§ For the purpose of administering the sums available for the improvement of congested districts in the Highlands and islands of Scotland, the following persons shall be Commissioners (called the Congested Districts (Scotland) Commissioners), that is to say Secretary for Scotland, the Under Secretary for Scotland, the Chairman of the Local Government Board for Scotland, the Chairman of the Fishery Board for Scotland, the Chairman of the Crofters' Commission, and such other persons, not exceeding two, as the Secretary for Scotland may from time to time nominate.
§ The Secretary for Scotland may from time to time make, alter, and vary such rules as he shall deem necessary for regulating the proceedings of the Commissioners, and the times and places of their meetings.
§ MR. J. CALDWELL (Lanark, Mid)said he had an Amendment to move with reference to the constitution of the Congested Districts Board. He suggested that the Lord Provost of Glasgow and 794 the Lord Provost of Edinburgh should be members of the Board. They were men of wide experience, and both in Glasgow and Edinburgh there was a considerable Highland population who were very much in sympathy with the population of the Highlands. To add these two gentlemen to the Board would have the effect of putting the Board on a more popular basis, and would give great satisfaction.
§ *THE LORD ADVOCATEsaid that this was a tentative Measure, and no doubt there was a difficulty in knowing exactly how to form the Board; but the Government had done the best they could, after mature consideration, and they seemed to have pleased at least some of the Gentlemen who sat on the opposite Benches. No doubt the Commission as constituted by the Bill had a good deal of the official element, but the officials placed upon it were for the most part permanent officials, and be was afraid the Government must stand by their scheme. Both the gentlemen suggested in the Amendment were very busy men, and accordingly, without doubting for one moment that the Board would obtain two very good men if they were added to it, lie did not think they would be a practical element on the Board, because it would be too much to expect that they would be able to give much of their tinge to the affairs of the Board. He thought the constitution of the Commission was a matter which must really be left to the Government, and he could not accept the Amendment.
§ MR. CALDWELLasked leave to withdraw the Amendment.
§ MR. COURTENAY WARNER (Staffordshire, Lichfield)pointed out that there was no representative of the Treasury on the Board. It was entirely a Board for spending purposes, and he would be glad to know whether it was not usual to have a representative of the Treasury on such a Board?
§ *THE LORD ADVOCATEsaid that if the lion. Member looked at the Bill he would find that, although there was no representative of the Treasury on the Board, the Treasury had a good deal to say as to the spending of the money.
§ Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
795
§
*MR. WEIR moved, after the words "Crofters' Commission," to insert the words,—
two other persons to be elected by the members of the County Councils of the counties in which the congested districts were situated, under rules and regulations to be supplied by the Secretary for Scotland.
§ He thought the Secretary for Scotland could not do better than to go to the County Councils of the Highland counties to select two men out of their own number who would be well acquainted with the congested districts, and who would be able to place the facts before the Board.
*MR. HEDDEHWICKobserved that it was admitted by the Lord Advocate that the formation of this Board had been a matter of great difficulty, and he could well understand the difficulty of constituting a Board which should be satisfactory to everyone concerned. But in its proposed form the Board would not give complete satisfaction, nor would it supply a sufficient guarantee that the object which the Government had in view would be carried out. Who were to be the members of this Board? In the first place, there was the Secretary for Scotland, and every word that had been uttered by the Lord Advocate with reference to the Lord Provosts of Edinburgh and Glasgow applied equally to the membership of the Secretary for Scotland, who was a very busy man, engaged in London. It seemed to be the object of Parliament to keep on heaping work on the Scotch Secretary, and so to diminish the importance of the ancient office of the Lord Advocate. The present Secretary for Scotland might have a thorough knowledge of the congested districts of Scotland, but it did not follow that his successors would all have the same knowledge. The power of the Secretary for Scotland on this Board would be very large, because he was to be supported by the presence of the Under Secretary, and would have the right of appointing other members. If the Government wished to snake this Bill effective and to do some good in the Highlands, they should take care that the persons who were to administer the Measure were men possessing local knowledge. The Amendment of his hon. Friend seemed to provide machinery for 796 the appointment of at least two men who would have such knowledge, and its adoption would possibly prevent the waste of a great deal of money which the Government were devoting to the purpose of relieving the congestion. He hoped, therefore, that the Rower of nominating two members would be given to the County Councils. The proposal of the Amendment, it should be noted, was limited by the condition that the appointments of the County Councils were to be made subject to regulations drawn up by the Secretary for Scotland.
