Part of the debate – in the House of Commons am ar 15 Gorffennaf 1925.
This hon. Member is not so easily satisfied, by this concurrence of opinion among the gentlemen. What I am concerned about is somehow to see that these women are not going to be done out of their rights, because of scandalmongering among their neighbours. As the right hon. Gentleman knows, I have been moving Amendments consistently throughout this Bill to protect these women. I am very glad to have his assurance that he is going to safeguard the women so far as Clause 21 is concerned, but with regard to Clause 6 there is this difficulty again, that it is this type of case that may come before the Minister, and I gather that you may have a woman's pension taken off for presumably immoral conduct, and she may find herself without an appeal. I do not want to press this Amendment as it stands, but I do want to say that it does seem to me urgent that we should have this appeal safeguarded at every point. If we do not, we shall find ourselves when this Bill has gone through with all sorts of people left out and the appeal absolutely impossible for them. We had a similar sort of case under the Ministry of Pensions. There are very bad cases. We are most anxious to have no Statute-barred cases under this Bill. I would ask the Minister whether he would not be prepared to take this Clause back and re-draft it so that it might come up again on the Report stage.