§ Considered in Committee.
§ (In the Committee.)
§ [Mr. STUART WORTLEY () Sheffield, Hallamin the Chair.]
§ Clause 1:—
(2.40.) MR. BRYNMOR JONES () Swansea, Districtsaid that in the course of the discussion on this subject a few days ago. he drew a comparison between the Beira and the Uganda undertakings, and the Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs, in the course of his reply, made a very strong statement. He said, in fact, that the Beira Railway was one of the worst constructed in Africa, and had had to be relaid. He would like to know what authority the noble Lord had for making that statement, and whether the noble Lord had seen the letter in The Timies this morning from the contractors of the Beira Railway, pointing out that the statement of the noble Lord was entirely inaccurate, inasmuch as the railway was built under the supervision and to the satisfaction of the engineers of the company, who were Sir George Bruce, Sir Douglas Fox—both past presidents of the Institute of Civil Engineers—and Sir Charles Metcalfe, all of them engineers of the highest English standing. The line was relaid in consequence of the necessity of altering the original gauge so as to have the same gauge right through from Cape Town to Beira. He would like further to ask the noble Lord whether the account also given by Messrs. Pauling in The Times as to their negotiations with the Foreign Office was correct, and if so what were the reasons given by the Foreign Office for undertaking the works themselves when so advantageous an offer had been made by these contractors?
*THE UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Lord CRANBORNE,) Rochestersaid that although the hon. Member had not given him any notice, ho would do his best to answer his Question. With regard to the Beira Railway, it was originally a 2It. railway and was constructed on a very cheap basis. All the 1226 bridges, with one exception, were of wood. The hon. and learned Gentleman would know that the two most important things in working a railway were the diameter of the curves and the steepness of the inclines. In both these respects the Beira Railway was a far greater sinner than the Uganda Railway; and when the Beira Railway came to be tried, and heavy burdens were thrown upon it, the difficulties were found to be insuperable, and the whole line had to be reconstructed on the 3ft. 6in. gauge. When that reconstruction was completed, the railway had cost between £7,000 and £8,000 a mile. The line ran through far easier country than that traversed by the Uganda Railway; it was only 220 miles long, and never reached a higher point than 3,000ft. above the sea level. In the circumstances he did not think that the difference between £7,500 and £9.500 a mile in the cost of the two lines was at all surprising. It certainly did not reflect badly on the Uganda Railway. He had no desire to run down the Heir a Railway, and if anything he said the other night was thought excessive he gladly withdrew it. He still maintained, however, that the Beira Railway was not an example to be quoted in condemnation of the Uganda Railway, especially when the much more difficult country and the much greater length of the line were considered.
§ MR. T. M. HEALY () Louth, N.said that the noble Lord had not dealt with the point raised by Messrs. Pauling & Co. in their letter to The Times. They stated that they made an offer to Lord Kirmberley in April, 1895, to construct and work this line on certain conditions for £2,500,000. Lord Kimberley's Government soon after went out of office, and they renewed the ofter to Lord Salisbury's Government, but they never received any reply to that offer. The Government had gone on and made the line themselves at a cost to the country of £5,500,000, or £3,000,000 more than the amount for which Messrs. Pauling offered to do the job. He noticed that that was the same firm of contractors whose work on the Beira Railway was made the subject of comment by the noble Lord. It seemed to him to be very singular. The firm had certainly constructed some railways in Donegal very well indeed 1227 —and that was a difficult country—and he could not see why they should not he entitled to receive a courteous answer to their offer. Five millions was being spent on this railway, and another five millions on a colonial cable. Ten millions of the taxpayers' money was being spent on colonials who paid no taxes, while the people who had to pay through the nose—especially in Ireland—were not reaping a shilling's worth of benefit from the outlay.
§ MR. JOSEPH WALTON () Yorkshire, W.R., Barnsleyasked the noble Lord whether he could inform the House as to the amount of remuneration given to the Crown Agents, and other permanent officials, who had had the carrying out of the construction of the railway, and also what amount of remuneration would have been received by Government officials had the work of constructing the railway been entrusted to private contractors.
