HC Deb 23 June 1880 vol 253 cc660-71

Order for Second Reading read.

MR. FAY,

in moving that the Bill be now read a second time, said, that it was designed to provide for the establishment of a tribunal for the conduct of local inquiries relating to Private Bills in Ireland. He did not claim to be the author of the Bill. It was drawn by his hon. Friend the Member for Tip-perary (Mr. P. J. Smyth), but handed over to him (Mr. Fay) when his hon. Friend was unable to come to the House in time for the presentation of the Bill. It was highly probable that the idea of introducing the measure had its origin in his hon. Friend's mind, probably to a great extent, in words spoken by the right, hon. Gentleman now at the head of Her Majesty's Government, when he was appealing to the sympathetic heart of Mid Lothian. Of course, no one should be tied to the ipsissima verba of an electioneering speech no more than the more social Members of that House should be tied to their after-dinner speeches; but still the expression of the Prime Minister's feeling on the subject-matter of the Bill strongly advised some local machinery for relieving the House of Commons such as the Bill recommended. Now, neither he nor his hon. Friend the Member for Tipperary meant at all to come forward, and, in answer to the remarks of the right hon. Gentleman, cry out "Eureka." On the contrary, they humbly submitted to the House what they considered a fair suggestion. The question was no new one. It had been mooted in that House more than once; and on all occasions the concession had been made by the House that there existed a necessity for some reform in this direction. As to carrying out the desired measures, their proposal did not in any way invade the ancient Prerogatives of Parliament. It was no new scheme, repealing Acts of the House deliberately passed, or establishing, as against old precedents and old tribunals, new laws and new organizations. The Bill merely proposed that, to provide facilities for legislation on Private Bills in Ireland, they should change the venue of the existing tribunals in that and the other House, as regarded certain component parts thereof, from London to Ireland. They should establish a branch of the Private Bill Office in Dublin, to be called the "Irish Private Bill Branch Office," for the deposit of Irish Private Bills, subject to regulations by Standing Orders, to be made from time to time for that purpose by each House of Parliament; that Private Bills originating in the House of Lords should be referred to a Committee consisting exclusively of Irish Representative Peers, or Peers of Parliament connected with Ireland by having a residence in that country; that Private Bills originating in the House of Commons should be referred to a Committee composed exclusively of Irish Members of Parliament, and that these Committees should hold their sittings in Ireland, at such convenient places as they might select. As the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister had, to a great extent, practically conceded the merits of the claim which he now advanced, it was not his intention to go into details upon the question, and he should be as brief as possible in his remarks. But there were three points which occurred to the Irish mind in regard to Private Bills. He alluded to Railway, Gas, and Tramway Bills, and all Bills of that class. Now, the points which had provoked a very strong expression of feeling in Ireland in respect of these measures were (1) the serious inconvenience attending the promotion of such schemes in London; (2) the large drain of money from Ireland into London; and (3) that the great expense attending the promotion of smaller schemes, such, for instance, as small trams, had operated to prevent a great many valuable improvements from being effected in the country. These were all very serious grievances. As to the inconvenience, that was probably the smallest matter; but he would say much valuable evidence was lost by the fact that many men of position and great business engagements fought very shy of being kept knocking about the Lobbies of the House for weeks, perhaps, awaiting to be called as witnesses. But as to the drain from the country, first, from a general point of view, he found that it was calculated, when this matter was under discussion in 1871, that, from 1800 to 1870, 681 Irish Local Acts were passed. That did not include the rejected private measures. Well, take them at another 681, he would calculate the loss in cash to Ireland for legal and other incidental costs at nearly £3,000,000. Add to this travelling and hotel expenses of witnesses, and those interested in the Bills, and the sum would probably represent close on £6,000,000 lost to Ireland. That, in itself, to a poor country, was a severe loss. As regarded the witnesses' expenditure, he might add that it was wonderful how men accustomed to humble homes and meagre fare dropped at once into views about grand hotels and choice brands of wine when they came over as such witnesses. Enthusiastic Englishmen ascribed this fact to the instantaneously refining feeling of London society; others, more prosaic, believed it ascribable to the fact that every witness thought corporations and projectors of companies fair game for plunder. But the expense of promoting Bills by small townships had been something enormous; and he could heap up instances