HC Deb 14 June 1894 vol 25 cc1059-69

Order read for resuming Adjourned Debate on Question [12th June], That it be an Instruction to the Committee, to whom the Great Western Railway (No. 1) Bill [Lords'] is referred, to strike out from the Bill so much thereof as authorises the construction and maintenance of the railways and works described as Railway No. 1 and Railway No. 2."—(Sir G. Osborne Morgan)

Question again proposed.

Debate resumed.

*SIR G. OSBORNE MORGAN

said, that the Instruction referred to two short lines of railway, in length altogether about 2½ miles, connecting the district of Rhos, or, as it was locally known, Rhosllanerchrugog, with the station of Wrexham. He was perfectly aware that the course which he was asking the House to take was unusual, but it was not unprecedented, for only three weeks ago the House threw out the Truro and Newquay Junction Railway Bill after it had been considered and passed by a Committee. The grounds upon which the Truro and Newquay Bill was rejected were precisely the grounds upon which he asked the House to pass his Instruction, and they were stated very clearly by the hon. Member for Truro, who seconded the rejection of that Bill, and who said if the Bill passed there would be an end of all hope of breaking up the monopoly of the Great Western Railway in Cornwall, and further added that the feeling of the locality was entirely against the Bill. The Member for South Islington (Sir A. Rollit), than whom there was no one more competent to speak on such a question, made a very important speech upon the occasion. He said, speaking as the Chairman of the Railway Rates Commission— Many complaints regarding high rates were heard before the Commission, but the Great Western Railway Company were the chief offenders. He warned the House against enlarging a monopoly which had proved detrimental to the interests of the district. It was upon those grounds the Cornish Bill was fought, and it was defeated by the enormous majority of five to one, the numbers being 290 against and 59 for the Bill. On that occasion the Members for Cornwall came up in great force to oppose the Bill. He had looked carefully through the Division List, and he found amongst the Members who opposed the Bill his right hon. Friend the Member for Bodmin (Mr. Courtney), who was one of the greatest authorities upon such a subject in the House of Commons, and he also found on the same side the names of almost every Member of the Government, amongst the rest being the present President of the Board of Trade (Mr. Bryce). He should be sorry to think that his Welsh colleagues were less alive to the wishes of their countrymen than their Cornish cousins, and he could not think that the Government would look with a less friendly eye on the wishes of Welsh constituencies than on those of the Cornish. The two cases seemed to him to be exactly on all-fours, except that the Cornish Bill had passed through a Committee of the House of Commons, and this Bill had passed through a Committee of the House of Lords. Of course, he did not wish to raise an invidious discussion as to the relative merits of the House of Lords and the House of Commons, but this he did say: it seemed a much stronger thing for the House of Commons deliberately to send a Bill to a Select Committee, and then when that Select Committee, presided over by so experienced and able a Chairman as his hon. Friend the Member for Somerset, unanimously decided in favour of that Bill, for the House of Commons to throw it out, than for the House in the first instance to save the Committee the trouble of deciding on the matter. The grounds upon which he asked the House to pass this Instruction lie would state with all possible brevity. The town or district of Rhos was situated in the very centre of East Denbighshire, and was the largest mining centre in the whole of North Wales. The present population was something like 12,000, nearly the whole of whom were working men, most of them being colliers. Rhos was about four miles from the market town of Wrexham, and, strange as it might seem, up to the present time there had been no direct railway communication between these two places. When the Bill was before the House of Lords Committee Mr. Pope, Q.C., seemed to think it was perfectly ridiculous that a collier should care for walking four miles, but he (Sir Gr. Osborne Morgan) wished to know whether Mr. Pope, or any member of his profession, would like, after working in a mine for eight hours, to walk four miles along a muddy road? The people of the district had year after year appealed to the Great Western Railway Company for further accommodation, and year after year the Great Western Railway Company had turned a deaf ear to the appeals of the people of Rhos, and even the influence of the late Sir Watkin Wynn, the "Prince in Wales," who was popular, and deservedly popular, did not avail. At last the people determined to have a railway of their own. He was bound to say there was another reason which influenced them, and that was the exorbitantly high rates which, as the result of their monopoly, the Great Western Company were able to charge and which rates were absolutely prohibitive. It was in these circumstances that the East Denbighshire line was launched, and then, for the first time, the Great Western Company brought forward their scheme. The East Denbighshire railway scheme, which had been rejected by the House of Lords, was more convenient for the district than the railway of the Great Western, having a more convenient terminus at Rhos and having access to the Central Station at Wrexham, which was in the centre of the town, and not like that of the Great Western, five-eighths of a mile distant. The East Denbighshire scheme would also have connection with the Wrexham, Mold, and Connah's Quay line, and with the Ellesmere Railway. The strongest evidence was given of the wishes of the population in favour of the East Denbighshire Railway, and there was really no evidence to the contrary. Besides the ground of convenience there, was the fact that they were trying to break up a monopoly under which this district had groaned for 20 years past, and which had enabled the Great Western Railway to charge rates which were simply prohibitive. Not only was the feeling of the district in favour of the East Denbighshire Railway Company's scheme, but there was every chance that even if the Great Western line were authorised to be made it would never be completed. Some 20 years ago the Great Western were authorised to make a line from Wrexham to Mold. That line was promoted for the purpose of shutting out a rival line, and yet except for three or four miles that railway was just where it was 20 years ago, and like the Essex farms, of which they heard the other day, was falling back into a state of nature. The two schemes with which he was now dealing went before a Committee of the House of Lords, Lord Camperdown presiding, and he drew attention to a remark of the Chairman, when counsel proposed to call evidence of people on the spot. Here was what occurred as given in the Report of the proceedings before that Committee— Mr. Batten: I propose, my Lord, to call the Hon. George T. Kenyon, the hon. Member for the Wrexham Borough; he has been asked by his constituents to come and tell your Lordships what they think of the Bill. It will not take a minute. The Chairman: We have had the other Member of Parliament, so I suppose we must have this one. Of course, what we really want is to go to the root of the matter and to know who is going to find the money. Of course, the people on the spot are in favour of it, and prefer your scheme to the other. I have no doubt you can produce any number of them. On the grounds that the Great Western Railway were in possession, and also on the ground that there would be difficulty in raising the money for the line, the Lords Committee threw out the East Denbighshire Bill. As soon as the decision of the Committee became known a public meeting, attended by between 800 and 900 people, was held at Rhos on the 2nd instant, at which the following resolution was carried without a single dissentient:— That this meeting is of opinion that the construction of the proposed Great Western Railway between Wrexham and Rhos will in no sense adequately serve Rhos and Ponkey, inasmuch as no railway will be beneficial to the district which does not communicate with the centre of Wrexham, and that the passing of the said Great Western Railway Bill into law will make it wholly impossible in the future to obtain Parliamentary sanction for a second line in this neighbourhood to meet its real requirements. Since then he had presented Petitions largely signed by the various official bodies in the locality, including the Wrexham Corporation, all strongly asking the House to reject the Bill of the Great Western Railway Company or to pass this Instruction, though it was true that 126 of his constituents had asked him not to persevere with his Motion. There was no foundation for the assertion that the capital could not be found for the East Denbighshire line, which, on the contrary, would be subscribed without difficulty. He asked the House not to extend a monopoly which was doing the greatest possible harm to the district, in opposition to the strong feeling of the inhabitants. He knew that in fighting the case of the poor Welsh collier he had arrayed against him one of the richest and most powerful corporations in England; but he had great faith in the justice of the House of Commons, and he hoped, in view of the precedent they had set in the Cornish case recently, they would not go through the cruel farce of sending the Bill to a Committee, but would decide the matter in the sense indicated in his Instruction.

