§ Considered in Committee.
§ (In the Committee.)
§ [Mr. J. W. LOWTHER (Cumberland, Penrith) in the Chair.]
§ Clause 1:—
MR. GIBSON BOWLES (Lynn Regis)I object to Clause 1, and I have to propose an Amendment. The Amendment is extremely simple, but it has a very important and novel object. I think I can show to the Members who remain in the House that it is an important and desirable Amendment to make. This Bill is practically a re-enactment of the Uganda Railway Bill of 1896, which Bill prescribed the form in which the accounts should be laid before the House of Commons, and that was the form required by the Treasury. They are laid before the House of Commons in the form required by the Treasury, and I venture to say that a more unsatisfactory form could scarcely be imagined. The whole expenditure of this Bill, amounting to £5,000,000 up to this time, is lumped together under eight heads, to which a ninth has been added. I am really sorry that the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer is not in his place. I think he ought to be in his place. He knows that I am about to attack the Treasury, and him as the head of the Treasury, and I feel it difficult to carry on the discussion without his presence. I cannot carry on the discussion without someone present representing the Treasury—either the Chancellor of the Exchequer or the Secretary. In their absence I would say that this Bill should be withdrawn for the present.
* THE CHAIRMANThe right hon. Gentleman the Under Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, who is in charge of the Bill, is present.
MR. GIBSON BOWLESWell, he knows nothing about the Treasury accounts. [At this point the CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER entered the House.] My whole argument is to be addressed to the state of the accounts, on which I put a question to the Chancellor of the Exchequer to-day. I say that the statement 106 of the accounts in the way required by the Treasury is not satisfactory to this House. My argument is that the Comptroller and Auditor-General should prescribe the form in which the accounts should be presented, and not the Treasury. Under the Uganda Bill as it at present stands the method will be continued of having the accounts rendered in the form prescribed by the Treasury. I say that is a very bad form. Three reports have been made to the Comptroller and Auditor-General in the form required by the Treasury. It is true that the Chancellor of the Exchequer said that if I referred to some other Papers, and not the accounts presented to this House, I should find satisfactory details. I have nothing to do with these Papers. My concern is with the accounts presented to this House, and with the form followed by the Comptroller and Auditor-General with respect to accounts submitted to the Public Accounts Committee. I say that the three reports presented are totally insufficient. In each case they contain mere large bald items consisting of hundreds of thousands of pounds. I am speaking of the expenditure. I have no complaint to make as to the first two items in the accounts, the first showing the amount issued from the Consolidated Fund, and the other showing the amount borrowed. It is the third item which is so entirely insufficient. You have in the first account £367,000 under eight heads, and no further details at all. The second and third accounts are exactly the same, with the exception that the account rendered this year, giving the figures up to 1889, contains the following note by the Comptroller and Auditor-General—
Certain questions in connection with those account are it present the subject of inquiry.Therefore, it is clear that tile account as presented, is wholly unsatisfactory. My complaint is as to the form of the account itself. It is altogether inadequate. I will give one illustration. There is the enormous sum of £290,000 under the head of unallocated expenditure, which I say is not an account but the negation of an account. Hero is another, and this is really the chief instance of the inadequacy of the account. The item for administration up to 1889 is £163,448, i which has transpired almost accidentally. It has never come before the Public 107 Accounts Committee, nor is it in the accounts themselves laid before Parliament. It transpires only through the accidental generosity of the Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs. In a memorandum laid by him before the House there is this large item of £163,448, in addition to which there is of course a poriton of the unallocated expenditure. This item contains an entirely unsuspected matter—the item of one per cent. to the Crown agents. I am. not going into that. It is money expended for the railway in buying stores and plant. I think it is very unsatisfactory, and it is a matter that will have to be pursued in another direction. I only instance it. There is another item of £2,000 a year for the rent of the engineer's office. He gets £500 a year for salary, and four times as much for the rent of his office.
§ * THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Mr. BRODRICK,) Surrey, GuildfordIt is for office clerks and the rent of office.
MR. GIBSON BOWLESWell, I accept that explanation. I should not have fallen into the error if the accounts had been given in fuller detail. I do not know what other items of a questionable character there way be in the accounts. Undoubtedly the item of one per cent. is of a most questionable character. In the accounts presented to Parliament no disclosure is made of that item. I should be quite content to rest my complaint on that alone, and to say that the accounts are unsatisfactory. In many Statutes the accounts are ordained to be presented to Parliament in the way required by the Treasury. I broadly say that it is an undesirable thing. There are a great many instances which I could go into in particularity where the Treasury have required accounts to be rendered in a form calculated not to afford information, but to withhold it from this House. In no case was that so strongly illustrated as in the case of the review ground of Salisbury Plain. The form required by the Treasury was such that under the heads of ranges and manœuvring ground they included largo purchases of land at Salisbury Plain, and no particulars were given at all, and it was necessary to move for the particular accounts before we could get any sort of details of the purchases 108 made under those heads. I come now to my main argument. I have given illustrations of the imperfections of the accounts. The Treasury is not the proper authority to prescribe the form of the accounts. The proper person is the Comptroller and Auditor - General. The Treasury may think it easy to put off the House with general items which give very little information, but if you put it into the hands of the Comptroller and Auditor-General, who is an officer of the House, he will require that the accounts should be rendered in such a way as to afford proper facilities to himself and the House for looking into the various items. He has to act in the interest of the House, and it is not his business to carry out preconceived ideas, or preconceived official policy. It is his business to show the whole of the accounts. I submit a new suggestion, and I hope the Chancellor of the Exchequer will be disposed to adopt it. I may be told that it cannot be entertained now. I should be pretty well content if I were told that consideration would be given to it. The broad question I raise is whether the Treasury or the Comptroller and Auditor-General should prescribe the form of the accounts, and it is to elicit an expression on that point that I move the Amendment which stands in my name on the Paper.
§
Amendment proposed —
In page 1, line 7, at find, to add ' and as if in Section 2, Sub-section 3 there of, Comptroller and Auditor - General were substituted for Treasury."—(Mr. Gibson Bowles.)
§ Question proposed, "That those words be there added."
§ * THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (Sir M. HICKS BEACH,) Bristol, W.The hon. Member is so invariably prepared to find fault that I confess I am not disposed to attach the importance to his criticism on this occasion which it might otherwise deserve. The Treasury has not the smallest interest in concealing anything from the House. In such a matter as this it would be in the direct interest of the Treasury that everything should be presented to the House of Commons in order that criticism by hon. Members, and by the hon. Member himself, might deal with anything wrong in the matter of expenditure 109 by the Department. In this particular case I referred the hon. Member to another account which I hold in my hand, and in which he could, if he thought fit, find the details he asks for. It is in No. 4 schedule of the expenditure for 1899, page 7. If the hon. Gentleman will refer to that he will find the details of the expenditure on construction, which could not by any possibility be given in the other account. I could show similarly, if it was worth while, that the details in regard to other items are to be found on other pages. I do not want to quarrel with the hon. Gentleman at all. I do not at all resent his wish for further information. If the Comptroller and Auditor - General should report to the Committee of this House, or to the Committee on Public Accounts, that he has not sufficient information to enable him to conduct a proper audit of all the items, I should be most happy to give further details.
MR. GIBSON BOWLESI think under the circumstances I am quite able to withdraw the Amendment I have made.
§ Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
§ Question proposed, "That Clause I stand part of the Bill."
