§ THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR, Manchester, E.) ,in rising to present a Bill to amend the Procedure with respect to Private Bills in Scotland and Ireland, said: Sir, I will endeavour, in deference to a request made to me by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Stirling Burghs, to introduce in a very brief statement the proposals which Her Majesty's Government desire to make with regard to the reform of Private Bill Procedure in respect of Scotland and in respect of Ireland. This matter has to be looked at from two entirely different points of view. We have to look at it purely as 1448 it relates to suitors in those parts of the United Kingdom, and we have to look at it as a relief to the Members of this House who have to carry on a great deal of heavy and laborious work in connection with Private Bill legislation. Now, Sir, as regards the first point, I do not think it necessary to say much. There is a very generally expressed desire in Scotland—a genuine but not so generally expressed desire in Ireland—that the Private Bill legislation of these two countries should, at all events so far as a good many of these proceedings necessary to coming to a decision upon cases are concerned, be conducted not at Westminster and not before Committees of these Houses, but in Ireland or Scotland, before some other form of tribunal. That much will be admitted by the Scotch and the Irish Members, and I do not propose to waste time in discussing that point. There is, however, another point of view which is, in my mind, at least as important, and that is what I may describe as the national aspect of this problem. The labour thrown upon Members of this House by Private Bill Committees is such, with the greatly increased time required by our Debates, and the greatly increased interest shown by the public in those Debates, that it becomes a burden they are very little able to bear. Sir, very valuable and remarkable evidence was given by the right hon. Gentleman behind me, the Chairman of the Committee of Selection (Sir John Mowbray), with regard to the extreme difficulty of getting Members of this House to serve on Private Bill Committees, and upon the correlative fact that Committees of the House of Lords were preferred by suitors, not because the House of Lords is better, but because it has more leisure to attend to Committees, and is therefore able to give greater satisfaction to those who go before it. I think it is our bounden duty, as far as we can, to relieve Members of this House of the labour which is thus thrown upon them, and it is also our bounden duty to satisfy the feelings of suitors in Scotland and Ireland by diminishing the cost and relieving them of the necessity of coming in every case to Westminster to try and conduct the 1449 litigation in which they are interested. The Bill, therefore, attempts to remedy two evils which have long been felt. But this difficulty has always met those who attempted a remedy—namely, that if you remove the Private Bill legislation relating to Scotland and Ireland to a local tribunal, you will have the same class of cases decided in Scotland and in Ireland upon principles quite different from those obtaining at Westminster. It should also be borne in mind that, whilst the House should be relieved of its semi-judicial labour, it should not be relieved of the responsibility of deciding the principles that should regulate and govern Private Bill legislation in every part of the United Kingdom. Several proposals have been made for mitigating the case of suitors and relieving the labours of this House. One proposal was that all these matters should be tried, not first before a Committee of this House and then before a Committee of Lords, but that they should be tried before a single. Committee partly composed of Peers and partly of Commoners. This was proposed with the view of saving half the expense and half the time; but, as was pointed out by the Committee, there was this great difficulty, this objection to the proposal—that the relief would be far less than the proposers of the plan imagined. Another suggestion is that the system of Provisional Orders carried out by the Board of Trade and the Local Government Board might be largely extended; but we must recollect that a Provisional Order saves trouble only when no Parliamentary opposition is expected. The passing of a Provisional Order is commenced by a local inquiry conducted by an officer delegated by the Department, and if the opposing parties in the locality are satisfied, then the matter passes the House of Commons sub silentio, and the House is not involved in the trouble of examination by Committee or the labour of arriving at a decision. But if the Bill is opposed after the Provisional Order is introduced, practically all the labour incident to an ordinary Private Bill is repeated in the case of a Provisional Order, and therefore no time, labour, or expense is saved by this process. There remains, then, the plan of a Special 1450 Commission in Ireland and in Scotland, if the Bill is intended to apply to either of those parts of the United Kingdom. by which the labour of a Private Bill Committee may be delegated to another and a paid tribunal. But it will be observed that almost every scheme hitherto proposed for utilizing a Special Commission of this kind labours under the defect that it either removes the whole of the Private Bill legislation submitted to the Commission from the control of Parliament, or else it so surrounds and hampers the decisions of the Commission with Parliamentary safeguards that practically suitors are as much inconvenienced and Parliament has as much labour thrown upon it as if the Commission had never been asked to intervene in the matter at all. One plan I ought to allude to very briefly has been suggested, the delegation of Parliamentary control altogether to the Commission, a plan which received a certain amount of sanction last year, yet which, in spite of the high authority supporting it, I cannot bring myself to recommend to the House. That plan is to delegate to a certain number of Members of this House the duty of sitting in Scotland or Ireland to assist paid Commissioners in dealing with these questions. It seems to me that plan raises most serious Constitutional issues, and is open to very grave objection from other points of view. Are you going to pay these Members or not? If you are, you will introduce a new and, I think, a very unwholesome precedent, and if you are not, how can you expect Members to absent themselves from their homes, and certainly from their business, for long periods of time, to carry on difficult and exhaustive inquiries in localities with which they are not connected? Again, is it right, is it in accordance with Parliamentary usage, that when a man is sent here by his constituents to discuss and vote upon various questions, we should send him away to take part in other business wholly