HC Deb 10 August 1893 vol 15 cc1729-44

Lords Amendments considered.

Lords Amendments, as far as the Amendment, page 30, to leave out Clause 41, agreed to.

Amendment, page 30, to leave out Clause 41, the next Amendment, a second time.

* Sir J. LUBBOCK (London University)

rose to move, "That this House doth disagree with the Lords in the said Amendment." It was, he felt, a serious responsibility to ask the House to disagree with an important change made by the House of Lords; and, under ordinary circumstances, any Member doing so would be bound to state his reasons very fully and in ample detail. The present case was, however, exceptional and peculiar. The clause known for shortness as the Betterment Clause was objected to on the Second Reading, but was referred to the Committee. It was passed by the Committee after careful inquiry, though by a small majority only. When it came back to the House it was again challenged, but after a full discussion was supported by a very largo majority—in fact, nearly two to one. Under these circumstances, and as the subject had been so recently before the House, it was not necessary for him to go at length into the matters then discussed, and that appeared to him the more unnecessary, because he thought he should be able to show the House that the Resolution taken against the clause in the House of Lords was really based upon a misapprehension of what the clause did. The Resolution adopted by the Lords said— That this House, before assenting to the Second Reading of this Bill, desires to express its opinion that proposals for the assessment of capital values instead of annual values, and for creating new and arbitrarily-defined areas of taxation such as are contained in Clause 41 of the Bill, ought not to be embodied in a Private Bill, but, if found just and equitable, should be based on general principles laid down by Parliament. He did not wish at present to enter into the question whether this ought to be done by a Public or a Private Bill; but what he did wish to point out was that this clause neither proposed to substitute assessments of capital value instead of annual values, nor did it create any new and arbitrarily-defined areas of taxation. In fact, it created no area, of taxation whatever—either arbitrarily or otherwise. Then there was another objection to the clause—that it was considered to be an attack upon the rights of property. It was nothing of the sort. It was simply an attempt to adjust the payment for these improvements in a fairer manner than would otherwise be done. The improvements in the Bill had been passed both by this House and by the House of Lords as desirable in themselves, and the question arose how they were to be paid for. They all agreed that the great bulk must be paid for by the property liable for rates in the Metropolis; but they asked that some part should be borne by those who were benefited pecuniarily by the expenditure of their fellow-citizens. They were about to spend a largo sum of public money; and if the result was that certain houses were in consequence of that expenditure largely increased in value, they should contribute, not the whole, but a part, of that improvement, which was due to no action, no expenditure of theirs, but by the action and expenditure of the County Council as representing the ratepayers generally. It was sometimes said that if the property was improved the Council would be recouped by the rates. But so they should be if a man improved his property at his own expense. Take two cases. One man spent £1,000, and improved his house to that extent; he paid the rates on it. Another man had his property improved £1,000 by the expenditure of the ratepayers. He also paid on an additional £1,000. They both paid the same addition. Was it fair that the man who had spent his own £ 1,000 should pay more than the other, where the improvement was due to the money of the ratepayers? Surely that was manifestly unfair. Others said that the County Council should recoup itself by extra purchases. Long experience had shown that this was impossible. They had to pay for the land, the houses, and the trade interest, and they always found that the trade interest ran away with the whole profit, and more. The only case in which any profit was made was in that of Northumberland Avenue, where there were no trade interests to be bought up. It had been objected to him in conversation by several opponents that perhaps no property would be actually benefited, though there might be a general convenience; but the answer was that, if no property was actually benefited, no property would pay. Then the question arose—Were the County Council proposing any unfair mode of ascertaining the value? He did not understand that the clause was attacked on that score. The Board of Trade wore to appoint an arbitrator, the County Council were to convince him that there was an improvement, and unless they did so no betterment would have to be fixed. In the previous discussion in the House it was shown that the principle of betterment was not new. It was applied as long ago as the Fire of Loudon, though he admitted that it had been superseded by a different principle. What was that principle, and why was it proposed to change it? He was not concerned to prove that there were no objections to this plan; they did not say that betterment was perfect. There were objections to every system of taxation and of rating. All that could be done was to choose that which most nearly approached to equity and justice. He would therefore ask the House, and he would very respectfully ask the House of Lords, not merely to look at betterment in the abstract, but to compare it with the alternative. Under the system of our predecessors the cost of a local improvement was borne, half by the district, say the parish, and half by the Metropolis at large. But our Metropolitan Divisions were of very irregular shapes; and, even if they were symmetrical, it would often happen that those out of the district benefited more by an improvement than those in it. An improvement in the south of a district might be of little or no special advantage to those in the north; and yet, under the old system, they were called upon to contribute heavily towards it. Under the proposed system no one would be called on to pay more than the general rate, unless it could be shown that his house had been actually improved in value, and then only to the extent of a portion of that increase. The amount involved in the present instance was small, but the principle was important. If it could be shown that in any details the plan proposed was unfair, by all means let it be amended. The only object the County Council had, or could have, was to do justice as between different ratepayers. What they asked the House to affirm was the principle. They did not say that it was perfect, but they thought it was much fairer than the alternative plan. He would not, under the circumstances, go more fully into details; but he asked the House, he would not say to support the County Council, but to support their own Committee and their own decision, and he did so because they were satisfied that the plan in the Bill was equitable in itself, and fair to the ratepayers generally.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House doth disagree with the Lords in the said Amendment."—(Sir J. Lubbock.)

