The House of Lords and taxation / by Ernest E. Williams.

  • Williams, Ernest Edwin.
Date:
[1909]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The House of Lords and taxation / by Ernest E. Williams. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    taxation of the Commons); and in later times, as the business of financial legislation has developed, the Commons have had to depart yet further from logical consistency and to circumscribe their claim, first in one and then in another direction, in order to save it from breaking down altogether under the weight of impracticability to the conduct of business. That part of the [ claim, with its somewhat ill-defined and ragged edges, which still remains, appears therefore hopelessly indefensible from any standpoint of principle. But before considering the matter further in that aspect, there are other points which may conveniently be noted here. To return, first, for a moment to the admitted inconveniences of maintaining the claim. I have shown how in certain directions the Commons have themselves—in view of practical needs, but with lack of logic most damaging to their claim—deliberately cut down their assertion of privilege. For the same reasons, they have in another direction pursued a different, but equally significant, course. The Government sometimes finds it desirable to introduce to Parliament, through the House of Lords, measures which contain provisions dealing with money charges. In such cases the Bill is presented and printed and discussed in the ordinary way until it gets to third reading. Then the charging provisions are omitted, and in that form the Bill is sent to the-Commons, where it is printed with the charging provisions underlined and bracketed, and with a note stating that they are to be proposed in Committee. By this means the House of Commons is supposed to save its alleged privilege, or its face ; but to the dispassionate observer this trick with printers’ type neither adds to the dignity of Parliamentary procedure nor does it maintain intact the Commons’ claim that the Lords shall not legislate on money matters ; for very plainly in the case of such Bills they do, the little game of make-believe notwithstanding.1 Other like measures are occasionally resorted to, but it would make this article unduly long to refer to them in detail. The object is in all cases the same—to allow the Lords their necessary share in financial legislation, while affecting in form to withhold it from them. Room, however, may be found for one recent instance. When the Education Bill of 1902 was before the Lords, they inserted an amendment: “ Provided that all damage due to fair wear and tear in the use of any room for the school-house for the purpose of a public elementary school shall be made good by the local education authority.” But that proviso obviously 1 May's Parliamentary Procedure mentions several instances illustrative of this practice, such as the Burial Grounds Bill in 1853, and the Supreme Court of Judicature Bill of 1873 (P- 581).