unconnected with the Debates in this House, business which obviously would prevent him from doing his fair share of the work going on at Westminster, and bearing his proper share of the responsibility which attaches to decisions come to in this House upon 1451 questions submitted to it? For these reasons, as the House will readily conceive, on the whole, I do not think the Government ought to take on themselves the responsibility of proposing such a very novel and, as we think, such a very inexpedient measure. Well, the plan we propose, which I venture to propose with great diffidence to the House, for I am well aware of the difficulties which surround this question, turns and centres on the appointment of what I may call a Joint Standing Committee of both Houses of Parliament. This Joint Standing Committee is to consist of the Chairman of Ways and Means in the House of Commons, the Chairman of Committees in the House of Lords, and two Members appointed by each House in addition. The Committee, I may say, will have the right to sit for the purposes of this Bill, for which alone it is called into existence, even though the House may be prorogued—it may sit to carry on its business, if it so desire, at any time of the year. The first duty of this Joint Committee is to see that the promoters of any Bill primâ facie relating to Scotland or Ireland have satisfied the Standing Orders of the House, or that the Standing Orders are suspended in reference to the measure they have introduced. The second point the Committee is to determine is whether the Bill is in the main a Scotch or an Irish Bill, or whether it is not. It will be observed that unless you give a decision on this question to a tribunal having what I may describe as an equitable jurisdiction you will be face to face with many difficulties. You may have a scheme which is in the main Scotch or Irish, but which overflows, as I may say, however little, into England and Wales, and affects those parts of the United Kingdom. If you lay down a hard-and-fast line on the subject, you will preclude such a Bill from reference to the Commission whose duties I will explain presently. I propose to give this Joint Committee a discretion in the matter, allowing it to decide without appeal whether in its opinion the measure is one mainly Scotch or Irish as the case may be. The third point this Joint Committee will have to determine is whether the Bill involves 1452 any principle upon which Parliament has not hitherto come to any decision. Notice that most of the Bills that come before us are of a kind upon which Parliament has over and over again expressed a general view and has frequently laid down the general lines upon which a Committee should decide. But now and then it happens—let us take the Channel Tunnel proposal, or electric lighting schemes; and there are others that might be cited—now and then it happens that some new invention or project comes to the front upon which Parliament has never settled what should be the principle of procedure to be adopted by a Private Bill Committee to which it delegates so much of its authority. If in the opinion of the Joint Committee the Bill is one that does involve a new principle, then, in that case, we propose that the present procedure should be maintained. It is only when a Bill belongs to a well-understood class, a class for which precedents and principles are laid down, that the Bill is to be relegated for decision to the Commission. I may notice that one advantage that will be gained by the institution of this Joint Committee is that it will have the assistance of that legal advice from experienced officials which now aids in the conduct of Private Bill legislation. I think nobody acquainted with the inner working of our legislative system will deny that this will be of great advantage to the system of Private Bill legislation for Scotland and Ireland. This, broadly speaking, is the principle of our Bill. The actual constitution of the Commission is a matter of less importance, and of less novelty. It will be sufficient to say that it appears to me we shall be very wrong if we do not utilise the existing Railway Commissioners, highly paid and competent officials, well acquainted with the work to be done, and who comprise among their number a Scotch Judge eminently qualified to assist in Scotch affairs, and an Irish Judge to assist in Irish affairs. But in addition to the Railway Commission thus constituted of Judges and Railway Commissioners there should be, I think, an Assistant Commissioner to deal with Scotch matters, and an Assistant Commissioner to deal with 1453 Irish matters. I believe that would be sufficient for all the work of the Commission, but there is power given in the Bill for the Speakers of both Houses of Parliament to appoint additional Commissioners should the Joint Committee represent to them that the number of Bills referred to the Commission is in excess of what the Commissioners are able to deal with. It will be observed that if our plan is carried into effect, the stages of Bills will practically be: The stage before the Joint Committee—at which, of course, counsel will not appear—when the Committee will decide whether the Bill is within the Standing Orders, whether it involve any new principle, on which Parliament has not hitherto given any decision, and whether the Bill be mainly Scotch or Irish; the Bill will then be referred to the Commission; it will be read a first and second time in the two Houses without debate; it will be referred back by the Commission to the Joint Committee, who will be able to suggest formal Amendments to the Commission, the convenience of which all acquainted with Private Bill legislation will understand. The Bill will then come before the House for Third Reading, when it may be debated, may be rejected, or may be referred back to the Commission with instructions to carry out any Amendment which may be decided upon by the House. I hope, and I believe, that the Bill which I have thus briefly expounded to the House, though novel in some of its principles, really carries out many of the objects which have been aimed at by gentlemen who have previously endeavoured to frame schemes of this kind. I think it will retain the control of the Imperial Parliament, not only over the general principles of Private Bill legislation, but also over the details of any Bill on which Parliament desires to express its mind, and while carrying out these objects will enable local inquiries to be made in Scotland or in Ireland, as the case may be, and I think it will considerably diminish the cost of litigation. I believe it will satisfy the demand, the most legitimate demand, over and over again brought before this House by inhabitants of Scotland and Ireland, who have long protested against a system which drags them up 1454 to Westminster to deal with affairs which are, in the main, matters of detail, which can be better entered upon by inquiry on the spot.