* MR. WHITMORE (Chelsea)

said, he could not throw himself into any violent passion against the general principle of betterment, or against the application of it in this particular instance; but, at the same time, he did not see how those hon. Members who had hitherto voted against the particular application of the principle embodied in this Bill could alter their action now. On the contrary, their attitude had been confirmed and strengthened by the decision of the House of Lords' Committee. The right hon. Baronet the Member for the London University had put his case forward with his usual moderation and fairness; but he had admitted that, in fact, the betterment principle was anovel principle, or one to be re-introduced after the lapse of a long period of time. He thought the right hon. Gentleman would agree that it was also a principle which in itself had many opponents; and however much they might wish, in the abstract, and theoretically, to give effect to the general idea of betterment, that the principle in its application was full of difficulty. The right hon. Baronet had said that to give effect to this principle by Public Act would cause delay. He must ask the right hon. Gentleman had not the course followed by the supporters of this principle of attempting to give effect to it by Private Acts of Parliament led to us much delay as would follow from the introduction to that House of a Public Act of Parliament? Ever since the constitution of the London County Council, that Body had tried to tack on a Betterment Clause to every one of the public improvement schemes it had brought forward. What had been the result? So far, it had found itself unable to carry into effect any one of the proposals, and, at least, a delay of five or six years had followed on their persistent attachment to this principle. He did not blame them for their attachment to Betterment, but he said that so long as they refused to allow any London improvement scheme which did not have among its clauses a Betterment Clause, so long experience had shown in the past they were unable to carry such London improvement. He regretted and deplored that result. So long as they persevered in this particular course this must happen—that Committees of that and the other House, in sanctioning the particular application of the betterment principle, must, to some extent, follow the individual predilections and individual prejudices of Members of these Committees. That was, at all events, the lesson of the past. It was the precise result of what had occurred hitherto in the history of this matter. It was very unfortunate that the question of betterment had become, very stupidly, a Party question; but anyone who looked at the proceedings of the Committees which had considered this principle could not deny that the Members who sat on such Committees were largely influenced in their decisions by the accident of belonging to the particular Party to which they were attached. What would be the result of that? In one Session of Parliament they might get a particular London improvement carried out to which the betterment principle would be made applicable, and in a subsequent Session and subsequent Parliament another London improvement might be carried out in which that principle would be rejected, so that instead of there being a stable, consistent, and permanent system on which these improve- ments were carried out, they would have a capricious, piecemeal, and absolutely unfinal system. He believed most honestly that the bulk of the Conservative Members for London would be glad to see this question settled. He believed most of I hem would agree that landowners ami occupiers had, under the Lauds Clauses Act, too often received far too much compensation because of public improvements, and would also agree that changes in the law were necessary; but they differed from the methods of hon. Gentlemen opposite, and they considered that these changes ought to be carried out by Public Act, deliberately passed through that House, and not in a piecemeal fashion by means of a Private Act. If hon. Members opposite would only introduce a Public Bill into this House giving expression to their views on this subject, it would meet with no unfair opposition, and an end might be put to this stupid controversy. But so long as the London County Council unwisely tried to secure their end by proposals in Private Bills, it would be their duty, on public but not on Party grounds, to oppose such a policy. He should, under the circumstances, vote against the proposal of the right hon. Baronet to re-insert the clause.

