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74
Of these the most important were Parts IV., V. and VI., relating to the
milk supply of the Metropolis.
Part IV.—Clauses 21 to 31, for the prevention of the supply of
tuberculous milk to the county, was retained, and is now in operation.
Part V.—Clauses 32 to 48, Miscellaneous Sanitary Provisions,
was abandoned.
Part VI.—Clauses 49 to 51, to legalise the establishment of Milk
Depots in the Metropolis, was also dropped.
The main objection to Part IV., which is intended to deal with tuberculous
milk, is that it attacks the question at the wrong end, and seeks to deal
with it at the railway station of delivery instead of at the source—the farm.
Moreover, the London County Council has no power to stop the delivery of
any consignment that may be under suspicion. They can take samples, but
before the result of the examination can be known, the remainder of the milk
will have been consumed.
The Council have by this Act merely obtained power to exclude tuberculous
milk from the County of London, and there is nothing to prevent the farmer
selling infected milk elsewhere when excluded from the Metropolis.
As originally drafted, the Bill debarred the Corporation from exercising the
powers sought by the County Council in the City for the administration of
this part of the Act, but when the Bill was in Committee in the Lords, the
Corporation secured the addition of a Clause conferring on them or their
Medical Officer similar powers within the City concurrently with the County
Council or their Medical Officer.
Part V. of the Bill, as drafted, gave the County Council powers to deal with
unwholesome or dirty milk in a very similar way to those obtained in
Part IV. with regard to tuberculous milk, but owing to the opposition of the
Corporation and others, it was dropped during the progress of the Bill in
Parliament. It is revived again, however, in Part II. of the General
Powers Bill, introduced by the County Council this Session (1908).*
Part VI. contained proposals for granting authorities power to establish
depots in their districts for the sale of sterilized milk.
This also was not preceeded with by the Council. Apart from the question
of municipal trading, which involved competition with local tradesmen at a
loss to the ratepayers, as evidenced by similar experiments in Lambeth,
*On the 6th March, while this Report was in the press, the London County Council (General Powers) Bill,
1908, was read a second time in the House of Commons when, on the President of the Local Government
Board giving an undertaking to bring in a general Bill dealing with tha milk supply of the whole country,
an instruction was given to the Committee to strike out all the clauses in Part II. of the Bill dealing with
the milk supply other than the model milk clauses.
The opposition of the Corporation to this part of the Bill is thus fully justified by the action of the
legislature.