§ * MR. PERKS (Lincolnshire, Louth)My objection to this Bill is that it is absurd to go on spending these huge sums of money without providing for more effective control of the expenditure than is at present being provided. I wish to allude to one or two of the excuses—be-cause they can be called nothing more— that are contained in this official apology which was published a few days ago. I want again to point out how serious is the position concerning this railway, because we are not merely to construct this railway, but also other large projected public works— railways and harbours in various parts of the world. It is of the utmost importance that this large expenditure should be controlled by capable men. I do not say one word to imply any charge against the personal character of those who have been conducting this matter, but I say that they have shown an absolute want of capacity in dealing with the Uganda Railway. I would remind the Committee again that when this railway 110 was originally projected, we were assured in the most positive way that it would not cost more than £3,000,000. The railway was to be a little over 600 miles in length. The whole of this £3,000,000 has gone, the railway has been diminished in length 100 miles, and we are now asked for £2,000,000 more to complete this shortened railway. Further, we are not even now told that this money will be sufficient; indeed we are distinctly warned by Sir Guilford Molesworth in his report that it is impossible, even under the latest survey, to say that the money now being asked will finish the line. You are making this railway on a gauge which neither fits the Egyptian line, the German line, nor the British railways coming from the south. When this railway was projected with a three-foot gauge we were told that the difference between a three-foot and a three-foot three-inch gauge was comparatively slight, and would make very little difference in the cost of the road. When I put a question to the right hon. Gentleman the other day as to the difference in cost between what is now being constructed and a three-foot six-inch gauge in order to make the rolling stock and the various equipments interchangeable with the Egyptian railways, I was most absurdly told—the right hon. Gentleman will excuse me saying it—that to convert this road, which has at present only 300 miles constructed, from a three-foot throe-inch to a throe foot six-inch gauge would cost £500,000. We had no details given us of that. I shall perhaps be told that this large cost is due to the conversion of locomotives and rolling stock, but any practical man must perfectly well know that the cost of changing the axles or otherwise converting 500 or 600 trucks and 90 locomotives, and to alter the gauge from three-feet three inches to three-feet six inches, upon the residue of the line, would not amount to the extraordinary sum of £500,000. We were told in one of the early rosy reports, which I think has been thrown over recently—it was a fancy picture drawn up by one of the early engineers, I forget who at the moment—that there would be a very largo quantity of land leased and sold for the purposes of settlers who were starting little plantations and farms. Even in this last report we are told that the Government is proceeding to consider the letting of lands. Now I wish to ask who is 111 going to make the title? In whom is this railway invested from the coast up to Lake Nyanza? We are not told of any ordinance—certainly no ordinance passed by the local Government. Have you simply seized the land from the savages or natives through whose country you have gone, and spent £3,000,000 in the belief that the purchasers of sites would rely on your power to secure them a title in these uninhabited portions of South Africa? I think before the country is asked to spend large additional sums of money we ought to have some accurate information with reference to the conditions under which this great project is vested, and who are the responsible people controlling it. This work is one of a large number of works that are being constructed. For example, a railway is being constructed in the direction of Coomassie, another in Sierra Leone, and another in the Malay States, and under recent Acts of Parliament large sums have been voted for these purposes. I do not think it is at all satisfactory that these projects should be controlled and managed by a miscellaneous committee got together in some strange way, some paid by salary, others by commission, and others receiving nothing at all. If we are going to construct railways all over the world, and execute other important works, they should be constructed under the authority of a British railway board, on which we would have expert people who should be properly remunerated for the services they render. The gentlemen forming the Uganda Railway Committee have not been very fair to the House of Commons in the course they have taken. If they had been the directors of a limited company they would have been seriously blamed for the course they have taken in not bringing to the knowledge of their proprietors, as they ought to have done, the facts which they say they discovered at an early stage of the management. One of the excuses is in the second paragraph of the memorandum, whore it is stated that it was evident to them, at an early stage, that some of the items in the 1893 estimates were insufficient. They say that it was only in September last year that they had any reliable estimates at all. I think that having come to the conclusion that the estimates were totally insufficient, and that both the country and they had been misled, it was the duty of Her Majesty's Govern 112 ment in 1896 to have fairly and frankly told the House of the discoveries which had been made by the Committee. I propose now to refer to some of the items in the account on page 3, and to the various official excuses given for this strange state of affairs. Upon bridges you are spending the enormous sum of £660,000. There is a difference of £400,000 between the expenditure now proposed and the estimate of bridges. How does that come to pass? We were told in August, 1895, that the line would be completely bridged as in the original scheme. Now that statement could not have been true. It was a statement made when the House was asked to vote the preliminary sum of £20,000 for the surveys and the starting of the works. We were told then that the sum of £3,000,000 would provide for completing the whole works, including the bridges of this railway. Now we are told that that is not so, and that there is a difference of no less than £400,000 for bridges. I may be told that this is due to the rise in the prices of iron and steel. I do not know whether I shall have that singular excuse given, so my answer to the right hon. Gentleman is that if these men had been prudent men, and had had the ordinary business knowledge of men engaged in the execution of great works abroad, they would have covered themselves for the whole of the iron and steel at the commencement of the contract. They knew how many miles of railway they had to make, how many tons of rails, and howmany tons of steel for bridges would be required. Why did they not buy the material in advance? That seems a novel idea to the hon. Gentleman opposite, but I can assure him it is the prudent course taken by men who understand this business.
§ * MR. BRODRICKCould that be done in regard to work not fully surveyed?
§ * MR. PERKSThe line was surveyed. We were told the exact mileage of the railway, and the weight of the rails. If you know that you have to construct 600 miles of railway, and that the weight of a rail is 701b. or 80lb., you do not require a survey to know how many tons of rails you have to buy.
§ * MR. BRODRICKYou were speaking of bridges.
§ * MR. PERKSMy answer to that is that the contract provided originally for £200,000 for bridges, and if the hon. Gentleman will tell us that the difficulty was caused by the rise in prices, we shall then see what is the nature of the excuse given for the non-purchase of material. It is quite clear that business and competent men would have seen that they required so many rails, bridges, and sleepers, so much cement, so much timber, so many stores; and for all this the contractors ought to have covered themselves in the very early stages of the contract. If the gentlemen in charge of the work do not know how to do that, it is high time that we got men who did understand it. We are told here in another explanatory note that the difference in the permanent way is £500,000. How is that explained? There is no explanation given in this memorandum. On the subject of ballast we were told in 1895 that the railway was to be fully ballasted, then we were told later on that it did not require any ballast at all. We are told now that instead of £24,000 put down for ballast they require the enormous sum of £340,000. Why could they not have discovered that before? They might easily have discovered whether the sleepers would stand without ballast at an earlier stage. Why did they take three years to discover that they would require £340,000 to complete the ballast of the railway? There are many tropical railways and railways in Southern countries using precisely this sort of sleeper without ballast, and I am told by competent people that it is extremely doubtful whether this money will be required for ballast, although it is possible it may be required for other purposes connected with the railway. Wearetold there are ninety-two locomotives. What are they wanted for? It certainly cannot be for purposes of construction. You do not want ninety-two locomotives to construct 600 miles of railway. The Government defence is that they will be required for the traffic, but yet we are to have only one train per day each way. Have the Government ever calculated how many locomotives they will require to work the traffic of one train each day? Will they want anything like ninety-two locomotives? Further, how does this large number of locomotives fit in with the traffic which it is estimated will be earned by the railway? The 114 figures do not fit in at all. If you have ninety-two locomotives at work you will be capable of earning a very much larger amount than anything which has been estimated, or is likely to be earned. On page 4 of the memorandum we have statements to this effect: "The expectations of the earlier estimates have not been realised;" "in the absence of regular sections the quantities could only be guessed at," and " owing to the absence of records the amount of waterway could only be surmised." I venture to say that if this Uganda Committee cannot do more than indulge in expectations and surmises and guesses, not only is it high time that we had a very much more competent Committee to deal with this subject than the one we have, but it is very doubtful indeed whether we ought to speculate with these large sums of public money until some great change has boon effected. I have not one word to say against the principle of constructing this railway. In the last Parliament I supported the Uganda Railway, and I supported the last Government in its defence of it. I believe it is a wise project, but we do expect these undertakings to be managed by business men on business lines. A great undertaking of this description should not have been plunged into a hopeless state of muddle and confusion, simply because these men do not understand their business, or else they do not give proper attention to the subject, and do not keep any proper and effective control over the different officials who have been sent out to manage this great undertaking.
§ * MR. BRODRICKdenied that there had been nothing but muddle and confusion in connection with this matter. All the hon. Member could point to was the fact that in the preliminary survey made in 1893 there had been a considerable underestimate of cost. But that estimate by Major Macdonald was for an incomplete line, and turned out to be about one-half of the cost of a fully equipped line under wholly different circumstances. That might be a matter for criticism, but it was not the fault of the Foreign Office. He was not responsible for the original estimate—in fact, he had had a very short responsibility with regard to it—but he desired to repudiate altogether the idea that this com- 115 mittee was an incompetent body. On the contrary, it contained quite as many experts as would be found in any railway board in the kingdom—persons who knew the country and had great technical knowledge of railway construction. The position in which he stood was that he. had been unlucky enough to lay before the House a very full memorandum with regard to this expenditure—a Paper which had earned for him a certain amount of gratitude from the hon. Member for King's Lynn, but which had furnished a rod to his back for every Member who desired to make the worst of the expenditure. Complaint had been made with regard to the gauge. It was perfectly true that the gauge was different from that of the Egyptian and Capo railways, but this question was fully considered when the scheme was first discussed. He did not know whether in the very remote future there might be some connection established by rail, or whether the greater bulk of traffic would be by water. If the greater bulk was by water, goods brought to or from the Uganda Railway had to cross the lake by steamer. It was a matter of perfect indifference whether the gauge was the same as on the other railways or not. Complaint was made also of the large cost involved in making the change, but it had to be remembered that the £500,000 would be subject to some deduction for the value of materials; but as it was not known when the change would be made, he did not like to make any allowance of that character. It was obvious that to make a change in the estimate before any material was purchased was probably a very small thing compared to making a change after the whole undertaking was completed. In the one case the whole of the huge stock had to be got rid of, while in the other it had not to be paid for at all; consequently the difference between the two was very great. With regard to the land, proper instruments were being prepared. A certain amount of land had been obtained from those who previously possessed it, but most of it had been obtained by Act. Upon this point, however, he would have to make a full statement. Undoubtedly considerable pecuniary advantage would be obtained from the land, and the slip of land by the side of the railway would, when sold, be put to the credit of the capital account.
