Sitting of 5 February 1935

Preamble
The House met at a quarter past four of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.

CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES.
THE EARL OF LUCAN: My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend the Leader of the House, I beg to move that Lord Stanmore be appointed to take the Chair in the Committee of the Whole House this day, in the absence of the Chairman of Committees.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.

WESTERN AUSTRALIA.
Message from the Commons to acquaint the House that they concur with the Lords in the Resolution of Thursday last, That it is desirable that a Joint Committee of both Houses be appointed to consider the Petition of the State of Western Australia for a Bill to effectuate the withdrawal of the people of Western Australia from the Federal Commonwealth of Australia, and to report whether the same is proper to be received.
BRITISH SHIPPING (ASSISTANCE) BILL.
Brought from the Commons; read 1a, and to be printed.
EDINBURGH CORPORATION (TRAM WAYS, &c.) ORDER CONFIRMA TION BILL.
Brought from the Commons; read la; to be printed, and (pursuant to the Private Legislation Procedure (Scotland) Act, 1899) deemed to have been read 2a and reported from the Committee.
BAILDON URBAN DISTRICT COUNCIL BILL. [H.L.]
Read 2a.
BURY AND DISTRICT JOINT WATER BOARD BILL. [H.L.]
Read 2a.
CHICHESTER CORPORATION BILL. [H.L.]
Read 2a.
EXETER CORPORATION BILL. [H.L.]
Read 2a.
HERTFORDSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL BILL. [H.L.]
Read 2a.
HOYLAKE URBAN DISTRICT COUNCIL BILL. [H.L.]
Read 2a.
NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE CORPORA TION (QUAY EXTENSION) BILL. [H.L.]
Read 2a.
NOTTINGHAM CORPORATION BILL. [H.L.]
Read 2a.
PORT OF LONDON BILL. [H.L.]
Read 2a.
SEVERN NAVIGATION (CHARGING POWERS) BILL. [H.L.]
Read 2a.
URMSTON URBAN DISTRICT COUNCIL BILL. [H.L.]
Read 2a.
WEST RIDING OF YORKSHIRE MENTAL HOSPITALS BOARD (SUPERANNUATION) BILL. [H.L.]
Read 2a.
WEST SUSSEX COUNTY COUNCIL (WATER) BILL. [H.L.]
Read 2a.
WEYMOUTH AND MELCOMBE REGIS CORPORATION BILL. [H.L.]
Read 2a.

NATIONAL GALLERY (OVERSEAS LOANS) BILL. [H.L.]
Order of the Day for the House to be put into Committee read.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(The Earl of Munster.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly:
[LORD STANMORE in the Chair.]
Clause 1:
Power to lend pictures representative of British art belonging to the National Gallery for exhibition or display overseas.
1.—(1) The Trustees and the Director of the National Gallery shall, in their discretion, have power to lend—

(a) for public exhibition outside the United Kingdom; or

(b) for display in the official house of a British Ambassador in a foreign country,

pictures vested in them which are by British artists; and any pictures so lent shall be lent on such terms as the said Trustees and Director think fit, and subject to such conditions as they may impose for the purpose of securing the safe custody and due return thereof:
Provided that, where a picture has become vested as aforesaid by virtue of any gift or bequest, the powers conferred by this subsection shall not be exercisable as respects that picture in any manner inconsistent with any condition attached to the gift or bequest, unless either—

(i) the donor or his personal representatives, or the personal representatives of the testator, as the case may be, have consented to the exercise of those powers in that manner; or

(ii) at least fifteen years have elapsed since the date of the vesting of the picture.

THE EARL OF MUNSTER THE EARL OF MUNSTER moved, in the proviso in subsection (1), to leave out all words after "picture," where that word occurs for the second time, and insert:

"(a) until at least fifteen years have elapsed since the date of the vesting of the picture unless the donor or his personal representatives or the personal representatives of the testator, as the case may be, have consented to the exercise of those powers; or

(b) in any manner inconsistent with any condition attached to the gift or bequest unless either the picture became so vested before the first day of January, nineteen hundred, or the donor or his personal representatives or the personal representatives of the testator, as the case may be, have consented to the exercise of those powers in that manner."