§ MR. LOUGH () Islington, W.asked for further information with regard to figures in the estimates. When he brought this matter up last time the noble Lord rather scolded him, and certainly failed to give him any satisfaction by promising to do his best to stop this scandalous waste of money. The amount put down for contingencies was £252,000, and it now appeared that £222,000 had been saved under that head. He wished to know, therefore, why an estimate for £252,000 was laid. Then there was an item of £484,000 for general charges. That was an increase of £200,000. How was it that such a vast sum was required for services which could only bo described as general? Surely now that the line was approaching completion they ought not to have such vague estimates laid before them. Rolling stock up to the present appeared to have cost £400,000, and now £128,000 more was to be spent. That seemed a huge amount for a railway which would have so very little traffic to cope with. But the worst item of all was that for station buildings. They had already cost £370,000 and now a further sum of £200,000 was asked for, or £570,000 in all. That seemed to him a most astounding and extravagant amount. Surely the stations 1228 were not to be on the same pattern as Charing Cross or Victoria. He would ask the noble Lord to endeavour to explain these items and to give the Committee some assurance that efforts would be made, event this late stage, to secure economy in this vast expenditure.
*MR. HERBERT SAMUEL () Yorkshire, N.R., Clevelandsaid it would be more satisfactory if the noble Lord would give the Committee the detailed accounts of the expenditure. The accounts already laid merely gave the large totals of the money spent under five or six heads.
§ COLONEL DENNY () Kilmarnock Burghssuggested that the amount of remuneration paid to the Crown Agents for the Colonies might be shown as a separate-item. These gentlemen were borrowed from the Colonial Office for the purpose of superintending the construction of the line, and it appeared that for every penny spent on this railway they received 1 per cent., which amount went to form a pension fund for themselves. That fund now amounted to something like £320,000. Would the noble Lord be kind enough to state how much of the excess was due to this 1 per cent?
§ MR. BRYCE () Aberdeen, S.trusted that the noble Lord the Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs would not hesitate to supply the information asked. It was obvious that in a case such as this, where there had been much extravagant waste, the House should be put in possession of all possible information. He also hoped the noble Lord would reply to the question of the hon. Member for the Swansea District with regard to the statement of the well-known contractors, Messrs. Pauling and Co., that they tendered for the work of this railway, and that had their offer been accepted the railway would have been made for about half what it had actually cost. It would be remembered that when the question was last debated the noble Lord put forward the excuse for the Foreign Office doing the work that it was improbable any contractors would have undertaken it. If this firm did offer, then the noble Lord must have been misinformed, and some explanation ought to be forth coming.
1229 It would have been the greatest possible advantage to have had a private firm undertaking this work who had had experience of makinga railway under similar conditions. They ought to have an explanation given upon this question. With regard to the Beira Railway, he had two or three remarks to make upon what the Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs had said. He himself had travelled upon the Beira Railway when it was a two-foot line. It was quite true that the curves were sharp, but it should be remembered that the narrower the gauge the sharper they might make the curves. Therefore the comparison made between the Uganda and the Beira Railways was not a satisfactory one. On all the famous narrow-gauge railways it was well known what extraordinarily sharp curves were made with perfect safety owing to the narrow gauge of the line. The Beira Railway was made under circumstances of unusual haste and urgency, and it might easily have cost a little more than would otherwise have been necessary owing to the fact that it had to be made in such exceptional haste because it ran through one of the deadliest regions in the world. For about ninety miles from Beira up to the sea was a malarious region in which half the Europeans engaged in the line either died or suffered from fever during the construction of the line through that part, and the death rate there was something like 30 or 40 percent. Therefore, it was necessary to make this railway with exceptional haste. No such haste was necessary in the case of the Uganda line, and consequently a comparison with the Beira Railway was not quite a fair one. The noble Lord had stated that the Beira line was constructed through an easier country, but he found that the part near the coast in the case of the Uganda Railway was, according to the best information he had been able to collect, a great deal easier than the coast section of the Beira line, which was subject to floods which put the whole country under water for thirty or forty miles on each side of the line, and consequently the difficulty of making that line through this country whilst it was under water was enormous. Therefore it was necessary to make a bend for 1230 the line at great cost, and the question of the bridges presented extraordinary difficulty, and that was a far more costly work in the case of the Beira than the Uganda line. Speaking generally, there was no comparison between the extreme difficulty of that country and the difficulties encountered in Uganda. The comparison which the noble Lord drew was not a fair one, and these facts had to be borne in mind in estimating the amount of money they had spent upon the Uganda Railway. He did not wish to repeat the criticisms offered the other day, but he thought it was necessary that justice should be done to the Beira line.
