HC Deb 03 July 1896 vol 42 cc633-44

On the Motion for the Third Reading of this Bill,

MR. HENRY CUBITT (Surrey, Reigate), moved, to leave out the word "now," and at the end of the Question to add the words "upon this day three months." He remarked that he was aware that the course he was taking was an unusual one, but he thought it would be seen that the circumstances justified it. In the first place, he had to remark that formal notice of the Bill was not given to the Corporation in proper time, and not until just before the Second Reading. He put down an Amendment for the rejection of the Bill, but, after consulting the authorities of the House, he felt that the proper course to take, under the circumstances, was for the Corporation to petition the Committee on Standing Orders, and for the petition to go before the Committee on the Bill, although it happened that the Corporation were too late to be heard before the Committee against the Bill in the usual way. He, therefore, took no action on the Second Reading, and the Bill was allowed to pass. But as the Standing Orders Committee, in the exercise of their functions, felt that they could not give the Reigate Corporation a locus standi, the only course open to them was for him, as their representative, to move the rejection of the Bill on the Third Reading. It might be asked why the Reigate Corporation was not aware of the Bill at an earlier date? It was brought to their notice, but not formally. It was the duty of the Finance Committee to consider Bills of this kind and to report to the Corporation upon them, and, of course, they took their legal advice in such matters from the Town Clerk. The Chairman of the Finance Committee and the Town Clerk were the two persons who brought the Bill to the notice of the Corporation, and although he did not wish to make charges against anyone, he was bound to say that, considering that both those gentlemen were interested in the Bill—one of them in the East Surrey Company, and the other in the Reigate Company—he thought they ought to have been specially careful in seeing that the Corporation were made fully aware, and in proper time, of the introduction and importance of this Bill. ["Hear, hear!"] He would now explain why the Reigate Corporation opposed the Measure so strongly. The main object of the Bill was to empower the East Surrey Company to buy up the undertaking of the Reigate Water Company, which supplied part of the borough of Reigate. Now, the Corporation of Reigate naturally desired to keep the control of its own water supply, and if the East Surrey Company bought up the smaller company they would obtain the whole control of the water supply of the borough, of which they had already secured the larger portion. Moreover, the Corporation contended that the charges of the East Surrey Company were excessive. The Reigate Company had no power to take up the streets of the borough for the purpose of laying mains without the leave of the Corporation, and this fact gave the Corporation a certain hold over the Company, but the East Surrey Company had such large powers under their Act that the Corporation would have no control whatever over their proceedings in the borough. He had said enough, he hoped, to convince the House that he was warranted in adopting the course he had done, and begged to move the rejection of the Bill.

MR. COSMO BONSOR (Surrey, Wimbledon)

