MR. CRIPPS (Lancashire, Stretford) said he should like to have the words "when present" inserted, in order that the presence of the owner should be necessary to make him criminally liable. MR. WALLACE (Perth) agreed that the omission of the words "when present" would be an improvement. If the owner permitted a breach of the Act he should be made responsible. He did not think there would be any opposition offered to this proposal. SIR FREDERICK BANBURY said he was quite willing to amend the Amendment by leaving out the words "when present." shown that the owner, whether present or absent, would not be liable just the same as the driver. * MR. BURDETT-COUTTS (Westminster) said they all agreed that if an owner permitted intentionally a breach of the law he ought to be made liable. If the words "when present" were to remain, he would ask whether the case could not be met by adding to the Amendment the words "or if absent, intentionally or knowingly permits." It seemed to him that those words would cover any case of the owner either ordering the driver to go at an excessive speed in his absence or of permitting the offence when he was present. ROBERT MR. DALZIEL (Kirkcaldy Burghs) did not think the words "when present THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL (Sir should be omitted. Were they going to make the owner liable for permitting dangerous driving when he did not happen to be in the car himself, and knew nothing at all about it? He hoped the right hon. Gentleman would not accept this Amendment. FINLAY, Inverness Burghs) thought they would only get into greater difficulties if they added the words which had been suggested by the hon. Member for Westminster. The law as to aiding and abetting quite met the case. MR. LAWSON WALTON (Leeds, S.) said the President of the Local Government Board had given a conclusive answer to the Amendment. Permission was a form of abetting, and under the law any person who aided and abetted was equally liable to the principal offender, and the law as it stood was quite as strong as it would be by the insertion of these words. He could not conceive a case in which it could be Noes, 72. (Division List No. 239). Amendment proposed to the proposed Amendment "In line 2 to leave out the words when present.' Amendment to proposed Amendment agreed to. Question put. The Committee divided :-Ayes, 37; Goulding, Edward Alfred Lawson, Sir Wilfrid (Cornwall Muntz, Sir Philip A. NOES. Bayley, Thomas (Derbyshire Sloan, Thomas Henry Thomson, F. W. (York, W. R.) TELLERS FOR THE AYES- Bull, Willian James Coghill, Douglas Harry Forster, Henry William Kenyon, Hon. Geo. T. (Denbigh) Law, Andrew Bonar (Glasgow Foster, P. S. (Warwick, S. W. Paulton, James Mellor Fuiler, J. M. F. Greville, Hon. Ronald Percy, Earl Plummer, Walter R. | Rankin, Sir James! Ritchie, Rt.Hn. Chas. Thomson MR. BROADHURST (Leicester) hoped it would be convenient to take the discussion now on his Amendment proposing a speed limit of fifteen miles an hour. MR. WALTER LONG said it would be inconvenient from the point of view of the hon. Member and those who desired a speed limit to take this Amendment at the present stage. He thought they were all agreed on the Second Reading that if a speed limit was introduced into the Bill it should not form part of that portion which carried with it the penalty of imprisonment. He had himself put down an Amendment that raised the question in a precise form and dealt also with the question of penalties. It would be more convenient if the Committee postponed the discussion of the question of a speed limit until he moved that Amendment. MR. DALZIEL moved to leave out "recklessly or negligently, or" in line 6. He had placed this Amendment on the Paper with a view of obtaining from the President of the Local Government Board a definition of the words he proposed to leave out. It seemed to him that it would be exceedingly difficult for these words to be defined, more especially in view of the fact that in nine cases out of ten it would be the local policeman who would have to interpret what was reckless or negligent. A stronger reason why the words should be left out was that they were unneces | Rollit, Sir Albert Kaye Sturt, Hon. Humphry Napier Walrond, RtHn Sir William H. TELLERS FOR THE NOES-Sir Alexander Acland-Hood and Mr. Anstruther. sary. If they were left out anyone driving to the danger of the public would still be liable to all the penalties provided in the Bill. Surely a person driving dangerously was driving recklessly and negligently. He begged to move. Amendment proposed— "In page 1, line 6, to leave out the words ' recklessly or negligently, or.'"