*(3.10.) LORD CRANBORNEThe right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Aberdeen has referred to the question of the Beira line. Let me say that he is quite misinformed if he thinks there was no urgency in regard to the making of the Uganda Railway. The right hon. Gentleman having said before that there was no urgency in respect of the Uganda Railway, I was in a position to reply to him and explain in great detail why there was great urgency, and I did so.
§ Mr. BRYCEsaid he did not say there was no urgency, but he drew a distinction in this respect between the Uganda and the Beira lines. In the case of the Beira line the climate was very unhealthy, and the difficulties were increased by floods.
*LORD CRANBORNEApparently, the right lion. Gentleman does not know the reasons of the urgency of the Uganda Railway because he did not hear the remainder of the debate which he initiated. I think I have some reason to criticise his reference to the question of urgency, although I dealt with the matter rather fully on the last occasion. The hn, and learned Member for Swansea has compared the cost of the Uganda Railway with that of the Beira line, and he compared them unfavourably to the former. Upon inquiry, I find that the Beira line cost £7,500 per mile when it was placed upon a broad gauge and made into a satisfactory railway. I still maintain the opinion that it is not a well-constructed line, and in order to make it into a well-constructed line, £7,500 per mile had to be spent upon it. That £7,500 per mile is in respect of a 1231 line which was very much easier to construct than in Uganda. When you have to go up to 8,000 feet in the construction of a railway it must be more expensive than going up to 3,000 feet. The right hon. Gentleman did not do justice to the length of the railway in Uganda, for there is an enormous difference. In Uganda there is extra haulage, and the expenditure increases as you go along with the line, and when you come to very steep hills, as in the case of Uganda, the cost of haulage becomes enormous. The first 230 miles of the Uganda line is all that can be compared with the Beira railway, and it has not cost £7,500 per mile. In Uganda, when you get far away from the coast and have to go to a height of 8,000 feet and make viaducts and bridges which the circumstances of the country necessitate, then you find a very expensive cost. But leaving aside all points of cost, and admitting for argument's sake that I am wrong in my criticism of the Beira line, I do not admit that much can be said against the Ugada Railway by comparing its total cost with the Beira line.
The hon. Gentleman opposite asks me about the contractor, and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Aberdeen said that a firm of contractors offered to build the line for £2,500,000, and, therefore, we might have had the railway at that price. But that docs not follow at all. Has the right hon. Gentleman always found that contractors do a job at the price they offer? Is that his experience? No man finds that to be the case. The usual result is that the contractor charges a great deal more. I told the Committee when I first introduced this Bill that it was impossible to make the Uganda Railway without coolie labour. That labour would most certainly have had to be found by the contractor. It was not myself alone who said that you could not have made this railway without coolie labour. The Leader of the Opposition had said so upon a former occasion, and if the right bon. Gentleman the Member for Berwick did not actually say so, he used language which very nearly came to that point, if it was necessary to have coolie labour, as I say it was necessary, what would the contractors have done? Would they 1232 have had coolie labour? Certainly not, because the Government would not have allowed them to have coolie labour. It is only as a considerable favour that the Government of India allow us to have coolie labour, and it is only permitted to the British Government. It is, therefore, highly probable that they would never have consented to allow coolie labour to a contractor. I do not think the right hon. Gentleman or the hon. and learned Member has done justice to the case. One of the conditions laid down by the contractor was that there was to be a certain guarantee of interest bearing all the loss on working expenses, and on the top of that we were to grant not only £2,500,000, but also certain plots of land.
§ MR. T. M. HEALYThey were not yours, so they would have cost you nothing.
