GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY BILL. (Hansard, 3 March 1898)

§ MR. T. LOUGH (Islington, W.)

Mr. Speaker, this is a Bill for the construction of a new railway in the suburbs of London, and there are numerous provisions of a very drastic character in it dealing with areas and streets, taking them for building purposes in the neighbourhood of London, and a great many residences will be destroyed. There is a very elaborate clause in it dealing with the poor people who will be suppressed by the operation of the Act. The Company seeks power to build houses within a mile of houses they have destroyed, but that does not seem to me to be an adequate way of dealing with this difficulty. The business of a Railway Company is not so much to build houses for working people as it is to convey them, and there is nothing in this Bill as to facilities for so conveying them. You give these poor people a mile extra to walk to their work, and a mile back, but you do not say one word about increasing the facilities for reaching their work, and we know that there is a very strong feeling in this House that adequate provision should be made for the conveyance of the working men, and the poorer classes, into the centres of London to their work. I do 442 not propose, myself, now to oppose the Second Reading of this Bill. I have put down an instruction with regard to one of the points I have mentioned, and I have made a friendly arrangement with the Gentlemen on the other side that the matter may be dealt with on Tuesday next. I have since received an intimation that this instruction is out of order, but perhaps it may be that before Tuesday next I may be able to put one on the paper that will be in order; if so, there will be no further difficulty, as far as I am concerned, on the Second Reading of the Bill. I hope that the hon. Member in charge of this measure will at least give a favourable consideration to the question which I hope to raise further on by way of instruction.