HC Deb 02 July 1858 vol 151 cc877-80
MR. ALCOCK

said, he rose to call the attention of Her Majesty's Government to the expediency of ascertaining the value of the surplus land at Battersea Park, with the view of applying the produce of such surplus land (100 acres) to the payment of the principal money and interest, amounting in all to a balance of £284,730 9s. 3d. due to the Government in respect of Battersea Park, Chelsea Bridge, and the Embankment of the Thames at Chelsea; and to submit that Chelsea Bridge be opened to the public toll free. It was obvious that unless immediate steps were taken these tolls would remain for ever—

MR. FITZROY

said, he rose to order. There was a Bill before the House relating to the tolls on Chelsea Bridge, which was read a second time last night, and which stood on the orders for committal; and, it was therefore irregular to enter on the discussion of the matter now.

MR. SPEAKER

said the conclusion of the Motion was to submit that Chelsea Bridge should be open to the public toll-free. It would be irregular to discuss, on the question of adjournment, a subject on which there was a Bill before the House; and the hon. Member must confine his observations to the other part of his Motion.

MR. ALCOCK

said, he would do so. There was a debt due to the Government on Battersea Park and Chelsea Bridge, the amount lent by the Government for Chelsea Bridge—

MR. SPEAKER

I repeat to the hon. Member that a discussion on Chelsea Bridge, is inappropriate and out of order; but there is a part of his question relating to Battersea Park, which I believe is not included in the Chelsea Bridge Bill which may be brought into discussion.

MR. ALCOCK

said, he only wished to say that the amount which he had stated in his notice as being due to the Government in respect of Chelsea Bridge, Bat- tersea Park, and the embankment of the Thames at Chelsea—£284,730—was perfectly correct, as appeared from documents obtained from the Office of Works itself. The Chief Commissioner might ask him whether, if the Bridge were opened tollfree, the parties interested would be prepared to repay the sum advanced by the Government with interest. His reply was, that if the noble Lord would allow any person to purchase the surplus land for the same sum he would be in a condition to answer his question in the course of a few days.

MR. BENTINCK

said, he wished to say one or two words in consequence of what had fallen from the hon. Member for Bristol (Mr. H. Berkeley). After the pleasing manner in which the hon. Member had dealt with the subject, they must all regret that the hon. Member was not in the Executive Government, for he seemed to find no difficulty in dealing with the subject. Upon that point, however, the hon. Member would find himself mistaken. He agreed with the hon. Member in recommending the Government to deal at once with the question, but he joined issue with the hon. Member when he stated that it was an Imperial, and not a local question. He (Mr. Bentinck), on the contrary, believed it to be strictly a local, and not an Imperial question, and that the Government would not be justified in taking a farthing, in reference to this matter, out of the pockets of people who had no interest in it. Nothing was more uncalled for, more unjustifiable, or more at variance with what was due to the rest of the country, than that the richest city in the world should go about in this manner with the begging-box.

MR. ALDERMAN CUBITT

remarked, that he thought it was quite a truism to say that every town and city should pay for clearing away its own filth; but if they imposed on the metropolis the whole cost of doing that, they ought to leave it the power of deciding how it should be done. The House, by an Act passed twelve years ago, decided that every house should drain into sewers. Every sewer ran into the Thames; and, therefore, Parliament compelled the metropolis to drain into the river, and since then Parliment had announced that great sewers should be made all along the banks of the Thames; and it also said that the metropolis should pay for them. He thought that if the Metropolitan Board of Works had not been dictated to, but allowed the power of deciding what should be done, that body would have carried out a plan for purifying the Thames at a very much cheaper rate.

LORD JOHN MANNERS

said, that the hon. Member for Bristol, if he were in his (Lord John Manners') place for twenty-four hours, would never have dreamed of charging apathy on the hon. Members of that House in reference to the drainage of the metropolis, for the hon. Gentleman was perhaps the only Member who had not, in the course of the last fortnight, suggested some plan for the purpose. The hon. Gentleman now came forward in a decided manner, not to suggest any plan, but to say that the Government should be impeached if they did not do something. The hon. Gentleman was mistaken if he supposed that the Government were apathetic with respect to the state of the river. They were most anxious to prepare and bring before Parliament, at the very earliest opportunity, a measure which would satisfactorily settle this long-standing and difficult question; but he put it to the hon. Gentleman whether it was wise to raise these preliminary discussions, which had only a tendency to throw additional difficulty in the way of a settlement, which was sufficiently difficult already. The hon. Gentleman asked whether the Metropolitan Board of Works had presented any scheme, and in reply he had to state that that Board yesterday officially submitted to him a plan which they believed ought to be adopted to remedy the grievance. Of course the hon. Gentleman would not expect any opinion from him on a plan which he received only yesterday; but he might state that the point of outfall, as contemplated in that plan, was somewhere down at Barking Creek. He respectfully declined at present to enter into the question which had been raised as to whether the metropolis should pay the whole expense or not. That question must be deferred until the Government produced the measure, which they intended to propose at the earliest possible day, and certainly in time to enable the Houses of Parliament to come to a decision—he trusted a satisfactory decision—on the whole question. With respect to the question put to him by the hon. Member for East-Surrey (Mr. Alcock), he could only say that he should be quite ready to hear what was the hon. Gentleman's offer for the land in question, which he was as anx- ious to sell as the hon. Member could be to purchase.