MR. J. STUART (Shoreditch, Hoxton)

said, he had hoped the House would have escaped another Debate on the betterment principle, which was affirmed at the last discussion by a majority of 2 to 1. He had still more hoped that criticisms on the attitude of the London County Council on the general matters with which it had to deal would also have been avoided. He should not reply to the last observations of the hon. Member for Chelsea, further than by saying that in regard to this question the London County Council was aware that upon it the House had confidently and distinctly declared its opinion. The House of Lords was in sharp contradiction with the House of Commons, and the point was what should they now do in reference to the action of the Peers in throwing out the Betterment Clause without discussion on its merits, but merely on the ground that it was not a suitable subject to be dealt with in a Private Bill. Two grounds were alleged for that action—namely, that the clause contained two new principles, neither of which, however, Was, as a fact, to be found in it. The complaints were that it constituted an assessment of capital value, and that it created arbitrary areas for taxation. So far from its being a clause for the assessment and taxation of capital values, his hon. Friend the Member for St. George's-in-the-East (Mr. Benn) had placed upon the Paper certain Amendments which distinctly provided that in the case where there was a betterment of £200, £100ouly was to be charged, and that at the rate of £3 per annum. That was a very different thing from the assessment of capital value. Then, as to the arbitrary delimitation of areas of taxation, there was no such thing in the clause; but even if there wore it would be a very proper provision to introduce in Private Bill legislation, and many instances might be cited in which limited areas had been subjected to special taxation because of the benefit they had derived from particular expenditure. The principle was included in Bills promoted in 1890 and 1892, and it met with the full approval of the right hon. Gentleman who, in the last Conservative Administration, filled the Office of President of the Local Government Board (Mr. Ritchie); and in those years it was rejected not because it was unsuitable in a Private Bill, but on its merits. But now, they had a very excellent opportunity of experimentally applying the principle; and that high authority, Lord Morley, the Chairman of the Lords' Committees, said that it would be extremely difficult by a Public Act to lay down principles which would apply to a variety of cases which depended entirely on local circumstance, and that, therefore, the subject was one which might legitimately and rightly be left to Private Bill legislation. The same view was taken by the Lord Chancellor; but in spite of these opinions the Lords, by a very slender majority, threw out the clause. He agreed with the Lord Chancellor that they were bound to accept that action as a pronouncement of the House of Lords against the principle of betterment—a pronouncement made without examination of the principle which the House of Commons, after careful and continuous examination for many weeks, had affirmed. They regretted that the House of Lords had not examined, into the question, and he now called upon the House of Commons to stand by its guns and to send the Bill back to the House of Lords for the re-insertion of the clause. This was the second time in which a Bill of great importance to London had been sent back from the Upper House mutilated and destroyed, and the people of the Metropolis had already suffered very great loss through the action of the Peers. This was not a Party question, for hon. Members sitting on the Opposition Benches were numbered among the supporters of the principle; and he would impress upon them that it was neither fair nor just nor right to the people of London that the House of Lords, without the slightest examination, should mutilate and destroy their Bills. He appealed to the House of Commons to support the decisions of its own Committee, to stand up for its own decision, and to stand forward as the protector of the London ratepayer in a most just reform.

* COLONEL HUGHES (Woolwich)

hoped that a further conference between the two Houses would result in the reinsertion of the clause, if only for experimental purposes, in order to ascertain how the principle of betterment would work. They nearly all approved the principle, and they only differed as to the method of giving effect to it. Before a general Bill dealing with it could be introduced, it was desirable that they should have some experience of its working; and by the Bill now before the House they were given an opportunity of trying within the next few years whether the valuation of betterment could be equitably adjusted. Let them not reject the principle from this Bill, because it was a good one, and he believed that if it had been applied to the Black wall Tunnel Scheme a considerable portion of the expense of that undertaking would have been defrayed by owners, the value of whose land had been increased twenty-fold by the improvement. The London County Council were perfectly right in seeking to stop the continuous accumulation of debt, and in trying to levy a portion of the charge for improvements on those whose property was benefited. The very fact that a Bill for the equalisation of rating in the Metropolis had been introduced showed that the limit of the taxation of occu- piers had been reached, and he thought it would be very unwise to prevent the application of the betterment principle in this case.