*LORD CRANBORNEHad we done this we should very likely have been worse off. The hon. Member for Kilmarnock has asked me about the Crown Agents, but that question was very carefully discussed by the House of Commons in 1900, and then my right hon. friend the Member for Bristol, the late Chancellor of the Exchequer, explained that though the remuneration of the Crown Agents came out of the fees, yet it was a fixed remuneration. That was the explanation then given. The salaries were fixed by the Colonial Office, and they were found out of the fees. The hon. Member asks mo to give him the total amount paid. As I understand it, the Crown Agents are paid salaries like myself and any other member of the Government, and the fact that they transact the business of the Uganda Railway as well as the work of the Colonial Office makes no difference to their remuneration. That is what I understand is the case. The hon. Member for West Islington asks me if I will give a pledge that economy will be studied in the future. It is really not necessary to ask us if we will study the interests of economy in the future, for of course we will. I do not suppose that the hon. Gentleman thinks it is a particularly pleasant thing for me to come down 1233 here and ask for this £600,000 on the top of everything else that has been granted for the Uganda Railway. That is not at all the wish of the Government, and I should be very glad indeed if the line could be conducted more economically. I will give the assurance that we shall do our utmost to study economy in the matter of the Uganda Railway in the future. The hon. Gentleman has put several questions on the items themselves which I will endeavour to answer. First of all, as to station buildings. The original estimate, found in the first part of the Table, was made on the mileage rate of the first 270 miles. That was an inaccurate mileage rate, because, as the line wenton, partly owing to physical conditions, the nature of the ground, and so forth, the mileage rate increased so that the rate for the first 270 miles was erroneous when taken as an estimate for the latter part of the line. A great many of these buildings are calculated at so much a mile in the case of English railways, and the calculation is found to work out accurately.
§ MR. T. M. HEALYIs galvanised iron calculated at so much a mile?
*LORD CRANBORNEThen there were certain head-quarters works and a staff at Nairobi. I told the Committee quite candidly when introducing the Bill that certain things had been omitted from the original estimate which ought to have been included. This is certainly a thing which ought to have been in the original estimate, but it was not, and therefore has to be made good now. I have already explained to the House that the climate was disappointing, and, as is well-known, all building operations are much more difficult when the weather is very bad. Then there is the question of the water supply. That all comes into the item "station buildings, etc." The water supply is a difficulty on the Uganda railway because we have not found sources of water to supply the railway at sufficiently frequent intervals. In such cases the water to replenish the reservoirs has to be carried from one place to another on water trains. That is a very expensive matter, but as our investigations have proceeded and we have found more sources of water, we have been very glad to do away with this carriage of water by establishing a water 1234 supply. That has at once transferred the cost from annual to capital expenditure. The carriage of water increases the annual, but not the capital cost, whereas the establishment of a water supply increases the capital expenditure, but effects a great economy on the whole enterprise. That has happened in one or two cases, and we gladly ask the House for more money on that account, because it is economical in the long run. The fact that the railway was not made so quickly as we had hoped it would be has rendered it necessary to make more substantial he temporary buildings that were used, and that has increased the amount of that item. As to the rolling stock, there vas an under-estimate of £50,000 in the first instance, made, not by the engineer in South Africa, but by our responsible advisers at home, based on inquiries as to the cost of works and so forth in England. Then there is the question of safety chains and automatic brakes. Hon. Gentlemen may criticise such expenditure on the Uganda Railway, but it is really an economy, because we find that the cost of the breakages which these automatic brakes, and safety chains would have prevented would have gone a long way towards meeting the extra cost if they had been provided n the first instance. The reason for the reduction under the head of "contingencies" is that a large part of the money asked for in 1899-1900 was absorbed by items which are not found in the second column of the table otherwise I should have had to ask for a larger sum even than £600,000. The "general charges" are much higher, chiefly because of the mistaken estimate and the time it has taken to build the railway. "General charges" includes wages, and so on, of the hands employed, and the longer the railway is in the building the heavier the general charges must be. The miscalculation of assuming that the latter portion of the line would cost the same as the earlier part applies also to the general charges.
§ MR. HERBERT SAMUELWhat about the detailed accounts?