of the evil. He should take as a present illustration one of the last made townships in Ireland—that was Drum-condra. Its rating was £13,000 only; its conversion into a township cost £1,700 under the present system. There were other township creation expenses equally bad, including Rathmines, Sligo, £14,000; Clonmel, £20,000; and he might also refer to the cost of the Dublin Trunk Railway, amounting to £54,000. He could multiply incident after incident if he so desired; but he should now point out that the result of this was that a great many small improvements in Ireland were prevented from being carried out. By way of illustration he might mention that in many parts of Ireland small links were wanted to connect them with existing railways. These gaps could not well be filled up by the making of railroads. In point of fact, they would not pay; but if they could get Tram Bills at a very cheap price— say for a few thousand pounds—they could in many cases connect towns which were now almost inaccessible. These trams would be extremely suitable, especially in the mountainous districts, where the circumstances of the country would not afford a short railway to meet the nearest stations or mountain roads. Well, in these cases the companies promoting schemes would, under the present system, be out of pocket half the amount of money that would be required to form the line before they were in a position to lay a rail; for it would have to be spent in London on high fees to London lawyers, and luxurious living. That was a very serious defect. As regarded the reclamation of waste lands the very same thing would happen. He (Mr. Fay) himself was about projecting a company for the reclamation of certain slob-land. It would, he believed, have been a great commercial success; but everyone seemed anxious to avoid an immediate investment of ready money for expenditure in London. Send them back to Ireland, where their legal expenses would be about one-tenth of what they were here, and their witnesses and other expenses infinitesimal. From the point of knowledge of the facts, surely the Irish Peers and Commons were the best judges of Irish wants and Irish witnesses. For his part, when, six years ago, he came first to that House a very glutton for work, he found himself appointed a Member of a Committee on a mixed group of Welsh, English, and Scotch Bills. His first look at the Paper finished him, and he had never served on a Committee since. The Bill that headed the list was a railway from some place in Wales to some other place in the same Principality. The two names were composed of the letters C F B and W thrown together, apparently without any regard to pronunciation. He had never heard of them before or since, for he had a fixed idea that the Bill was a sort of conundrum intelligible only to Welsh people. The next Bills were either Scotch or English, relating to waterworks, and a turnpike in places he had never heard of. He asked himself could he conscientiously do his duty in respect of a Bill about which he knew nothing and cared less; and he considered it his duty to plead professional engagements and leave room, perchance, for some Welsh Gentleman, who might solve the puzzle of the Welsh names, or for some Scotch or Englishman who took an interest in the water supply or turnpikes affected by these Bills. He maintained that with a system such as he advocated the expenses would be so materially reduced that they would be able to undertake measures for the improvement of land and for giving greater facilities for locomotion to people throughout the country. Well, now, what could be the objection to trust Irish Peers and Members with these local inquiries? Had the Irish Peers shown themselves open to corruption, or had the Irish Members, of no matter what politics, a single shadow been thrown on their honour as Committeemen of this House, and they had acted as such ever since the Union? Surely, if such was the case, they might be trusted in their own country to do their own work. Look to the whole controlling parties of Ireland — Judges, Superior and County Courts, magistrates, corporations, Poor Law Boards—where was there a spot upon their reputation? But they might say—What about the Provisional Order system of the Local Government Board? The answer was—The Irish people would have none of it; they would not have a few unsympathetic paid clerks, unacquainted with the people and their wants, deciding on the wishes of the elective bodies, whether corporate, company, or otherwise. They had never worked in harmony with the people, and their dealings with local bodies had been very unsatisfactory. It would be a misfortune if a practical measure like the present were not accepted by the Government, or, at any rate, so far favoured as that they would be disposed to institute an inquiry into the necessity of establishing such a system as he proposed. He would, indeed, be sorry to impede in any way Her Majesty's Government in the discharge of those duties which this short Session rendered urgent. Should Her Majesty's Ministers see their way to the appointment of a Committee on the subject, or the more extended one indicated by the speech of the Prime Minister at Mid Lothian, he would be perfectly satisfied. The hon. Gentleman concluded by moving the second reading of the Bill.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."— (Mr. Fay.)