* SIR J. FERGUSSON (Manchester, N.E.)

As Chairman of the Committee which considered this Bill I desire to intervene for a few moments in the Debate. The hon. Member for the Hoxton Division of Shoreditch (Mr. J. Stuart) has complained of the Bill being mutilated and destroyed by the House of Lords; but that is a mere figurative expression, for all we have to consider is the omission of a clause which provides for the application of the principle of betterment to the improvement authorised by the Bill itself. The area to which the principle is proposed to be applied is very small, and as the total amount it is suggested it will be possible to recover is only £5,000, the mutilation of the Bill appears to be extremely problematical. The interpretation which the Lord Chancellor gave as to the action of the House of Lords being a pronouncement against the principle itself is not binding upon the House of Lords. That House simply decided that it would not consider the novel principle of betterment in a Private Bill on the ground that it ought to be dealt with by general legislation. In so deciding it was perfectly consistent, because on a former occasion a very strong Committee of its own Members reported that it was impossible that the principle could be fairly applied to individual eases. And when the hon. Member for Hoxton referred to the fairness with which the principle was to be applied, I could not help bearing in mind that the area to be subjected to the charge was not the parish which the witnesses declared might be considerably benefited, but was to be that area immediately abutting on the proposed new roadway. When it was proposed to apply the betterment principle to the Strand Improvement Scheme, the idea was dropped because of the difficulty of fixing the limits within which it should be applied, and I venture to assert that those difficulties are still more marked in the present case. Here we have a roadway the houses upon which are to be made liable to the special charge, and the owners will only be able to dispute the charge by going before an arbitrator appointed by the Board of Trade. Possibly the houses immediately abutting on the roadway will be enhanced in value, and so, too, may those which happened to be corner houses in streets immediately adjoining. Then on what principle of justice is one set of houses to be arbitrarily assessed for the improvement and the other set of houses to escape? The principle of application in this case is absolutely inequitable. Another objection to this proposal is that while the benefit to the property may be of only a temporary nature, and be exhausted in a few years, the charge is practically a permanent one. The only true principle upon which such a charge as this can be imposed is in the nature of a quinquennial assessment of rents, and under such a plan as that property which really benefits by a public improvement can be made to bear its fair share of the burden in the form of increased rates. On the grounds I have stated I hope the House will support the House of Lords in the rejection of the clause.

THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (Mr. S. BUXTON,) Tower Hamlets, Poplar

I do not propose to discuss the principle of betterment on the merits of this particular case. My right hon. Friend the President of the Local Government Board has stated on a previous occasion the views of the Government in regard to this matter; the question on that occasion was fully and thoroughly discussed, and the House, by a large majority, approved the insertion of the principle in this Bill. The Government adhere to the view which was taken by them on the Second Reading of the Bill. There ought to be a fair opportunity afforded of trying the principle of betterment, and I think that the House ought to give this power to the County Council, so that, as far as practicable, there shall be an extra portion of the cost of great public improvements placed on the shoulders of those who most largely benefit by their construction. I may remind the House that while the Betterment Clause was rejected by the Lords by the very narrow majority of 51 to 36, it was affirmed by the House of Commons by 216 votes against 118, and I hope that in these circumstances the House will disagree with the Lords' Amendments.

MR. FORWOOD (Lancashire, Ormskirk)

It might be supposed that the betterment principle only affects Loudon, whereas it is a matter of principle which affects the country at large, especially the large urban constituencies. I have been connected for many years with the management of one of the largest Municipalities, which has spent between £2,000,000 and £3,000,000 in street improvements, and I affirm that it is absolutely impossible to adjust with any equity and fairness the charge of betterment on the adjoining property. It is impossible for anyone to estimate how much property immediately abutting on the roadway to be improved has been benefited, or how much a mile away or more has been benefited. Let us take the case cited by the hon. and gallant Member for Woolwich (Colonel Hughes), the tunnel constructed at Blackwall. He said it had raised the assessable value of adjoining property. But it will probably do more than that; it will cause the conversion of agricultural land into building land, and land even a quarter of a mile distant from the tunnel will benefit. Where, then, is the line to be drawn for the delimitation of the betterment area? It certainly would not be fair, simply to include the property immediately adjoining the tunnel. The same difficulty arises in the case now before the House, and I say the only way to overcome it is for the County Council to buy the land for some considerable width on each side of the roadway and to take care that the price paid for the land on the proposed street is the price of the back land before an attempt is made to construct the street. That laud could be re-sold, and thus the real improved value of the laud is obtained by the public, and not by the owners of the land. The question of betterment is in this way avoided. This is the principle which, if I remember rightly, was adopted by the Metropolitan Board of Works with reference to Northumberland House and the adjoining land, and this has been the system followed by the Municipality with which I have been connected. We have paid largely for public improvements by buying back land and selling it at a higher price than we gave for it.

