British Parliament

Southland Times, Issue 19540, 20 April 1905, Page 2

British Parliament

OLD AGE PENSIONS, Per United Press Association. By Electric Telegraph. — Copyright LONDON, April 18. Mr F. A. Channing’s Old Age Pension Bill, which Messrs Thomas Burt, John Burns, Keir Hardie and John Wilson support, allots five shillings a week to British subjects, aged 65, who have been, resident in the United Kingdom for the last twenty years. THE ALIEN. LONDON, April 19. Received 19th, 10.39 p.m. Mr Akers Douglas, in introducing the Aliens Bill, quoted statistics showing the. growing influx of foreigners and also their crimes. The bill safeguarded the right of political asylum. Emigrant ships' would in future be admitted to eight ports only, where machinery to exclude undesirables would be established. The bill omits the clause relating to prohibited areas,. The country desired, besides tho expulsion of criminal aliens, the exclusion of the destitute, diseased or criminal. Sir C. Dilke, opposing the bill;’denied the accuracy of the statistics quoted. The evil dealt with under the bill was trifling, except in a district or two. The sweating evil could be met by .anti-sweating legislation. A GREAT QUESTION. Received 19th, 11.5 p.m. Mr Gerald Balfour - introduced the Unemployed Workmen’s Bill, to establish local bodies in London for the purpose of discriminating between applicants; also a central body alone empowered to provide employment exclusively on a farm colony and to establish labour exchanges ; the entire cost to be defrayed by subscription and an equalised rate'of half-penny in the pound. The organisation in the provinces would not be compulsory. Mr. S. Buxton declared that if the law were made compulsory elsewhere the last state of London would be worse than the first.