*LORD CRANBORNEThey have never before been supplied in connection with the Uganda Railway. The House did not ask for them in 1900, and, in any case, they could not be presented before this Bill becomes an Act of Parliament. I hope it will not be necessary for me to ask for 1235 any more money by way of loan for this railway. If there is any other demand on behalf of capital expenditure it will be found in the ordinary Estimates, and hon. Gentlemen will have an opportunity of cross-examining me, or whoever holds my place, in Committee of Supply.
*SIR HENRY FOWLER () Wolverhampton, E.The noble Lord has intimated that in its policy for the future the Foreign Office will take to heart the lessons which the experience of the Uganda Railway has taught them, but he did not seem to realise the lesson which I think the Foreign Office ought to have learnt—a lesson which, I am sure, the House of Commons has learnt, and will insist on in the future, viz., that there shall be no more railways constructed by amateur departments in public offices. The initial mistake, the blunder that has characterised the whole of these proceedings and is responsible to a large extent for this extravagance, is the unwise and injudicious plan of attempting to construct a railway in South Africa by a body of gentlemen sitting in London, a Departmental Committee of the Foreign Office with certain other persons associated with them. I do not know whether the noble Lord is aware that the Foreign Office were warned seven years ago against taking this step. They were warned that if they constructed the railway themselves they would have to pay 40s. for every sovereign's worth of material, skill, and labour, as compared with the cost if done by experienced and responsible contractors. This is not the first railway that has been made in Africa, but all the others have been constructed by contractors who had experience of the country, who knew the labour difficulties, the cost of materials and—sometimes, no doubt, from experience—the possible loss. These contractors, while perhaps making a good contract for themselves, would also have saved the public funds a very large sum of money.
With reference to the reply of the noble Lord, let me take first his statement as to the Crown Agents. I remember the reply given by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I cannot say 1236 that that reply, to my mind, was satisfactory, nor is that of the noble Lord. What does ot really mean? That one Department of the Government borrows from another Department certain salaried servants, whose salaries are paid continuously and charged on the Department to which they properly belong. As a simple matter of fact, the borrowing Department ought to pay its proportion of the salaries for the time during which the servants are in its employ. But that is not done here. There is, I am told, a fixed percentage charged on all expenditure on material used. The noble Lord did not tell us where that went to. it is all charged against this account, but into what other account does it come? It is not a relief, as it would be under ordinary circumstances, to the Colonial Vote; that Vote is not reduced by a single penny. The explanation is that it goes to a sort of pension fund, out of which the Crown Agents are remunerated. I have no fault to find with Crown Agents receiving pensions, but that is not the proper way in which to provide them. If Crown Agents are entitled to pensions, they should be voted by this House, as is done in the case of other branches of the Civil Service. But the policy of Government servants governing expenditure, a percentage of which is either immediately or later to go into their own pockets, is a most dangerous one to pursue, and if these accounts were overhauled, and the whole thing shown on the one side and the other, I think that would be the opinion of the House of Commons also.
With reference to contingencies, an hon. friend to mine in 1900 pointed out the extraordinary and unnecessary extravagance that had been imposed on the country by this mode of constructing the railway. I do not blame the noble Lord for that; he is in no way responisible for it; he has really come into this damnosa hereditas. He is in no way to blame, and he rather resents some of the criticisms that are made. I have no doubt that, if he could speak out as frankly as he used from below the Gangway, no one would denounce the whole transaction in stronger terms than the noble Lord. But what we must press the noble Lord for, and in this he 1237 is responsible, is the detailed accounts He says he is not going to ask for any more money—
§ SIR HENRY FOWLERWe hope so too. But that is no answer to our request for information as to how the money has been spent. It would be no answer on any ordinary Vote in Supply for the Minister in charge to say it was a closed transaction, and that he would give no details of the expenditure because he was not going to ask for any more. The Secretary to the Treasury has just come in. so I will put to him a question which he is perhaps better able to answer than the noble Lord. How are these accounts going to be dealt with by the Comptroller and Auditor General? I remember well when I was a member of the Public Accounts Committee some very extraordinary revelations being made before the members of the Committee of the way in which materials and stores were thrown away in one of the West African matters in which the Government were interested. In that case there were a great many detailed accounts supplied, and many of them were vigorously attacked by the Treasury itself. The Financial Secretary to the Treasury is now in his place, and I think that we should have an assurance from him that the Treasury will so vigorously audit these accounts that when the Auditor General comes to deal with them he will have an opportunity to deal with these large items over which the right hon. Gentleman has passed so rapidly, without giving the House any further information than they had before. I agree with my hon. friend who said that it is no use crying over spilt milk. I have no fault to find with the construction of the railway, but I think that every blunder that could have been made in the construction of a railway has been made in the construction of this railway. Why did not the right hon. Gentleman adopt the principle upon which all the great railways of America and Canada were built, of giving sections of land to the contractors who built them?
