§ MR. HENNIKER HEATON (Canterbury)I beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, whether, in regard to the Telegraph Debt of £10,130,000, and the suggestion to pay it off, his attention has been called to the statements made on page 37 of the Forty-first Annual Report of the Postmaster General, for 1895, that during the year ended the 31st March last the expenditure exceeded the revenue by about £154,000, to which must be added the interest (£298,000) on the capital expenditure incurred at the transfer, making the total loss for the year about £452,000; that in the period of 25 years since 1870 the receipts show a balance of about £1,795,000 in excess of the expenditure, but they fall short of meeting the interest on capital, the aggregate deficiency in this respect being £5,859,000; whether, in view of these statements, he will state what portion of the original purchase money stock 11 of £10,130,000 has been, paid off in proportion to the rest of the National Debt; and, what is the difference in the amount of the interest payable on such stock 25 years ago, and the amount (£298,000) set down for 1895 in the Report and Accounts of the Postmaster General?
§ * MR. HANBURYThe passage at page 37 of the Postmaster General's Report was written before the accounts of the year had been fully made up, and only purported to give approximate figures. The actual figures will be found in Parliamentary Paper No. 16 of the present Session. The excess of expenditure over revenue in the year to March 31, 1895—not March last—was £141,637 12s. 7d. The Post Office is not aware that any proportion of the moneys applied to the reduction of the National Debt has been ear-marked as a fund for paying off the stock created for the purchase of the telegraphs. Any separate and specific treatment of the telegraph capital would, it is feared, have resulted in its being increased rather than reduced. It may, in a sense, be said that the working of the telegraphs has itself hindered the reduction of the National Debt, for, in the first place, it has added to it more than £10,000,000, and, in the second place, it has resulted in deficiencies amounting to £5,847,110 3s. 6d., which have had to be made good out of the general taxation; and had any portion of the Telegraph Debt been paid off, as my hon. Friend supposes, the payment must have been made from the balances on other votes, except to the extent of £67,600 in 1870 and 1871. If, therefore, a strict balance-sheet of the working of the telegraphs was prepared, the outstanding debt would not be between 10 and 11 millions, but would be about 16 millions. The interest for each year from 1870 is set forth in Parliamentary Paper No. 5. In 1870 it was £214,500, and in 1894–5 it was £298,888 5s., the difference being £84,888 5s.