SELECT COMMITTEE MOVED FOR. (Hansard, 29 April 1862)

§ MR. HORSFALL

said, that in rising to move for a Select Committee to consider the practicability of consolidating the establishments governed by the Boards of Inland Revenue and Customs respectively, he wished to premise that he had no desire to 1066 cast any reflections upon either of those Boards, still less upon her Majesty's Treasury. On the contrary, he had to acknowledge the courtesy with which the Chancellor of the Exchequer had acquiesced in the appointment of the Committee. He would only, therefore, call attention to a few points connected with the efforts made from time to time to reduce the expenditure, reserving all matters of detail for the consideration of the Committee. According to returns presented to that House the expense of collecting the Customs and Inland Revenue for the year ending the 31st of March, 1861, was £2,317,218, of which the Customs charges were £770,314, and those of the Inland Revenue department £1,546,904. At various times changes had been made in the constitution of the Board of Customs. At one period there existed three boards—one in London, another in Edinburgh, and a third in Dublin, the latter discharging the double duty of collecting the Customs and Excise. At a subsequent period those three boards were abolished, or rather consolidated into a central board in London, the result of which operation was to save the salaries of between 3,000 and 4,000 servants of the Crown, amounting to a quarter of a million annually. A Commission was appointed some time afterwards to inquire into the expense of collecting the Customs revenue, and their labours resulted in a reduction of forty or fifty in the number of officers of Customs, and in a saving to the country of some £16,000 or £17,000. From 1849 to 1860 no material reduction had taken place. In 1841, when Sir Robert Peel introduced his Free-trade Budget there were about 1,000 articles on which duty was required to be paid, and that number was reduced to 515 in 1849; and in 1860, when the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer carried his Budget, the number was again reduced to something little over twenty. Considerable relief must therefore, have been experienced by the Board of Customs from the time when the articles on which they had to collect duty amounted in number to 1,000. In the interval the Board had likewise been relieved from the administration of the Navigation Laws, which were abolished; from the charge of the Colonial Customs, which were transferred to the Colonial Legislatures; and from the control of the Coastguard, which had been transferred to the Admiralty. The House and the country therefore had a right to expect that some 1067 reduction would have taken place in the expenditure; but how did the facts stand? In 1841 there were 5,037 persons in the employment of the Board of Customs at a cost of £614,009, and in 1856 they had 5,713 persons in their employment at a cost of £687,241, being an increase of 656 persons and of £73,232 in charges upon the country. It was due to the Chancellor of the Exchequer to say that since the Budget of 1860 a reduction had taken place in the staff to the extent of 543 persons, and in money of £87,679. But bearing in mind that in 1841, while there were 1,052 articles on which duty was collected, 5,037 people were employed at a salary of £614,000, in 1861, when the number of articles on which duty was paid had fallen to twenty, there were 5,300 people employed, their salaries amounting to £646,602, being an increase between those respective periods of 263 persons, and £32,593. The Estimates for 1862–3 showed an increase which was not large, but was still an increase; it amounted to thirty-eight persons, and £4,475. He should state a few further facts to show to what extent he thought economy might still be carried in the management of the Customs Department, and of the Department of Inland Revenue. By a return presented to the House, he found that there were nineteen ports yielding a gross revenue of £73,736, and at which the cost of collection was £32,621, or 44 per cent of the gross receipts. That was startling; but an analysis of the receipts and expenses at twenty-one ports, the names of which he would state, showed how it was that such a state of things existed. In the following returns the first amount annexed to the name of the port indicated the gross revenue, and the second the cost of collection:—Aberystwith, £245, £617; Cardigan, £65, £422.; Maldon, £272, £875; Milford, 645, £1,337; Padstow, £142, £574; Rye, £278, £661; Scilly, £85, £387; Teignmouth, £655, £666; Wells, £164, £500; Borrow-stoness, £721, £654; Campbelton, £17, £471; Kirkwall, £93, £780; Lerwick, £51, £493; Stornoway, £43, £473; Stranraer, £79, £372; Wick, £1,138, £1,264; Wigtown, £54, £705; Strang-ford. £172, £369; Guernsey, £49. £1,170; Jersey, £154, £1,741; and Middiesborough, £140, £152. The total revenue from these twenty-one ports was £5.262; and the total cost of collection, £14,683, or 279 per cent, He also 1068 found that there were seventy-three ports, out of the 128 for which the House had the returns, at which the duties were collected at the rate of 27 per cent. He should, no doubt, be asked whether the trade of these ports was not to be carried on. His reply was that the trade must be carried on; but what he contended for was, that if they had officers of the Customs unemployed at those ports, they ought to employ them in the collection of the Inland Revenue. That was the point to which he would direct the attention of the House and of the Government. The principle of consolidation was not a new one in respect of public departments by which the revenue was received. In 1849 the stamps, the excise, and the taxes were consolidated; and there was quite as much difficulty in that consolidation as there would be in the one which he now advocated. He had not heard it from Mr. Wood, the late chairman of the Board of Inland Revenue, himself, but he had reason to believe that he (Mr. Wood) would have carried the work of consolidation still further. The next point to which he wished to refer was that of the multiplicity of forms now used in the Customs and Excise offices. These forms might be very easy to the officers who had each his particular department to attend to, but to the merchant or clerk who had all the forms to attend to they were a mass of confusion. He could not sit down without saying that he entirely concurred in the statement made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer a few evenings before—that if they were to look to the remission of taxation, that could only be obtained by a gradual but resolute economy in every department of the public service. The hon. Member concluded by moving for a Select Committee.

§ THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER

said, that he rose on the part of the Government to give a cheerful assent to the Motion of his hon. Friend as it then stood; but he was bound to say that it would not have been compatible with his duty to agree to a Motion which would have contemplated as a proper subject of inquiry, and probably of adoption, the consolidation of the Board of Customs with the Board of Inland Revenue. On that subject he would not pretend to give an authoritative opinion; but having had considerable experience arising from a constant connection with the heads of those departments while filling the office which he had 1069 the honour to hold, he thought he had the means of forming a judgment on the nature of their functions, and he confessed he had come to the conclusion that these functions were so weighty and so anxious that, in the case of the Board of Inland Revenue, consolidation had been carried to the very furthest point to which it was possible to carry it without great mischief to the public service. His hon. Friend said he understood it to have been the opinion of the late Mr. Wood that consolidation might have been carried further. For the opinion of Mr. Wood, in all questions relating to the administration of the public revenue, he had the most profound respect, He believed that the country had never enjoyed the services of a better officer than the late Mr. Wood; but from his knowledge of the views of that Gentleman he thought there must be some misunderstanding. Mr. Wood might have been in favour of the union of some particular offices; but as to a union of all the boards intrusted with the collection of the entire revenue of this country, with the exception of that derived from the Post Office, into one board, he must express his opinion that such was not the view of Mr. Wood. Nothing but great ability and a more than ordinarily comprehensive knowledge could qualify any man to fill the office now held by Mr. Pressley. That gentleman filled the office of Chairman of the Board of Inland Revenue with great advantage, because he brought to the performance of his duties the advantages of a most excellent capacity and of an experience of forty years. To find a successor to him, in the event of his retiring, would be no easy matter. Nearly the same thing might be said of the head of the Board of Customs. It was quite true that owing partly to wise legislation during the last twenty years, and partly to the efficient management of the department itself, the anxieties of the head of the Board of Customs had been very much lightened; but there were still heavy responsibilities attached to the office; and, on a consideration of all the circumstances, he thought it was not the duty of any Government to assent to a proposition for the consolidation of the Customs and Inland Revenue Departments. The question of consolidation was not one of principle, but of degree, and they were justified in carrying it to a certain point, but beyond that point it ought not to be carried; and that point would be reached certainly whenever the mind of man would be overstrained 1070 by its being carried further, as he thought would be the case in this instance, if they were to amalgamate the two departments. As the Motion stood, he anticipated nothing but utility from it, and lie was thankful to the hon. Member for giving the House a virtual promise of his able assistance in their important inquiry. The House must not, however, understand from what had been said of the particular ports quoted by the hon. Member, where the cost of collection bore an outrageous proportion to the revenues levied, that the comparison was fair and complete, without reference to other considerations. No doubt there were several ports where it would be in one sense the interest of the State to abandon the revenue and the collection. The establishments, however, were maintained at these places, because the officers had other very important duties to discharge besides the collection of revenue. The Customs officers were the instruments of carrying out various laws that were not revenue laws, and it was also necessary to maintain establishments at these ports for the purpose of preventing the introduction of contraband goods. The figures taken by themselves would therefore be fallacious. At the same time, he agreed that the state of those establishments was a fair subject for inquiry, and that it was possible arrangements might be made advantageous both to the revenue and the establishments themselves. It would, however, be a breach of duty, while on that subject, if he permitted the assent of the Government to the Motion to be construed as implying any unfavourable opinion of the manner in which the great revenue departments in question were now administered. His opinion was that those two departments were pervaded by a spirit of energy and purity, of anxiety to accommodate the public and to discharge their duty at the smallest cost, which was highly honourable to them and a pattern to all public servants. The manner in which the revenue of the country was collected was a subject of very agreeable contemplation. In 1848 the cost of collecting the Customs Revenue was £5 15s. 3d.; in 1857, £4 12s. d.; in 1860, £3 11s. 6d.; in 1861, £3 6s. 9d.; and for the year ending March, 1862, £3 2s. 6d. per cent. That was a gradual and very great practical diminution in the cost of collecting the revenue. The cost of collecting the Excise Revenue was, in 1842, £6 15s. 7d.; and in 1857, £4 15s. 9d. The whole cost of collecting the Inland Revenue, including 1071 both the direct and indirect taxes, was only £2 15s. 6d. per cent. In France the cost of collecting some of the taxes was not less than 16 per cent, and the cost of collecting the Customs duties in the United States was 8 per cent. The greatest inducement to inquire into the subject was the system of receiving and paying the money, which it would be desirable to simplify and to treat as pure matters of revenue and account. He would not say whether the union at which the hon. Member hinted would be found to be practicable, but it would not be safe to suppose that the appointment of the Committee would be followed by great and sweeping changes, or that large savings would be effected. With these remarks, he gave a cheerful agreement to the motion.