MR. KENYON (Denbigh, &c.),

in seconding the Motion, said, he quite agreed with the course which the right hon. Baronet opposite had asked the House to pursue. The conduct of the Great Western Railway Company in this matter was in accord with their general line of policy, which was a very old one. Those who were interested in railway legislation could tell them to what lengths the Company would go in order to remain in possession of their preserves, and those who knew the district affected by this line could tell them how little the Great Western Company had done in the direction of improving the railway communication. He spoke for his own constituents, and he thought he might speak also for the constituents of the right hon. Baronet in saying that they had no sympathy with this Bill. As a fact, the line as proposed by the Great Western Company would not afford that accommodation to the inhabitants of Rhos and district which they had a right to expect. The Bill provided a route which his constituents did not want. What the people wanted was increased facilities for getting into Wrexham, where they did their marketing, but this line never took them there at all; it merely took them five-eighths of a mile from the Wrexham, Mold, and Connah's Quay Railway. A previous Bill which had passed in the House conceded the principle that there was to be an independent line and a central station in Wrexham. He wished the right hon. Baronet had told them of the experience that a person had who arrived at the station of the Wrexham, Mold, and Connah's Quay Railway—of the inconvenience and the long waits for trains. He made a confident appeal to the House not to further tie up the district by passing this Bill.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That it be an Instruction to the Committees to whom the Great Western Railway (No. 1) Bill [Lords) is referred, to strike out from the Bill so much thereof as authorises the construction and maintenance of the railways and works described as Railway No. 1 and Railway No. 2."—(Sir G. Osborne Morgan.)

