HC Deb 20 June 1864 vol 175 cc2088-102

Order read, for resuming Adjourned Debate on Question [13th June]. "That the Bill be now read the third time."

Question again proposed.

Debate resumed.

SIR JOHN TROLLOPE

said, he rose to take objection to this measure on the third reading—a course which he was aware placed him under considerable disadvantage. But he begged to remind the House that no discussion had occurred on the principle of the Bill on the second reading, or, at least, the discussion then was very slight and inadequate to the importance of the measure. He took exception to the measure on three main grounds. First, he thought it very unnecessary to disturb the present relations between the taxpayers and the machinery by which the taxes were collected. Next, if it was at all desirable to alter the system upon which the taxation was collected, he thought it exceedingly undesirable to do so by a permissive Bill. And, thirdly, he regarded all Bills which contained large and sweeping exceptions as very objectionable. Having acted as a Commissioner of Taxes for the last forty years, he was able to speak with considerable confidence on the way in which the operation proceeded. He could speak as to the smoothness of that operation, the little annoyance it caused to the people, the very small amount of loss occasioned to the Exchequer by the mode of payment and collection, and therefore the undesirableness of interference with it. Moreover, he greatly apprehended that if the Bill passed it would be only the prelude of more compulsory measures. If that were so, a very considerable element in the collection of our national taxation would be disturbed. A body of gentlemen throughout the country now gave their time gratuitously to the supervision of that revenue operation—he meant the local Commissioners of Taxes, to the value of whose services the Chancellor of the Exchequer had more than once borne testimony. [The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER: Hear, hear!] Surely, then, it was no light matter that that right hon. Gentleman should throw discouragement and discredit upon exertions of these gentlemen for the public interest. If the measure was carried to the full extent, he seriously feared that the local Commissioners of Taxes would in a great degree cease to discharge those duties. They would find those duties very irksome to them when they had to be performed as if under compulsion and in co-operation with officers not of their appointment, but strangers brought to the locality and shifted about from time to time, and altogether very different from the men with whom they had hitherto acted. Although, no doubt, assessors and collectors of taxes were in theory or in law changeable from year to year, yet in practice the same men, the men most intelligent and best educated in their respective parishes were chosen by their fellow parishioners as collectors and assessors of taxes, and in the rural districts the collector and the assessor was generally one and the same person. They executed their functions with perfect integrity, and he did not see why a great slur should be cast upon them simply because the Chancellor of the Exchequer, or rather the Commissioners of Inland Revenue, might have on their hands a number of supernumerary officers for whom they desired to find situations. He found by the third clause that a species of election was given, and the districts were to be invited to decide whether they would put the Bill in force. Most country places would refuse; some of the large towns, such as London, Liverpool, and Birmingham, might be disposed to consent to it. What was good for London, he should have thought would be good for all the large towns, but it appeared London was to be excepted. He had not heard any adequate reason assigned; but there might have been some pressure put on the right hon. Gentleman. Perhaps the sixteen Members representing the metropolis had an interview, or had expressed their opinion in a sufficiently emphatic manner; but though the metropolis was excepted now, do not let those Members flatter themselves that it would long remain so. Once let the Bill become law, and it would soon be made compulsory throughout the length and breadth of the land. He confessed that if there was to be a change, he would rather it were made compulsory at once. They would then know what they had to grapple with. Some discharged exciseman or officer, formerly employed in collecting the paper duty, was to be sent down by the Inland Revenue to collect the taxes; the country would be formed into little arrondissements as the Commissioners might think fit, and sous-préfets were to be appointed for the collection of taxes, whose office would become a focus of espionage. The clerks of the Commissioners, he found, were to be paid one penny for each notice sent out, which would not remunerate them for their trouble. At present notices were distributed by the local collectors, who went from house to house and collected the taxes, which he believed were cheerfully paid; but under the new system persons were to go to the market town to pay their taxes: if the amount was small it might be paid in postage stamps, but defaulters would be returned to the Exchequer, and costs incurred, probably twenty times the original sum. He could not see how that could be called an economical measure. When the question was first agitated it was referred to the local Commissioners of Taxes, whose opinion, it was understood, was very generally against it. [The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER: The majority affirmed it.] Then, why was this Bill not brought forward four years ago? It was said that £50,000 would be saved by this Bill, but the omission of the metropolis would very much reduce that amount; and when they came to consider the allowance made to the assessors and collectors, it was difficult to see any economy in the measure. The Bill would be injurious to the country; it would be ill-received by gentlemen whose services had been valuable to the State, and they were to be treated with contumely and placed in a position that made their duty irksome to them. He should, therefore, take the sense of the House, and move that the Bill be read a third time that day three months.