MR. J. ROWLANDS (Finsbury, F.)

said, the whole question of recoupment had been dealt with by the Committee. They had had the figures worked out in reference to the recoupment schemes of the Metropolitan Board of Works, which showed that every scheme, with the exception of the Northumberland House scheme, where the Board of Works were able to enter into negotiations with one purchaser for the undeveloped land, had been carried out at a great loss. To carry out the principle of recoupment, it would be necessary to buy the back property. They had to compensate every tenant on each property; they acquired the property, and then they had simply the freehold of the land loft, and that had to recoup them for the whole of the outlay they had incurred. However, it was not necessary to go into that question to-day. It was considered in the Committee for eight or nine days, and the result was that it was decided to recommend to the House the betterment principle. The right hon. Member for Manchester had said that the Bill had not conic down to them in a mutilated form. There was no other proposal for improvement in the Bill, and yet the Committee sat for the time he had mentioned. Why was that? Because of the fight on the vital principle of the Bill contained in the clause struck out in the House of Lords. It came to this—were they in London to have great improvements, or were they not? Could they have some relief for occupying tenants, or could they not? Rents had gone up, and rates had gone up at the expense of occupying tenants alone, and improvements which were required were at a standstill because they could not burden occupying tenants with further rates.

MR. KIMBER (Wandsworth)

thought it time that attention should be directed to the Motion before the House, the discussion having turned on the principle of betterment, to which few Members were opposed if it was correctly applied. That principle itself was not involved in the Motion. The question was whether or not the particular method proposed should be adopted for carrying out the principle? Unfortunately, the question had taken a Party turn, the London County Council being supported by the present Government in all their measures, whatever their tendency. The question was, as the House of Lords had said, whether they should improve the principle of betterment by means of an entirely now tax—whether the experience of 200 or 300 years should be ignored, and they should have a restricted area of taxation rather than that which had been adopted in the Metropolis for so many years? The right hon. Baronet opposite had said that the two grounds taken by the House of Lords were not well-founded. He had said that the House of Lords were wrong in saying that this clause attempted to assess capital values, but he had not attempted to prove his contention by argument. The right hon. Baronet's argument was that if the House of Lords were right, and if a capital tax were going to be imposed, he should be with them, and he did not argue for the clause as against the objection of the House of Lords. He (Mr. Kimber), therefore, claimed the right hon. Baronet as a supporter of his argument that the House of Lords were right in saying that the clause involved a capital charge. As to the other point that the House of Lords took—namely, that; the Betterment Clause created a new area of taxation—hon. Members opposite denied that this was so; but they did not attempt, by reference to the clause, to show that that was so. Not only was it a new defined area, but a map was produced showing the limits of the application of the Betterment Clause, and that was actually a part of the Bill, and was signed by the Chairman of the Committee.

* SIR J. LUBBOCK

said, the taxation would not be levied on that area; but if there was property within that area that was bettered, that would have to pay.

