ABBEY ARRANGEMENTS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXI, 24 June 1937, Page 4

ABBEY ARRANGEMENTS

LONG WAITS IN THE WET (By Air Mail—From a Special Correspondent) LONDON, sth June. Complaints were made in the House of Lords of serious inconvenience caused to Peers and others owing to the breakdown in the motor car arrangements at the Coronation. Viscount Elibank said that some suffered not only inconvenience but also in health by having to stand about for lengthy periods in' the wet. Both in the Abbey and in the Houses of Parliament the last of those to get awa. was somewhere about 8.30 in the evening. Many of them had had very little food or refreshment from the early hours of the morning. Lord Strabolgi declared: “If Lord Elibank had said a little more about the disgraceful catering arrangements within this House, I would have been so bold as to agree with him. “There is somebody’s head which ought to be had over that. We paid a high price for the luncheon, and the arrangements were miserable.” The Marquis of Dufferin and Aya, for the Government, did not pretend that there was no substance in Lord

Elibank’s complaint. - He was prepared to agree that there was grave confusion both at the Abbey and for those who were trying to leave the House of Lords after luncheon.

He reiterated the apology which had already been made by the Commissioner of Police to all the peers and distinguished guests who were inconven- ’ ienced by anything that occurred. <

It was the intention of the Commissioner, he added, to take up the whole matter afresh with the officers of the House of Lords, in the light of the suggestions made, he hoped the unfortunate results might never recur. P Viscount Trenchard, the former Commissioner of Police, held that there were many fewer hitches this time than there had been on any previous occasion.

“But,” he added “1 would like to remind Lord Elibank that the problem of picking up and setting down- at the House of Lords and Westminster Abbey was by no means the only problem which confronted the policeon that day, and that it was, 1 think, the. only problem with which thev were not able to cope perfectly satisfactorily.” Lord Elibank, replying, urged that it might be advisable to appofht a small departmental committee within the House of Lords to see if they could devise a definite scheme.