*LORD CRANBORNEsaid he did not object to that mode of paying the contractors, but when the cost came to be considered that item would have to be reckoned in the account.
§ SIR HENRY FOWLERHalf the amount of money which has been paid for this railway would have been saved if that principle had been adopted, and it would have been worth the while of the Government, even if they had only saved a million by it. I press upon the right hon. Gentleman this fact— that the House of Commons have a right to ask, and do ask, for a detailed account of how this money has been spent in plant, material, stations, rolling stock, contingencies, and commissions.
§ (3.38.) MR. PARKER SMITH () Lanark, PartickI quite agree with the right hon. Gentleman who has just spoken that it is expedient that railways should, so far as is possible, be built by contract rather than under the control of a Government Department, but I think the right hon. Gentleman opposite does not quite appreciate the circumstances here, and seems to be basing himself too much on the letter of the contractors this morning when he says that, if the railway had been built by contract instead of by a Foreign Office Committee, they would have had it done for £2,500,000 instead of £5,000,000. But I should like to know what sort of a railway they would have built for £2,500,000—what would have been the gradients, the curves, and the rails. And I should also like to know whether they, or any other contractors, would have bound themselves to a price at that time. No man in his senses would or could have done so. My criticism of the railway is that the Government began to build it before they had any detailed survey or estimate. They had the excellent field survey of Major Macdonald, but no detailed survey or estimates. If the contractors had been let in on that footing, it is perfectly certain that it, would have cost so much as it has under the present circumstances. Therefore my criticism of the building of this railway goes back further, and I regret that the Government did not have a more adequate survey of the line 1239 and get better estimates before they began to build it, because then it would have been possible to put something into the hands of the contractors and have saved something for the country. The right hon. Gentleman criticised the Crown Agents and the principle on which they are paid. Crown Agents have orders for our different colonies in all parts of the world, and although it is true that a percentage is charged upon all the purchases they make, the system on which they are paid is quite different to that which the right hon. Gentleman suggests. The right hon. Gentleman suggested that the Crown Agents are paid by those percentages, but although they are paid out of them they receive a fixed salary.
MR. BRYN ROBERTS () Carnarvonshire. EifionThe right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Wolverhampton said the initial mistake of the Government was in attempting to construct a railway in Africa by a Committee sitting in London, instead of giving it over to a contractor. I agree that that was a very great mistake, but it was not the initial mistake. The initial mistake, in my opinion, was in going to Uganda at all. And for that mistake I would remind the right hon. Gentleman the responsibility rests entirely upon Lord Rosebery, who was the late and is the present Leader of the right hon. Gentlemen. The noble Lord thinks with regard to this matter it is a sufficient answer to come down here and say that there was a mistake in this, that, and the other, but if that was a sufficient answer it was not necessary to come down and tell the House that. Everybody knows there were mistakes in the estimates, but what we want to discover is not where those mistakes are, but who is responsible for the estimates and how the mistakes were made. One suggested explanatlon of the difference in the estimates was the distance of the railhead from the coast and the cost of getting the materials up to the railhead, but the engineers who had the conduct of this railway must have taken that into account. The noble Lord seems to me to have been very easily hoodwinked by the engineers in his employ, because they appeared to have persuaded him that they never took this into consideration. The cost of the material and the carriage of the material to the railhead must have 1240 been taken into consideration in the case of Uganda just as it would be in the case of an English railway or any other. The cost of building ten miles of railway in Sutherlandshire may not be much more than the cost of building ten miles in Essex, but the cost of the material necessary and its carriage is always taken into consideration. We are faced with these two facts. First of all we were told that the country was fully surveyed before the railway was made.