MR. PACKE

said, he rose to second the Amendment. He should like to know some good reason for the proposed change in the system of collecting the taxes. The right hon. Gentleman had happily for himself found the means to muzzle the sixteen Members for the metropolis. ["No, no!"] If that was not so he had no doubt their votes would be given against the Bill. Strong petitions had been presented against the Bill from the Tower Hamlets, from Marylebone, and St. Martin's, Westminster. In addition, petitions had come from all parts of the country, for there never was a more unpopular Bill. There were very strong petitions from Birmingham, Newcastle-on-Tyne, Bath, Stockport, West Bromwich, and other influential towns, against the Bill. People generally were not very fond of paying taxes, but if they must pay them they did not like to have the unnecessary trouble and inconvenience put upon them which the Bill proposed. There were many small sums which the poorer classes had to pay for taxes, and they would not like to have to walk several miles to the market town to pay them. There ought to be very strong reasons to justify them in passing a Bill to inflict the burden on the poorer classes, and he had heard none at present. Another objectionable feature of the Bill was, that persons living in the country would have to pay their taxes to the exciseman—never a very popular officer— instead of to the village collector, as heretofore. He, therefore, very cordially seconded the Amendment.

Amendment proposed, to leave out the word "now," and at the end of the Question to add the words "upon this day three months."—(Sir John Trollope.)

MR. COX

said, he rose at the same time as the hon. Member for Leicestershire (Mr. Packe) and for the same purpose, to second the Amendment. Although he sat there as one of the sixteen representatives of the metropolis, if a Bill which applied to the country generally, excepting the metro- polis, was in his opinion a bad Bill, he held himself free to vote against it. He had gone into the lobby against the second reading because he believed the Bill to be a bad Bill, and one which showed the tendency of the present Government to introduce a complete system of centralization. Thinking that such a measure ought not to apply to the metropolis, he also thought that it ought not to be inflicted upon any other part of the country. He would like to hear the opinion of the representatives of large constituencies, such as Liverpool and Birmingham, upon the question why their constituents should be brought under the operation of the Bill if the metropolis was exempted? He could assure the House he knew of no compact between the metropolitan Members and the Government in relation to this Bill. He had heard that one of the Members for Middlesex did communicate with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who declined to receive the deputation, and referred them to the Chief Commissioner of Inland Revenue. What further took place he could not say. However, as he had voted against the second reading of the Bill, so he should vote against the third reading, believing that it would do much harm and could do no good.

MR. SCLATER-BOOTH

said, he must admit that there were parts of the Bill which deserved approval, such as allowing payments of taxes to be made by Post Office orders, and by stamps, and also the removal of the liability to pay taxes twice over, owing to defalcations on the part of the collectors. Still he had been disagreeably impressed by the exemption granted to the metropolis. The result would be that if passed the measure would really only operate in the country districts, an exceptional mode of legislation which was very objectionable. Again, the Bill proposed a complete change in the mode of payment of the assessors. Under the old law the collectors were paid by a poundage; but under the proposed measure they were to be paid at the rate of three half-pence a line on the certificate of assessment. He wished to ask for an explanation of that mode of payment. It would be extremely difficult, he believed, to carry the measure into operation in large towns; but it was in the country districts that it was proposed to work the Bill, and so far as he was informed, the assessors in those districts would receive no remuneration at all. In his part of the country there were some places where only two or three persons were assessed, and the consequence would be that the remuneration to the assessors would be so trifling that he could not suppose the local Commissioners would be content to permit the introduction of the Government Bill. He should, therefore, vote against the third reading of the Bill, unless he received a satisfactory explanation. The separation of the collection from the assessment he did not complain of, but he thought the Government should take care that the remuneration should be proportionate to the duties to be performed.