§ * MR. BRODRICKreplied that some applications had been made, and although the hon. Gentleman looked so incredulous, it was expected there would be a very considerable desire, especially on the part of traders, to obtain the land. The next point was in connection with the bridge work, and with regard to this the estimate had undoubtedly gone up very largely. But why had it gone up? In the first place, the preliminary estimate, which had been referred to, was quoted not as the anticipated cost of this work, but simply in order to give the House a comparison with the sketch estimate made by Major Macdonald before the railway was commenced. That was not the estimate upon which the House voted £3,000,000. The amount for bridge work was considerably larger than in the estimate of £2,500,000.
§ * MR. PERKSIt is quite true it was not made on the original Macdonald estimate of 1892, but I would point out that in the estimate of 1895, which was laid before the House when these figures of £3,000,000 were submitted and approved, the statement there is that the line would be completely bridged as in the original scheme.
§ * MR. BRODRICKunderstood that in the original scheme the bridge work was not in all cases of a permanent character; the smaller bridges especially had been made more substantial. That was one point. Another point was with regard to the insufficient survey of the land. He was not an expert, but he should suppose that in surveying land such as this it was certain that difficulties would arise in making an accurate estimate of every bridge which had to be made, when so many hundreds of small bridges were involved. In this ease not only was the estimate larger, but the bridges had been made more elaborate, and the cost of iron and steel had risen greatly. The hon. Member surely did not wish the Committee to think it was possible over land which had been only partially surveyed to put out contracts for bridge work four or five years before it was needed, and without knowing in many cases the exact sizes of the bridges required.
§ * MR. BRODRICKsaid large orders were given in the first instance, but he doubted whether any contractor would give orders under such circumstances. As was well known, in many recent railway undertakings in the United Kingdom there had been a very great disturbance of estimates on account of the large rise in prices of iron and steel. As to ballast the hon. Member answered himself; because the Committee did not arrange originally to ballast the whole of the line, and now, according to the hon. Member, competent persons were of opinion that the ballast would not be required. Therefore, what the Committee were advised originally competent persons now said would not be required. It was not an agreeable task to come before the Committee asking for an increase of nearly £2,000,000 on an original estimate of £3,000,000; but he submitted that where there was a change in the nature of the work proposed to be done the Committee were bound to expend a larger sum, and they were bound also to expect an increase or a possible disturbance of the estimate from the fact that the land had been insufficiently surveyed. He had previously endeavoured to show the Committee, and he still thought, that considering this was a great Imperial undertaking from which not merely commercial but great political results were expected, the actual expenditure which had been made and the actual sum involved was not such as should frighten the Committee from voting the money.
§ MR. BAYLEY (Derbyshire, Chesterfield)In the closing remarks of the right hon. Gentleman the Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs the whole House will have a considerable amount of sympathy. The right hon. Gentleman has had a very difficult task, and he has performed it with that usual dexterity with which the Foreign Office performs such tasks. At the same time I wish to say that I do not think the right hon. Gentleman has replied in any satisfactory way to the criticism that railway men and men of business should have been placed in charge of this railway.
§ * MR. BRODRICKAll the members of the Committee are either business men or railway men.
§ MR. BAYLEYWe want to get to know who is the person really responsible for the management and the building of this railway. This Report we have in our hands throws some daylight into this Uganda Railway construction at last. We have the fact pointed out here that the Crown Agent is the responsible person for the building of this railway. The Foreign Office have had no more to do with it than the signing of the contract. The agreement which the Foreign Office make with the Crown Agent out there is that he is to receive 1 per cent. on all stores ordered, and this payment covers the whole expense, including the keeping of the accounts. The Foreign Office tell us in their Report that £3,000,000 has been expended and that during the four and a half years which this railway has been under construction £15,801 has been paid in commission to the Crown Agent in addition to his salary. This is what has been paid, according to the Report, for transacting the financial business of the committee and for the keeping of the accounts of the railway. But the Crown Agent has not done his duty, because we have not got the accounts for this year.
§ * MR. BRODRICKHow could you get them? With all respect to the hon. Member, this mode of argument is ridiculous. He is asking for accounts something like six weeks before they can be delivered.
§ MR. BAYLEYBut you have not got the accounts for last year. You put this power into the hands of a man and you pay him 1 per cent. commission for the making of all contracts and the placing of all orders for the supply of stores and material and the supervision of all contracts. What experience has the Crown Agent had in passing railway trucks and locomotives? Has he had any experience in engineering at all? What does this gentleman do who gets £12,000 in four years? He orders as much as the engineers will allow him. He orders ninety-two new locomotives for 360 miles of railway through a desert without a village and without a house near it and with scarcely any traffic. That is one locomotive for every five miles. And how many trucks does he order? Why, he orders ten trucks for every locomotive, or 942 in all. That is for a line without 119 a particle of traffic on it. All that is ordered besides goods and passenger stock. I think that if the Foreign Office do not stop this kind of thing and make a bargain with somebody who understands the ordering of locomotives and railway trucks, you will probably find a locomotive for every mile of the railway and ten trucks for every locomotive, and the railway will eventually be covered with locomotives and trucks. No business firm would ever think of bringing such a Report before any body of business men in this world. Some of our large railways have not much more than one locomotive for every five miles, but here you have got this proportion without the slightest traffic at all. It has been complained that, after spending £50,000 upon the original survey of this line, you had to alter the plans, which caused an extra expenditure of £2,000. The reason for that was that you never looked at the thing, from the very commencement, from a business point of view. Let us look at the number of engineers you have got. You have two superintendents of works at £1,000 each; seven district engineers at £800 each; twenty-three assistant engineers at £420 each; one locomotive superintendent at a £1,000; and three assistant locomotive superintendents at £833. Now all these locomotives should be new and in perfect working order, and should not need to be constantly patched up. I am sure you do not want all this immense staff of engineers. At any rate, if you began with that immense staff, why did they not carry out the line in a different way, thus avoiding all this unnecessary expense. It is no use crying over spilled milk, but the House has a right to ask why the Foreign Office did not employ clear-headed business men who have had experience and knowledge of railway building. You have not got such men, as is evident by the very fact I have pointed out of having ninety-two locomotives with ten trucks to each locomotive. We want men who understand this business, and who have been brought up to it all their lives, to control this construction in a satisfactory and proper manner, and then there would be no dissatisfaction in regard to the spending of this money. I hope the Foreign Office will look into this matter, for the further they go on as at present with this want of business knowledge the worse they ill become, and I am sure there will be 120 another large Vote asked for if something is not done.
MR. BRYNMOE JONES (Swansea District)I wish to say a few words in regard to the way in which this great undertaking has been conducted. I had an opportunity of saying something about this question in a previous debate, and the right hon. Gentleman opposite, in the courteous language which he always adopts towards us, answered some of the objections which I then urged. I will not say that he answered them entirely satisfactorily, but perhaps, in some respects, he did get rid of the points made against him. But I do not think that he really answered the comparison which I made. I said that when I noticed the great difference between the original estimate for this railway and the actual cost upon the present estimate, without in the least being a business man, I asked myself what really could be the cause of the difference. I compared it with the railway from Beira to Fort Salisbury. I am not going into the details of the points I made about that railway, but the right hon. Gentleman said my comparison was not a fair one. Again I have been in communication with an eminent firm who have made more miles of railway in South Africa than any other firm of contractors. I am informed that in the work of making the railway from Mombasa to Lake Victoria, the general conditions are practically the same as those of the railway from Beira to Umtali. That you cannot have exactly the same gradients and curves and embankments follows as a matter of course, but the general conditions are the same. You have the same conditions with respect to the country, swage life, and the difficulty of rising from the sea level to the high watershed or plateau above. Then let us look again at the difference between the cost of the two undertakings. The right hon. Gentleman has not denied the statement that the cost of the railway from Beira to Fort Salisbury was £4,800 a mile. We are now asked in this case £7,505, and I observe that the right hon. Gentleman has carefully avoided giving an undertaking that this shall be the last and final demand on behalf of the Government in connection with this undertaking. The right hon. Gentleman has not answered our point—16,000 labourers have been employed on this undertaking, and I am 121 credibly informed that only 3,000 were employed on the Beira. Why this enormous difference? Why do the agents of the Government employ 16,000 labourers when contractors who have done similar work in another part of Africa have been able to do it with 3,000, with one white employee to every ten natives, and in point of time the Beira and Fort Salisbury Railway compares favourably with this. I do not want to go over all the ground which I covered on the last occasion, but I should like to correct the right hon. Gentleman with regard to one matter. According to my recollection he said, in reference to a point which was taken by some of us on this side of the House, as to whether a contractor could be found who would undertake this work on reasonable terms, it was impossible to get any contractor to undertake a work which was at once doubtful, and possibly, though improbably, unremunerative. From that, I apprehend, he meant that nobody would tender for it. Now, I respectfully say that if he looks at the documents in his office he will find an offer was made by a responsible firm to carry on the work on the report laid before Parliament. It was not accepted; and I should like to hear from the right hon. Gentleman why he gave us the impression that no one had offered to take from the shoulders of the Government the responsibility of carrying out this work. That is a question to which the Committee is entitled to have a reply. Another point upon which I am entirely dissatisfied is the gauge of the line. The present line is a 3 feet 3 inch railway, which nearly approximates to the French metre system. How does that come about? The railway from Cairo southward to Omdurman is 3 feet 6 inch, and all the railways in South Africa with one exception are 3 feet 6 inch gauge, and one part of the cost of the Beira-Salisbury railway was caused by the alteration from what was originally contemplated to bring it into line with the others. Who advised the Foreign Office to build on this gauge, and on what basis could he advise the Government to do it? He must have known that he could not have saved any material, and that the best course must have been to adopt the gauge of the country. hat was the advantage to be derived from it? We have never had an answer yet to that question. I have not the slightest desire to object to this rail- 122 way. I desire it to be made, and I have never voted against the Government on any matter involving expenditure on making railways, and the right hon. Gentleman will recognise that that is the case. My point is that the work has been mismanaged. I attack no individual; I ask for no specific name. I only express the view which I believe to be true, that there has been no management from first to last. Those are the main points I wished to press on the right hon. Gentleman, and, in conclusion, I would ask him whether he is satisfied that this railway can be made for £8,505 per mile, and whether there are not responsible contractors to be found who would come forward and undertake to complete the work at a reasonable rate.