DR. CAMERON

said, he had had no intention of interposing in the debate at so early a period, although his name was on the back of the Bill, and he only did so because no one else had risen. He regretted that the Treasury and the front Opposition Benches were both alike conspicuous by their emptiness, for this was a Bill of great importance; and what he wished to insist upon was the necessity of some legislation of this kind, not only for Ireland, but for Scotland and England. They felt in Scotland quite as much as was the case in Ireland the need of some local tribunal to dispose of their Local Bills. As to the details of the measure, he would not enlarge upon them, or discuss whether they ought to remedy the evil by perambulating Committees of this House, or a system of legislation by Provisional Order; but he contended that if they were to set to work to devise the very worst possible system of Private Bill legislation, they could hardly by any possibility devise a worse than the system which at present prevailed in Parliament. His own experience in connection with the city he represented had been as unfortunate as had been the case of Dublin in the instances referred to by his hon. Friend (Mr. Pay). Glasgow was continually in the Committee-rooms upstairs, and was always spending large sums of the money of the ratepayers in expenses, either when obliged to come there for needed improvements, or when dragged there by its neighbours. What sort of tribunal did they find? Those cases in which the city was interested, involving enormous sums of money and enormous interests, might be disposed of before a tribunal consisting of a majority of Members who had never sat upon a Private Bill Committee before. He (Dr. Cameron) himself had sat upon one group of Private Bills on a Com- mittee on which three Members were new Members who knew nothing whatever of the proceedings of the House of Commons, and knew nothing of the traditions or the Rules which regulate them. So long as they had learned Gentlemen of the long robe to guide them, they did not go very far wrong; but when the opposition to a Bill was withdrawn they found themselves in a mess in settling the clauses. One clause after another came up, and the whole discussion then turned on whether these clauses were approved of by Mr. Speaker's counsel or by Lord Redesdale's counsel. Were those Gentlemen, however able or however eminent, to be the tribunal to settle clauses materially affecting the interests and liberty of the lieges in this country, and was it the function of a Committee simply to endorse their views? No worse tribunal could, in fact, be devised than that which now existed. They had no need to go further than that day for an example. There were a number of Committees upstairs; but in consequence of the interesting scene being transacted in this House about Mr. Bradlaugh, the Members of those Committees left the Committee-rooms, and the persons who had the Private Bills there were obliged to keep over for another day their witnesses, to refresh their counsel, and to have the whole of their business retarded. If they had perambulating Committees, going about the country and instituting inquiries, they would, of course, report to this House, and then legislation would proceed on precisely the same lines as it did at the present moment. He did not say that would be the best possible solution of this question; but it was a very simple solution. It did not deprive the House of its jurisdiction. It simply left the Committee to take evidence in Ireland, instead of in a Committee-room of this House. An eminent authority, the President of the Local Government Board (Mr. Dodson), while Chairman of Ways and Means proposed another system — that evidence should be taken by a perambulating Commission, or other tribunal, and that upon that evidence legislation should proceed by way of Provisional Order. That system was not open to the objection of local legislation originating in Provisional Orders of the Local Government Board, which he objected to quite as strongly as anyone. He thought a system might be devised upon the lines proposed by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Chester, which would meet the difficulties of the case quite as? well or better than this Bill. But assuredly something should be done, and that speedily. The want which this Bill was introduced to supply was a want participated in to the full extent by Scotland and England, quite as much as it was by Ireland. He believed that the want of some such provision for the settlement of local questions as was contained in this Bill had done more to strengthen Home Rule, in the sense in which the expression was generally used in Great Britain, than any other thing. [Mr. PARNELL dissented.] The hon. Member for Cork (Mr. Parnell) shook his head. There was no necessity for introducing any acrimony into the discussion of this question. But in Glasgow a great number of persons were constantly complaining of the necessity of coming up to London to settle every small question, and were asking if Home Rule would not do away with that necessity and difficulty. It would; but that was not the question before them. The question was whether it could not be equally well settled by such a proposal as that contained in the Bill, and whether the Members of the House could not find themselves more in accord in adopting such a proposal than by waiting until they could carry the more extensive and radical measures of Home Rule. He had great pleasure, as the Representative of a Scotch constituency, in supporting the Bill; and he trusted that the Government would deal with the question involved in its principle speedily, and not with reference to Ireland only, but with reference to Scotland and England also.