agreed with his hon. Friend in thinking that the course he had now taken was absolutely unprecedented in that House, and regretted extremely that the pressure to which he had alluded in the final sentences of his speech, coming from a small number of his constituents, should have induced him to take a course which seemed to be an unfortunate one. He had been informed, not many minutes ago, that he was supporting this Bill on personal and private grounds, and that he was a large shareholder in this company. But he wished to state at once that he had no interest whatever in the company, and that he was not even a consumer of its water. The only interest he had in this matter was a public one. The Bill did something considerably more than deal with the Reigate question. It offered a supply to the parishes of Walton-on-the-Hill and Kenley. Those parishes were of a very high elevation, and it was absolutely necessary that they should have some water supply, as their population was increasing by leaps and bounds and they were shortly to have the additional advantage of railway communication. The only supply those parishes now got was from very deep wells, or from the water that fell from the roofs of the houses and was collected in tanks. He lived in the district, and could say that the water supply received in the tanks had failed every year, and that the people had been subjected, to their great inconvenience and great danger to their health, to the necessity of drawing their supply from an open pond at Walton-on-the-Heath. It was not fenced in, and cattle, pigs, and other animals strayed into it, and after a certain convivial meeting on Epsom Downs gipsies might be seen washing their linen in it. And that was the sole source of supply for a great number of the people living in that locality. The clergyman of the parish had said the water from the pond made the most excellent tea that could be found in any part of the world; but he did not think the House would like to associate itself with such an idea. He was aware that water companies were not popular bodies in that House; but if hon. Members would only get rid of the prejudice which the name "water" always seemed to arouse, he was certain they would admit that this company deserved generous treatment at the hands of Parliament. It was founded in 1862, and ever since that time Sir Frederick Bramwell had been intimately connected with it. The object was to supply a most difficult district—the valleys and hills of Surrey—with water; and, during an existence of 36 years, this was the first time, so far as he had heard, that the company had been censured in any way, or that it had any difference with the consumers it supplied. For 16 years the company had no dividends at all, and yet it had fulfilled both its Parliamentary obligations and its duties to the consuming public. After 1888 it began to pay 4 per cent. dividends, and last year, for the first time, it paid 5 per cent.—a point which was made a great deal of by the objectors to the Bill. But he did not think that Parliament would consider that a dividend for six years of 4 per cent., and for one year of 5 per cent., was excessive remuneration for a company that had existed for something like 30 years. With regard to the point of opposition raised by his hon. Friend, he would like to point out that the borough of Reigate covered an area of about 6,000 acres, and that the town of Reigate, from which this petition emanated, only occupied 435 acres. The population affected by this Bill was only 4,000 out of a total population of 22,000 residing in the borough of Reigate, while the rateable proportion that was affected was £23,000 a year out of a gross amount of £140,000. Consequently it was really a small clique in the old borough of Reigate that was raising this question. His hon. Friend had alluded to the fact that the Corporation of Reigate had not had a fair chance of opposing this Bill, which he said was smuggled into Parliament without anybody knowing anything of its provisions. He was a member of a Parish Council in the immediate neighbourhood, and the Bill was discussed by them as long ago as November; and it was a matter of common knowledge in Reigate that these particular provisions had been inserted in the Bill. With regard to the statement that the Town Council had been "rushed," he might say that he held in his hand a report of a meeting of the Highways Committee held on the 27th of April—which would have given ample time for this Bill to have been opposed in that House—at which it was discussed. There was a Debate on the whole subject; and when the Highways Committee divided, 14 Members refused to oppose the Bill in Parliament, and 14 was a large majority in a Town Council which only consisted of 24 members. They had, therefore, this fact, that on the 27th of April a majority of the town council of Reigate absolutely refused to oppose the Bill as to which now they were asking the House to take the unprecedented course of rejecting on the Third Reading. This was really a question of a local quarrel between certain members of the Town Council, and they now came to that House and endeavoured to get Parliament to settle their dispute. He would also point out that there was nothing in the procedure of Parliament to prevent the Reigate Town Council, if they pleased, from framing a Bill next year for the purpose of acquiring control over their own water supply. That would be a reasonable course for them to take, but he did not think it was at all reasonable for them to ask Parliament to throw out a Bill which had been passed by Committees of both Houses and which was now at its final stage, simply on the ground that there had been a local quarrel. The Reigate Water Company had had the greatest possible difficulty in supplying water even to the small number of consumers which they had. It was a fact that three years ago, in the drought, they had to appeal to the East Surrey Water Company for assistance, and that Company connected their mains with the Reigate mains so as to give them the supply which was wanted. Again, he thought it was in the heavy frost of last year that there was a water famine in Reigate. Consequently, if this portion of the Bill was taken out, the population of Reigate would be placed in great danger of being without water. He hoped the House, by a large majority, would reject this Motion. There was one remarkable fact to which he would like to direct the attention of the House. This was, he thought, the fourth occasion within a fortnight on which a Private Bill, after it had been through all its previous stages, had been opposed on the Third Reading by a small clique for certain and particular purposes. He did not think that was a good precedent to set, and he trusted the House would condemn it. The public generally had the greatest possible confidence in the impartiality and judicial decision of the Committee, both of that House and the other House, and he hoped that nothing done that day would shake that confidence.

MR. JOHN BURNS (Battersea)