§ * MR. JOHN BURNS (Battersea)I wish to say a word with regard to this railway, but before I deal with the points of the previous speakers I want to ask the Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs as to a point put in some slight respect by the hon. Member for one of the Lincoln constituencies with regard to the parallel strips of land along the railway. I believe this railway runs through territory that we have acquired almost entirely by right of conquest, and the reason I raise the point which I am now about to raise is this: Every American knows that in every case the railways received concessions from individual States and Federal States for making a railway. The American railways were built on this condition, that they should have strips of land from six to twelve miles wide besides the railway handed over to the railway company, and the effect of that has been prejudicial to every industry in America that did not participate in the advantage, and I do not want, in the case of the Uganda Railway, for the people—say 100 years hence—to suffer from the same cause. If the railway becomes a success, which I very much doubt, I do not want j the Foreign Office to lightly give away or sell strips of land close to the railway of | three, six, or twelve miles wide to concessionnaires, a proceeding which may operate prejudicially to the prosperity of the land through which the railway runs. If this is to be a State railway, I would ask them to take all the land within a reasonable distance of the railway, and not 123 to sell to any one who may come along for the purpose of exploiting or developing it, because if the railway is a success, and this laud is let to concessionnaires, it will be permanently prejudicial to the State. I would ask the right hon. Gentleman to be very careful how he deals with the land parallel with the line. If this is to be a State railway we ought to see that it is to be a permanent benefit to this country and advantageous to the country through which it runs. Having said that I turn to our subject. The other night I gathered from the Under Secretary that the Crown agent was Sir Clement Hill, of the Foreign Office, and not Sir Montague Ommaney. I am now told that is not the fact, and that the Crown agent is Sir Montague Ommaney. All the remarks I applied to Sir Clement Hill on that occasion I intended to apply to the Crown agent only, and I desire now to know whether Sir Montague Ommaney is an engineer, because it appears to me that if we are to have railways conducted by the Foreign Office we ought to have them conducted in a businesslike way, and it seems to me that you ought to have dispensed with the Crown agent altogether and appointed a general manager and resident engineer in Uganda. It is impossible for a Committee which, however capable, sits in England to know the practical details, and have the control over a vast concern like the making of a railway, and unless we vest absolute and exclusive responsibility in a general manager on the spot, and have under him a responsible resident superintendent engineer, who has control of all the labour and the carrying out of all the contracts, it cannot be carried out successfully. Instead of doing that we find a committee composed, no doubt, of distinguished persons who are helping the Government, but who are not on the spot, and there has been mismanagement and extravagance in expenditure. I want to sec a general manager and superintendent engineer appointed, and let them live on the spot. Then, as to the staff. We have seventy Europeans, who receive in salary£50,000. That is simply enormous. Fancy John Aird or any of the other great contractors employing such a staff at such a salary to build 360 miles of railway! It is absolutely preposterous. The Blackwall Tunnel, costing a million of money, only had one resident engineer at £1,000. Now, I want to safeguard my- 124 self against the suggestion that I am making insinuations. I find by this memorandum that the Foreign Office are employing 16,000 labourers, and I notice that the amount of men does not quite square with the amount of pay per day. I know that these men are employed as they must be out there through their chiefs, or through gangers; and where men are employed in that way there is a possibility of considerable leakage in the payment of them. Now, I do not suggest that anything is wrong, but what I think is, where men are employed in this way through gangers or middlemen, especially if they are employed by Greek gangers, there is reason to be very careful, if not suspicious. I want to know whether the men on the pay list, and are paid, work, or whether this railway suffers from what we frequently suffer in this country, what is technically called "dead 'uns,"— that is to say, the pay-sheet showing 1,000, of which only 950 work. The most careful contractor has a hard job to prevent it, and the system is, I believe, not unknown in Government Departments. But in South Africa it is extremely necessary to see that the men employed get the money, and that the gangers do not impose on the foreman. When I was working on similar work I found it very difficult to distinguish the number of men whom I have described in the technical phrase dead 'uns. I do not think I have much more to say further than this, even at the eleventh hour, that the time has arrived when this advisory committee should be put on one side in favour of a general manager and engineer resident in Uganda, and that everything should be under their control. I do not think that the Crown agent should be employed on commission; it is a very dangerous precedent to establish. Commission in any form is mischievous in principle, and I think we ought to get a good man and give him full power and authority, and not let him be dependent on commission. The discrepancies in the accounts show that the accounts are prepared in a most elementary manner, and the idea of having 92 locomotives for making 360 miles of railway was ridiculous in the extreme. I believe you have wasted money because you have had no resident manager and engineer, and I agree with my hon. friend when he says that had you taken the proper initial step of having a proper man at the right time, 125 you could have got the work done on very reasonable terms. The whole thing has been mismanaged because you had this advisory committee at home giving its services gratuitously, and you never can get something for nothing, and you would have done better if you had taken the two contractors who sit on that side of the House. Five years hence this case will be quoted against you, and it will be said that no contractors could be got to make a railway in the unhealthy districts of Uganda. That is an additional reason why the Government should have shown the fullest circumspection in the judicious selection of officers who would have made a less bad job of this very bad job. I am a friend of the Foreign Office on this matter. I do not blame them altogether, for they must learn experience in the school of adversity. I ask the Under Secretary to regard me as a friend of State railways, but they must be carried on on right lines. It is because this railway has not been carried on on right lines that it is more costly than it should have been. There is a sad passage at the end of this memorandum. I find that out of 16,000 labourers employed 464 have died. That is a tremendous death-roll for a peaceful operation. But, further, there were 1,300 in hospital and 160 invalided home to India. That indicates a condition of things which we ought to minimise if possible. I would appeal to the Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs, now that we are expressing sympathy with native labourers in another part of Africa, to see that these men are not overworked or badly treated, and that medical stores and attendance are provided for the poor fellows. If there is one duty upon the Government, as Englishmen, when engaged in a work of this kind, it is to see that the men are well paid, well fed, well treated, and that their medical comforts are in excess of rather than under the necessary standard. Above all, they ought to see that the labourers when at work are provided with more protection from the ravages of wild beasts and disease than these men have been. As one who always received the utmost kindness from natives, I say that every kindness shown them comes back in a hundred ways. It begets cheerfulness and willingness at work.
§ MR. SYDNEY BUXTON (Tower Hamlets, Poplar)I have attended all the three debates which we have had on this subject, and have not yet ventured to address the House. In a part of the reply of the Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs we have had the most astonishing confession of mismanagement in regard to this matter I over heard in the House of Commons. The right hon. Gentleman said that the whole question merely resolved itself into an underestimate of the cost. The under-estimating, however, is really very great, seeing that the original estimate was £1,750,000, that it was raised to £2,250,000, that it was afterwards raised to £3,000,000, and that it now stands at £5,000,000, although the latter sum is for a lesser mileage of railway than the original estimate of £1,750,000. It has been said that we have failed to point out any specific point of mismanagement. I think anyone reading these Papers or listening to the speeches must have felt, at all events in regard to some important matters, that there was a considerable amount of muddle which has not been cleared up. We are told in the Papers that in regard to the very great increase in the cost of bridges, the original survey of the line was made in the dry season, and that the surveyors did not anticipate what bridges would be required during the wet season in Uganda, when the rivers are full of water.
§ * MR. BRODRICKWith due respect, what I said was that in the dry season it was impossible to estimate what bridges would be required in a wet season and what they would cost.
