ÆäÀÌÁö À̹ÌÁö
PDF
ePub

The two

classes into which

[blocks in formation]

Table of

see Introduction.

CONDITIONS ΤΟ BE OBSERVED BY PARTIES BEFORE PRIVATE
BILLS ARE INTRODUCED INTO PARLIAMENT. PROOF OF Contents,
COMPLIANCE WITH THE STANDING ORDERS BEFORE THE
EXAMINERS. DETERMINATION AS ΤΟ THE HOUSE IN
WHICH A PRIVATE BILL SHALL BE FIRST INTRODUCED,
AND GENERAL SUPERVISION OF ALL PRIVATE BILLS, BY

THE TWO CHAIRMEN (LORDS AND COMMONS). PARLIA

MENTARY AGENTS.

EXCLUDING the relatively small class of Name, Estate, and other "personal" bills, all private bills to which the private standing orders are applicable are divided-by the standdivided, by ing orders, of both houses, relative to private bills-into S. O. 1 (in both the two following classes according to the subjects to which

bills are

houses).

1st Class.

they relate :

1ST CLASS :

Burial Ground, making, maintaining, or altering.

Charters and Corporations, enlarging or altering powers of.
Church or Chapel, building, enlarging, repairing, or maintaining.
City or Town, paving, lighting, watching, cleansing or improving.
Company, incorporating, regulating, or giving powers to.
County Rate.

County or Shire Hall, court-house.

Crown, Church, or Corporation Property, or Property held in

Trust for Public or Charitable purposes.

Electricity Supply.

Ferry, where no work is to be executed.

Fishery, making, maintaining or improving.

Gaol or House of Correction.

Gas Work.

Improvement Charge, unless proposed in connection with a Second

Class Work to be authorized by the Bill.

Land inclosing, draining or improving.

Letters Patent.

Local Court, constituting.

Market or Market-place, erecting, improving, repairing, maintain

ing or regulating.

Pilotage.

Police.

Poor, maintaining or employing.

1 Cf. infra p. 839 and Chapter XXIX.

Chapter
XXVI.

Poor Rate.

Powers to sue and be sued, conferring.

Stipendiary Magistrate, or any Public Officer, payment of. And
Continuing or amending an Act passed for any of the purposes
included in this or the Second Class, where no further work
than such as was authorized by a former Act is proposed to be
made.

2ND CLASS :

Making, maintaining, varying, extending, or enlarging any

Harbour.

2nd Class.

Aqueduct.

Archway.

Bridge.

Canal.

Cut.

Navigation.

Pier.

Port.

Public Carriage Road.
Railway.

Dock.

Drainage,-where it is not
provided in the Bill that
the Cut shall not be more
than Eleven feet wide at
the bottom.

Embankment for reclaiming

Land from the Sea or any
Tidal River.

Ferry, where any work is to

be executed.

Reservoir.

Sewer.

Street.

Subway.

Tramway.

Tramroad.

Tunnel.

Waterwork.

bills: how

For every private bill-to whichever of these two classes Private it belongs and in whichever house it eventually is first intro- solicited duced a petition, signed by the parties (or some of them) and who are suitors for the bill, must be duly deposited in the S. O. 32, 193 (H.C.); Private Bill Office of the House of Commons on or before s. o. 32 (H. L.). the 17th December, with a printed copy of the bill annexed; and a printed copy of every such bill must also be deposited, on or before the same date, in the Office of the Clerk of the Parliaments, House of Lords.

the case of

London

In the case of certain bills promoted by the London Deposit in County Council under the conditions described in stand- certain ing order No. 194,1 the deposit of the petition for the bill, and other requisite deposits and notices, are fixed at the later dates mentioned in standing order No. 194B.2

1 Supra p. 675, n. 1.

2 Standing orders Nos. 69 and 69B of the House of Lords, which mutatis mutandis correspond to standing

County

bills.

S. O. 194, 194B

orders 194 and 194B (House of Com- (H. C.).
mons), contain provisions to meet
the case of these bills if originating
in the House of Lords.

Preparing bills.

Clauses
Acts.

Compliance required

of both

XXVI.

In preparing their bills for deposit, the promoters must Chapter be careful that no provisions be inserted which are not sufficiently alluded to in the notices, or which otherwise infringe the standing orders; and if the bill be for any of the purposes to which the provisions of any of the Clauses Acts 1 are applicable, these provisions must be incorporated by reference.

The bill is otherwise drawn in conformity with what is known as "the Model Bill," by which the best forms are prescribed. This "Model Bill" is annually issued by the office of the Lords' Chairman of Committees, and is a collection of "model clauses" for railway, tramway, and gas and water bills, and of numerous miscellaneous clauses in common use.2

The requirements of the standing orders which are to be with S. O., complied with by the promoters of private bills before Nos. 3-68, application is made to Parliament, were conveniently arranged by the Commons, in 1847, in the following order; introduc- and a similar arrangement has since been adopted by the House of Lords:

houses,

(a) before

tion of Private Bill (S. O. 3-59);

"1. Notices by advertisement. 2. Notices and applications to
owners, lessees, and occupiers of lands and houses. 3. Docu-

The principal Clauses Acts are
the Companies Clauses, Lands
Clauses, and Railways Clauses Acts,
1845; and the Markets and Fairs
Clauses, Gasworks Clauses, Com-
missioners Clauses, Waterworks
Clauses, Harbours and Docks
Clauses, Towns Improvement
Clauses, Cemetery Clauses, and
Town Police Clauses' Consolida-
tion Acts, 1847. See Bigg, Clauses
Consolidation Acts. These Acts,
as stated in the preambles, were
passed, "as well for avoiding the
necessity of repeating such pro-
visions in each of the several Acts
relating to such undertaking, as for
ensuring greater uniformity in the
provisions themselves." Some of
them are amended by subsequent
Acts. Where a bill provides for
purchase of land, but not for com-
pulsorily taking it, the Lands Clauses

Acts will be incorporated "except
the provisions relating to the taking
of land otherwise than by agree-
ment." The few exceptions from,
and amendments of, the Clauses
Acts that are now permitted in
drafting private bills are indicated
in the "Model Bill."