said he ventured to submit a few reasons other than those given by the hon. Member for Reigate, why the House should endorse his Motion. He would in the first place draw the attention of the House to a very significant fact. When this Bill was first introduced, the name of the hon. Member for Reigate was on the back of it. Now he had not only abandoned that position, but three months afterwards was found moving its rejection. This fact alone should induce the House to listen, firmly but justly, to the appeal of the district made through its representative. And the fact which should weigh with the House in considering whether a great injustice had not been done to the district, which he contended had been very badly treated by its officials in the withholding of information, was that the Mayor and Corporation of Reigate supported the action which had been taken by the hon. Member for Reigate. He was sorry the hon. Member for Wimbledon should have made the reference he did to a clique. The fact was that a public meeting was held at Reigate at which between 400 and 500 citizens attended, and out of that number only 20, and half of those were well-known shareholders, were in favour of the Water Bill being proceeded with. But he did not desire to look to the hon. Member for Wimbledon or the hon. Member for Reigate, or to himself, for facts in regard to this matter. He would respectfully ask the House to listen to some words from the petition of the Corporation of Reigate, signed by the Mayor. What were those words? Paragraph five said:— The Bill was not, as it should have been, submitted by the town clerk to the finance and general purposes committee of the town council, the duty of which committee it is to watch Bills and Acts of Parliament and guard the interests of the ratepayers affected thereby; the town clerk, who is a large shareholder and director of the East Surrey Company and a shareholder in the Reigate Company, stating that the Bill did not prejudicially affect the interests of the body; and the chairman of the said committee, being chairman of the Reigate Water Company, also told the committee that it was not necessary to take any steps in opposition to the Bill, and no print was had before or considered by that committee. He ventured to say they had not in the annals of Parliamentary Committee legislation anything to equal the allegations that were made in this petition of the Reigate Corporation, and he would support it by one other sentence which corroborated what the hon. Member for Reigate had hinted at. The petition stated that they were unable to proceed, as indicated by the hon. Member for Wimbledon, because they were advised by their officials that the Borough Funds Act, as regarded notices not having been complied with, the town clerk not having advised the committee that it was necessary to comply with the said Act, this being due to the course that their interested clerk and their non-interested chairman of the finance committee took. The result was Reigate was not properly seized of the facts. There was absolutely nothing in the counter-petition that contradicted what the petition of the Corporation of Reigate set forth. When he found that a man like Mr. John Watney, and a man like Mr. Freshfield, the late solicitor to the City Corporation—a man who, whatever his politics might be, served the City of London with great ability and distinction—sided with the inhabitants of Reigate in a particular motion, it led him to believe there were strong reasons in favour of this being inquired into. Here they had allegations of a most serious character in a document signed by the town clerk himself—namely, that he and the chairman of the finance committee withheld from their Corporation facts with regard to a Bill in which, as director and shareholder, they were directly interested. It seemed to him the House of Commons was not only the guardian, and the capable guardian, of its own duties and its own honour, but the House of Commons ought to go outside its own special duty, and as the guardian, through its forms and procedure, of the honour of the municipal life and the cleanliness and decency of public cities in general, it ought not to let a Bill go through the House that had as the chief argument against it that the clerk of the council and the chairman of the committee were interested in the scheme, and withheld salient information from the Corporation that they should have been possessed of. The hon. Member for Reigate never more correctly represented his constituency than he did that day in moving the rejection of the Bill. He believed the House of Commons ought not to be deaf to the almost unanimous opinion of the citizens of Reigate, but should come to their assistance, not only in the interest of good municipal government, but to prevent this case being used as a precedent by means of which men with designs upon the honour of a municipality should be frustrated, and the fair fame of their municipal life should not be aspersed by allegations which had not been answered, and which could not be answered. He trusted the House would unanimously accept the Motion, and allow this Bill to come up this day six months, when Reigate would have had notice, and would be able to bring before a Committee of the House of Commons that information which had been illegally and improperly, and in his opinion, immorally denied to itself by the action of its two officials.

*THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (Mr. J. W. LOWTHER,) Cumberland, Penrith

observed that it had been said by his two hon. Friends behind him that this was an unprecedented Motion. It might be so, but even if it was, if good cause could be shown in support of it, there was no reason why the House should not accept it. They had to consider whether the hon. Member for South East Surrey had really shown good cause against the Third Reading of the Bill. If it could be proved that the Bill had been, to use the phrase of one of the speakers, smuggled through the House, then there would be ample justification for rejecting it on Third Reading. Could that fairly be said of the present Bill? It was hardly necessary for him to say that the notices which the Standing Orders required had, of course, been given, otherwise the Bill would not have passed the examiners. They were fully given, and had appeared in all the local papers. But had there been anything beyond that? He had been at some little pains to look into the matter, and it did seem to him that it had really been before the citizens of Reigate and the Town Council of Reigate without their taking any action. The hon. Member for Wimbledon said that even his own small Parish Council was fully aware of what was going on some months before Parliament sat, and it was a fortiori probable that the citizens of Reigate would have had a seisin of the matter and have considered it. He found that on the 7th December last the Surrey Standard, a newspaper circulating in the district, reported a meeting of the Reigate Company, held to consider the offer of the East Surrey Company to purchase their undertakings, and upon the 10th December the same paper published a leader dealing with this very question. On the 13th December the Surrey Mirror published a report of the meeting of the Reigate Company to consider the offer of the East Surrey Company, and under the head of "County Jottings" they mentioned the fact that the Reigate Company had agreed to sell. The Surrey Standard of the 24th and 31st December published notices of a special meeting of the East Surrey Company, which was to be held in order to approve of the application to Parliament, and of the agreement with the Reigate Company. On the 7th January the Reigate and Redhill Journal also had a report of the Reigate Company to confirm that resolution. The same account appeared in the Surrey Mirror of that date. On the 14th January the Reigate, and Red hill Journal had another report of a special meeting of the East Surrey Company to confirm the application to Parliament. On the 14th February the Surrey Mirror had a report of the Surrey County Council's meeting, at which this matter was discussed. Even if they assumed for a moment that the citizens of Reigate had overlooked every one of these notices appearing in the local press, yet let the House remember that this Bill went before the House of Lords, that it was an opposed Bill in the House of Lords, and it was hardly credible that a matter affecting the district of Reigate and the county of Surrey should not have appeared in the newspapars, which naturally would have reported the proceedings which took place in another place on this subject. Down to the time, therefore, that the Bill left the House of Lords he could not but think that the matter was before the Reigate Council. They, at all events, at the time had an opportunity of petitioning in this House. They did not avail themselves of that opportunity, and it was not until a few days before the Second Reading in this House that they seemed to have taken any definite action in opposition to the Bill. On the other hand, he thought the hon. Member for Wimbledon had hardly pressed strong enough the point he made with reference to the action which the Reigate Council did take upon this matter. It was admitted that the Highways Committee were fully seized of the matter; they knew it was going on, and on the 15th April they passed a resolution saying it was desirable that the Bill should be opposed. That resolution came before the Reigate Town Council on the 27th April—in ample time to petition this House—an amendment that the report should be referred back being rejected on a division. The Reigate Town Council rejected a motion that the Bill should be opposed by 14 to six. ["Why?"] He did not know why they rejected it. He was not in the secrets of the Council.