-(Mr. Dalziel.) proposed to be left out stand part of the Question proposed "That the words clause." It had been Gentleman would not think it necessary MR. WALTER LONG hoped the hon. to press the Amendment. extremely difficult to frame this clause so as to carry out what they all desired. Speaking for the Government, he said that what they desired was that they should not do anything which would be unjust to people who owned motor-cars, but at the same time they had felt that the present condition of things made it absolutely necessary to legislate for the It was not protection of the public. only life and limb, but the general convenience of the public that should be safeguarded, and the proposals in the Bill were framed in order that it should be part of the duty of those using motor-cars to obviate as far as possible any discomfort to other people who had a right to use the road. There could be no doubt that the leaving out of the words in the Amendment would very much weaken the clause, and would not carry with it that protection the public had a right to have. The user of a motor-car ought to realise as he went | stitute reckless driving. He was afraid along that he must use the road in a that the magistrates would say that the way consistent with the general con- speed limit fixed by the Bill was the safe venience of others who used it. He speed laid down by Parliament, and that hoped the hon. Gentleman would with- a mile or two in excess of it was not a draw the Amendment. safe speed, because Parliament had limited the speed to a certain number of miles per hour. He thought motorists should have some protection against the prejudices which certain benches of magistrates had already exhibited, and he had not the slightest doubt that a motorist for driving at thirty miles an hour-assuming the would not only be convicted of exceeding speed limit to be fixed at twenty-fivethe speed limit, but also of reckless and careless driving, if these words were left in. MR. MALCOLM (Suffolk, Stowmarket) said he did not think that many Members of the Committee had much objection to the clause as it stood. There was an important point to which he wished to call attention-namely, that the whole of this clause was very stringent. They hoped that later on the President of the Local Government Board would see his way to give a more easy and effective kind of appeal than was provided for under the Bill as it stood. Otherwise he thought the clause would operate very unjustly. 66 Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. MR. ALLHUSEN (Hackney, Central) moved to leave out or at a speed" in line 6. It would be generally agreed, now that the right hon. Gentleman considered a speed limit desirable, that they should omit these words. He was very much afraid that if they were left to be interpreted by the magistrates, any speed in excess of the speed limit would be regarded as reckless and careless driving. He wished to make it clear to the magistrate that there were two separate offences in the Bill, one being reckless driving and the other exceeding the speed limit. With regard to the first offence motorists were agreed that very heavy penalties should be imposed, but the second offence, which might be a mere technical infraction of the law regarding the speed limit, was one which hardly called for the same punishment. MR. WALTER LONG said his hon. friend was under a misapprehension. His argument was not applicable to this portion of the Bill. MR. ALLHUSEN said he did not quite agree with that. There was not the slightest doubt that there was a disposition on the part of magistrates and the public to regard mere speed as dangerous, and he thought it was necessary to make it quite clear that driving in excess of the speed limit did not necessarily con Mr. Walter Long. MR. WALTER LONG hoped his hon. friend would not press the Amendment. He was under a complete misapprehension as to the effect of inserting these words in the clause. What the Government proposed would not materially alter the existing law, but collect the law from existing statutes and Local Government Board regulations into Sub-section 1 of the clause in order to make it as clear as they could make it, that apart altogether from the speed limit, whether it was twelve or 120 miles an hour, there was a totally different offence-namely, reckless and negligent driving. If they took these words out of the clause they would weaken the law as it now stood. SIR ALBERT ROLLIT (Islington, S.) said that the effect of the Amendment would be to wreck the Bill. The danger of a speed limit was that a man would never be convicted of furious driving so long as he kept within the maximum limit. MR.BAYLEY(Derbyshire, Chesterfield) said he hoped that the right hon. Gentleman would accept the Amendment which did not repeal any right that the public had under the common law, but would rather strengthen the common law. MR. DALZIEL said he hoped the President of the Local Government Board would keep an