me by the Government. I desire to say, so far as I am concerned, that no such communication of what passed between the Sovereign and his Ministers was ever made to me.
  Mr. POLLOCK: It seems to me that the hon. Member has served a very useful purpose in bringing this matter to the attention of the House. I do not see that
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  any exception can possibly be taken to the manner in which he brought it before the House. It is all very well for certain hon. Members to find a cause for hilarity in it. The object of bringing it forward, I have no doubt, was that an opportunity might be given to ascertain whether or not there was any foundation for saying that this speech was correctly reported. How does the matter stand? This tour on which the hon. Member is engaged has been very widely reported in the newspapers. Only a short while ago I found a report of it in an evening newspaper. And quite rightly. However humble the position of an hon. Member, he would be quite entitled to have his tour referred to in the papers. But the fact of his being a Member of the House gives him an opportunity of being widely reported, and makes it all the more important that the matter should be brought to the attention of the House. The hon. Member, in order to secure funds for his party, makes a tour. That may be perfectly right, but it is open to the comment that he goes a long distance in order to secure funds. Apparently he has been making use of these statements as the basis of collecting funds for the advancement of the particular views which he and his party hold. The statements he made apparently for the collection are of deep importance, and I am quite certain that it is in his own interest, as well as in the interest of the party with whom he is acting—and, indeed, in the interest of all parties — that the matter should be brought to the attention of the House in order, so far as possible, that those persons most fully acquainted with the facts should either confirm or give an emphatic repudiation of the statement which the hon. Member for East Tyrone has made in the Dominion. I hope a good many Members may feel the importance of this subject. The hon. Member for Huntingdon has done a public service in bringing the matter to the attention of the House. [Laughter.] If there are some hon. Members who feel this to be merely a matter for jeering there are others who take a different view, and who are anxious in the interest of the hon. Member for East Tyrone. [Cheers.] I felt quite sure that that would provoke a considerable cheer. I say that in the interest of the hon. Member for East Tyrone, and of the party with whom he acts, it was important that the matter should be brought to the attention of the House.
  MARQUESS of TULLIBARDINE: There is one further matter to which I wish to refer. The hon. Member for Waterford rather reflected upon the manliness of the hon. Member for Huntingdon in bringing up this question.
  Mr. JOHN REDMOND: I did rather reflect on the manliness of the hon. Gentleman in making the suggestion rather than the statement that this information was obtained from me, and that it was obtained by me from the Prime Minister. That was the meaning of the hon. Member's speech.
  MARQUESS of TULLIBARDINE:I did not intend to convey that the hon. Gentleman had obtained this information from the Prime Minister. I think it most unlikely that it would have been given him by the Prime Minister. The real point I wish to bring out is that the hon. Member has practically repudiated this report. If the report is false, I think the hon. Member should wire out and state that it is so; otherwise the hon. Member for East Tyrone will be guilty of taking money under false pretences, and I am perfectly certain that is the last thing the Irish Nationalists would wish to do. I do not wish to bring in another name which has been dragged in. I would ask the right hon. Gentleman who at present is speaking on behalf of the Prime Minister if he will mention when the guarantees were given.
  MASTER of ELIBANK:I would ask the Noble Lord to wait until Monday.
  Mr. HOHLER:The matter which has been raised is one of great importance. I fully expected that the hon. Member for Waterford would rise to deny that he had anything to do with the communication made by the hon. Member for East Tyrone. What we really want to know is—When were the guarantees given? What I wish to ask the right hon. Gentleman is this. Is it or is it not a fact that these guarantees had been given before the hon. Member for East Tyrone made his speech. That is the point. It would have been much more interesting if the hon. Member for Waterford, instead of rising to answer a point not put, had told us that in fact he knew nothing of those guarantees at that date. That would indeed have been interesting. I do not suppose the Prime Minister did it himself, but we know there
  702
  are means of communication between the Irish party and the Government not known to us. We fully appreciate that the hon. Member has for a long time dictated the policy of the Prime Minister. The Prime-Minister has been a tool in his hands—a most pliant one. The point is not whether the hon. Member communicated to the hon. Member for East Tyrone or whether the Prime Minister communicated to the hon. Member for Waterford, but had the guarantees been given at that time? Will any hon. Member on the Treasury Bench get up and deny that is a fact? If he will not, the conclusion is obvious, and we need not look far. The leakage, whether from the hon. Member for Waterford or from the hon. Member for East Tyrone, seems to have been common property of the Irish Nationalists, and yet the whole farce and fraud of our debating the Parliament Bill was continued in this House for over a month, when the Prime Minister was making the communication of knowledge to the Irish party and denying it to us and denying it to the Second Chamber; and I venture to-think that that is a piece of hollowness and sham which reflects discredit on the Minister responsible for it.