MR. McLEODreminded the Committee that a large portion of the sum to be administered by the new Board was to be withdrawn from the administration of the County Councils. A portion of this £20,000 a year was made up of savings on the Estimates, and those savings were to a large extent spent by the County Councils. Seeing that the Government were proposing to withdraw from the County Councils the whole of the money which they used to administer under the Highlands and Islands Works Act, the least that could be granted them in return was some representation on the new Board. No part of the money which Parliament had intrusted to the Highland County Councils had been misspent. Those County Councils had, in fact, shown a great amount of energy and wisdom in the expenditure of Parliamentary money, and their example might well be followed in other parts of the country. The new Board, as the Government proposed to constitute it, would be the mere creature of the Secretary for Scotland, who would command four votes as against three. That would be to give an unnecessarily large amount of power to one individual, and he held that the constitution of the Board would be considerably improved if the Amendment were accepted. Then he wished to know whether the new members of the Board were to be remunerated or not. It would be impossible to secure the services of men of ability who possessed 797 local knowledge unless provision was made for their remuneration. The only persons who could be expected to serve on a Board of this kind without remuneration were permanent officials or parties who were interested in the administration of the Act in a particular way, and the only persons so interested would be the landlords and factors, and their presence on the Board would not meet with the approval of the Highland people.
§ *THE LORD ADVOCATEsaid that the Government must adhere to the constitution of the Commission as provided in the Bill. The proposal was to appoint two Members who would be practically popularly elected. The scheme of the Commission, rightly or wrongly, was that it should be practically under Government and Parliamentary control. That was the reason why the Secretary for Scotland was included in the body. The great advantage of Parliamentary control meant, not the power to disallow a vote but to enable the proceedings of the Commission, if need he, to he defended. In the opinion of the Government, therefore, it was better to have a Coin mission of this official character, looking to the novel experiment that was being made, than to have anything in the nature of a popularly elected element upon it.
§ MR. CALDWELLpointed out that the members were to be elected by the different county councils in the congested districts. He thought that this was a very reasonable protection as to the men to he appointed. In dealing with the elective element the Government should not forget that on the Fishery Board in Scotland there was now an elective element. Thus the principle had been recognised that the parties principally interested should be represented in order that their wants should be made known. All that the Scottish Members asked for therefore was that two men should be appointed 798 who were directly in touch with the wants of the people of the district, and who should be enabled to snake the case of the people known. The position of the Government afforded an illustration of the inconvenience arising from having the Secretary for Scotland in the House of Lords.
§ *MR. WEIRurged that their wish was to have practical men on the Commission. Those who had been appointed were busy men, and it was utterly impossible for them to spend eight or ten days in travelling to and from Edinburgh to visit the congested districts of the Highlands.
MR. McLEODasked whether the gentlemen to be nominated possessing local or special knowledge were to be paid?
§ *THE LORD ADVOCATEsaid that according to the design of the Bill they were not to be paid. In the Irish case the added members were not paid; and if it was possible to get unpaid services in Ireland, he hoped that it would not be more difficult to get similar service rendered in Scotland.
§ DR. TANNER (Cork Co., Mid)said if the members of the Irish Board were not paid, that was no reason why the y should not be paid. Hon. Gentlemen on the Treasury Bench were paid for their services, and as a matter of common sense those gentlemen who were to give their services on the Scotch Board, if their services were worth having, should have some remuneration; and payment would give control. The First Lord drew his salary, and why should not these gentlemen—why should not everybody get their wages all round? [Ministerial laughter and cheers.]
MR. McLEODthought they would find on inquiry that in the case of the Congested District Board for Ireland, if there was no actual remuneration there was a very liberal allowance. The only desire he had in pressing the point—he did not expect they were going to deal with it to-night—was to impress very 799 strongly upon the right hon. Gentleman the necessity of making some provision other than was made in the Bill as it stood. It was not fair to expect that men with special local knowledge—those were the right hon. Gentleman's words— should place their services at the disposal of the public without any provision whatever; and from past experience, he should say that unless they took means to have it put into the Bill, or there was a perfectly clear understanding on the matter, in all probability no provision would be made.
§ *THE LORD ADVOCATEThere is a provision for expenses in the subsection.
§ *MR. SERJEANT HEMPHILL (Tyrone, N.)said he should not have interfered in the debate were it not that the Lord Advocate, in referring to the analogy of Ireland, did so in a manner which he could not regard as altogether complimentary, because there was a sort of covert insinuation—[Cries of "Oh!"] —that there were no Irishmen with sufficient public spirit to act gratuitously. [Cries of "Oh!"]
§ *THE LORD ADVOCATEPrecisely the opposite. I paid Irishmen the compliment of saying that we get very good service from them, and I expressed the pious hope that we should get the same in Scotland. ["Hear, hear!"]