§ MR. SYDNEY BUXTONI certainly should find it very difficult; but my business is not that of an engineer or surveyor. It shows, however, great incompetence on the part of someone, when there is a difference on the estimates between £200,000 and £670,000. That is on the shoulders of those who drew up the report that the survey was taken in a dry season. Then as to the ballasting of the line; surely it ought to have been decided at the original stage whether it was to be a light line or a heavy line. There is another point, which is not a question of estimates. We understand from the reports of the committee, and from what the right hon. Gentleman himself 127 has said, that in consequence of subsequent discoveries there is a necessity to take up from the base a considerable amount of condensed water. That surely is a matter that ought to have been discovered at the initial stage of the line. Then there is the labour question referred to by the hon. Member for Battersea, regarding which some explanation should be forthcoming from the Government. The hon. Member for Swansea pointed out that we had experience of the same form of construction of railway in the case of the Beira line, and in that case the Indian labour amounted to 3,000 men, compared in this case with 16,000. As to the question of locomotives, that is not a matter of cost, but of common sense. It will take some years yet, or at least a great many months, before the line is completed, but apparently all the locomotives required both for passenger and goods traffic have been purchased. The consequence will be that these locomotives will rot and rust for many years, and when required will probably have disappeared in the sands of Africa. That is enough to condemn the mode in which this railway has been constructed from the beginning. Then, the railway is constructed on a gauge absolutely different from all other British railways in other parts of Africa. We have hoped to have connection between British lines of railway from the South to the North of Africa, but this line is constructed on a gauge which will prevent it being a trunk line in connection with any other British railway system. The right hon. Gentleman said— and this is the only point he can put to his credit—that whatever may be the criticism in other respects, the cost of management had been very small—he put it at 7 per cent. I am bound to say, with the hon. Member for Battersea, that if cheap it has been very nasty. It would have been much better for us to have had competent, well-paid men in Africa than honorary officers mismanaging things in England. I have the greatest lack of confidence in the management of this Foreign Office committee, not only for their conduct in the past, but because we have had no suggestion that these estimates of £5,000,000 are anything more than a round figure; and they can give us no grounds for the belief that the railway will be completed for that sum, which is nearly double the 128 original estimate. While the committee have grossly under-estimated the capital expenditure on the railway, I believe they are now grossly over-estimating the amount of traffic of a remunerative character likely to come to the railway. I do not think there is any likelihood of the railway being ever in a true sense of the term a paying concern. The right hon. Gentleman expects that the traffic receipts will be £120,000, and he puts this as a considerable asset against the capital expenditure. But I find that instead of there being anything approaching that, these receipts, for the last half of 1899, including stores, were only 483,000 rupees, whereas the working expenses were 1,400,000 rupees.
§ * MR. BRODRICKPerhaps the hon. Gentleman will allow me to say that the working expenses included the carriage of railway stores and a great mass of material. It is impossible to compare like with unlike.
§ MR. SYDNEY BUXTONI admit the validity of the argument in regard to the million and a half of rupees as cost of traffic. But I understand that the traffic does not pay working expenses.
* MR. BEODEICKThe working expenses, including the carriage of all stores and material, is less than a million and a half rupees. If you take the traffic other than stores at the same rate it would amount to 150,000 rupees and more.
§ MR. SYDNEY BUXTONAfter the exhibition of incompetency of this committee to estimate the capital expenditure, I am not prepared to accept their estimate of traffic when they do not give us figures to support it. It seems to me a great mistake for a great and very competent Department, such as the Foreign Office, to undertake work for which they are obviously unfitted. This is the sort of work which should have been in the hands of contractors. I agree with Lord Rosebery when he says that of all departments of Government the one least qualified to construct a railway was the Foreign Office. I have no particular suggestion to make at the present time. We have the railway in hand: and we have got to finish it. But when you have gross ineompetency of this sort, I think some inquiry ought to be made by the 129 House of Commons whether we cannot finish it at some less expense than this. It is this sort of thing which brings so much discredit on what is called Imperialism and expansion in England. As the hon. Member for the Berwick Division said the other day, if you annex a large territory like this you are bound to have a railway, but there is no reason why it should have been so mismanaged as it has been.
§ MR. DILLON (Mayo, E.)As far as my recollection serves me the right hon. Gentleman was wrong in one important particular in regard to this matter. He said that the land in Uganda was England's by right of conquest. Now I recollect that when the late Sir Lewis Pellet was challenged on the subject he produced an enormous number of treaties with African chiefs, not one of whose names I could pronounce. But the reason why I have risen is to make one more effort to obtain from the Under Secretary some explanation as to the labour cost. The men who made the first surveys, including Colonel Macdonald, stated in support of their estimates of the cost of the railway their expectation of obtaining large masses of native labour at the price of fourpence per day. Now this region had been traversed by travellers for many years before, and the conditions on which native labour could be obtained were perfectly well known. I want to know how it came about that the calculation that the rough work of this railway could be done by local native labour has been totally disappointed. Since the railway was commenced, all that region has been desolated by the most appalling famine, and it appears horrible when we read descriptions of the condition in which men, women, and children were found there, that we should have been obliged to go to India and import 10,000 labourers, when the opportunity was afforded of giving employment to the local famine-stricken population. No explanation has been given why the local native labourers were to be paid only fourpence per day and the imported Indian labourer at fourteen pence a day, or why it is that there has been this horrible mortality among the Indian labourers. In regard to that point I wish to know whether there was any difficulty about the wages with the local natives. Fourpence per day, even in Africa, is a very low wage, and I presume it was 130 without food. In South Africa I do not suppose any natives would work for four-pence or a shilling a day. Wages are fairly high, and considering the traffic that has been going on for some considerable time on this route, and considering that the Swahilis have been in the habit of being hired as labourers, they must have been paid a higher wage than fourpence a day. I would ask whether before recourse was had on a wholesale scale to Indian coolies at four-teenpence a day, any offer was made to the native labourer's at more than four-pence a day? There is one other point which we are entitled to have explained. In the original estimate it was said that it was only intended to allow for the importation of 7,500 labourers, mostly skilled, and the price of Indian skilled labour was estimated at twelve pence a day. Now this Paper says that the actual amount paid for unskilled labour was fourteen pence a day. That is extraordinary. It seems to me that the Under Secretary of State ought to explain how that estimate was arrived at. The persons who made it must have been grossly ignorant of the cost of Indian labour. But the point I am chiefly anxious to have explained is how can it be accounted for that in a country where famine was raging and the people starving, 16,000 labourers had to be imported from India.
§ MR. WEIR (ROSS and Cromarty)The right hon. Gentleman has told us that this railway is managed by a committee of experts. My opinion is that it is managed by a committee of muddlers of the first water. What have this committee been doing? They have been ordering goods from hand to mouth. It is the duty of railway contractors and all persons engaged in the construction of large works to look a long way ahead. If their specifications had been properly drawn up, the committee would have ordered their material a long way ahead, but that would not suit the gentlemen who are paid by commission, because, of course, the higher the price of the material the greater their commission. I wonder the right hon. Gentleman has not sufficient business tact to notice that. As soon as ever the right hon. Gentleman can take the work out of the hands of these muddlers the better it will be for the British taxpayer. I do not believe 131 in unpaid services, and the services of this committee should be paid for. The , Crown Agent's commission amounts to £15,801, and there is also an expenditure of £12,463 for office expenses, etc., to which the right hon. Gentleman did not refer. Why should we not be supplied with details? The right hon. Gentleman also told us that he could not now arrange to alter the gauge. I do not know at what stage the committee took up the work, but I think they took it up early enough to have this question of gauge considered. What an absurdity it is to have different gauges in different parts of Africa, when your policy is to have one railway from Cape Town to Cairo. That railway is being pushed forward, I am glad to say, with a great deal of energy, but when it reaches Uganda a different gauge will be found there. I maintain that the committee ought to have attended to that matter. The right hon. Gentleman says it would be an expensive business to alter the gauge. I have no doubt it would be costly at the present time, but I maintain that a serious blunder was made at an early stage in the construction. The right hon. Gentleman was asked if any land had boon disposed of along the railway, and his answer was that no land had been disposed of, but that applications for land had been received. The right hon. Gentleman knows that there is no population along parts of the railway, and who is going to purchase land in these parts? The planters would have to adopt a system of compulsory labour, under which the natives would be compelled to work so many days each year. My feeling is that the right hon. Gentleman will have to wait a long time before he disposes of any land along that line of railway. Then he referred to the question of bridges. In the construction of bridges, would not a competent engineer have allowed for the rise of the rivers during the wet season? It was the business of the engineer to have done that. The right hon. Gentleman says that bridges have had to be made stronger, and that in itself shows what a useless set of men are looking after this business. He also tells us that iron and steel are more costly now. Why, every schoolboy knows that, but I say that this committee of muddlers ought to have arranged for their contract several years ago, before the enormous increase in the price of iron and steel occurred. We are told that only one member of the com- 132 mittee is paid. Is the committee to-day the same committee that started the work? I find that a sum of £10,229 has been paid for land and as compensation. Paid to whom? I suppose the most of it has been expended in gin, whisky and rum to make the chiefs drunk. I do not blame the right hon. Gentleman for that, because that is how business is carried on in that part of the world. I happen to know. I have not been engaged in any job myself, nor am I interested pecuniarily in any venture in that part of the world, but I make it my business to read up these matters, and I have also the benefit of acquaintance with people who have lived for many years in that part of the world. It has been asked why native labour was not obtained, and fourpence per day was said to be rather a low figure. I think it is rather a high figure under the circumstances. I say there has been the grossest mismanagement, and unless the right hon. Gentleman makes some alterations, such as were suggested by the hon. Member for Battersea, who is a practical man, and unless one or two efficient men are sent out, I prophesy that the taxpayers of this country will have to put their hands in their pockets for a great deal more money than £5,000,000 before this railway is constructed. Why is the railway being constructed? Is it for the development of Empire? We all want to have ours the most glorious Empire under the sun. We are in for it, and I suppose we will have to pay for it. But I venture to say that some common sense ought to be brought to bear on this matter. I would urge the right hon. Gentleman to take this railway out of the hands of the muddlers and put it into the hands of competent men who will carry out the work in a businesslike fashion.