The noble Earl said: The Amendment which stands in my name on the Order Paper is one which I foreshadowed on the Second Reading of this Bill. Paragraph (a) of the Amendment relates to gifts and bequests to which no restrictive conditions attach. In such cases loans within fifteen years of vesting require the consent of the donors or their representatives. Loans after the first fifteen years can be made at the discretion of the Trustees and the Director. Paragraph (b) deals with gifts and bequests to which restrictive conditions apply, and in these cases the discretion depends upon whether the gifts or bequests were vested in the trustees before or after January 1, 1900. In the case of gifts vested before that date they can be loaned at the discretion of the Trustees. If, on the other hand, they were vested after that date their loan will for all time be dependent on the consent of the donors or their personal representatives. As I think I informed your Lordships on the Second Reading of the Bill, gifts or bequests vested before 1900 can be loaned at the discretion of the Trustees, and this will enable the Trustees and the Director to loan some part, at least, of the great collection of Turners. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 1, line 21, leave out from ("picture") to the end of subsection (1) and insert the said two new paragraphs.—(The Earl of Munster.)
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
On Question, Whether Clause 1, as amended, be agreed to?
THE EARL OF CRAWFORD: I have not put down an Amendment, hut I shall be obliged if my noble friend Lord Munster will consider the matter at some later stage during the passage of this Bill through Parliament. I am not very much pleased with the definition of the places to which these pictures may be sent "for display in the official house of a British Ambassador 'in a foreign country." I cannot help thinking that this definition of the official house of an Embassy is not very desirable as destination for these pictures. It means that you could send pictures from the National Gallery to Baghdad or to Angora but you may not send them to The Hague or to Oslo. The distinction, therefore, is purely arbitrary and, being based upon something
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which has no artistic connotation, is not very just. I should rather leave the responsibility with the Director and Trustees of the National Gallery without making any presumption in favour of any particular place. Likewise it might be suitable for them to send pictures occasionally to the residence of a Governor-General which, as the Bill stands, is of course impossible because it is not for public exhibition.
I read the newspaper comments upon the short debate which took place here a few days ago and there seems to be a general impression that the National Gallery and the Tate Gallery possess not only a great number of these important English pictures but a real quantity of masterpieces. That is a complete fallacy. There are very few masterpieces in the National Gallery indeed, of Gains-borough and Reynolds and Romney, for instance; and I do not suppose that the Ambassador is going to be very anxious to have second and third-rate examples of our great English painters. The best clearly may not leave this country, and the second- and third-rate ones I do not think are really desirable. It is not upon them that one would like our fame as an artistic race to be established.
I should like to make a suggestion in this respect and to enter a plea for something in this country corresponding with the Garde-meuble of France. For a good number of years past the Office of Works has been devoting a great deal of care and a modest amount of money to refurnishing our Embassies and Legations all over the world. They have done really extraordinarily good work at a very modest expense, but the work is still incomplete because the last items of decoration are not there. All the regular furniture, chairs, tables, and so forth no doubt are there, but the Office of Works has no store and no money from which to supply pictures and decorative artistic objects. I should like therefore to see a Garde-meuble built up here corresponding with that in Paris from which beautiful things are sent to the Embassies and other places inside or outside the French Republic. We ought to have a collection of good examples of English furniture; we most certainly ought to have a collection of English engravings. We occupied a pre-eminent position 150 years ago in the art of engraving naval scenes,