Motion made, and Question proposed,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend the Procedure with respect to Private Bills in Scotland and Ireland."—(Mr. A. J. Balfour.)
§ *(11.43.) MR. CAMPBELL-BANNERMAN (Stirling, &c.)This is a question to which the salutary rule recently laid down by the Chairman of Ways and Means may well be applied—namely, that we should refrain from expressing a strong opinion upon a measure until we have actually seen it in print, for it is obvious that its provisions are of a somewhat complicated nature. But I may say at once of it that it seems to have been much better thought out and to be a better contrived measure than that introduced last year, and the fact of the scope of the measure having being so greatly changed justifies the opposition offered last year. At the same time, I confess that there will be considerable opposition to some parts of the measure, and upon like grounds. The right hon Gentleman bases his scheme to a considerable extent on the supposition that Members of this House are overworked and need relief. I am quite aware of the strong evidence given on this subject by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Oxford University (Sir J. Mowbray), but I have heard other Members of the Committee of Selection decline to bear out that opinion, and for my part I do not believe that a case has been made out to show that Committees cannot be adequately manned for the purpose of dealing with Private Bills. There are many of us who maintain that Railway Bills and other Private Bills are, after all, Bills affecting public interests, and ought to be dealt with by those who are distinctly representative of, and responsible to, public opinion; and unless a clear case were made out of the absolute impossibility—and this is the hypothesis the right hon. Gentleman proceeds upon—of finding among Members of the House of Commons sufficient time and capacity to do this work; unless a reasonable case were made out, I should 1455 be strongly opposed to handing over these inquiries in any degree to paid Commissioners or Judges, Railway Commissioners or others. We discussed these matters often last year, and it was often pointed out that the business which makes up the total of our Private Bill legislation consists broadly of two parts, and by far the largest part is that originated by Local Bodies, for the acquisition of gas works, water works, and so on—local legislation required by Municipal or other Local Authorities. I conceive that this part of the business could be largely dealt with by an improved system of Provisional Orders, and by increasing the powers of Local Authorities. But when we come to Bills promoted by great Railway Companies the position is somewhat different. They maintain there would be no saving of expense by local inquiry, and they are the best judges, for they pay the expense. At the same time, I quite recognise the fact that in Scotland there is a strong desire that inquiry should be local, and I am quite willing that it should be local, especially if litigants have no good reason to show why the case should be brought up here. But inquiry, local or not, ought, in the opinion of a good many of us, still to remain in the hands of the representatives of public opinion, and should not be placed in the hands of Judges or paid Commissioners. The right hon. Gentleman did not explain all the provisions of his Bill, and we shall be curious to know who these Assistant Commissioners are to be, and with whom is their nomination, whether they are to be paid—[Mr. A. J. BALFOUR: Yes]—where they are to sit, and if an office is to be established. Last year considerable objection was taken to the Government proposal, because it involved the establishment of a new Board in Edinburgh, and I am curious to know if there is any proposal of the kind now. When we consider that the number of disputed Private Bills coming from Scotland average six or seven in the year—I think I am stating an extreme number—and that since last year the two principal belligerent Railway Companies in Scotland—the Caledonian and the North British—have come to an agreement that they will 1456 not oppose each other, or encroach on each other's territory, I would ask, Where is the work of the Commissioners in Scotland to come from if their appointment is to be of a more or less permanent character? That is the great difficulty in the way of establishing any local tribunal, or fixed paid tribunal, for Scotland and Ireland alone. The right hon. Gentleman has not explained why the principle of his measure should not apply to England. If it is a good thing in itself I can conceive that the proper course would be, if you quite believe that you cannot get members to undertake the duty and discharge it efficiently, to have a highly paid and responsible tribunal to do the work for the three countries. You would then have work enough to do for the best class of men. But speaking without knowledge of the particulars of the scheme, and unable therefore to speak confidently, I confess I have no great hope of the results that will flow from establishing this half-and-half tribunal for the purpose of accomplishing the really small amount of work arising in Scotland and Ireland.