§ * MR. BRODRICKI am placed in this extraordinary position—that every hon. Member who has criticised this railway scheme has contradicted one of the strong points made by some hon. Member who preceded him. For instance, the hon. Member for Poplar, who spoke with an amount of acrimony rare as coming from him, said that the administration was too cheap, whereas the hon. Member for Battersea complained that it was too, dear.
§ MR. SYDNEY BUXTONI said it was cheap and very nasty, and that I would rather have it dearer.
§ * MR. BRODRICKWhat I stated was that the hon. Gentleman considered the administration too cheap; I left out the latter part of the phrase. On the other hand, the hon. Member for Battersea says it is too dear. Again, the hon. Member for Poplar said that there ought to be more highly paid officials conducting the work in Africa, and the hon. Member for Battersea urged that there were too many men on the spot drawing large salaries. In the same way the hon. Member for Gateshead complained very vigorously that our locomotives were too few and too cheap, whereas a tremendous attack has been made upon us because it is said our locomotives were too numerous and too costly. The hon. Gentleman for Poplar, who is never tired of addressing this House on questions of slavery, declared over and over again that no forced labour should be used in regard to this railway. I informed the House the other night that it was because we were unable to get free labour in Africa that we were forced to import Indian labour, and now the hon. Gentleman has the face to get up and ask why it is that the Government have not used African labour. He is so anxious to find any stick to beat the Government with that he is prepared even to go back on his own previous speeches and magnificent perorations. He appeals to the House not to sanction any system of forced labour, although he knows perfectly well that there are only two ways of getting labour in Africa or elsewhere—either voluntary or by force. We have also been attacked to-night with regard to the health of the Indian coolies. We were told that they were dying by thousands. The hon. Member for Batter-sea appealed to us to instruct the European managers in Africa to take more care of the health of the coolies. But what are the statistics? The death rate is about 29 per 1,000, which is below the average of a great many English towns. [An HON. MEMBER: Oh, oh!] Yes; there are many English towns with that death rate, and in India there are quite a number of places where the death rate is higher.
§ MR. JOHN BURNSNot for adult labourers. It includes all ages, especially 134 infants, among which mortality is excessive.
§ * MR. BRODRICKBut the men were brought from one climate to a totally different climate, and some increase in the death rate might be expected, and I think it is very creditable to the British officials that they have managed under great difficulties to keep the death rate so low. But of all the attacks which have been made on the Government, the one which seems to me to have less weight than any of the others is the attack with regard to the question of the gauge. It is well known that the railway terminates on the Lake, and that the connection can only be resumed by rail at the other side of the lake, a distance of 250 or 300 miles. Who ever thought of complaining because English railways are not of the same gauge as the railways of Franco? Who ever thought that the people of France were extremely unwise in having different gauges from the railways in England? As there is a break of over 250 miles the question of gauge does not really make any material difference. I have been asked by almost every speaker whether I would not guarantee that the money now asked for would complete the railway. I am not going to put myself in such an absurd position as to stand bail for a thing regarding which no man can under the circumstances give an absolute guarantee. All I can do is to bring before the Committee facts and figures. We have spent 60 per cent. of the money, but we have done in every respect more than 60 per cent. of the work. The actual line open is over 60 per cent., the actual embankment constructed is over 80 per cent., and the locomotives in hand are 100 per cent. It is very easy to divide the number of miles by the number of locomotives, but obviously you require a larger number of locomotives when you are bringing up a large amount of material on a single line, and it would be very poor economy to get locomotives, costing about £2,000 each, which might not be subsequently required. With regard to the expenditure I do not apologise for it at all. It is said that the managing members of the Committee ought to be in Africa. I do not think that should be so. If we are to have a managing board in London, we must have as managing member an ex- 135 pert who is responsible for the work, and we must also have a competent man in charge in Africa. We have in Africa a competent engineer at a salary of £1,600 a year, and, so far as we know he is an excellent man for the work. The point which I should like the Committee to remember is that it is perfectly clear that the traffic is paying its own way. The railway is already earning from £60,000 to £65,000 a year. We can only estimate from that, but I think that we may estimate that when the traffic is no longer one way we shall be able to double the present traffic. We fully believe that the railway will pay its way in the future so far as the working expenses are concerned. It is of course a question as to how far the capital sum can be met by the receipts from the railway. I can only deeply regret that so many members of the Committee have taken so sinister a view on the matter of this railway. I do not think that any contractor under the circumstances of Uganda, and looking to the conditions under which the country was surveyed, and the information on which this House proceeded, would have found it wise to undertake a large and expensive contract. I can only say this—that I do not believe any body of men, paid or unpaid, could have given more earnest and complete attention to their work than this Committee has done. I believe that in dealing with a railway of this character you are certainly taking a leap in the dark when you proceed without a complete survey. This House determined not to wait, but to proceed upon a reconnaissance survey, and in the circumstances some errors were unavoidable. I can only congratulate myself that, although there has been a chorus of dissatisfaction on the other side of the House at the manner in which the Foreign Office constructed this railway, an equally unanimous chorus of satisfaction has been expressed on this side, and with that I am willing to rest content.
§ MR. LABOUCHERE (Northampton)The right hon. Gentleman seems perfectly surprised that we have not gone into all the history of this railroad and dealt with its political and other aspects. This is not a Second Reading debate. The House has already decided that this railway is 136 to be made, and we are endeavouring at the present moment to induce the Foreign Office to act as practical businesslike men. If the right hon. Gentleman wished it, and if it were in order, I should be happy to finish the evening by discussing the whole question of the Uganda Railway, but that would be out of order. My hon. friend was strongly in favour of a railway being built to Uganda, but it does not follow that he was in favour of the Foreign Office constructing the railway and fooling all over Africa until it comes to a place called Florence Bay. "We do not know anything about Florence Bay," the Government say, "but that is enough for the stupid donkeys sent to represent the people in the House of Commons." An attack has been made on the hon. Member for Poplar for referring to the work as cheap and nasty. When my hon. friend referred to the work as cheap and nasty he meant that you could not plead that you have not spent money for nothing. It may be urged that it is not so. The right hon. Gentleman seems to have his knife in my hon. friend the Member for Poplar. He said he was an advocate of forced labour. Why, it is owing to the action of my hon. friend that there is no forced labour on this line. When the reconnaissance survey was made, it was estimated that you would get 16,000 Africans. Everybody knew perfectly well that it would be absolutely impossible to get 16,000 Africans without some sort of forced labour, and it was the protests made by my hon. friend against your slaving these unfortunate people, that forced you to alter your proposal. The right hon. Gentleman need not take credit to himself and the Government. You ought to give credit to my hon. friend and to others on this side of the House. The only item I would justify in the whole thing is the wage you have to pay these coolies.
§ * MR. BRODRICKI am sorry to destroy the hon. Gentleman's point. My predecessor, who introduced this Bill to the House, distinctly stated that no forced labour would be employed. If you give credit, you should give it where it is due.