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likewise our topographical colour prints, our sporting prints, our achievement in the art of engraving—above all, our series of English portraits reproduced in mezzotint. Nothing in the world compares with these and it will be far better if we could have groups of all those things to send overseas than second- or third-rate paintings. Those would really exalt our fame, because it is in those things, which, incidentally, are the most decorative things in the world, that we really excel.
Of course one would like to have tapestry like the French have in their Garde-meuble. I wish the Office of Works would interest itself in this and really take the matter up. I have not a doubt that you would get ex-Ambassadors, ex-Governors, and so on to contribute things, to make legacies and to get gifts. You would get bequests, and if the Office of Works was allowed a very small and modest grant, within a very few years there would be built up a nucleus which would make all the difference when you came to consider the decoration of our Embassies or Legations. If you could interest the National Art Collection Fund you would very rapidly build up your storehouse. If the Treasury would take me into their confidence I would convince them that by an insignificant grant in five or ten years we would have a collection which would be an economy because it would be of material value. I am sure that in many cases you would save rather expensive decorations in those Embassies and they would embellish other official residences also. Perhaps my noble friend between this and the subsequent stages of the Bill would be so good as to consider if the term "Embassy" is really the final opinion of the Government as definition on this subject.
VISCOUNT MERSEY: I should like to make one or two remarks upon what the noble Earl has said. I deprecate very much extending this permission to Legations. When I was young we used to have six Ambassadors abroad, we now have fourteen or fifteen, and in addition we have forty-four Legations. I am, however, entirely in sympathy with what the noble Earl has said as regards the houses of Governors-General. From my little knowledge of the Colonies I believe that probably they are mostly empty of
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really good examples of British art, and I think it is most important that our fellow subjects in the Colonies and Dominions should be given the opportunity of seeing what has been produced in this country in that direction.
The noble Earl, Lord Crawford, called attention to the Garde-meuble, but of course the French in that matter are in a very different position. They have no Royal dynasty in France and so the Government have the Palaces of the Louvre, of the Tuileries, of Versailles and half a dozen others on which to draw. Many of our examples of furniture and pictures are not in the public galleries but in the palaces in this country. As regards engravings, there again I am entirely in agreement with the noble Earl. This country was pre-eminent in the art of mezzotint engraving, whereas, as your Lordships know, the French and the Germans were much more active in line engraving. Line engraving was never our forte, whereas mezzotint engraving was. Thousands of examples, I suppose, are put away in the British Museum; but there again we are on the extremely delicate ground of allowing things to be taken from the British Museum. That, in my opinion, is a very dangerous door to open. I hope the noble Earl in charge of the Bill will consider the adoption of some form of words which would admit of the houses of Governors-General—that is to say, of officials directly representing the Crown—being put on the same plane as the houses of Ambassadors.
LORD ADDINGTON: May I add my plea to those that have been put forward? I do not know why the display of objects of art should be limited to the houses of Ambassadors. There are other places which are very fine buildings and suitable for the display of some objects of art. No doubt the Trustees who in the Bill are given discretion in the matter would not send to places which are unsuitable.
LORD PONSONBY OF SHULBREDE: I should like to support the suggestion made by the noble Earl, and in order to bring the matter to a head may I ask the noble Earl in charge of the Bill whether on the Report stage he would accept an Amendment in paragraph (b) of subsection (1) of Clause 1 changing the words "Ambassador in a foreign country" to the words "British repre-

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sentative abroad"? That would cover both Legations and the houses of Governors-General.
THE MARQUESS OF READING: I do not want to prolong this debate, but I was very much impressed by what the noble Earl said and I should like to support him. Unlike my noble friend Viscount Mersey, I think it would be a good thing to extend this power to include Legations and the houses of the representatives of Britain abroad. I do not want to take up time, but I hope the noble Earl in charge of the Bill will consider extending the terms of the Bill to cover the cases put forward.
THE EARL OF MUNSTER: One or two noble Lords have called attention to the absence from paragraph (b) subsection (1) of Clause 1 of any mention of British Legations and the houses of Governors-General. The Bill as it now stands was drafted in full agreement with the Trustees of the National Gallery and the Tate Gallery, who indeed agreed to allow pictures representative of British art to be sent abroad on the one condition that they were only sent to Ambassadors houses. As, however, there appears to be some desire that the Bill should be extended to apply also to the houses of Governors-General and to Legations, I will certainly between now and the Report stage bring the matter to the attention of my right honourable friend and see if anything further can be done in the matter.
The noble Earl, Lord Crawford, raised the question about the kind of pictures that would be sent to British Embassies. I think, if my recollection serves me correctly, that he raised the same objection to the Bill of 1930—that if it was intended to send pictures to Embassies abroad it would be far better to send none at all than not to send good pictures. I should like to impress upon your Lordships that in sending pictures to the Ambassadors abroad it is not intended in any way to do so as an advertisement for British art, although I have no doubt that the Trustees and the Director in their wisdom will choose pictures which will certainly stand at a high level compared with other pictures in the country. It may interest my noble friend the Earl of Crawford if I tell him that a suggestion is being examined now that a certain small sum of money should
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be set apart each year to purchase further pictures for the Legations, which are not included in this Bill. However, as the point has been raised I will certainly bring the matter to the attention of my right honourable friend, and if your Lordships will allow me I will refer to it again on the Report stage.
Clause 1, as amended, agreed to.
Remaining clause agreed to.

UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE BILL. [H.L.]
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (VISCOUNT SANKEY): My Lords, this is a Bill to consolidate the Acts relating to unemployment insurance. It makes no alteration at all in the existing law, but merely brings into one measure the law on the subject. Since 1920, when the original Unemployment Insurance Act became law, between thirty and forty further Acts and other measures dealing with unemployment insurance have been passed. Some of the Acts have been wholly repealed, some of them have been partly repealed, others have been amended—some of them on several occasions—while others remain in the condition in which they passed. There have been serious criticisms, and great inconvenience has been felt in many quarters, because of the present state of unemployment insurance legislation. It is a matter of extreme difficulty to find one's way about the different Acts in order to arrive at what is the existing law upon any aspect of the subject. The Royal Commission on Unemployment Insurance commented on the added difficulty they had experienced in their inquiry owing to the complicated character of the legislation, and said that they attached importance to consolidation. It is obviously in the interests of all concerned—of the employed persons and their employers, as well as of the Legislature—that consolidation should take place as quickly as possible. Accordingly the Government introduce the present measure, and I beg to move that this Bill be now read a second time.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Bill read 2a, and referred to the Joint Committee on Consolidation Bills.

PHYSICAL TRAINING IN PRISONS AND ASYLUMS.
LORD KILMAINE LORD KILMAINE rose to move to resolve, That all mental homes having over 100 patients, should be required to include a fully equipped gymnasium in their establishment, and that the same provision should also be made in respect of the State prisons and reformatories and county asylums. The noble Lord said: My Lords, I have put this Motion on the Paper in the hope that I may thereby be able to help the many hundreds of unfortunate men and women who are dragging out their lives in the mental homes and asylums of this country. I happen to have very intimate knowledge of the life that goes on in these mental homes, because I have two friends one of whom has been and one who unfortunately still is a paying guest at two of the best known of them. I say without hesitation from what I know that the life of the average patient in these homes can best be described as one of total inertia.
It is true that in one of the best known of the mental homes—I refer to one in Sussex—every provision is made for those patients who are able to take part in physical games and exercises to do so. They are provided with a golf course, tennis courts, croquet lawns, putting greens, and pleasant walks that take them along the country lanes. But in bad weather there is practically no exercise whatever which those patients or their attendants can have. The patients are restricted either to spending the day moping in their rooms or walking up and down the corridors, if they are so permitted. There is certainly a billiard room, but it stands to reason that only a few can indulge in this form of exercise. In the more drastic homes the only form of exercise for the patients in fine weather is exercise in what is called an "airing court," which is a courtyard about the size of this Chamber surrounded by high walls, with a plot of grass perhaps in the middle and a few paths round the edge. Here the unfortunate patients have to sit, or walk up and down aimlessly, until they are herded in to meals. The only other form of exercise that they have is going for gang walks round the grounds or along the high roads in the charge of
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uniformed attendants. In wet weather they have absolutely no exercise at all.
I venture to think that if a gymnasium were provided it would be of immense benefit to the patients themselves of both sexes and to their attendants. Many of the Attendants have a most wearying time. They are often in charge of, and responsible for, patients who require constant supervision, and when they get time off there is often nothing for them to do except to flirt with the female staff. The old Latin tag mens sana in corpore sano would, I think, find fulfilment in the case of many mental patients of both sexes—for unfortunately there are more women than men in these places—if they could obtain healthy exercise in a gymnasium. There are, of course, many patients who for one reason or another are quite incapable of taking part in outdoor games or exercises, but any able-bodied patient could take part in some of the forms of gymnastic exercise that could be provided. In the case of violent patients, part of their trouble is due to exactly the same cause as leads the chained-up dog to be savage—the feeling of being confined in a limited space and having no outlet for their pent-up energy. I am firmly of opinion that in many of these places if the patients could get healthily tired out by doing gymnastic exercises, that would greatly conduce to their general health and to their sleeping better at night, and it would probably also lessen their outbreaks of violence.
What is needed in most mental cases is to find some means of restoring the patient's self-respect and of arousing his interest, and I believe firmly that if patients could be interested in gymnastic exercises, and especially if they could excel in any particular branch of them, the spirit of emulation and the feeling of being successful would take them out of themselves, help them to forget their own troubles, and would probably conduce greatly to their cure. I do not know whether the State prisons or reformatories are provided with gymnasia. I have heard only of one case of a mental home for naval men where there is a gymnasium. But I cannot help thinking that here, too, the facilities, if provided, would be of the very greatest benefit, especially in the case of reformatories where young people are detained. I