MR. BURNS

asked if the right hon. Gentleman was aware that the town clerk advised them that they could not proceed, because under the Borough Funds Act they could not vote the money later on?

*THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES

said he was not responsible for the advice given to the Reigate Town Council by the town clerk, nor was the East Surrey Company, and if the town clerk had been guilty of some form of laches in not having advised the Council rightly, why should the East Surrey Company suffer, when they had complied-with all the regulations of the House? It was not his business to enter into the merits of the Bill. It was only his duty to say whether the forms of the House had been properly complied with. In his opinion they had not only been properly but amply complied with. The East Surrey Company would be hardly dealt with if the House were to reject their Bill.

MR. HENRY LABOUCHERE (Northampton)

contended that the interests of the inhabitants of Reigate should be considered before those of the water company. As to the action of the Member for Reigate, the first object of a Member of Parliament was to keep out of local disputes, unless perfectly sure that a considerable number of electors were on one side or the other. [Laughter.] The Corporation of Reigate and the Member for Reigate were of the same opinion—that this Bill should not be proceeded with further. The town clerk signed the petition that the Bill should be thrown out, because he instructed the Corporation wrongly. When the House knew the opinion of the majority of the people of Reigate and that they were unable to appear before the Committee, although they thought they had a fair case, they ought to throw out the Bill and let it be brought in again if desired.

SIR WILLIAM HARCOURT (Monmouthshire, W.)

said he had made it a rule never to interfere in private Bills; but there were exceptions to that rule when it affected the procedure of Parliament. The question was whether this matter had been fairly dealt with, and the test of that was whether the parties entitled to be heard had been heard. It was quite plain that they had not been. To pass a Bill under these circumstances would be very unsafe. It did not follow because the East Surrey Water Company had done all that was necessary, that the House should pass a Bill on which the inhabitants of Reigate had not had an opportunity of being heard. When the resolution relating to the matter came before the Reigate Town Council on April 27, it was found to be out of order, because the provisions of the Borough Funds Act as to obtaining the consent of the ratepayers had not been complied with, and the town clerk had not advised the Council that it was necessary to comply with that Act. It would be an unfortunate precedent if, in circumstances such as these, a Bill should be passed seriously affecting the interests of a community and contrary to the opinion of its municipal representatives.

MR. T. F. HALSEY (Herts, Watford)

reminded the House that the Standing Orders Committee was appointed to relieve persons promoting or opposing Bills from any accidental omission to comply with the Standing Orders. Every case was carefully considered on its merits. The Committee simply considered whether those who applied that the Standing Orders should be suspended had made out a satisfactory case. There was a full meeting of the Standing Committee, and after a careful consideration of the matter they came unanimously to the conclusion that a case had not been made out for the suspension of the Standing Orders.

*MR. JOHN ELLIS (Nottingham, Rushcliffe)

, as a Member of the Standing Orders Committee, confirmed what had been said by the hon. Gentleman who acted on the occasion in question as the Chairman of the Committee. The issue the Committee had to decide upon was very narrow. It was whether the Town Council of Reigate were fully informed of the circumstances of the Bill in ample time to have allowed them to present a petition in the ordinary course. The Committee were fully satisfied that the Town Council had had such an opportunity, and that, therefore, it did not be with them to suspend the Standing Orders.

Question put, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question."

The House divided:—Ayes, 175; Noes, 77.—(Division List, No. 308).

Main Question put, and agreed to.

Bill read the Third time, and passed, without Amendment.