MR. AYRTON

said, he had heard with surprise the objections of the hon. Baronet (Sir John Trollope), that the character of the Bill as a permissive Bill was something quite new. The fact was that all legislation in respect of local self-government during the last twenty years, had been of a permissive character. Then as to the exemption of the metropolis from the Bill, he would remind the House that when the Municipal Reform Act was passed the metropolis was exempted, and when it became necessary to deal with the local management of the metropolis a special Act was passed. There was nothing, therefore, extraordinary in the principle of the Bill of exempting the metropolis from its provisions. It had been said that the exemption was the result of a compromise between the metropolitan Members and the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer; but he certainly was not aware of any such compromise. If the Bill were extended to the metropolis it would be necessary to introduce some special provisions, in order to place it on the same footing as the rest of the country. If the Bill were not found suitable, and if it were rejected throughout the country, there could not possibly be any danger to the metropolis; but if, on the other hand, its working were found to be beneficial, there was no reason why its advantages could not be extended to the metropolis at a future time. As the Bill at present Stood, however, he believed it would be very injurious to the metropolis.

MR. HORSFALL

said, that he had supported the Bill on its second reading because he concurred in the principle, and he was still of opinion that if it was carried out in a proper manner it would confer a boon upon the ratepayers by effecting a considerable saving. He had, however, a strong feeling against the metropolis being exempted from its provisions, and he therefore thought it his duty to oppose the third reading of the Bill.

THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER

said, he could not imagine how the test of value of the Bill could be found in the exemption of the metropolis from its operation. If the Bill were a good one for the ratepayers generally, the exclusion of the metropolis could only be so far disadvantageous to the metropolis itself. If, on the other hand, the Bill called upon the ratepayers to make needless sacrifices, and placed them under new disabilities, it should be rejected altogether. The question of the exclusion of the metropolis was fully debated in Committee, and he could say that all the knowledge he had of the support of, or opposition to the Bill by the metropolitan Members, was that the hon. Member for Finsbury opposed it, and the hon. Members for Lambeth and the Tower Hamlets supported it. How, therefore, it was possible that the exclusion of the metropolis was to determine the question, whether the Bill was a good or a bad Bill, he could not comprehend. That the exclusion or inclusion of the metropolis might be a mistake was another question, but he could not understand how that could form the turning point of the rejection or acceptance of the Bill. The exclusion of the metropolis was, however, to be taken in connection with another feature of the measure. The Bill was a permissive Bill. The right hon. Gentleman who had moved the rejection of the Bill had founded his opposition to the measure in a great degree upon the fact, that it was a permissive Bill; but he must remind the House that no measure of the kind could be passed unless it were a permissive Bill, so that the choice lay between a permissive Bill or no Bill at all. The idea of passing a compulsory measure to wrest from the hands of the local Commissioners the valuable patronage they at present enjoyed was, he believed, a perfectly visionary project. Every one must acknowledge that the services rendered by the Commissioners were not only valuable but essential to the working of the direct taxation of this country, and nothing that he had ever said in that House had had the slightest tendency to weaken the system or undermine the authority of the Commissioners. He had at all times endeavoured to magnify the obligations which were due to the Commissioners, and in every way to sustain their authority, and he had not in any degree departed from that principle in the present Bill. The Commissioners themselves excluded the metropolis. They knew perfectly well from the communications that they had received, that the majority of the Boards were in favour of such a measure as the one before the House. He had stated previously that there were reasons in favour of the exclusion of the metropolis—resons which did not extend to other places. It was not, like most towns in the country, a centre for the payment of the country district around. In London there were no officers who were capable of performing the duties which would be intrusted to them under the provisions of the Bill, and a new set would consequently have to be appointed. It might, therefore, have been said that their object in including the metropolis was to obtain the appointment of so many new officers. One objection to the present system was the extreme uncertainty and slowness of the collection of the revenue. They had but little command over the officers, and the money even after its collection found its way to the Exchequer but slowly. In London this did not apply. There the payments were made by the collectors immediately to Somerset House. The case of the metropolis and of the large towns was entirely distinct, because in most of the large towns there would not be a power of separate action which would enable them to exempt themselves from the provisions of the Bill, whereas in London there was such a power, and it was morally certain that the power would be exercised. To hon. Gentlemen, therefore, who did not object to the principle of the Bill, he must point out that the exclusion of the metropolis was much more nominal than real, and could not determine the question whether the Bill was a good or a bad one. It was said that the Bill was most unpopular in the country. Now, if he had evidence of that unpopularity he should be surprised indeed, the object of the Bill being merely to insure certainty, regularity, and responsibility, and to relieve the taxpayers from inconvenience. The desire of the Government was not to obtain advantages for the State as against the taxpayer, but to substitute a good system for a very defective one, as far as the collection of taxes was concerned. As to the alleged unpopularity of the Bill, he did not see how that could be when it had been for four months before the country, and the number of petitioners against it was only between 3,000 and 4,000. That was a pretty good answer to the statement as to unpopularity, when it was remembered that the Bill could not be expected to be acceptable to a certain class of paid officers—the collectors and assessors of taxes throughout the country. With regard to the assessors, the present law recognized no payment to the assessor except in case of the income tax, as to which the payment was left in the Bill precisely as it stood at present. In the case of the assessed taxes, the assessor received no payment whatever. But, then, it was said that the assessorship was united with the collectorship. The intention of the law, however, was that the assessor and the collector should be totally different persons, and should, in fact, act as a check upon each other. The law was now evaded by placing the two offices in the same hands; but it was proposed to separate the two offices, and so to act really up to what was now the theory of the law. Practically, no doubt, the assessor had been a paid officer, and the Government, taking the matter into consideration, had provided a mode of remuneration for him. Then it was said that a permissive Bill ought only to be adopted where the circumstances of the country were different. Well, that was exactly the fact, the circumstances of the country were different. Then, as to the payment of the assessors, in populous places the business of assessing and collecting taxes was very valuable; in thinly populated places it was a great burden. The Bill had been made permissive so as to respect the discretion of the Commissioners; but that was no reason why the Government should not consider the case of those assessors and collectors —and they were very numerous—whose duties were rather a burden than a privilege. So unremunerative was the business of collection, though often joined with assessment, that in some places the inhabitants raised a salary for the collector In rural districts the office was accepted with great reluctance, and was often imposed in defiance of the strongest remonstrances. He frequently had letters from persons complaining that they had been required by the Commissioners to act as collectors, and it was said that in some instances the office was conferred on persons from pique and spleen. One of the principal objects of the Bill was the giving of relief in cases where the office was felt to be burdensome. Saving was not the only consideration; and this saving must be materially diminished by the compensation which must be paid to the collectors; but he freely admitted that no saying to be effected would justify the passing of a burdensome Bill affecting the collection of taxes. There were other reasons why the Bill should pass; and among these were the present liability of parishes to re-assessment, through the neglect of the Commissioners or through default. He supposed there was not a week that he was not obliged to answer some person or another who complained of a collector, and he could not interfere, because the collectors were not Government officers; but this Bill would enable towns to relieve themselves of that state of things. As to the objection that the metropolis was exempted, he would remind the House that the exemption was the act of the Committee. If the Committee had determined to include the metropolis, the Government would have endeavoured to introduce provisions for carrying out that object; but, on the other hand, if the Bill was desired by the people of Liverpool, Birmingham, and other large towns, the exemption of the metropolis afforded no reason why they should not have it. Whenever the Commissioners liked to exempt themselves they could do so; but a majority of the Commissioners had expressed themselves to be favourable to the Bill, so that he thought the right hon. Baronet must not have attended to that point. A large number of the Commissioners had not replied at all to the application made to them on the subject, and therefore he thought that they might be considered favourable to the measure. He thought it would be found that the remuneration which might be allowed under the Bill would be sufficient, for when it was said that the clerks would have to pay a penny for the postage-stamp on the notice, for which they were to be allowed only a penny, he would observe, in reply, that a clerk would have his percentage besides, and that where he had to send out notices to 100 persona in the same street, it was not likely he would put stamps on the notices when he could have them delivered by a messenger for, perhaps, about a shilling. It was, however, in the hands of the House to do what it pleased with the Bill, but he would remind hon. Members that the people of Ireland and Scotland were contented with a system similar to the one now proposed, but inferior to it, inasmuch as in Ireland and Scotland the people could not pay their taxes in stamps or by money orders. He hoped, however, that they would be able to extend the latter advantage to the sister kingdoms.

