HC Deb 31 August 1880 vol 256 cc826-7
MR. WHITWORTH

called the attention of Mr. Attorney General to the discrepancy between the two following descriptions of a Railway, given on the the part of the Board of Inland Revenue:— 1. By Mr. Melvile, Solicitor of Inland Revenue, in his evidence before the Railway Passenger Duty Committee, 1876:— A Railway means in this Act of Parliament (2 and 3 Will. 4, c. 120), and in all subsequent legislation, a proprietary Railway. It does not mean a Railroad laid along an ordinary highway; for instance, it does not include Tramways, as we know them now …It would seem by what I explained to the Committee before that the term Railroad embraces a Tramway just as well as what we commonly call a Railway, but it really only embraces a proprietary Railway.…Now I come to Section 50, which says 'The proprietor or company of proprietors of every Railway in Great Britain,' that led me to say, therefore, that the word Railway means a proprietary Railway; you could not apply that to a Tramway made upon a high road …; 2. Through the Secretary of the Treasury, in this House, on the 23rd August, 1880:— Railway Passenger Duty is not levied on Tramways under the circumstances alluded to by my hon. friend (when they belong to Municipal Corporations), because the Board of Inland Revenue are advised that, not only on the particular ground stated (the limitation of the proprietorship of the Tramway Company to the rails), but as a general question of law, Tramway Companies are not liable to the Duty; and he asked Mr. Attorney General, If he will state what is the peculiarity in a Tramway, besides the separation of the property in the road from the property in the rails, which deprives it of the character of a Railway and exempts it from Railway Passenger Duty?

THE ATTORNEY GENERAL (Sir HENRY JAMES),

in reply, said, he believed that the view taken by the Board of Inland Revenue in charging the duty on railway passengers was that the Company so charged were the owners of the railway. That being so, it was necessary that there should be an actual ownership of the railway, in order to bring it within the scope of the Act. The Board were advised that in the case of tramways there was no such actual ownership, since the place where the rails were laid was the street or highway, and so the passengers conveyed upon such tramways did not come within the operation of the Act. He might add that the Prime Minister had already promised the Railway Passenger Duty Abolition Committee that the present state of the law should be considered by the Government, and that the Board of Inland Revenue had already been ordered to do so.