It had always been the practice of the Revenue authorities to collect "annual taxes," e.g., customs duties and the income-tax, from the moment the "Budget resolutions" were passed in Corn mittee of Ways and Means without waiting for the enactment of the Finance Bill which gave those resolutions retrospective sanction—the interval between the resolutions, passed in April, and the Finance Act being usually about four months. In the famous case of Bowles v. the Bank of England [1913], i Ch. 57, the plaintiff obtained a declaration and injunction restraining the Bank from deducting income-tax from his dividends in the interval in question. In order to prevent vexatious litigation of this kind and to give what had become, until that case, an unchallenged custom the force of law, the Act of 1913 known as the Provisional Collection of Taxes Act was passed giving temporary statutory authority to the collection of any taxes voted under the Resolu tions. The Act is chiefly important for the very stringent condi tions it imposes on the necessity of the consent of the House to the Ways and Means Resolutions being given within a very narrow limit of time ( o) days and being embodied in a second reading of the resulting bill (2o days after the consent to the resolution). Furthermore it limits the statutory force of the resolution to 4 months and provides that the resolution shall, in any case, cease to have effect immediately if Parliament is pro rogued or dissolved.
The only other developments of note as regards legislative pro cedure during the last 18 years are some slight changes in the Standing Orders in the allocation of Parliamentary time to "pri vate members" and the establishment of an Estimates Com mittee. Neither has done much, if anything, to diminish the growing ascendancy of the Cabinet over Parliament, an ascend ancy which the late Sir William Anson regarded as finally con summated by the Parliament Act by which, in his view, "legis lative sovereignty may be said to have passed to the Cabinet." But, even more decisive in this direction than the Parliament Act was the grant by His Majesty of the exercise of the preroga tive of dissolution in 1924 to a Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald, who was actually in a minority in the Commons. Earlier, in January of the same year, Asquith had questioned the right of a Prime Minister, so situated, to obtain a dissolution, but constitutional precedent, notably Lord Aberdeen's advisory opinion to Queen Victoria of May 15, i858, was against As quith's view and the grant of the dissolution of 1924 may be said definitely to establish the existence, in the hands of the Prime Minister, of this coercive power over the Commons. Asquith himself had gone a long way in the direction of the assump tion of this prerogative by the Prime Minister when, on November 15th, 191o, he not only "advised" His Majesty to dissolve Parlia ment but accompanied his advice with a request, which was granted, that the King should pledge himself beforehand to exer cise the prerogative of creation of a sufficient number of peers to carry the Parliament Bill into law in the event of the Liberal party being returned to power. (Hansard: "Commons Debates," Aug. 7, 191E) The institution of the Estimates Committee in 1922 was due to the growing restiveness of members at the inadequate time (2o days) available in supply for the discussion of the vast and growing expenditure now submitted to the House by the Government. But the concession was jealously limited by the terms of reference to the Committee, as approved by the Govern ment, which were "to report on what economies, if any, con sistent with the policy implied in the Estimates, may be effected therein." The establishment of the Committee has, in fact,
effected little change. The exclusion of questions of policy ex cludes everything except details, and, in a debate of Aug. 1, 1922, on the Estimates Committee's Report, one of its members pointed out its futility in the words "the pity is that the reports are presented of ter supply is concluded, so that their interest is of quite a post-mortem character." Even the Public Accounts Com mittee, useful though it is as an independent examination by the Commons of "expenditure," as distinct from estimates, is re stricted in its activities by the fact that it has "no right to go into questions of policy" (Hansard: "Commons Debates," vol. 152, p. 888).
A remarkable development in the direction of "democracy" was effected by the institution of "Payment of Members." It had been the honourable distinction of the House of Commons, almost alone among the legislatures of the modern world, that its mem bers gave their services voluntarily in the representation of their constituents, although it had at one time been the practice, long fallen into disuse, for the boroughs to pay their members. In 191I the Liberal Government of the day introduced, not in the form of a special statute but by a vote on the Estimates, an appropriation of £400 to be paid to each member of the House, and their vote has ever since been a standing feature of the annual Appropriation Bill. Thereby it is made a charge not on the constituency, as in the case of the boroughs in early times, but on the national Exchequer. No conditions as to attendance at the House are annexed to the receipt of the salary. (Cf. Holins hed v. Hazelton [1916] 85 L.J. [H.L.] p. 6o.) Turning to the constitution of Parliament itself, we find vast changes, alike in the franchise, the qualification of members and the distribution of constituencies. The Representation of the People Act of 1918 enfranchised women for the first time and, in so doing and also in simplifying the qualifications of men's votes, added no less than 13 million voters to the register. It also altered and simplified the law of registration, effected a redis tribution of seats, abolished the property qualification and re moved the pauper disqualification. At the same time it reduced the qualification for the exercise of a vote, in the case of men of at least 21 years of age, to the simple requirement of 6 months' residence or, in the alternative, occupation of business premises, either or both of which might confer the vote, not more than 2 votes being so conferred. In removing the "lodger" qualification, with its requirement of the tenancy of rooms of the annual value of Li o, and substituting mere residence as sufficient, it operated as an Act for the enfranchisement of youth, and so it has proved to be. In 1928 the franchise was further extended by the removal of the age restriction (3o years of age under the 1918 Act) upon women voters and by making them eligible for a vote at the same age as men. The inevitable corollary of the grant of the franchise to women was the removal of their disability to be elected to Parliament; this was effected by the Parliamentary Qualification of Women Act. Strangely enough they are not yet qualified, when peeresses in their own right, to take their seats in the Lords—such was the judgment of a Committee of Privileges in Viscountess Rhondda's petition to the Lords [1922] 2 A.C., 33o, where it was held that the sex Disqualification Removal Act, admitting women to public "offices" and "functions" had not altered their disability in the matter of succession to a seat in the Lords.