§ *MR. SERJEANT HEMPHILLYou added that you hoped the Scotchmen would work without remuneration. However, that is a matter of very little importance. ["Hear, hear!"] The attention of Members, he thought, ought to be called to the composition of the Irish Board before they voted. It consisted of the Chief Secretary, a member of the Land Corporation, whom the Lord Lieutenant might nominate to especially represent agriculture and fishery, certain ex-officio members, and five other members. There were thus five non-official members of the Irish Board, and they were all men above suspicion of partiality or want of judicial 800 fairness. One was an ornament to this House, another was a Roman Catholic Bishop, and they were all men in whom the public had confidence. The Irish Board thus had five members representing the public, and all that his hon. Friend the Member for Mid Lanark asked was that in the case of the Scotch Board there should be two representative members in addition to the two nominated by the Secretary for Scotland. He would not have interposed at all only he thought—as Ireland had been referred to, it might be as well that the House should know what they were doing—that they should have their eyes open, and not blindly follow the First Lord of the Treasury into the Lobby without exactly knowing what was being done under the Irish Act.
§ DR. TANNERsaid it followed from what the hon. Member who had just spoken had said that there was a real injustice towards Scotland. No doubt certain of the Scotch Members were desirous of the Bill passing, but if it passed in a crude and undigested form he believed it would do more harm than good. It was because he felt that the Lord Advocate had ill-advisedly mentioned the word Ireland—[laughter]— that he had thought it his duty to take part in the Debate. The Lord Advocate might be acquainted with Ireland, but he was evidently not acquainted with the constitution of the Congested Districts Board for Ireland, and it was for that reason that he had ventured for the second time in the course of eleven years to put in a word on a Scotch Bill.
§ Question put, "That those words be there inserted."
§ The Committee divided:—Ayes, 53; Noes, l32.—(Division List, No. 257.)
§ *MR. WEIRproposed to leave out the word "two," and to insert the word "four." The Board would have to deal with an area three times as large as that 801 of the Congested Districts Board in Ireland, yet that Board had nine members, while the Scotch Board would only have seven. He did nut believe in large Boards. But the two members nominated by the Secretary for Scotland would not be sufficient to overtake the work, hence his Amendment for four. The only practical man on the Board would be the chairman of the Crofters Commission. He himself knew the difficulties of getting about in the Highlands. Lewis was the most congested part. It took eight or ten days to go from Edinburgh and back to remote parts of the island of Lewis. In that case the two would not be sufficient. The Secretary and Under Secretary for Scotland and the Chairmen of the various Boards were busy men who could not leave London or Edinburgh. Would the Secretary for Scotland be likely to visit remote parts of Lewis? Travelling was difficult mid tedious in those parts, where there were no roads and not even footpaths over the wild no connecting the congested townships.
§ *THE LORD ADVOCATEsaid that after the declarations he had made, he must stand by the Commission as it was. But the hon. Member was scarcely accurate. He compared the district of the proposed Board with that of the Irish Congested Districts Board. But the district of the former would not cover the whole of the Crofter district, but only certain portions of it.
§ MR. CALDWELLsaid that the Government had the appointment of five official members and the other four, so they had nothing to complain of.
ME. McLEODsaid the Lord Advocate had given no reason against the increase of the figure from "two" to "four.'' It would always be within the power of the Secretary for Scotland to nominate one, two, three, or four persons, as he might think proper, and to confine the number to two did not seem to allow sufficient latitude. He could not see how any possible danger could arise from the in- 802 crease. The cast-iron attitude the Lord Advocate seemed disposed to assume towards all Amendments did not commend itself to Scotch Members, and would not facilitate progress with the Bill.
§ MR. J. H. DALZIEL (Kirkcaldy Burghs)hoped the Government would not take up an attitude of absolute resistance to all Amendments. There was a general desire that the Bill should pass in as perfect a shape as possible, and the Lord Advocate must recognise that his hon. Friends represented a large amount of public opinion in the Highlands, the overwhelming majority of the people in whose interest the Bill was brought forward. Circumstances might arise to render additional appointments necessary, and this Amendment did not even imply that the Commission would be increased by two extra members, it simply left the power with the Secretary for Scotland to make the appointments if, in his view, the circumstances required them. Every Member would be appointed officially and represent the view of the Government rather than of the people in whose interest the Board was constituted, and a special crofter or other question might arise in relation to which the appointment of another Commissioner as a trusted expert might give strength and popularity to the Board. Would the Lord Advocate agree to alter the word front "two" to "three" giving power to add three Commissioners?
§ *THE LORD ADVOCATEsaid he was anxious to meet the views of hon. Members, and would agree to insert the word "three" instead of the word" two."
§ Question put, "That the word "two" be omitted and the word "three" inserted, and agreed to.
§ Clause, as amended, ordered to stand part of the Bill.
803§ Clause 2,—