HC Deb 02 April 1903 vol 120 cc996-8

[SECOND READING.]

Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.

SIR JOSEPH DIMSDALE

said he felt that the hon. Member for Battersea was placed in a difficult position when he was asked to give a pledge in regard to this Bill. The hon. Member was an individual member of the County Council, and whether he acceded to the Second Reading of the Bill or not, he himself could not allow the Second Reading to pass without a severe protest. He did not rise to discuss the question whether a steamboat service was required for the Thames, but he did rise to ask the House to pause before it sanctioned a measure creating a trust, promoted practically by a company more or less unfortunate in its business undertakings. In it, power was asked that the Corporation, the County Council, and the Conservators of the Thames should be authorised to guarantee the interest on the money. But neither the Corporation nor the County Council had been consulted on this proposed trust, and were ignorant of the arrangement. It was also provided that the Corporation might guarantee interest at 3 per cent. on any sum not exceeding £100,000 to be borrowed or raised; and for acquiescence in this arrangement the Corporation were to have the luxury of putting three trustees on the body. But the most serious suggestion was that the London County Council should be authorised and required to pay money to the trustees out of the county fund, and in the case of the Corporation out of the funds of the Bridge House Estate. Now the Bridge House Estate was a trust carried on under Acts of Parliament, and the City Corporation, even if they so desired, could not hypothecate its funds to be used in the way proposed without the sanction of Parliament.

SIR FORTESCUE FLANNERY

Is the hon. Baronet aware that his fellow Member for the City is one of the backers of the Bill?

SIR JOSEPH DIMSDALE

I am fully aware of it, but that does not prevent mo from doing what I think right. On behalf of the Corporation he protested strongly against their name being brought into this trust Bill. For such a Bill to go upstairs would be simply wasting the time of the Committee.

SIR FORTESCUE FLANNERY

said he had never listened to a speech in this House with more astonishment than he had done to that of his right hon. friend. This Bill was introduced by the senior Member for the City of London, and his right hon. friend actually asked the House to withhold it from the consideration of the judicial body upstairs. It was difficult for him to accept the idea that the right hon. Baronet, who was the keeper of the City's cash, was able to pledge the Corporation of the City of London to a particular course in antagonism to the Bill that was introduced by his colleague. In those circumstances he suggested that the proper course for the House was to leave this question to be determined by its own Committee upstairs. He had the fullest confidence that the House with a sense of fairness would allow the Bill to be dealt with by the judicial body appointed for the purpose.

MR. JOHN BURNS

said it was significant that the hon. Member for the City of London, whose name was on the back of the Bill, did not happen to be there to defend it. He did not object to the Bill going to the Committee upstairs because he was convinced that the proposal embodied in it was so unreasonable, impracticable, and he had almost said impudent, that no House of Commons would for a moment think of passing it. Three public bodies, the Thames Conservancy, the City Corporation, and the County Council, all refusing, were to embark £100,000 each of the ratepayers' money to buy up a fleet at a price, according to competent authority, about four times what the total fleet was worth. This was the kind of Bill which the House ought to reject; but the London County Council being, as always, magnanimous, were prepared, if he was allowed to keep his pledge, to let the Bill go upstairs and receive the happy despatch at the hands of a Parliamentary Committee. He appealed to the hon. Baronet to rest content with that.

SIR JOSEPH DIMSDALE

said that having made his protest he would not attempt to divide the House.