  Mr. JOHN REDMOND: On a point of Order. The hon. Gentleman has just repeated a statement which I have denied to him. According to the ordinary rules of courtesy and Debate in this House, when an hon. Member denies a statement of that kind his denial will be accepted. The statement of the hon. Gentleman was that a communication was made to the Irish party from the Government with reference to the granting of the guarantees. I have denied that, and I ask you whether the hon. Member ought not to accept my denial.
  Mr. SPEAKER: The hon. Member for Waterford is quite right. It has always been the custom in this House when an hon. Member makes a statement that the rest of the House should accept that statement. I am sure that the hon. Member for Chatham will follow the usual course.
  Mr. HOHLER: Undoubtedly, with the greatest possible pleasure. I understood the statement of the hon. Member for Waterford was that he had not made the communication to the hon. Member for East Tyrone, nor had the Prime Minister conveyed the communication to the hon. Member for Waterford.
  Mr. JOHN REDMOND: I did not say the Prime Minister; I said the Government.
  Mr. HOHLER: At any rate the strong point is that somehow the fact was known to the hon. Member for East Tyrone, and no doubt the country will form its own conclusion. We are not in the least afraid of the country, but we do think that there is matter for an apology, and for regret that the hon. Member for East Tyrone, in the speech which he has made, has ventured to use the name of His Majesty in the disgraceful and discreditable way in which he has done.
  Mr. BOOTH: I desire to call attention to a most serious question, and one which has a very important and serious aspect. I wish to discuss the question of the pollution of rivers. It has a most important bearing on this discussion. Take the River Aire, which flows through the West Riding of Yorkshire, pure from the mountains. It passes through village after village, and town after town, until it becomes a large volume of water, but, unfortunately, it also becomes muddier and muddier. It flows past the end of my garden—and I should be happy to invite any hon. Gentleman who is interested in the subject to see it—and there it seems to be as black as ink. I am sorry I have so limited a time in which to discuss the question, but I would point out that this is pure water when it starts to flow from the mountains, and until it reaches a spot where it disappears underground for about a mile, but when it reappears it becomes a mighty river of ink. I desire to draw the attention of the House to this most serious problem.
  Adjourned at Half after Eleven o'clock.

  Cost of Education (United Kingdom).
  Cost of Education (United Kingdom).
  Holiday Remuneration.
  Holiday Remuneration.
  Cultra Coastguard Station.
  Cultra Coastguard Station.
  Old Age Pensions (Ireland).
  Old Age Pensions (Ireland).
  Summer Working Hours.
  Summer Working Hours.
NATIONAL INSURANCE BILL.
  MATERNITY BENEFIT.
  MATERNITY BENEFIT.
  HALF-TIMERS (TEXTILE TRADES).
  HALF-TIMERS (TEXTILE TRADES).
  Coast Erosion (Report of Royal Commission).
  Coast Erosion (Report of Royal Commission).
  East Cork Election.
  East Cork Election.
  Land Purchase (Ireland).
  Land Purchase (Ireland).
  Old Age Pensions.
  Old Age Pensions.
  Artisans Dwellings (Tullamore).
  Artisans Dwellings (Tullamore).
  Emigration from Ireland.
  Emigration from Ireland.
  Royal Minister Fusiliers (John O'Brien).
  Royal Minister Fusiliers (John O'Brien).
  Revaccination (Bombay).
  Revaccination (Bombay).
  Sunderland Lock-Out (Alleged Assault).
  Sunderland Lock-Out (Alleged Assault).
  Insurance Companies.
  Insurance Companies.
  Tramway Speeds.
  Tramway Speeds.
  Telephone (Danebury).
  Telephone (Danebury).
  Church Estates in Leicestershire.
  Church Estates in Leicestershire.