open mind on this Amendment. There was not a road in the whole country which had not another road turning into it. What they appeared to be doing was setting traps in order that motorists might be caught. They might as well call this Bill at once a Motor-car Abolition Bill. It was iniquitous when a road was clear that a man might be summoned because, under circumstances not defined, there might be traffic in the road which was then clear. He never heard of such words being put into any Bill, and he thought it was absolutely preposterous. He hoped the House would not be prejudiced to such an extent that it would be impossible for people to have motors at all. He sincerely hoped the right hon. Gentleman would accept the Amend ment. MR. SEELY (Lincoln) said as he had put down an Amendment lower down in order to raise this discussion, might he point out to those who were pressing so hard for the retention of these words that the real thing that caused all the difficulty was the extremely heavy penalty for the first offence. A man was liable to be sent to prison. For that reason it was extremely awkward to have a lot of loose, ambiguous words put into the MR. SEELY said he objected to the clause. The President of the Local | These words covered all the cases in Government Board was right in his esse and in posse, and if the extension endeavour to make this perfectly clear to stopped there they would have loose, the public, that they were to be protected, vague, and ambiguous language, which but he submitted that the real way out would have this two-fold effect. It might of the difficulty was to take it out of the mislead the magistrates, and would power of the magistrate to send to mislead the public. prison for the first offence, and make imprisonment the penalty for the second offence, so as to give people time to find latter half. out what the opinion of the magistrate was as to reckless driving. These were a MR. LAWSON WALTON said the lot of new words, and nobody knew magistrate had to determine whether what these particular words might be a motor was being driven recklessly held to mean, or what style of speed and or negligently or at a pace that driving might be held to be covered by seemed to him to be reckless. There the words. The real way out of the was a general principle of law that difficulty would be to take these words loose and ambiguous language should out of the clause, and give up the be avoided, because the tribunal called attempt to enforce such a heavy penalty upon to interpret an Act could in the first instance, having regard to the have no idea of the intentions of fact that some of the magistrates were Parliament when passing it, and behostile to motoring. cause the public did not know what they had to do under the Act. If it was stated explicitly that the motorist was to have regard to the actual traffic in the road and the possibility of traffic arising the matter was made clear. For these reasons he trusted the right hon. Gentleman would not oppose the Amendment. SIR ALBERT ROLLIT said no one would wish to restrict unnecessarily a very important branch of industry, and to repeat the mistakes committed in other Bills; but on the other hand the personal safety of the public had to have equal consideration. seemed to him that on the whole these words ought to be retained. It was said that previous words covered these heads. It That might be so. The additional words were simply suggestive to the bench of a consideration which under no circumstances ought to be lost sight of. There was one particular reason for the inclusion of these words, and that was that the whole of the public were entitled to the use of the roads at law, and there might be places that were particularly dangerous. If that was so, they ought to be relieved of the terrible anxiety they were under about motor-cars at points of danger, and therefore additional caution should be imposed on the drivers of motor-cars. MR. LAWSON WALTON said the argument of the hon. member for Islington, although supposed to be in favour of the Amendment, was fatal to it, for the reason that he was trying to make these vague words explicit. The Committee had already passed words which were as vague as they could be "that they should have regard to all the circumstances." Mr Seely. MR. RANDLES (Cumberland, Cockermouth) opposed the Amendment. said many of the country roads were very narrow, and a speed which was quite safe on the average road might be very unsafe in such roads. It might be reckless to go at even fifteen miles an hour in some of these narrow lanes. He had received notice of a case, which occurred in his constituency, where one of his constituents was driving down a road which was only seventeen feet wide from hedge to hedge, and only thirteen feet wide when three feet was allowed |