RESOLUTION. (Hansard, 24 April 1866)

§ MR. KNIGHT,
in moving a Resolution on this subject, said, that for nearly throe centuries each parish had provided the money for relieving its own poor, and directed the way in which the money was to be expended. The tendency of modern legislation, however, had been very much to change this order of things. The agitation for the extension of the area of rating bad been confined to very few places, and it was got up chiefly by the action of the Poor Law Board. The law of Elizabeth laid it down that everybody ought to be rated according to his ability, but it was very difficult in parochial rating to ascertain the ability of a person to pay. The matter was at last settled in 1839 by a distinct decision that stock-in-trade was absolutely rateable, but it was afterwards found necessary to excuse it from rating. Be that as it might, the state of the law was now altogether changed. Modern legislation had since 1839 laid down many new precedents, and it had been in repeated instances acknowledged that it was unfair that the whole of the local rates should be paid by real property. A portion of the county rate, he might add, for certain local purposes, a portion of the police, the salaries of the masters and mistresses of union workhouses, the stipends of pupil-teachers, part of the expenses for medical officers, and some other 2003 small charges were at present paid out of monies annually voted by Parliament. Now that a new Poor Law had been established in England a national rate was called for from all quarters, and he wished under those circumstances to ask the House to lay down a rule which would render the principle established by modern legislation safe; because it would not, he thought, be safe to establish a national rate in the full sense of the word, as contemplated by many persons, which would surely be to allow the guardians to dip their hand in the national till. To make everything a national charge would be to lead to great confusion and almost to national bankruptcy, and he found by the accounts of rating which had been published by the Poor Law Commissioners in 1837 that there were more than thirty heads of such expenditure which had nothing to do with the maintenance of the poor. Recent Returns showed that the amount of property which paid the poor rate was £143,000,000, but the large amount of £169,000,000 of ascertained income was not assessed to the poor rate. He did not bring forward his Motion with the expectation of its being at once carried out, but only with the view of obtaining an expression of opinion on the part of the House that certain items should from time to time be added to those which he had already mentioned as being placed on the national Exchequer. The head centres of the great agitation in favour of national rating were Norwich, St. George's-in-the-East, Hammersmith, and Fulham, but those places were left in the same situation in which they were previously to the recent measure for the establishment of union rating. While he did not deny the justice of the appeal for the reduction of the malt tax, it must not be forgotten that only a comparatively small portion of the country would benefit by its abolition, but to reduce the poor rate would be to confer a benefit on every voter in the United Kingdom, and especially on the smaller class of voters. In conclusion, he begged to move— That, in the opinion of this House, it is expedient that all items of Poor Law expenditure throughout the United Kingdom, not being in-maintenance or out-relief, or otherwise under the immediate control and direction of Boards of Guardians or Parishes officers, should become a National charge.

§ MR. WARNER
seconded the Motion; and said the expense of taking care of the sick in workhouses and the hospitals ought 2004 to devolve upon a general and not local rate, as the cases of inhumanity recently made public in connection with the London workhouses had sufficiently shown that Boards of Guardians were not capable of; managing these departments.

THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER
was glad to hear the hon. Gentleman who made the Motion say that he did not expect his Motion would be at once adopted by the House, and probably, therefore, the hon. Gentleman did not intend to press it upon the attention of the House, his object being that the principle contained in his Resolution should be considered by the House. The moderate course pursued by the hon. Gentleman relieved them from much difficulty, because it would enable them to discuss the question raised without prejudice, and it was very desirable that the attention of the Government and of hon. Gentlemen should be directed to the subject, in order that a clear conclusion might be arrived at as to the best mode in which local charges should be provided for. He might say that he was one of those who did not think that these transfers of local charges to the Consolidated Fund were things in themselves politic and advisable, and in his opinion no such transfer should take place, except for some very strong and definite object of public policy connected with the immediate matter. The hon. Gentleman mentioned various precedents in favour of his proposal, referring to the police rate and the medical and educational expenses connected with the administration of the Poor Law, and he might also have referred to the greatest instance of all—the constabulary expenses in Ireland. With regard to the police rate, the reason why the Consolidated Fund was saddled with one-fourth of the expense was simply to secure a great object of public policy in the establishment of an efficient police. So with regard to the medical and educational expenses, one great object in view was to bring up the administration of the Poor Law to the point which it was deemed requisite that it should attain. In 2005 the case of the Irish constabulary, it was thought necessary to establish a force which should be in some degree independent of local control, and, that being so, a very large portion of the charge was from the first placed on the public Exchequer. He regretted that it had been found necessary to carry the transfer of those charges even to the point that had now been reached. The hon. Gentleman had stated that where-as there were £169,000,000 of ascertained income not assessable to the poor rate, the whole burden fell upon £143,000,000 of property. At first sight there appeared rather an inequality in this, but in point of fact the inequality was extremely small. Where a parish was entirely rural, it was quite immaterial whether the local rate was laid according to the Scotch principle, now abandoned, on means and substances, or upon visible property subject to rating. In town parishes, also, the inequality would be perfectly immaterial; and the only parishes where the inequality was of any importance were mixed parishes, partly rural and partly manufacturing or mining. In that case he admitted that the mining income and profits of trade were not taxed equally with the agricultural property. But, then, it must be borne in mind that all that mining and manufacturing property usually came into the parish not to aggravate, but to alleviate, existing burdens. The question of transferring local taxes to the public Exchequer was far from being free of political difficulty. If those taxes were in excess, the feeling of the people on the spot was made to bear on them. In respect to Imperial taxation people were called on to pay taxes not for purposes of which they witnessed the results with their own eyes in their own neighbourhood, but which they had only a vague impression of If the rule of transferring local burdens to the general Exchequer were acted on without discrimination, the political danger would be most serious. The public debt of the country amounted to about £800,000,000, and it was almost hopeless to deal with it. But it was not necessary to put our local taxation in debt. Local taxation would be made to pay its way from year to year. On the other hand, the course of natural indebtedness (to use an American term) had been continually becoming worse and worse. He wished the hon. Member also to consider that every claim of this sort made for England raised corresponding claims for Ireland and Scotland, and, then, a series of questions would be created which 2006 would be almost incapable of solution, for it was almost impossible to apply to the three countries a uniform principle which would not cause a great deal of discontent, and it would be difficult to persuade people that they had not been unequally dealt with. The hon. Gentleman proposed, in effect, that a large amount of charge should be carried from the local to the Imperial Exchequer, and so far as he could estimate the amount so charged would be about £2,250,000 for the three kingdoms. At present these local charges were paid out of a fund borne by the property of the country, and computations which he had seen showed that not more than 1–12th or 1–15th of the local taxation was paid by the working classes; but putting their contribution at 1–9th, which was a high estimate, they would pay £250,000. But supposing the principle were adopted that the whole of the charge should be carried to the Imperial Exchequer, what proportion of the taxation would the working classes pay? Not less than one-third unquestionably. The hon. Member opposite shook his head, but if he had not studied the subject, he (the Chancellor of the Exchequer) ventured to assure him that it was not an extravagant computation. Hardly any person would place their contribution at less than a fourth; he himself was inclined to rate it higher than one-third. Assuming one-third to be the correct proportion, the effect of the change would be that the working classes, who now contributed £250,000 towards the local charges, would then contribute £750,000 to the Imperial Exchequer. In every point of view, the question was a most serious one, and he was glad that the House was not then called upon to give any decision upon it. Before pressing the matter forward on any future occasion, the hon. Gentleman, he hoped, would carefully examine all the important, elements which the Motion embraced.

§ MR. KNIGHT,
in reply, said, that the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer would have been more appropriate if it had been delivered before the passing of the Act of last Session, when the Government threw the whole adjustment of the question previously existing to the winds, and substituted an entirely new state of things. The ratepayers were greatly grieved by the operation of that Act, because in many parishes property was one-eighth less in value now than it was before the passing of the Act. 2007 He regretted that he could not coincide with the arguments of the right hon. Gentleman opposite (the Chancellor of the Exchequer).