§ (11.50.) MR. T. M. HEALY (Longford, N.)I listened with attention to the First Lord of the Treasury, though I am not able to agree with him. It is his view, I suppose, that the Government must do something to remove grievances, so far as our country is concerned, but I am bound to say I listened to the remarks of the right hon. Gentleman with a feeling of deep sadness. I want to know why he cannot let the thing alone if he cannot give us what we want? Why give that which does no good to anybody, and which nobody wants. So far as I am concerned, though I have no great love for the procedure in this House—if I was a promoter of a Bill I would rather come here ten times than go once before such an unfortunate tribunal as the right hon. Gentleman proposes to set up. I say nothing for Scotland except for the sake of symmetry. I do not know why this should apply to Scotland as well as Ireland, but I am not prepared to say whether it would be good for Scotland or not. As the Labourers 1457 (Ireland) Act originally appeared in 1883 it contained powers to take land compulsorily, and the decision was with the House, with considerable expense to petitioners. We got the Government with enormous difficulty, for it was thought almost an invasion of the sacred privileges of Parliament, to allow the Privy Council to do the business by Commission. A more unfit tribunal than the Irish Privy Council there could not be, all nominees of the party delighted to have the chance of knocking down any scheme a Board of Guardians may propose. Now, what is this proposal? First and foremost, what does it save? Nothing is saved. All the House fees have to be paid. Promoters have to come now with pockets loaded with gold for these fees. Then they have to run the gauntlet of the Standing Orders to the satisfaction of the Examiners. I hear praises given to the officials who have the conduct of Private Bill procedure, but I say a more inelastic set of gentlemen it would be difficult to find; they are bound by rules like the laws of the Medes and Persians, to the very letter of which they attach a sacred character. Plus these, the promoters will have to face a body like the Railway Commission, with Sub-Commissioners added by the Government of the day. There will be all the expenses of the First Reading; the Second and Committee stages are saved, and then the Bill goes through the House of Lords. Now, take the case of the Bill we had before us to-day dealing with the Belfast Lunatic Asylum. This would go before Judges and officials entirely out of sympathy with our point of view, and where our point of view would have no influence. But in the House we have a free arena for debate, and we can here prevent some mischief being done, though we may not beable to do much effective work. The right hon. Gentleman, with his usual cynicism, says he has brought forward this Bill to save the extremely heavy labours of Members of Committees. Now I have been in the House for twelve years, and I have never been asked to serve on a Private Bill Committee. I was present when the Chairman of the Committee of Selection gave evidence, in which he said promoters were all anxious to have 1458 their Bills taken somewhere about Derby Day. Those who had evidence to give wished to be in town about that time, and so there was a glut of Committee business about that time. I cannot think that Members who do not take a very active part in our proceedings here would not be glad to discharge some function attaching to their position. Is not a Committee of this House a far better tribunal than the tribunal the right hon. Gentleman proposes? Members of this House are men of flesh and blood in touch with public opinion; but when you have a tribunal of officials, you have views and ideas entirely different from those you will find in the House. I say the right hon. Gentleman is trying to solve a problem insoluble except in one direction—namely, Home Rule—and in that alone. Unless you set up in Edinburgh and Dublin competent authorities racy of the soil to exercise their judgment upon these matters, men in whom the people have confidence, and whom they meet with in daily life, you will do no good. We want to deal with men of flesh and blood in whom we have confidence. These are the views we entertain, and we think the Bill unfortunate. It has no chance of passing; there is no demand for it. I am almost sure Scotland has no desire for it. The right hon. Gentleman who has just spoken expressed no desire for it; it suits nobody. The First Lord of the Treasury has had the opportunity of putting his proposal before the country before the date of the Dissolution, and I am glad he has had that opportunity. He has devoted himself to it in a painstaking manner, and nobody doubts his hard official work, though he has done the Irish people all the mischief he could during his tenure of office. Well, he has had the opportunity, and he has brought forward a Bill which satisfies nobody, not even himself. He does not think it so good as a Coercion Bill, but he thinks if it will do no good it will do no harm. But this will be worse than the present system, which is bad only in the sense that it is expensive and cumbrous; it is not bad in itself, and, therefore, I am opposed to this measure. 1459 It being Midnight, the Debate stood adjourned.
Debate to be resumed upon Monday next.