MR. BRYN ROBERTSI remember perfectly well that in the last year of the late Conservative Government large sums were voted by this House for surveying the country where this line has been made.
*LORD CRANBORNEIt is hardly fair on the part of the hon. Gentleman, who, no doubt for very proper reasons, has not been able to be present during the debates on this question, to come down and discuss it in this way. I have already explained to the House that the estimates and surveys were not complete in 1900 and 1901, and I have explained the details.
MR. BRYN ROBERTSI am not speaking of the £600,000 now asked for, but of the first Resolution moved in the House when the Government first asked for this railway to be made.
MR. BRYN ROBERTSTwo years ago we were aked to grant a sum for making a survey for the construciton of this line. That survey was made, and it was upon that survey that the estimate was made of £2,500,000, the sum for which the contractors of that time say today they were willing to build this railway. The contractors said they would make it for only £10,000 more. In view of these facts, I think the Committee should have not only a promise 1241 of better management in the future, but also an assurance that there will be an investigation as to how these mistaken estimates arose, and who was responsible for them. We should also be informed whether the persons who were responsible for the mistaken estimates are still in the employ of the Government, and whether any personal advantage to themselves has accrued during all these years in the carrying out of this undertaking. There was nothing more rife than charges of corruption against the Government of the Transvaal some time ago, but I venture to say that there was nothing that had a stronger smell of corruption in the history of that Government than the case with which we are now dealing, where a railway which was estimated to cost two and a half millions has cost five and a half millions. This money has obviously been squandered, and the money has gone into the pockets of interested parties at the expense of the State.
§ MR. MARKHAM () Nottinghamshire, Mansfieldthought the Committee had been unwittingly misled by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Aberdeen. He stated that the line to Beira was one which required expensive beds in its formation.
§ MR. MARKHAMsaid he was there when the line to Beira was being constructed, and he could state that the whole of it was of the most tin-pot description. The rails were 20 Ibs., and the engines 20 tons, and the whole line as a working machine was valueless. He was the guest of Mr. Pauling at the time the line was being made, and he received very great kindness from him. He did not think that gentlemen failed to carry out his work properly. The object was to get a line made to enable material to be transported to Rhodesia, and for that purpose alone. The railway was made "on the cheap," it was not a good, substantial line, and it had to be entirely remodelled before it became a working machine. He protested against the idea put forward by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Wolverhampton that it was necessary in constructing such railways to give concessions along the line. All the trouble we had had in South 1242 Africa was due to the granting of concessions, and he objected to the perpetuation of that system in Uganda. He was opposed to the building of the line out of the pockets of the British taxpayers, for he thought Uganda had not yet reached that stage of development when a work of this kind should be carried out, but since the Government had decided to construct the line, he entirely dissented from the view that the adjoin ing territory should have been farmed out to concessionaires.
§ SIR HENRY FOWLERsaid that was not the view he expressed.
MR. MAKKHAMsaid the right hon. Gentleman stated that was the way in which the lines in Canada had been constructed. The contractors in this case had asked for mineral concessions, but when the Canadian lines were made, only grants of land were given. The right hon. Gentleman wished to carry out that principle, and that was a principle he was utterly opposed to, especially in Africa. He thought it was only fair to say that in his opinion it was a wrong conclusion to come to, that because the Beira railway was made for a small sum, the Uganda railway should also be made for a small sum. The Uganda railway was a substantial one, but the Beira railway could not be so described. The difficulties which were encountered in making the Uganda railway were far greater than those which were met with in the other case.