§ MR. LABOUCHEREWe were told that no "forced labour" would be employed in Rhodesia and the Transvaal. That is the general term employed. There 137 would have been forced labour here if it had not been for the noble exertions of my hon. friend. The right hon. Gentleman twitted me for what I said six years i ago in a debate, when I complained of the ill-health of the Indians employed on the railroad. He pointed to them as being as healthy as any in England. Only about 1,000 had died, and it was said there was no English town where the percentage was more favourable. I take the round figures. You have 10,000 coolies employed there. In the last year 450 died and 1,500 were invalided. In this exceptionally healthy place you have one man in eight cither invalided or dead. I think the disease and mortality among these unfortunate men is rather high. The right hon. Gentleman talked about the gauge and scoffed at the valuable observations made by the hon. Gentleman behind me on that subject. He asked what this railway has to do with any railway we may make from the Cape to Cairo. I did at least suppose that it had entered the minds of the Foreign Office Committee that in making this railroad to Florence Bay, which is 100 miles south of Uganda, we might make a connection with the Cape to Cairo line. This railway is to go to Florence Bay, and there it is to stop. Does the right hon. Gentleman know anything about i Florence Bay? He has not told us about it, and I will tell you why. I don't think that more than a dozen white men have ever seen Florence Bay. The reason is that it is one of the most un-healthy parts of the Lake, and even natives cannot live there. Yet this railway is to dump down its passengers in the midst of a swamp. I ask how are they to be carried to Uganda? "Oh," said one right hon. Gentleman, "we have a steamer on the Lake." There are ninety-five locomotives to bring them up to the Lake, and one steamer is to carry them further. Then the right hon. Gentleman said he had no doubt a company would take up the matter and put steamers on the Lake. I hope for the sake of the taxpayers they will do so, but I say for myself I will not take shares in that company. The right hon. Gentleman has entirely blinked the connection which had to be made between Florence Bay and Uganda. In Florence Bay you have to make harbours and piers, and you have to put steamers on the Lake if nobody else will do it to save you. These intelligent 138 gentlemen, the Foreign Office clerks, when they found that the railway was costing so much, thought they would make a little economy themselves by reducing the length of the railway fifty miles. The statement did not appear in a single one of the Papers except in the most incidental way. I think it would have been satisfactory if the right hon. Gentleman had included in the statistics laid before the House the additional expenditure for making these piers, not only at Florence Bay but at the point of landing at Uganda, and also for the provision of steamers. The right hon. Gentleman told us to think of the great advances which had been made, and to look at the number of locomotives and carriages they had already. He in his last statement said that we are to make £100,000 per annum out of this railroad. That is to be the gross profit from one train per diem. At the commencement it was to be one train per week. How in the name of wonder can you require ninety locomotives and 202 passenger carriages for one train per diem? The fact is that these gentlemen at the Foreign Office do not know much about railroads. They said, "Here is something we don't understand, let us throw dust in the eyes of the House of Commons." The right hon. Gentleman said he would not guarantee what it would cost, but he did guarantee that the railway would pay its way. The right hon. gentleman has no right to make these assumptions to the House. He cannot, with the data now before him, know more about the matter than any Member of this House. The right hon. Gentleman talks about the present traffic, but it has been shown that there is no traffic in the territory between Uganda or Florence Bay and Mombasa. Where you get your passengers must be from the employees of the railroad. You do not get them from Uganda. Will the right hon. Gentleman get up and tell me that the savages are using the railway? I saw recently that there had been an increase of the traffic, and I knew that the right hon. Gentleman would boast about it. I made inquiries how this happened to be. I found it was due to the fact that the Foreign Office people allowed the coolies holidays to go backward and forward to Mombasa. That is the passenger traffic on which the right hon. Gentleman is asking the House to spend 139 five millions sterling, under the impression that they will get it back. We have been fooled, and there can be no question about it. The right hon. Gentleman comes down here and tells us what the construction will cost, but he will not guarantee it. He says that a little more | than 60 per cent. of the whole line has | been finished up to the present moment for 60 per cent. of the capital. Does the right, hon. Gentleman know that it is easy to make railroads in some places and not easy to make them in others? If you were making a railway from Paris to Italy you would find that the real cost would be in going through or over the Alps. If you came and said, "We have made half the railway and only spent half the capital," and if you had still to make a tunnel through the Alps, everybody would laugh at the right hon. Gentleman. I am as certain as I am of my own existence that before we finish this Uganda railway somebody representing the Foreign Office will appear in this House and say that errors have been made, and that one, two, three or four millions are required. Admitting that the railway has to be made, and made if you like to Florence Bay, we want it made on strict business and commercial principles, because in that way I think we will get a better railroad for the money and the line will cost less. After all the mistakes made by this committee of the Foreign Office we cannot induce the right hon. Gentleman to change the system. He says that this system is to go on. If that is to be done we shall have to spend twice what is necessary. As to the Crown Agents' commissions, I really cannot understand why you should employ these Crown Agents at all. You have a director of contracts at a fixed salary.
§ * MR. BRODRICKWe have no director of contracts.
MR. LABQUCHEREYou have directors of contracts for the War Office and the Navy. If you had applied to one of these directors he would have done the work. He is a servant of the Government collectively, and you could make him do it. Why you are giving the Crown Agents £15,000 I cannot for the life of me understand. Further, I would ask the right hon. Gentleman whether these contracts were put out to tender?
§ * MR. BRODRICKSome were.
§ MR. LABOUCHEREThe right hon. Gentleman says some were. Why were not the others put out to tender? It seems to me that when you employ a gentleman who receives his salary through commission you ought to insist, when you have large contracts to make for rails and such like articles, that public tenders should be invited in order to get the best article in the best market. The Committee of the Foreign Office has no survey before it, and yet it makes these wild, reckless estimates. We have wasted money on this railway, and we will continue to waste money as long as the present Government are in office.
MR. GIBSON BOWLESWhen the first estimate of £3,000,000 was submitted we were told that it covered a fair and generous margin. You have very soon afterwards another demand for £2,000,000 more. It is absurd, and it would be unreasonable to suppose that £5,000,000 will cover the cost. You cannot expect it to cover the cost when the construction of the railway is put into the hands of gentlemen whom the hon. Member for Ross and Cromarty calls muddlers. They are not muddlers in their own profession. They are brought up to copy despatches, they can negotiate, and they can keep all the secrets they do not know; but when you call upon them to construct a railway you put an unreasonable demand upon them. If those Foreign Office gentlemen gave their time for nothing to the work of this railway, what became of their Foreign Office work? Surely either they had no work at all to do in connection with the railway, or their Foreign Office work must be disgracefully neglected.
§ * MR. BRODRICKBoth of the gentlemen on the committee have worked a very large number of hours overtime, and had not had their vacation for a considerable period.
MR. GIBSON BOWLESMy experience of one of them is that he does not get to the office before eleven or twelve o'clock.
§ * MR. BRODRICKHe is at the office till eight o'clock at night.
MR. GIBSON BOWLESAre they fully occupied with Foreign Office work or railway work? They cannot do a full day's work at both, and if you ask them to do two days work in one day's time you are destroying the lives of valuable public servants. I conceive that it is a ridiculous mistake to employ officials who have not the training necessary for constructing a railway. You might as well ask the bishops and archbishops to go out and command the army in South Africa. This would be better, because some of the bishops are naturally fighting men. Whether the cost is £5,000,000 or £7,000,000 I am afraid we have no choice in the matter. The 1 per cent. paid to the Crown Agents is perfectly outrageous. Of course I can understand the Foreign Office saying, "We are told that this is strictly according to rule. We do not know a rail from a chimney-pot, but we have to buy this. There are the Crown Agents for the Colonies. These gentlemen are accustomed to buy for the colonies, and they will buy for us on the same terms." The 1 per cent. is higher than they used to get from the colonies. It is a very high commission. I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman is aware of this other fact. The three Crown Agents have accumulated a fund of £341,000. That is a proof that they charge more for the work than is required. I wish to know whether the right hon. Gentleman is going to pay this 1 per cent. when it is demonstrated to be more than the cost of the work. It has been shown that 1 per cent. is more than is necessary. We have not reached the end of this question by a great deal, and there is a vast amount of matter that will require to be probed to the bottom. It may, perhaps, be very desirable to know the exact circumstances under which this gentleman did retreat from his office of Crown Agent. We are paying far too much for buying the material, and the least the Government can do is to reduce the amount of the commission.
§ CAPTAIN SINCLAIR (Forfarshire)I wish to add one word to the protest which has been made in regard to the management of this business by the Foreign Office. We have heard a great deal in this debate about the Foreign Office Committee, because that has been the executive committee charged by the Government with 142 the carrying out of this work, but I am sure that no one wishes to say that the gentlemen forming that committee have been less capable of performing the duties entrusted to them than any other body in the service of the Crown would have been under similar circumstances. The quarrel is with the Government not only for having selected them for carrying out a duty for which, perhaps, they are not fitted, but having withdrawn them from work for which they were better qualified, and, still more, for having persisted in defending the present system which by their own admissions the Government have shown has failed so lamentably. The right hon. Gentleman has made two defences in regard to the management of this railway. The first was when the hon. Member for North Louth brought this matter forward, and the other we have listened to to-night. No one who heard the two defences could fail to be struck by the dissimilarity of attitude taken up on the two occasions. In the first case the right hon. Gentleman entirely admitted miscalculations in various important respects; he said the price of labour and of material had unexpectedly risen, and I am perfectly certain that if the right hon. Gentleman had given the Committee any indication that a different form of control or that more care would be exercised in the future, criticism on this side of the House would have been very largely disarmed. But this evening he has taken an entirely different line, and has defended all the sins of omission and commission which have been only too evident in the management of the railway up to the present, thereby making his case worse, and the more completely justifying our criticisms. We have had very little clear information as to the real position and work and emoluments of the Crown Agents, but I will not go into that now. With regard to the traffic and working-expenses and the question of the gauge, the defence of the right hon. Gentleman was exceedingly weak. As to the traffic and working expenses, surely it must be admitted not only that for the conveyance of stores which are sent up by the Government for the support of the labourers working on the railway has there been a large return, but also that there are a number of native traders who have gone up the railway, as is generally the case when large gangs of workmen are 143 doing work of this kind, establishing themselves in little huts and shanties at the head of the line, and that the goods they ordered and which went up over the line have formed a very largo addition to the present traffic proceeds of the line which must cease when the railway is completed. However, both sides of the House are committed to the principle of constructing this railway, and possibly it may be too much to expect that the railway should pay even working expenses, far less any interest on the capital at present. The right hon. Gentleman referred to statistics of mortality in the working gangs on this railway, and he alluded to the statistics of mortality in some of our largo towns. It is entirely fallacious to compare for one moment the statistics of mortality among adult workmen, no matter where they may be engaged, with the statistics of mortality of a full population of men, women, and children. As to the gauge, the right hon. Gentleman ridiculed the criticism of my hon. friend when he pointed out the advisability of the gauge of one railway being the same as that of another, because, said he, there will be a lake between the two railways, and therefore you will have to break bulk. But the right hon. Gentleman surely forgot that it is only within the last few months that the alteration in the direction of the line was made which would take the line to the lake. I cannot conceive anything more likely to discourage the country from proceeding with enterprises of this kind than the conviction that such
§ enterprises when undertaken are not economically and efficiently managed. It is greatly to the interest not only of this side of the House, but also of the Government, that they should join in asserting the control of the House of Commons over expenditure of this kind. It may very probably be the case that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, when preparing his Budget for next year, will look with regret at the additional £2,000,000 which have had to be laid out in the extension of this railway. I quite agree with the Under Secretary as to the doubt whether any contractors would ever have undertaken this work, and it is more than we can reasonably ask him, especially after the experience of the past, to fix any limit to the expenditure which may be necessary before this line is completed, thus laying himself open to attacks if his estimate is exceeded. I share his objection to anything of that kind, but I must say that the attitude he has adopted in this debate has not been an encouraging one to those of us who desire to sec economical and efficient management, while if anything is likely to shake the confidence of the country in such enterprises it is the conviction that the House of Commons no longer cares to exercise any control over these matters.