MR. GREGORY

said, that, so far his experience went, the Committees of the House of Commons and Lords did justice with regard to all Private Bills. As regarded the clauses which were inserted, they were, in all cases scrutinized by the counsel of the Chairman of Committees in the one House and of the Speaker in the other, who could be entirely relied upon. Committees of the House were very jealous of local inquiries, and he had seen them upset after considerable outlay. Local inquiries had worked satisfactorily enough when their deci- sions were given effect to in Provisional Orders; but, otherwise, they had generally resulted in failure, of which Lord Dalhousie's Commission was a remarkable illustration. He thought, however, that a good deal of unnecessary expense was incurred in bringing witnesses to London to give evidence on merely local questions.

COLONEL COLTHURST

said, in the few observations which he would make he would confine himself to the effect the proposed Bill would have if adopted upon the great industrial efforts and improvements made in Ireland. He might instance railway companies; and he could state that if it were not for the great expense attending Private Bills a great many more railway works would be set on foot. In the Bill recently before Parliament it was proposed that the extension of railways should be left to presentment sessions; and if a local inquiry was held in every case, it would have the effect of preventing the adoption of chimerical or bogus schemes. There was another important point—namely, the reclamation of waste lands—-and in these he included lands which were only partially drained. To carry out to any extent a scheme for the reclamation of land it was necessary to come to Parliament for fresh powers to undertake them, and this would involve a great cost, which would have the effect of preventing any action from being taken. Inquiries held in Ireland then would facilitate such useful operations as the drainage of waste lands. Then in regard to the fishing population, a great deal could be done in the way of starting some 10 or 12 fishermen to maintain a number of boats together. Under present circumstances, that would necessitate great expense; but local inquiry would do much to meet the difficulty, and it was admitted by a Gentleman on the Treasury Bench that some change in the present system of dealing with Private Bills was desirable. He thought it would not be difficult to define the remedy. If local inquiries with regard to the development of Irish industries could be established, he had no doubt that substantial benefit would result therefrom. If the House did not approve of the details of the Bill, he hoped that it would affirm the principle.

