BRITISH POLITICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LI, Issue 48, 15 February 1908, Page 2

BRITISH POLITICS.

Hit LORDS AND COMMON'S. London, February 13. The proposal to pass the Scottish) Small Landholders Bill and the Scottish! Lund Values Bill through the House oi Commons practically without debate was discussed to-day. The Premier, Sir Henry Campbell-' Uniincrman, in a conciliatory statement, confessed that the House of Lords was justified i" rejecting the two measures which were submitted too late for due consideration. Hence the present "guillotine" resolution, lie maintained that the House of Commons had maturely considered the Bills last session and that it was unnecessary to waste time in debating them again. Received 14th, D.54 p.m. London, Febru iry 1-1. In the House of Lords, Lord Camperdown's Scottish Small Landholders' Bill was read for a first time. It avoids tlie ' Land Court and divided Ownership and other contentious features of the Government Bifl, and follows the main lines of the English Act of 1907.

THE COLONIAL SECRETARIAT. Received Feb. 15, 0.55 a.m. Loudon, February 14. | lu the House of Commons, Mr. Winston Churchill, Under-Secretary for the Colonies, in answer to a ciuestion put by Sir .1. S. Randies, said that the machinery of the secretariat, the setting up of which was agreed to at the Imperial Conference on Hie Dili of .May last, would doubtless lend itself to the consideration of the important question of the status of natural-horn Asiatic British subjects equally with the stadia of those naturalised. THE NAVAL PROGRAMME. London, February 14. ■Sir Edward Grey informed the House that Britain's offer at the Hague Conference to communicate iU naval programme, to Powers reciprocating would hold good at any time.