§ Question put.
§ The Committee divided:—Ayes, 147; Noes, 41. (Division List No. 123.)
145| AYES. | ||
| Allhusen, Augustus Henry E. | Chaplin, Rt. Hon. Henry | Gedge, Sydney |
| Anson, Sir William Reynell | Charrington, Spencer | Gibbs, Hon. Vicary (St. Albans) |
| Archdale, Edward Mervyn | Coghill, Douglas Harry | Godson, Sir Augustus F. |
| Atkinson, Rt. Hon. John | Collings, Rt. Hon. Jesse | Goldsworthy, Major-General |
| Balfour, Rt. Hn A. J. (Manch'r) | Colomb, Sir John Charles Ready | Gorst, Rt. Hon. Sir John E. |
| Balfour, Rt. Hn Gerald W (Leeds) | Cook, Fred, Lucas (Lambeth) | Goschen, Rt. Hn G J(St George's) |
| Banbury, Frederick George | Corbett, A. Cameron (Glasg'w) | Goschen, George J. (Sussex) |
| Barry, Rt. Hn A H Smith-(Hunts) | Cox, Irwin E. Bainbridge | Goulding, Edward Alfred |
| Beach, Rt. Hn. Sir M.H. (Brist'l) | Cubitt, Hon. Henry | Green, Walford D (Wednesbury) |
| Beaumont, Wentworth C. B. | Curzon, Viscount | Grey, Sir Edward (Berwick) |
| Bethell, Commander | Denny, Colonel | Griffith, Ellis J. |
| Bhownaggree, Sir M. M. | Disraeli, Coningsby Ralph | Hamilton, Rt. Hon. Lord G. |
| Bill, Charles | Dorington, Sir John Edward | Hanbury, Rt. Hon. R. Wm. |
| Blundell, Colonel Henry | Doughty, George | Hanson, Sir Reginald |
| Bond, Edward | Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers- | Hardy, Laurence |
| Boscawen, Arthur Griffith- | Egerton, Hon. A. de Tatton | Haslett, Sir James Horner |
| Brassey, Albert | Fellowes, Hon. Ailwyn Edw. | Helder, Augustus |
| Brodrick, Rt. Hon. St. John | Field, Admiral (Eastbourne) | Hornby, Sir William Henry |
| Butcher, John George | Finch, George H. | Houston, R. P. |
| Caldwell, James | Finlay, Sir Robert Bannatyne | Howard, Joseph |
| Cavendish, V. C. W. (Derbysh.) | Fisher, William Hayes | Hutton, John (York, N.R.) |
| Chamberlain, Rt. Hn. J.(Birm.) | Foster, Harry S. (Suffolk) | Johnson-Ferguson, Jabez Edw. |
| Chamberlain, J. Austen (W'rc'r) | Galloway, William Johnson | Johnston, William (Belfast) |
| Johnstone, Hey wood (Sussex) | Murray, Rt. Hn. A Graham (Bute) | Stanley, Edward, Jas. (Somerset) |
| Joicey, Sir James | Murray, Charles. I. (Coventry) | Stephens, Henry Charles |
| Kenyon, James | Nicholson, William Graham | Stewart, Sir Mark J. M'Taggart |
| Kenyon-Slaney, Col. William | Nicol, Donald Ninian | Strachey, Edward |
| Keswick, William | O'Neill, Hon. Robert Torrens | Strutt, Hon. Charles Hedley |
| Kimber, Henry | Pease, Herbert Pike(D'rlington) | Talbot, Rt. Hon. J.G.(Ox. Unv. |
| Knowles, Lees | Phillpotts, Captain Arthur | Thornton, Percy M. |
| Lafone, Allied | Pilkington, R.(Lanes, Newton) | Tomlinson. Wm. Edw. Murray |
| Lawrence, Sir E During- (Com | Platt-Higgins, Frederick | Tuke, Sir John Batty |
| Lawrence, Wm. F. (Liverpool) | Plunkett ,Rt. Hn. Horace Curzon | Warr, Augustus Frederick |
| Lawson, John Grant (Yorks.) | Powell, Sir Fran-is Sharp | Welby, Rt.-Col. A C E (Taunton) |
| Leigh-Bennett, Henry Currie | Pretyman, Ernest George | Welby, Sir Charles G.E.(Notts.) |
| Loder, Gerald Walter Erskine | Purvis, Robert | Whiteley, H (Askton-under-L.) |
| Long, Rt. Hon. W. (Liverpool | Rasch, Major Frederic Carne | Williams, Col. R. (Dorset) |
| Lopes, Henry Yarde Buller | Rentoul, James Alexander | Willox, Sir John Archibald |
| Lowe, Francis William | Richards, Henry Charles | Wilson, John (Falkirk) |
| Lowles, John | Ritenie, Rt. Hn. C. Thomson | Wodehouse, Rt. Hn. E. R.(Bath |
| Loyd, Archie Kirkman | Robertson, Herbert (Hackney) | Wortley, Rt. Hn. C. B. Stuart- |
| Macdona, John dimming | Rothschild, Hon. Lionel Walter | Wylie, Alexander |
| Marline, Sir John William | Boyds, Clement Molyneux | Wyndham, George |
| M'Arthur, Charles (Liverpool) | Russell, T. W. (Tyrone) | Wyvill, Marmaduke D'Arcy |
| Massey-Mainwaring, Hn. W.F. | Seely, Charles Hilton | Young, Commander (Berks, E.) |
| Mellor, Colonel (Lancashire) | Shaw-Stewart, M. H.(Renfrew) | |
| Montagu, Hon.J. Scott (Hants.) | Sidebotham. J. W. (Cheshire) | TELLERS FOR THE AYES— |
| More, Robt. Jasper (Shropshire) | Sidebottom, William (Derbys.) | Sir William Walrond and |
| Morgan, Hon. F. (Monm'thsh.) | Smith, Abel H.(Christchurch) | Mr. Anstruther. |
| Morrell, George Herbert | Smith, Jas, Parker (Lanarks.) | |
| Muntz, Philip A. | Smith, Hon. W. D.(Strand) | |
| NOES. | ||
| Bayley, Thomas (Derbyshire) | Kilbride, Denis | Roberts, John H. (Denbighs.) |
| Billson. Alfred | Labouchere, Henry | Runciman, Walter |
| Birrell, Augustine | Macaleese, Daniel | Samuel, J. (Stockton-on-Tees) |
| Burns, John | M'Cartan, Michael | Shaw, Charles Edw. (Stafford) |
| Cawley, Frederick | M'Crae, George | Smith, Samuel (Flint) |
| Channing, Francis Allston | M'Ghee, Richard | Steadman, William Charles |
| Colville, John | Maddison, Fred. | Sullivan, Donal (Westmeath) |
| Dillon, John | Nussey, Thomas Williams | Tanner, Charles Kearns |
| Doogan, P. C. | O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny) | Trevelyan, Charles Philips |
| Evans, Saml. T. (Glamorgan) | Oldroyd, Mark | Wilson, Hn. J. (York, W. R.) |
| Field, William (Dublin) | Pearson, Sir Weetman D. | Woodhouse, Sir J.T (Hudders'd) |
| Goddard, Daniel Ford | Pease, Joseph A. (Northumb.) | |
| Hayne, Rt. Hn. Charles | Scale Perks, Robert William | TELLERS FOR THIS NOES— |
| Holland, William Henry | Price, Robert John | Captain Sinclair and Mr. |
| Jones, William (Carnarvonsh.) | Reekitt, Harold James | Brynmor Jones. |
Bill read the third time, and passed.
§ Clause 2 agreed to.
§ Bill reported, without Amendment; to be read the third time upon Thursday.