Part of the debate – in the House of Commons am ar 15 Gorffennaf 1925.
Miss Ellen Wilkinson
, Middlesbrough East
I wish to make the matter clear. It seems to me that you may have two cases like this. You may have the case of a woman who is cohabiting with a man, and, as the Minister says, her pension stops. But suppose you have a case under Clause 6, where the local authority claim that the woman is not fit to bring up her children, because she is engaging in immoral conduct, and is cohabiting with several men—you may put it like that—in one case you have an appeal, and in the other you have not. It seems to me that the two cases are on all fours. What we are trying to secure is that we shall not have a woman's pension taken away from her without her having the right of appeal. In one case does the Minister mean to say, because somebody may appeal before him on the woman's behalf, that that is sufficient to do away with the woman's right of appeal, because if so would it not be the case that you have two different sets of authorities under the Bill? The Minister judging one case, and an almost exactly similar case being sent before the Court of Referees.
Ministers make up the Government and almost all are members of the House of Lords or the House of Commons. There are three main types of Minister. Departmental Ministers are in charge of Government Departments. The Government is divided into different Departments which have responsibilities for different areas. For example the Treasury is in charge of Government spending. Departmental Ministers in the Cabinet are generally called 'Secretary of State' but some have special titles such as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Ministers of State and Junior Ministers assist the ministers in charge of the department. They normally have responsibility for a particular area within the department and are sometimes given a title that reflects this - for example Minister of Transport.
A parliamentary bill is divided into sections called clauses.
Printed in the margin next to each clause is a brief explanatory `side-note' giving details of what the effect of the clause will be.
During the committee stage of a bill, MPs examine these clauses in detail and may introduce new clauses of their own or table amendments to the existing clauses.
When a bill becomes an Act of Parliament, clauses become known as sections.
