FIRST REPORT

BY THE

Joint Select Committee of the House of Lords and the House of Commons appointed to consider all Consolidation Bills in the present Session,

BEING A REPORT UPON THE

POOR LAW BILL [H.L.].

ORDERED TO REPORT THAT—

A Bill substantially identical with this Bill was introduced in the Session of 1926, and was referred to the Joint Select Committee on Consolidation Bills. That Committee had practically completed the examination of the first 114 clauses of the Bill when the prorogation of Parliament supervened.

The present Bill, as introduced, gave effect to the decisions of the Committee of 1926. The constitution of the present Committee being identical with that of the Committee of 1926, they did not consider it necessary to reopen the questions settled by that Committee and for the most part confined themselves to the consideration of the remainder of the Bill.

The Committee have made in the Bill such amendments as seem to them to be required to bring it into conformity with the existing law, or to be desirable to improve its form. The Committee consider that, subject to what is said below, the Bill as amended represents the existing law with respect to the administration of poor relief, and that the Bill should be allowed to proceed.

The consolidation of the Poor Law Acts is a matter of difficulty and complexity. The difficulties consist not alone in those inherent in any attempt to embody in a single measure enactments scattered over more than a hundred Acts and to assimilate the language of enactments ranging in date from 1601 to the present day, but chiefly in those occasioned by the revolutions in the Poor Law brought about by the Acts of 1834 and 1865 :

(1) The Poor Law Amendment Act, 1834, substituted boards of guardians for overseers as the bodies to administer the poor law, and the poor law union for the parish as the area of administration. But it tried to effect its object in

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general terms without making the specific alterations in the pre-1834 Acts which were consequential on the changes effected by the Act of 1834; and it is sometimes difficult to determine whether the old law affecting overseers applies to boards of guardians.

(2) The Union Chargeability Act, 1865, made practically all expenses of relief a charge on the common fund of the union instead of being, as theretofore, for the most part parochial charges. The Act of 1865 did to some extent attempt to work out the necessary consequential alterations to be made in the pre-1865 law; but the consequential amendments so made are far from being exhaustive, and in many cases difficulties arise as to how references in the earlier Acts to the parish of chargeability are to be construed, there being now no parishes of chargeability.

Similar difficulties in a less degree are caused by the Poor Removal Act, 1846, and the Divided Parishes and Poor Law Amendment Act, 1876, which, by creating a status of irremovability and making settlement by residence depend on such residence as would confer a status of irremovability, have made irremovability rather than settlement the dominating consideration for the purposes of chargeability.

Nor has the task of consolidation been rendered the easier by the changes in the law of rating effected by the Rating and Valuation Act, 1925 (an Act which does not apply to London) and the abolition of the office of overseer by that Act.

Another source of difficulty is the co-existence of various enactments dealing with the same subject matter giving rise to questions whether the later enactments are intended to supersede the earlier enactments, or are intended to be alternatives.

Finally, there are to be found, as might be expected in a series of Acts extending over so long a period, a number of enactments which have become obsolete by long disuse. The reproduction of an obsolete provision would have the effect of altering the law, for although a provision appearing in an Act of the 17th, 18th or early 19th century may be treated as having become obsolete by disuse, the same enactment in an Act of 1927 could not be treated as obsolete. A list of enactments treated as obsolete will be found in Appendix I.

Certain matters of general application require to be noticed :

(1) The Poor Law Amendment Act, 1834, contained a special code of procedure for the enforcement and recovery of forfeitures and penalties thereunder, but later Acts have, in some instances, provided that the penalty for an offence created by the Act should be recoverable under the Summary Jurisdiction Acts. The 1834 code applied alike

to cases where the forfeiture was in the nature of a civil debt and where it was a penalty for an offence. So far as the former class of cases was concerned, the Committee came to the conclusion that the effect of S. 6 of the Summary Jurisdiction Act, 1879, was to substitute the procedure for the recovery of civil debts under the Summary Jurisdiction Acts for the procedure contained in the Act of 1834. So far as penalties for offences were concerned, the Committee considered that having regard to the fact that the procedure under the Act of 1834 did not substantially differ from that under the Summary Jurisdiction Acts, they were justified in substituting the latter procedure, and so avoiding the anomaly of two different procedures for offences of the same nature being embodied in the same Act.

(2) Under the procedure of the Act of 1834 fines for offences were made payable to the board of guardians of the union in which the offence was committed. Under various other enactments reproduced in the Bill provisions were contained for the payment to particular boards of guardians of the whole or part of the fines recovered thereunder. As the amount of the fines recoverable under the Poor Law Acts is insignificant, the Committee decided to omit all the provisions as to the application of fines, leaving the ordinary law under which such fines go to the authority responsible for the expenses of the court by which they were imposed, to operate. The Committee ascertained from the representatives of the poor law authorities that the amount involved

so small that no objection would be taken to this. modification.

(3) The expression poor law union" has been used throughout the Bill. The use of this expression will attract the definition contained in the Interpretation Act, and so that it includes:

(a) A union of two parishes formed under the Act of 1834;

(b) A single parish for which a board of guardians is constituted under the Act of 1834;

(c) A union of two or more parishes constituted by a local Act;

(d) A single parish for which a body to administer the poor law therein is constituted by a local Act.

Generally speaking, the existing enactments apply to all these cases; but occasionally difficulties were experienced in determining whether a particular enactment was intended. to apply to all of them.

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The chief points to which the Committee consider that the attention of Parliament should be called will be found in Appendix II.

In Appendix III is set out a Table of Comparison showing how the various enactments repealed by the Bill are dealt with 30th March, 1927.

APPENDIX I.

PROVISION OF ACTS REPEALED WHICH HAVE BEEN TREATED AS OBSOLETE OR