LEAVE. FIRST READING. (Hansard, 20 February 1868)

§ MR. STEPHEN CAVE

, in rising to move for leave to bring in a Bill to give further time for making certain Railways, said, it was the measure which he mentioned in his remarks on Tuesday on the Motion for revision of the Standing Orders, as very much wanted at the present moment, and the House, he thought, appeared generally to concur in that opinion. It proposed practically to re-enact the Act of 1847, 11 Vict. c. 3, under which any railway companies were empowered to apply to the Board of Trade within two months after the passing of the Act for an extension of time to complete their works of not more than two years. The House would remember that clauses were inserted in the Railway Companies Act of last Session, empowering the Board of Trade to authorize the abandonment of railways under provisions similar to those of the Abandonment of Railways Act of 1850. Experience had already shown that it would have been well if provisions for the extension of time had been also revived; because, as he stated the other night, we might not improbably see reason in the course of inquiries now in progress to think that extension of time and not abandonment would be the just course, and we might thus be enabled to effect a reasonable compromise between the applicants for warrants of abandonment and their opponents. The proceedings were of the same nature as those in cases of abandonment. The greatest care was taken to secure publicity, and unless the companies carried out fully every requirement for giving complete notice to all interested, the Board of Trade would proceed no further. Indeed, he did not think he was going too far in saying that there was even less chance of changes in a Railway Act being surreptitiously introduced in the course of these inquiries than in the passage of a Private Bill through Parliament in the ordinary way. It might be said that after the expiration of the two years a company might come again for abandonment, and that the proprietors of lands and houses within the compulsory powers might be subjected to loss and inconvenience. That 1001 was quite true; but it would be equally the case if the railway obtained its extension of time by Bill, with the difference that it would be enormously more expensive to oppose, as well as to promote; and he need scarcely say that the object of the Government was to save expense not only to the companies which applied, but to landowners and other dissentient parties. Moreover this was a question for compensation, for which there were ample provisions in the Bill, and he might remind the House that in the abandonment clauses of last year the Act of 1850 was amended in this respect, by making the deposit and bond available as assets to meet charges and claims against the company, so that, unless exception was taken to the tribunal, no objection could be urged that opponents were likely to be injured; and with regard to the tribunal it had already been tried. In 1847–8 it dealt successfully with 168 cases, and if Parliament last year considered it worthy of being intrusted with the power of authorizing abandonment, he could hardly think it would fear to impose on it the less important duty of granting extension of time. He quite admitted that such duties, in both those cases, ought only to be temporary, for the purpose of meeting an emergency like the present. As on the previous occasion, these enactments would expire of themselves, the abandonment clauses applying only to Acts obtained before that date, and the proposed Bill only to those companies which come forward within three months. He might add that the Board of Trade were now dealing with applications for the abandonment of twenty-eight lines of railway, and were informed that more would be made. They had also reason to know that immediate advantage would be taken of that mode of obtaining extension of time if Parliament assented to the present Bill.