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Order for Further Consideration of Postponed Resolution [8th August] read.
(10.) "That a sum, not exceeding £13,761, be granted to Her Majesty, to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March 1888, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Office of Her Majesty's Woods, Forests, and Land Revenues, and of the Office of Land Revenue Records and Inrolments.
§ MR. HENRY H. FOWLER (Wolverhampton, E.)I shall not detain the House for many moments; but I wish to call the attention of the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury (Mr. W. H. Smith) to the question I wish to raise in connection with this postponed Vote. The Committee of Supply was placed in very considerable difficulty in discussing this Vote the other night, and I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman and the hon. Gentleman the Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Jackson) would not have sanctioned 202 the difficulty in which the Committee was then placed. On the 28th February last this House ordered a Return giving full details of the income and expenditure in connection with this Department of the Woods and Forests, about which i there has been considerable dissatisfaction for a considerable number of years, and though that Return was ordered on the 28th February, and only consists of three pages, that Return was not placed in the hands of Members until two days after the Toto was taken in Committee of Supply. I will not comment upon that, it carries its own story, because anyone who knows anything of the Accounts and of this Department knows that the Return could have been prepared, I was going to say in a few hours, but, at all events, in a few days; but to say that it takes five months to prepare a statement of the Accounts of the Woods and Forests is one of the severest condemnations of the Department, and it deserves the attention of the House. What I want to ask the right hon. Gentleman the First Lord of the Treasury is this. Twelve months ago the question of this Department was brought before Parliament. The then Chancellor of the Exchequer—the Leader of the House and Representative of the Conservative Government (Lord Randolph Churchill)—promised a Committee to inquire into the whole management of this Department. I did not move for the Committee at the commencement of this Session, as I thought the Royal Commission on Civil Service expenditure could grapple with this inquiry; but, as the right hon. Gentleman knows, we have devoted the whole of our attention this Session to other Departments, and I doubt if we can now make that searching inquiry, that strict Parliamentary investigation that it deserves; and without desiring to delay the House upon this Vote, though it was passed by the Committee in complete ignorance of the real state of the case, I wish to ask whether next Session the right hon. Gentleman will be disposed to grant a Select Committee for further inquiry into the funds and administration of this Department?
§ THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. W. H. SMITH) (Strand, Westminster)The right hon. Gentleman gave me no Notice of the purport of the Question, and I am unable, there- 203 fore, to inform him of the facts of the case. I have no doubt he made an accurate representation of the promise made 12 months ago; but I should wish to look into the question, and in the course of a few days I will give an answer to the right hon. Gentleman.
§ Resolution agreed, to.