MR. W. LONG (Liverpool, West Derby)

said, he must ask the leave of the House to say a few words with regard to the statements made by the right hon. Baronet opposite and his hon. Friend behind him. On behalf of the Great Western Railway Company he would like to thank the right hon. Baronet for the courtesy he had shown in abandoning his orignal proposal for rejection of the Bill on the Third Reading, and substituting for it the more convenient course which had been adopted that day. He ventured to submit with great respect that the two speeches which had been delivered by the Mover and Seconder of the Instruction did not justify the course which had been recommended to the House. The right hon. Baronet had given them a great deal of information about the history of the Great Western Railway, and had said a good deal about the rates which they charged. These were matters into which he should not go, because the proper time for such a discussion was when a Bill, of which they had heard, was introduced by the Government. So far as he could gather from the speech of the right hon. Baronet, his principal grievance was that he was unable while in London to consume his own vegetables as when he was at home. Well, he sympathised with the right hon. Gentleman in his deprivation, and he was sure that the Great Western Railway Company sympathised with him also. He understood that the hon. Gentleman behind him based his argument upon different grounds. The hon. Gentleman no doubt had some grievances to bring forward; but although there might be considerable force in them, he could not help thinking that this was anything but an opportune time for lecturing the Great Western Company on the way in which they should arrange their services of trains. If his hon. Friend wished to amend the train service he would be very much more likely to achieve his object by addressing his complaints or criticisms to the officers who were connected with the Company and the administration of the line rather than submit them to the House of Commons at a moment when they were considering an Instruction of this kind. The right hon. Baronet said he supposed he would be met by the ordinary stock argument, that this was not the proper method of dealing with a matter of this sort. He (Mr. Long), at all events, thought that those who supported the Bill were entitled to ask the House, before it adopted an inconvenient procedure, to consider and to bear in mind that the matters involved could only be properly construed by a Committee upstairs, and that already the House of Lords had very carefully considered it, and come to a decision upon it. The decision which had been arrived at was that the rejection of the Bill which the right hon. Baronet said ought, in his opinion, to have been passed. If the work of Committees was to be done not only upstairs but revised constantly in the House of Commons it was certain that very serious results would follow. A procedure of this sort would lead to this result—that they would find it very difficult to get gentlemen to sit upon these Committees at all knowing it was very possible that their proceedings might be rendered void and useless by the subsequent action of the House of Commons. He did not complain that gentlemen representing certain constituencies which were affected by the operation of this Bill should take a certain line of action upon it, but what he did submit was that if they had objections to offer they should set them out in Committee, and not to the House of Commons. There was nothing whatever to prevent this question being raised before the Committee upstairs. If the Committee thought that the Great Western Railway Company was exercising a monopoly that was disadvantageous to the whole district they would be able to decline to agree to any extension of the Company's powers. In the meantime, his contention was that it was unfair to enter into any premature discussion. Hon. Gentlemen had spoken of the monopoly of the Great Western Railway Company, but those who knew the Great Western Railway knew that it ran through an enormous tract of country of a purely agricultural character which did not bring in anything like the returns which were forthcoming in the case of railways serving the populous districts of the country. To levy wholesale charges against the Company because there might be grievances in some instances was a course which he believed to be not only unprecedented but unwise. If there was anything at all in the arguments to which they had been listening, the House could never again allow a great Railway Company to extend its system because charges were made against it of mistakes and omissions. The right hon. Baronet had put it to the House that in some cases the rates charged by the Great Western Company were excessive, and upon that ground the local Company ought to be entrusted with the making of this line. He had no wish to go into details, but bethought he might fairly remind the House that the promoters of the alternative scheme, in setting out their case before the Committee of the House of Lords, sought to prove that they would be able to find the money for the making of the line. But they failed to establish that fact to the satisfaction of the Lords Committee, and, therefore, he said that although the right hon. Baronet might believe, as no doubt he did believe, that the money would be forthcoming, it was a circumstance for consideration that the Lords were of opinion that there was no ground for supposing that the necessary funds could be produced. Whatever the objections of the right hon. Baronet might be—whether he was right or whether the Great Western Company was right—the points at issue could only be brought out by a Committee which could take evidence in the ordinary and proper form. They could not take evidence in the House of Commons. For the reasons he had stated he respectfully asked the House to reject the Motion, and allow the Bill to go upstairs to a Committee, where it would be considered like other Bills, and take its chance of success or failure.

