BRITISH POLITICS

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10205, 5 April 1911, Page 5

BRITISH POLITICS

AN AMENDMENT DEFEATED. LIMITATION OF LORDS' POWER. Received This Morning, 12.5 o'clock. LONDON, April 4. The House of Commons was crowded when Mr G. Younger, Unionist member for Ayr Burghs, moved his amendment to the Parliament Bill, limiting the deprivation of the power of the House of Lords to reject Bills to three years. The voting was as follows: .'! ; For the amendment 207 ' Against the amendment 296 >" I . ■■' I Majority for Government 89 Mr Younger urged as a ground for hlq amendment that the Government should reform the House of Lords, and it was unreasonable to deprive th 6 reformed House of the powers possessed by foreign and colonial Second Chambers. The Opposition taunted the Government with insincerity. The Right Hon. H. H. Asquith said that, whatever changes might be made in the constitution of the House of Lords, the House of Commons must retain ah undisputed supremacy over fyiance. The people had assented to~ the Parliament Bill as a whole, and the Government was bound in honour to give effect to the preamble of the bill in due time. Mr Balfour declared that the ordinary financial work might be left to the House of Commons if the reconstituted House of Lords was not

entirely elective. Otherwise, it wpuld be ludicrous to deny it a voice in; the finance. =Mr D. Dalziell, Unionist member for Brixton, said lie regarded the. bpilenmble as the pious opinion of the -Government, and unauthorised. It ji would'be ill-advised to make the pro- ' pcLals to the reconstituted House of I Lprds. ■ •

!Mr Winston <_4un*'.\ui!l said the Government did not proposa to embark on the rcjconstitution of the House of Lordo while the veto was unsettled.