ENGLAND'S POOR LAW

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 154, 27 December 1935, Page 6

ENGLAND'S POOR LAW

LOOPHOLE DISCOVERED

An. important considered judgment which may have far-reaching effects on maintenance orders obtained under Poor Law legislation was delivered at the Tower Bridge Police Court recently by Mr. Bernard Campion, K.C., says the ''Daily Telegraph." ' Mr. Campion ruled that, as a result of the repeal of Section 33 of the Poor Law Amendment Act, 1868, by the Poor Law Act of 1927, he had power to make a maintenance order, but not to enforce payment of arrears under the process adopted by the applicants.

In one case a man had been summoned by the L.C.C., in its capacity as Poor Law Authority, for arrears (amounting to £2 8s) of maintenance of his wife, said to be in an asylum.

The Magistrate said his attention had been called to the absence of any substituted mode of recovery either in the Act of 1927 or the Poor Law Act of 1930. It would appear that since the Poor Law Act, 1927, no statutory provision exists for the enforcement of the arrears under the maintenance order by the process now asked for by applicants.

The Poor Law Act, 1927, was superseded by the Poor Law Act, 1930. Section 19 (1) of the 1930 Act re-enacted the provision of Section 33 of the repealed 1868 Act as to the jurisdiction for that Court to make an order of maintenance, but omitted to include either in that section or in any other part of the Act any provision for enforcement of such an order by the Court. The 1930. Act" was a consolidating Statute. N Mr. Campion dismissed the summons in this and another case, where application was made for the payment by a son of arrears for the maintenance of his mother.

A legal authority told a representative of the "Daily Telegraph" that the judgment would cause consternation in magisterial circles.

"It calls into question a practice which has gone on from 1868 to the present day," it was stated. Many decisions given by Magistrates over a long period of years are challenged, and there is likely to be considerable controversy in legal circles regarding the existing Poor Law Acts.

"No.one seems to have noticed before that the Act of 1927 left Courts without jurisdiction in certain instances."