SIR STAFFORD NORTHCOTE

said, that before the House went to a division there was one point on which it ought to be well informed. His right hon. Friend (Sir John Trollope) had referred to the communications which had been made to the various Commissioners of the land tax in different parts of the country in the year 1860, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer had said that on the whole the majority of those who had answered the questions put to them were favourable to this measure, or to a measure more extensive, and he had rather twitted his right hon. Friend for not having paid sufficient attention to the circumstance. Now it was impossible for any private information to compete with that possessed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but the right hon. Baronet had good authority for the statement he had made. In the Committee which sat two years ago, over which the hon. Member for Liverpool presided, the question of the collection of taxes by Government officers was raised, and Mr. Pressly, the chairman of the Board of Inland Revenue, in reply to a question put to him with regard to the propriety of some such alteration as that now proposed, said— It would be very desirable that the Government should appoint their own assessors and collectors; at the same time we thought it necessary, some three or four years ago, to address letters to all the Boards of Commissioners in the country, and after reading the answers of the clerks we found it impossible to carry it out. The principal Secretary to the Board of Inland Revenue, Mr. Dobson, was also examined by the game Committee as to the circular, and he stated— The replies received were in opposition to our views; there were some consenting parties, but generally speaking they were in opposition to our views. When asked— Can you state generally the nature of the arguments against the proposed change? the reply was— No; but as far as my recollection serves they would not condescend to argue the point at all. That was the sort of evidence given before the Committee two years ago, and if it showed that the measure was unpopular, it was hardly fair to twit his right hon. Friend with not having attended to the subject. There was one point on which hon. Members ought to make up their minds, and that was the cardinal point— the permissive character of the Bill. He must say for himself that he approved of the main object of the Bill, and he should be glad if they could arrive at a system by which the collection of the revenue might be placed in the hands of collectors appointed by the Government; but it was a very delicate question, and one which came home to every taxpayer in the kingdom. Now, what was the House called upon to do? It was asked to give a permissive power to Boards in different parts of the country to impose upon the taxpayers a system which we did not venture to impose on them ourselves by direct legislation. That was a principle against which he decidedly protested. It had been said by the hon. Member for the Tower Hamlets, that permissive legislation had formed the basis of all local legislation for the last twenty years, and the Local Management Act had been instanced; but there was all the difference in the world between permissive legislation which placed the choice in the hands of the taxpayers, and that where the permission was given to a body of men who were neither taxpayers nor elected by taxpayers. As a magistrate he had himself experienced great difficulty in dealing with cases of permissive legislation like the Highways and Police Acts. The magistrates were appointed by the Crown, not by the ratepayers, and it was not pleasant for them to have to impose taxation. That House, which was elected by the taxpayers of the country, shrank from imposing burdens on those whom they really represented, and transferred the responsibility to the nominees of the Crown. Nothing could be more odious than the manner in which the Chancellor of the Exchequer put the question. He asked the House to give these local authorities power to refuse this legislation, which he believed to be desirable, because he thought they ought to be tender in the matter of patronage. Anything more odious than that mode of stating the case he could not conceive. In what position would the Commissioners stand towards the taxpayers of the country? They were asked to say whether certain measures should be enforced which that House was afraid to enforce, because they would be unpopular, and the Commissioners were told that they had that permission, because they had a great deal of valuable patronage in their hands. That was placing those gentlemen in a position of great difficulty. The truth was they ought to deal with the matter as one of principle. If the House thought it right for the interests of the country that the collection of these taxes should be placed in the hands of Government officials, they ought to come boldly forward and take the responsibility on themselves. Then they would find out what was the real opinion of their constituents, for it was hardly to be expected that many petitions would come in against the Bill so long as people thought that their local Commissioners would stand between them and its adoption. No doubt there might be strong grounds for saying that it was desirable that collectors should be appointed by the Government. There had, it was quite true, been large defalcations, and the taxpayers had suffered in consequence. The right hon. Gentleman, however, had altogether omitted to mention that the largest defalcations had happened in the metropolis, which was excluded from the Bill. In one ward there had been a defalcation of £1,700 or £1,800, and in another of £6,000. He could not understand why the metropolis was excluded. If there was any truth in the impression that the metropolis was omitted because the opposition of the metropolis was found so formidable, then that ought to make the House pause before passing the Bill. If, on the other hand, it was known beforehand that the London Commissioners would reject the Bill, what need for leaving them out? He did not exactly understand what was to be the machinery of the Bill. How were they going to deal with the stamp distributors? Already they had to give large security, and if additional security was to be demanded from them, it would be necessary to make some provision for additional compensation. The case was full of difficulties, and he believed it would be most unwise to pass the Bill in such a form.

THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER

explained that with regard to Mr. Pressly he believed that gentleman's opinion was that a compulsory measure would be most economical, but that no such Bill would be likely to pass. As to Mr. Dobson, he still believed, speaking from me- mory, that the right hon. Gentleman opposite had not accurately stated his opinion.

SIR JOHN TROLLOPE

The blue-book shows that the right hon. Gentleman is inaccurate.

THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER

I adhere to my statement.

MR. LOCKE

said, he could explain why the metropolis had been excluded. The Bill was a permissive Bill, and the position of the metropolis was different to that of Liverpool or any other large town. In Liverpool all the inhabitants would have an opportunity of saying whether they would adopt the Bill or not. But Southwark, for instance, consisted of large parishes, such as Bermondsey, and those parishes would not have had an opportunity of considering whether they would adopt the Bill or not, because they were connected with the Commissioners throughout the whole county. Those Commissioners would be in favour of adopting the Bill, and so the large parishes of Southwark would be swamped.

MR. HARVEY LEWIS

said, the Amendment of which he had given notice was not intended to exclude the rural districts at all. There were two classes of tax collectors—those who received large amounts and, therefore, large remuneration, and those who received small amounts and whose remuneration was in proportion, and it was to those two classes that his Amendment applied. He was bound, of course, to look to the interests of his own constituents, and the inhabitants of the metropolis had in large numbers petitioned against the Bill. The Amendment of which he had given notice would not only have referred to the metropolis, but also to other large towns; but when he found that the Members for some of those large towns, the hon. Member for Liverpool for instance, were not against the Bill, he felt bound to give up his Amendment.

MR. NEWDEGATE

said, he wished, in justice to the hon. Member (Mr. Harvey Lewis), to make one observation. On a former occasion he (Mr. Newdegate) had stated that the withdrawal of the hon. Member's Amendment was so sudden that the large towns had been taken by surprise; but the hon. Member had since written to him and conclusively shown that a circular was issued which gave the large towns due notice of the intention to withdraw the Amendment. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had justified the Bill before the House by saying that in many of the rural districts the collectorates were so poor that the Commissioners sought by the Bill to remedy this evil—under which the collectors would be appointed by the Inland Revenue Office. But why were the rural collectorates so poor? Because no measure had been introduced to consolidate these collectorates; for by giving to one collector several parishes instead of one, the whole difficulty upon which the Bill was founded would be removed. The Inland Revenue Office had long aimed at appropriating to itself these appointments. The Inland Revenue officers thought that they were in danger of want of employment; he had heard upon good authority that it was to their influence that no measure for consolidating collectorates in the country had been brought in, thus removing the admitted difficulty to remedy which the Bill had been introduced. It was perfectly well understood why Middlesex objected to being included in the Bill; and the reason was this, that in several parishes in that county the operation proposed by this Bill had been tested, and the effect was found to be, that where previously the expense of the collection of taxes was about £200, when the collection was made by the Revenue officers the expense amounted to more than £1,000. The Bill was another development of the principle of centralization, an attempt to deprive local bodies of their patronage and functions. It was perfectly plain that if this Bill were to pass the next appointment which would be grasped at by the Inland Revenue Board was that of assessors; and he did not know how the country would be satisfied when it was found that the metropolis would be excluded from such centralized interference, whilst the private affairs of every firm in the provincial towns and rural districts would be subject to the inspection of Government officers.

Question put, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question."

The House divided:—Ayes 128 Noes 132: Majority 4.

Words added.

Main Question, as amended, put, and agreed to.

Third Reading put off for three months.