MR. KIMBER

did not think that was an answer. The map showed that the area was a specific one for taxation. Reference had been made to the Committee. He happened to have been a Member of it, as he had been of the previous Committee which had considered the Betterment Clause two years before. The authority of the Committee would not be taken as great, for the reason that it was a Committee of nine, and they were divided on the principle of betterment by five to four, and amongst the five was a member of the Loudon County Council who were promoting the Bill. The decision of the Committee was the decision of the London County Council; nothing more, and no more authority could be attached to it. The hon. Member for Shoreditch said this was never discussed in the Lords at all; but he (Mr. Kimber) was present and heard the discussion, and the question could not have been more deliberately discussed. The question was fairly gone into; the clause was described in fair and accurate terms, and the decision was given after due deliberation. The hon. Member for Shoreditch (Mr. J. Stuart) said that all the London County Council desired was to do justice to the ratepayers; but if he might be allowed to say so, the question of justice, in the opinion of the London County Council, was not always the same as the idea of justice amongst the ratepayers of the Metropolis. If a man was bettered by £20 or £200 capital value, and if the charge on that at the ordinary rate was not enough, they could double the charge, or increase it. At any rate, they should give him the benefit of the principle of the annual revision and value which they had had in force for so many years—even centuries—in the City of London. Why had not the Council adopted that plan? Because they wanted to attack a particular class—namely, the ground landlords. No wonder that in that they were supported by the Government of the Prime Minister, that right hon. Gentleman himself having been so closely associated with assaults against the classes, and with attempts to sow dissensions between them and the people. As an example of the injustice of the clause, if a man had two properties within the limited area, one of which was admittedly worsened and the other bettered, while he was taxed with regard to the bettered property he was not allowed to set off anything in respect of the worsened property. Moreover, he was not allowed an appeal. As a matter of fact, three-fourths of the House had not had an opportunity of examining this matter, and must be taken as not understanding the particular kind of betterment now proposed. Private Bills were not circulated like Public Bills, and hon. Members did not come down at 3 o'clock to discuss them.

* MR. BARTLEY (Islington, N.)

said, they all agreed that if betterment could be fairly adjusted it was a fair pro- position. He differed rather from some of his hon. Friends, who held that the subject was one which could be better dealt with in a general Bill than in a special Bill. It seemed to him that the question of betterment was so peculiar to the particular district in which it occurred that it was better to consider each case specially in this way than in a general Bill. He, therefore, asked himself whether the proposal in the present measure, as an experiment, was fair and reasonable? The improved value which would attach to the property in the street when this bridge was constructed, and which would be added at the public cost, would be carefully ascertained and adjusted, and half the amount on a 3 per cent, scale would be added to the taxation of the property. He could not but think that that was a reasonable and fair proposition as an experiment. Looking at it from the point of view of equity, it must commend itself to every reasonable-minded man. He acknowledged that he had a certain sympathy against the County Council, but that very fact induced him to look at this matter rather more carefully than he should otherwise do. He had opposed several of these schemes—notably that in the Strand—as being unfair; but the present proposal was framed so as to cause the least possible amount of mischief, and if, when it was adjusted, it proved to be a fair experiment, it would have done something to show how the principle of betterment could be adopted. They all agreed that if property was improved by public works and at public cost the owners of that property should, in some equitable measure, share the burden of the cost in a greater degree than others whose property was not thus individually improved.

Question put.

The House divided:—Ayes 221; Noes 88.—(Division List, No. 260.)

MR. BENN (Tower Hamlets, St. George's)

said, it was not necessary to trouble the House with any explanation respecting the Amendments which stood on the Paper in his name. They had been framed to carry out a pledge given to the hon. Member for Wandsworth (Mr. Kimber) to destroy the mortgage character of the charge, and to put it in the form of an annuity. He therefore moved them as printed.

Amendments proposed, Clause 41, page 55, line 18, leave out "annual. Page 86, line 29, leave out from the second "to," to "the," in line 32, and insert "redeem the charge upon any lands on payment to the Council of any arrears thereof, and of a sum equal to thirty-three times the amount of such charge, and from and after such redemption. Page 36, line 37, leave out "annual."—(Mr. Benn.)

Amendments agreed to.

Amendment proposed, Clause 5, page 9, to omit lines 5, 6, and 7, and to insert "In consideration of this section no part of a Railway, and land of a Railway Company, shall be deemed to be land liable to an improvement charge, or rate authorised by this Act,"—(Sir J. Lubbock.)

Amendment agreed to.

Committee appointed, to draw up Reasons to be assigned to the Lords for disagreeing to one of the Amendments made by the Lords to the Bill:—Mr. Henry H. Fowler, Mr. Buxton, Sir John Lubbock, Mr. James Stuart, Mr. Benn, Mr. James Rowlands, Mr. Pickersgill, and Mr. Causton:—To withdraw immediately; Three to be the quorum.

Reasons for disagreeing to one of the Lords' Amendments reported, and agreed to.

To be communicated to The Lords.