MR. P. MARTIN

hoped the House would affirm the principle of the Bill before them. The present was not the first time that that grievance which Ireland and Scotland suffered with respect to Private Bill legislation had been brought before the House. In 1871, on two occasions, both by Bill and by Motion for a Select Committee, made by the late Member for Dublin (Mr. Pim), the subject had been exhaustively discussed; and during that discussion not a single Gentleman stood up in the House to entirely defend the present system of Private Bill legislation. The right hon. Gentleman the present President of the Local Government Board (Mr. Dodson), who at that time had control, to a certain extent, over that legislation, himself admitted it was costly and inconvenient, and, as he then contended, only that time should be granted, in order that the Amendments in the system in the direction of having those inquiries conducted in the localities interested, should be fully considered. The present Secretary of State for India (the Marquess of Hartington) had also pleaded for delay, and Colonel Wilson Patten said that no doubt Ireland in this respect suffered from a serious grievance. In fact, during the entire of that debate, the only defence of the continuance of the present system was rested on the difficulty of at once planning a mode of procedure which would satisfactorily discharge the functions of Private Bill Committees. Of course, he (Mr. P. Martin) could understand the hon. Member for East Sussex (Mr. Gregory) defending the present system; but even the hon. Member prejudiced, though he not unnaturally would be in favour of the present system, was forced to admit that very great additional and unnecessary cost was incurred in consequence of the inquiry being held in London. No stronger argument could be urged in favour of an alteration in the system. If this grievance was experienced in England, how much more severely would it be felt in Ireland? He did not intend to enter on a general discussion on Private Bill legislation, as they were now dealing with it as it affected Ireland. Briefs were prepared for counsel in Ireland, and then put into the hands of a Parliamentary agent, who himself charged special fees for the preparation of evidence as if he had done it all, so that in many cases Irish and Scotch suitors were subjected to a double series of charges. But it was not merely that this serious and additional cost was imposed in respect to agents and the expenses incident to the attendance of witnesses on the Irish and Scotch suitors. There was but too much reason to find fault with the adjudication of the Committees in consequence of the want of knowledge of the localities as to local requirements. To give one or two instances, he might remind the House of the fact that a Committee sat for 23 days to determine a matter of great importance to Ireland-— namely, the erection of a Central Station in Dublin. Some £50,000 were expended in the strife of the competing schemes before the Committee. In the end the Committee sanctioned a site, which anyone acquainted with Dublin would have known to be the most impracticable and the least desirable of any of those suggested. As a result they had no Central Station at present in Dublin. Then there was another instance in the Dublin Trunk Railway. He would not, however, weary the House by giving other examples to show the system had checked industrial enterprise, and worked in a most unsatisfactory way so far as Irish interests were concerned. The common sense of mankind was in favour of the principle; while it had been conceded by the House that, if possible, local inquiries should always be conducted on the spot, and every facility be given for making proper inquiry. The abuses of the present system were very great. They all knew that though witnesses to depose to the facts of the case had been brought over from Ireland at great cost, yet, in consequence of the absence of counsel, who generally held briefs in several cases on at the same time, before different Committees, in many instances those witnesses were not examined, and the truth was not elicited. Great advantage would accrue if the inquiry was conducted in the locality, not unfrequently, from the Members of the Committee being enabled to themselves visit and form their own judgment on the matter, to be subjected to their determination. They would not be obliged to so much depend, as at present, on the statements made either by counsel or engineers. Everyone would agree that a man's own eyesight was better than a statement made by the ablest counsel. Under those circumstances, he trusted the House would agree to the second read- ing of the Bill. It simply established a principle of a general character, and certainly would be of enormous advantage in relieving the House of what had been over and over again complained of —not from one side, but from both sides of the House—namely, that they undertook a vast quantity of Business which they found it utterly unable adequately to perform. The noble Lord the present Secretary of State for India, in strong terms, had regretted the House had to undertake Business which it was totally unable to discharge. That was the strongest argument for the transfer to local bodies of a great portion of the legislation undertaken by the House; and the noble Lord said the House would give a favourable consideration to any proposal which might desire to transfer to local bodies business of a character which might be transacted by them. The Bill was not one introduced by a section of Irish Members alone, but had received very general approval; and he hoped, under these circumstances, the House would agree to its second reading.

MR. FOLEY

said, he thought the Bill was necessary, not so much in the interest of railway companies, or the promoters of various undertakings, as in the interest of the ratepayers who had to pay for them. He contended that great cost was incurred, in many instances, when difficulties arose, without the ratepayers frequently having an opportunity to express an opinion until the measure was absolutely adopted. In his own township, a loan of £10,000 was required, and it cost £6,000 to obtain that loan; so that the ratepayers had to pay £16,000 when they could only expend £ 10,000. He believed local inquiries on the spot concerned would obviate many of the present difficulties and inconveniences; and he therefore trusted the House would agree to the second reading of the Bill.