The "Model Bill"-drawn up
as a body of precedents for the con-
venience of the Lords' Chairman of
Committees in his examination of
private bills (cf. infra, p. 705)—was
originally issued, at a period (1866–7)
of great activity in railway schemes,
as a "Model Railway Bill." But
it has since been considerably en-
larged and, annually re-edited at
the close of every session by the
Counsel to the Lords' Chairman, it
is now of indispensable service in
the promotion of private bills.

Chapter
XXVI.

ments required to be deposited, and the times and places of
deposit. 4. Form in which plans, books of reference, sections,
and cross-sections shall be prepared. 5. Estimates and deposit
of money,2 and declaration in certain cases."

The requirements of the two houses, under each of these
divisions, are now, mutatis mutandis, nearly identical.3
Their convenient arrangement and general similarity render
unnecessary their insertion in this work; and no version
of the standing orders, of either house, relating to private
bills can, at any time, be safely relied upon by the pro-
moters of bills, except the last authorized edition.4

after intro

68).

In addition to the standing orders above alluded to, there and (b) are others (Nos. 60-68), the compliance with which is duction proved after the introduction of the bills into Parliament; (S. 0.60of these, No. 60 relates only to the deposit of certain bills with government departments, and No. 61,6 and Nos. 62-68,7 will in due course be further mentioned.

5

Compliance,

proved.

Compliance with the standing orders was formerly re-
quired to be separately proved-in the Commons, before how
the committees on petitions for private bills; and in the
Lords, before the standing orders committee. But in 1847
the House of Commons provided, by standing order, for
the appointment of one or more "Examiners of petitions The
for private bills," instead of the committees previously

As to the custody, and as to facilities for the inspection of, documents directed to be locally deposited under the standing orders, cf. the Parliamentary Documents Deposits Act, 1837, and standing order (Lords) No. 146.

2 As to the custody of money deposits required under the standing orders, cf. the Parliamentary Deposits Act, 1846.

The standing orders of both houses are numbered alike, from No. 1 to No. 68; but there are two (numbered 25C and 36A) which are in the Lords' standing orders only, and one (numbered 35A) which is only in the Commons' standing orders. The material differences between the Lords' and the Com

mons' standing orders No. 22 (Con-
sents, Tramway bills) and No. 26
should also be noted.

The standing orders, of both
houses, relative to private bills are
amended in more or less important
particulars at the close of nearly
every session. Unless otherwise
specified, the standing order num-
bers quoted here in the text or mar-
gin, are taken from the edition of
the (House of Commons) standing
orders 1906.

See infra, p. 755. • See p. 724.

See pp. 723 and 842-5.

8 Standing order 2; and cf. report of select committee for revision of the standing orders, 1847, 102 C. J. 825. 880-896.

Examiners.

Their duties.

General

XXVI.

appointed. A few years later, in 1854, the Lords resolved, chapter
"That there shall be one or more officers of this house, to
be called 'the Examiners for standing orders,"" to examine
into certain of the facts required to be proved before their
standing orders committee; they then appointed as their
Examiners the gentlemen who held the office of Examiners
of petitions in the House of Commons; and finally, in
1858, they entrusted to these officers the same powers
which they had previously exercised as Examiners for the
Commons. This most convenient arrangement has enabled
the Examiners to take the evidence on behalf of both
houses simultaneously, and has obviated the necessity for
a double proof of all those orders, common to both houses,
with which parties, at a heavy expense and with an interval
of some months between the proofs, were formerly obliged
to prove compliance twice over. The two Examiners, there-
fore,-appointed by the House of Lords and Mr. Speaker-
now conduct, for both houses, the preliminary investiga-
tions formerly carried on separately in each house they
adjudicate upon all facts relating to the compliance or
non-compliance with the standing orders; and, in those
cases where they find that standing orders have not been
complied with, the standing orders committee in each
house determines, upon the facts as reported by the Ex-
aminers, whether these orders ought or ought not to be
dispensed with.1

When all the petitions for private bills, with printed
Petitions copies of the bills annexed, have been deposited, on or before

List of

for Bills. S. O. 229 (H. C.).

' Cf. infra, pp. 716 (standing orders committee, House of Commons) and 841 (standing orders committee, House of Lords). When the Examiner has found that the standing orders have not been complied with in the case of a petition for a bill, and the standing orders committee of the house in which the bill originates have reported that they should be dispensed with, the standing orders committee of the second house do not defer their decision until the bill reaches their

house, but at once consider and
pronounce upon the Examiner's re-
port also. By adopting this course
they obviate the possibility of a
promoter proceeding with his bill
through the first house and then
finding its subsequent progress
barred by their giving a different
decision, upon its reaching the
second house, to that of the stand-
ing orders committee in the first.
In practice, the view taken by both
committees in these cases has, as a
rule, been the same.

« ÀÌÀü°è¼Ó »