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hope that none of your Lordships will think this Motion of mine a frivolous one. It is not. From inside knowledge of what goes on in these places I am fully convinced that the proposal which I venture to make would result in vast benefit to many unfortunate people who live therein and would greatly lighten their existence. Surely it is better that patients in mental homes and hospitals should tire themselves out in healthy exercise in the gymnasium than that they should be taken for dull walks along the high roads or allowed to sit moping in "airing courts." My Lords, I beg to move.
Moved to resolve, That all mental homes having over 100 patients, should be required to include a fully equipped gymnasium in their establishment, and that the same provision should also be made in respect of the State prisons and reformatories and county asylums.—(Lord kilmaine.)
LORD ADDINGTON: My Lords, I must apologise for inflicting myself twice upon your Lordships, but as a member of a Committee which is concerned with this subject I should like to support everything that the noble Lord has said with regard to the benefit—
NOBLE LORDS: Order, order.
THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (VISCOUNT HAILSHAM): The noble Lord is speaking from the Episcopal Benches.
LORD ADDINGTON: I apologise to the House. I had not intended to address the House, but one of the things that the noble Lord said caused me to rise from the place where I was sitting to say a few words in support of his Motion. I want to emphasise, as a member of a committee which is responsible for one of our mental hospitals, the enormous importance of physical recreation and exercise. I think there can be no doubt of its value. The only point upon which I would offer any comment is that the noble Lord has not made clear how in many cases such a requirement could possibly be enforced. After all, a great many even of the county mental hospitals are much restricted both as to space and as to finance. The noble Lord knows that a lot of them are very seriously overcrowded, particularly on the female side; because, as he rightly says,
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there are many more patients on the female side than on the male side. If they are not able to get more ground and if there is no room for extension, it is very difficult to require the responsible authorities, at a moment's notice, to build a gymnasium and provide the equipment for it, with accommodation for the staff who would have to supervise it. The Board of Control who are the authority in these matters are particularly urgent in pressing the importance of recreation upon committees of county mental hospitals. In our own case we had an extension pending for some time but were unable to move until we had acquired the land which was necessary to permit of the extension. So that while urging that everything should be done to attain the end which the noble Lord has in view, and while agreeing that the attention of the Board of Control and the visitors who deal with even the ordinary mental homes might be specially drawn to what the noble Lord has said in this matter, I venture to suggest that a strict requirement would be somewhat difficult to enforce.
VISCOUNT GAGE: My Lords, I am sure that your Lordships would wish to be sympathetic towards the case of my noble friend Lord Kilmaine, but I must point out that what he is actually proposing is that a law should be passed to compel local authorities and others to provide the gymnastic facilities for which he asks. There is, of course, no reason now why any local authority should not, if it thinks fit, provide gymnasia, and I think the whole point is really whether there is sufficient evidence to support the passing of new legislation to compel them to do it. I think we must consider to what extent the majority of patients in any given institution would be capable of using gymnastic appliances. In any institution there are obviously many who are aged and infirm, and if we take those into account, and also those who physically or mentally are unfit to use gymnastic appliances, I feel that the law might merely have the effect of compelling the erection of gymnasia which could only be used by a quite negligible minority.
We must remember that patients are in these institutions for definite medical treatment, and therefore their course of life must for that reason be directed by-the medical officers not only having re-