*SIR JAMES FERGUSSON () Manchester, N.E.thought hon. Members should not be too apt to come to the conclusion that because this railway had cost more than the estimates which were submitted to the House, it was therefore wrong that the railway should be made by a Department rather than let on a contract. If contractors had undertaken to make a line from Mombasa to the Lake, they would have been quite as much in the dark as the Government had been, and their estimate of two and a-half millions must have been very largely conjectural. It certainly did not include the charge which was involved in the necessity of protecting the constructors of the railway from the tribes which were known to be very turbulent on occasions, and in 1243 fact there were unknown liabilities besides. The only thing the contractors could look to as a matter of business in undertaking such a liability at such a price would have been the prospect of the enormous potential advantage. It was believed that in some parts of this road there were very valuable minerals, and of course by undertaking such a work, with large blocks of land granted, there would have been great potential advantages. He doubted very much whether any Government would have been justified in parting with such extensive territories. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Wolverhampton had referred to the working of this system of construction in America, where every inch of the ground was known. There part of the land on each side of the railway was given as the price of the construction of the line, and then the settlement of those parts proceeded, so that money was put into the pockets of the Government in two ways—by the traffic which was brought to the line; also by the increased population and by the general benefit to the State. He recollected when he was himself in Australia that Colony thought it was desirable that a telegraph line should be constructed across Australia—two thousand miles in length, over which only two men had travelled without being lost. It was found impossible to get contractors at any reasonable price to undertake the contract for the whole line, but contractors were willing to make 500 miles at either end. The Government of the Colony undertook to construct the thousand miles in the interior themselves, and finished them before the contractors for the northern end. With such unknown liabilities as the Government had before them in Uganda, he held it was only right and prudent that they should keep the territory in their own hands rather than to grant concessions to private contractors. It was futile now to go into the question why this Uganda railway should be made at all. They were pressed fifteen years ago by certain Members at present on the Opposition Bench to be more forward in the acquisition of territory in the British interest in the great country they were 1244 now considering, and to be beforehand in taking possession of this territory with all its contingent liabilities.
§ MR. T. M. HEALYsaid the noble Lord's statement was very unsatisfactory, except in regard to one point. That point was that the climate of Uganda, was very disappointing. He was very much pleased to hear it. The noble Lord had entirely overlooked to deal with the point made about the contractors. It was said by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for North East Manchester that we should have had to give the contractors every alternate square mile, and that was objected to by the right hon. Gentleman. It was forgotten that if we had given the contractors every alternate square mile, the railway would not have cost the ratepayers of this country anything. It would be giving away what was not ours, where as we had to pay this additional two or three millions which had to come out of the pockets of some of the very poorest people of these islands. When the Government made railways in other people's countries he entirely approved of giving away the land of those countries instead of finding the money out of the pockets of our own taxpayers. Complaint was made in The Times this morning that while from start to finish of this undertaking those gentlemen were pestering—well, he would not say pestering—Lord Salisbury and Lord Cranborne, no reply was ever given to them. In order to prop up the railway they were told that there were large mineral resources in the country, but the country was inhabited by savage and turbulent tribes who would not work at half-a-crown a day, and coolies had to be imported from India. He found that there were to be thirty-six stations on the line, or a station nearly every fifteen miles. Fifteen thousand pounds had been spent on each station. The original estimate for the station buildings was now £372,000, but it was now £570,000, or nearly £200,000 of an excess. What sort of stations were they going to have for these negroes in East Africa? Were there going to be waiting-rooms, lavatories, and all modern improvements? A labourer's cottage of two rooms could be built for £120, and yet these galvanised iron sheds were to 1245 cost £15,000 each for the benefit of the people of that country. The craze for Imperialism had reached that part of Africa. He noticed that one of the bridges on the Uganda railway was called the Salisbury Bridge, another the Devonshire Bridge, and a third the Chamberlain Bridge. Now, as they owed the railway to Lord Rosebery, he would suggest that the leading Imperial lavatory should, in honour of the clean slate, be called "The Rosebery."
§ Clause 1 agreed to.
§ Clause 2 agreed to.
§ Bill reported, without Amendment; to be read the third time tomorrow.
*MR. SPEAKERsaid there was no other business before the House at the Morning Sitting. The sitting did not technically come to an end till 7.30, but with the permission of the House he would leave the Chair, and would return to it it any formal business had to be transacted, such as receiving a Bill coming from the House of Lords.
§ The sitting was suspended at ten minutes past four o'clock.