SIR A. HICKMAN (Wolverhampton, W.)

said, he felt he must make one or two remarks with respect to the charge of the right hon. Baronet that the Great Western Company was in the habit of charging prohibitive rates. He challenged that statement absolutely, and he would point out that if the charge could be sustained before the Committee they could call upon the Company to modify the rates complained of or reject the Bill.

THE PEESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF TRADE (Mr. BRYCE,) Aberdeen, S.

said, he did not intend to enter into the questions of fact which had been mentioned by the Mover and Seconder of the Instruction to the Committee or to discuss any matters which he considered to be outside the immediate scope of the principle which they had to decide. He had very attentively listened to the arguments which had been advanced on both sides. It required a great deal of local knowledge in order to form a proper judgment upon the facts as they had been presented to the House. On behalf of the Department which he represented, he had just a word to say with regard to the policy that was involved. There was a considerable distinction between this case and that of the Cornish Railway with which the House dealt the other day. That was an extreme case. The matter had been gone into by the Committee; a very great deal of evidence was given, and there was much conflict of opinion. The House did not agree with the conclusion at which the Committee arrived, and took the unusual but proper course on the Third Reading of throwing out the Bill which was adopted by the Committee. Here, however, the case was different, because the House was not aware of the merits of the case, no Committee of the House having yet inquired into it. But speaking on behalf of the Board of Trade, he would put it to the House that a very grave danger might arise if they abandoned the recognised policy of entrusting Bills of this character to a Committee upstairs. A Committee had every opportunity of investigating matters thoroughly and of obtaining evidence upon which to found an opinion, and if the House were to take questions of this kind out of the hands of the Committee they would cease to be respected, while the practice of taking the decision of the House would spread—a decision which would be arrived at not upon evidence such as would be taken before a Committee upstairs, but which would be the outcome of personal and local predilections, and influenced perhaps by political opinion. He felt bound to put these considerations before the House, and in the interest of the principle upon which Private Bills had hitherto been conducted he counselled the hon. Baronet to withdraw his Motion and to leave the Bill to the cognisance of the Committee.

MR. HERBERT LEWIS&c.) (Flint,

said, he had had experience of another case wherein the Great Western Railway, by putting forward an alternative scheme, had kept a whole district without railway service for 20 years. In this case the allegation was that the projected line was devised simply for blocking purposes, and no argument had been adduced that afternoon to show that such was not the fact. The Great Western Company took no proceedings whatever to open up this particular district until a movement was set on foot for the construction of a local line. They were told they ought to submit entirely to the decision of the Committees which sat upstairs. All he had to say in reply to that was that the promoters of small private lines were placed at a terrible disadvantage when they were opposed by powerful railway monopolies. Therefore, he urged that it was the duty of the House to stand by those who voiced the feeling of the locality. He hoped the House would not allow this blocking and choking policy to go on. In his opinion, this was just as extreme a case as the Cornish case.

SIR H. JAMES (Bury, Lancashire)

said, that if this Instruction were conceded the jurisdiction of the Committees upstairs would be entirely ousted. The circumstances here were very different to those of the Cornish case. In this instance the House reviewed the case of a Bill after the evidence had been given, whereas they were now asked to come to a conclusion without having had the advantage of hearing what view a Committee of the House of Commons took upon it. It was said that that House was a more competent tribunal than a Committee, and the right hon. Baronet the Member for Denbighshire had said that he did not want any witnesses. He, however, did not see that the House could possibly come to any conclusion until they had heard what was the case presented to the Committee.

Question put.

The House divided:—Ayes 114; Noes 156.—(Division List, No. 114.)

MR. YOUNG (Cavan, E.)

(addressing the Speaker) said: I wish to draw your attention, Sir, and the attention of the House, to a matter which has been a source of inconvenience to a few Members of this House who have been sitting to-day on a Committee of the House of Lords. No bell is provided there to announce Divisions in this House, and we have in consequence been deprived of the opportunity of taking part in the Division which has just occurred. The messenger, of course, came and told us there was a Division, but the information arrived too late for us to take part in it.

*MR. SPEAKER

The House of Lords Committee Room is out of the reach of our Division Bells, but I quite agree with the hon. Member that it is highly expedient that when Committees are there sitting, messengers should be told off to inform Members as to what is passing in this House.

Forward to