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gard to their mental treatment but also to their physical treatment as well. Properly controlled physical culture is becoming more and more recognised as a suitable and indeed necessary part of this medical treatment; but physical culture of this sort can very largely be provided without apparatus of any kind, and the question as to whether this kind of physical culture is being sufficiently used in the various mental hospitals is one which is engaging the attention of the Board of Control. The Report of the Board on Occupational Therapy in 1933, and their Annual Report of last year, both refer to this question, and indeed they go further and say that there is undoubtedly scope for much further development in this direction; but at the same time the Board emphasise that this form of treatment does not necessarily involve elaborate equipment.
Considering that the use of gymnasia for purely recreational purposes is rather ruled out in the case of the majority of mental patients by reason of their condition, the question seems to me really to be how far these extra appliances would be necessary for proper medical treatment. I am unaware that there is any evidence to that effect, and I am unaware that any medical officers have demanded that for the proper treatment of their patients further gymnastic accommodation of the kind asked for in the Motion should be provided. They may have done so, but I am not officially aware that they have made such demands. Actually, I think the noble Lord himself, when he referred to the absence of exercises in institutions, referred to gymnastic exercises rather than to the kind of exercises that would demand more elaborate equipment.
I must refer perhaps separately to the question of the mentally deficient as opposed to those in the ordinary mental hospitals. To them physical exercises and gymnastics cannot have such a therapeutic value in quite the same sense as can be claimed in the case of patients suffering from mental disorder. Most mental defectives are unlikely to improve mentally; but proper treatment may produce great improvement in conduct and power of adjustment. Moreover, in mental deficiency institutions a considerable proportion of the patients are young and able-bodied, and physical drill and other
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forms of organised exercise are an essential part of the daily life of these patients. It may be added that at the State institution at Rampton, where a very large number of high grade defectives are under care, a properly equipped gymnasium is provided.
It might be said therefore that perhaps the case for mental deficients is stronger than the case of patients at mental hospitals proper. But even at institutions for the mentally defective conditions are by no means the same everywhere, and it must be remembered, too, that the re-allocation of institutions under the Local Government Act, 1929, is necessarily a slow process, and is by no means yet complete. In all these circumstances I would suggest to the noble Lord that what he suggests is premature. The Government are really alive to and sympathetic towards the facts which the noble Lord has put before the House, but we feel that it would be wrong to put the State and the ratepayers to the kind of expense which I think the noble Lord has in mind, when there is no evidence that the doctors require it or that the local authorities are not properly using the powers they already possess. The noble Lord will understand that we are fully alive to the possibility of improving the facilities for physical training.
In regard to the noble Lord's question as affecting prisons and reformatories, I have been asked to make a statement on behalf of my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Home Affairs. The institutions mentioned in the Motion for which the Home Secretary is departmentally responsible in a greater or less degree are approved schools (formerly called reformatory and industrial schools), Borstal institutions and prisons. The great majority of the approved schools, particularly those having the custody of boys between fifteen and seventeen years of age, have either fully or partly equipped gymnasia, and skilled members of the staff or visiting instructors carry out instruction in physical training. In the case of Borstal institutions the provision of efficient physical and gymnastic training has always been recognised as an essential part of the treatment of the young persons who have been sent there. As regards prisons, great progress has been made in recent years in improving the physical condition of prisoners, and all

