SECOND READING. (Hansard, 14 March 1888)

§ MR. ISAACS (Newington, Walworth)

said, that having regard to the time at which they had arrived (5.20 p.m.), he should probably do better if, instead of moving the second reading of the Bill, he asked Her Majesty's Government to take this subject into their consideration; and he should be glad to be informed if they were in a position to give an assurance that it would receive attention at their hands at an early date. No one could possibly be more impressed with the importance of the measure which he had undertaken to bring under the Notice of the House than himself, because the subject was so vast from every point of view, and affecting as it did the material well-being of 4,000,000 of people, that it was almost Imperial as regarded the interests affected. London had been aptly described as "a Province covered with houses;" and in a debate in that House on the subject of the government of the Metropolis, one of the speakers drew attention to the fact that the London of the present day is bigger, in respect of population, than the whole of England in Queen Elizabeth's time. Its area was upwards of 120 square miles; it contained upwards of 500,000 inhabited houses, occupied by 4,000,000 people, and its rateable value at the present moment was £31,000,000 sterling. He troubled the House with these particulars in order that hon. Members might realize the vastness of the subject and the consequent difficulty of satistorily dealing with it. It occurred to him that before proceeding to expound the details of the measure they were now considering, it might be useful to 1237 take a short retrospective glance at the system which prevailed prior to the introduction of Sir Benjamin Hall's Act in 1855, as also of the working of that measure. Prior to the passing of that Act there were no loss than 300 different Governing Bodies in the Metropolis, and it had been computed that no fewer than 10,448 persons were engaged either as vestrymen, commissioners of pavements and sewers, &c.; and some notion of the chaos which then prevailed might be gathered from the fact that there were 1,000 persons officially engaged as commissioners of sewers, the number being subsequently reduced to 23, and ultimately to 11. In further illustration of the condition of matters municipal in London at that time, it might be interesting to state that the duty of paving the highway from Temple Bar to Charing Cross was entrusted to no less than seven different Bodies, and in the parish of St. Pancras alone there were as many as 16 Boards, independent of each other, to whom the lighting and paving of that parish were entrusted. It was unnecessary for him to dwell upon the enormous inconvenience to the public, to say nothing of the waste of public money, which ensued from such a system; and the unsanitary condition of London at that time caused the Government to reduce the number of the controlling Bodies who had charge of the sewerage and drainage; but with respect to the remainder of the matters embraced under the head of local management, it was deemed expedient to appoint a Royal Commission to inquire into the same, and to report as to the best means to be adopted to remedy the existing defects. Accordingly, in June, 1852, a Commission was appointed, consisting of Mr. Labouchere (subsequently Lord Taunton), Mr. Justice Patteson, and Sir George Cornewall Lewis, and their Report dealt very conclusively with the subject. Instead of the Government bringing in a Bill framed on the recommendations of the Commission, and with the double object of saving trouble and of proceeding tentatively, they hit upon the expedient of taking the Poor Law divisions of the Metropolis as the areas of administration, and created 38 Vestries and District Boards, to whom were confided the duties previously discharged by the Commissioners of Paving and other Bodies to whom he had re- 1238 ferred. That was a great reform upon the existing state of things; for to reduce the number of the Governing Bodies from 300 to 39, and the number of persons engaged therein from 10,000 to 3,000, must be admitted as a bold step in the right direction. After 33 years' experience, the defects of the present Act had become apparent, and it was desirable now to have some system more in accordance with the municipal institutions throughout the country. The initial error in the Metropolis Local Management Act—an error which had influenced its administration all throughout—was the circumstance that the divisions of the Metropolis which it created, and the mode and manner of the election of those entrusted with carrying out the provisions of the Act, were such as not to enlist in the service those whoso social status, mental culture, and material interests in the respective parishes or districts would best ensure the proper dealing with the subjects entrusted to their charge. He believed that very few of the inhabitants of the Metropolis had anything like a clear knowledge of the manner in which the election of the present vestrymen or members of the District Boards was conducted. It was true that notices were placed upon the church doors as to the time appointed for the election of vestrymen; but that, he (Mr. Isaacs) submitted, was not a sufficient advertisement, nor one calculated to awaken anything like a proper amount of interest on the part of those concerned. The result of the present system was that the local government of the Metropolis had fallen into the hands of cliques who might be described as almost self-elected, and, in some instances the maladministration of parochial affairs had been so pronounced as to cause the name of vestryman to stink in the nostrils of respectable people. Again, the numbers of those elected to serve as parochial administrators were far too great. From the City of London, with its Lord Mayor, 26 Aldermen, and 206 Common Councillors—total, 232, to govern an area less than a square mile in extent, the Vestries of the larger parishes, with their 120 members, to the District Boards of Works with their members ranging from 36 to 60 in number, all the Governing Bodies were by far too large as regards the number of their members.