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but six prisons have either fully equipped gymnasia or workshops which are used for gymnastic purposes and are equipped with apparatus. Of the remainder, one is shortly to be provided with a building which will be available for gymnastic purposes, and in the other five the inmates are, on account of age or physical condition or for other reasons, unsuitable for gymnastic exercise. The staff of every prison includes officers trained in physical exercises.
The Home Secretary fully appreciates the importance of the bearing which physical training has upon the mental and physical welfare of the inmates of the institutions under his care, and the matter is one to which particular attention is paid by the Prison Commissioners as regards prisons and Borstal institutions, and by the Home Office inspectors in the case of approved schools. It will, however, be recognised that there is a difference of opinion among medical and other competent authorities as to whether physical training is best afforded by means of equipment or by what is generally known as physical drill, and as at present advised the Home Secretary is of opinion that the question whether gymnastic appliances should be provided at those institutions which do not at present possess them is best left to the judgment of those in close touch with conditions at the individual institutions. I can, however, assure the noble Lord on his behalf that he will not fail to give the closest attention to what the noble Lord has said. I hope that in those circumstances the noble Lord will be satisfied that the Government are doing what they can to pay attention to the ease which he has put, and will not find it necessary to press his Motion.
LORD KILMAINE: My Lords, having regard to what the noble Lord has said on behalf of the Government, I will not press my Motion, but I should like to point out that I did not visualise any expenditure by the State. I was thinking
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of two mental homes which charge very high rates indeed to the representatives of the unfortunate people who are under their care—as much as £600 or £800 a year each. They are money-making concerns, they are a syndicate, and they could perfectly well afford out of their own profits to put a gymnasium at the disposal of the patients and staff if they wanted to do so.
Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

CONSOLIDATION BILLS.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I beg to move that a Committee of six Lords be appointed to join with a Committee of the House of Commons as a Joint Committee on Consolidation Bills in the present Session, and that the Lords whose names are mentioned on the Order Paper be named of the Committee.
Moved, That a Committee of six Lords be appointed to join with a Committee of the House of Commons as a Joint Committee on Consolidation Bills in the present Session:
That the Lords following be named of the Committee—

M. Aberdeen and Temair,

E. Lucan,

L. Stanmore,

L. Merthyr,

L. Amulree,

L. Howard of Penrith:

That such Committee have power to agree with the Committee of the House of Commons in the appointment of a Chairman.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
Ordered, That a Message be sent to the Commons to acquaint them therewith, and to request them to appoint six members to be joined with the said Committee.
House adjourned at three minutes past five o'clock.

Preamble
The LORD CHANCELLOR acquainted the House, That the Clerk of the Parliaments had laid upon the Table the Certificate from the Examiners that the further Standing Orders applicable to the following Bills have been complied with:

Folkestone and District Electricity [H.L.],

Frimley and Farnborough District Water [H.L.],

Norwich Electric Tramways [H.L.],

Poole Road Transport [H.L.],

Severn Navigation [H.L.],

Sharpness Docks and Gloucester and Birmingham Navigation [H.L.],

Stourbridge Navigation [H.L.],

Swansea and District Transport [H.L.],

The same was ordered to lie on the Table.

STOURBRIDGE NAVIGATION BILL. [H.L.]
Petition for Additional Provision; of the Company of Proprietors of the Stourbridge Navigation; together with proposed Amendment and clauses annexed thereto: Read, and referred to the Examiners.

BAILDON URBAN DISTRICT COUNCIL BILL. [H.L.]
EXETER CORPORATION BILL. [H.L.]
HERTFORDSHIRE COUNTY COUNCIL BILL. [H.L.]
NEWCASTLE - UPON - TYNE CORPORATION (QUAY EXTENSION) BILL. [H.L.]
NOTTINGHAM CORPORATION BILL. [H.L.]
SEVERN NAVIGATION (CHARGING
POWERS) BILL. [H.L.]
URMSTON URBAN DISTRICT COUNCIL BILL. [H.L.]
WEST SUSSEX COUNTY COUNCIL (WATER) BILL. [H.L.]
WEYMOUTH AND MELCOMBE REGIS CORPORATION BILL. [H.L.]
Committed: The Committees to be proposed by the Committee of Selection.