§ [SECOND READING.]
§ Order for Second Reading read.
§ MR. TREVELYAN (Yorkshire. W.R., Elland)in moving the Second Reading of the Land Values (Assessment and Rating) Bill, said that he ought first to apologise to the House for the extraordinary luck he had had in the ballot year after year. Perhaps it was rather an unfair return for his good fortune that he asked the House for the third time to help to crack the hard nut of the subject of the taxation of land values. He thought there was very good reason why they should discuss this subject for the third year in succession. Two years ago, in spite of the novelty of the question, the first concrete and practical measure introduced into the House was only defeated by a majority of seventy-one. The next year opinion had
† See page 739.858 sufficiently developed, and the Bill of hiss hon. friend the Member for Camberwell was only defeated by a majority of thirteen; and it would not be an unheard of miracle if time worked the abolition of that majority. The Bill he introduced stood in a different position in one respect from that introduced the year before last, or that presented last year by the hon. Member for Camberwell. This question was undoubtedly started by men who, by no stretch of the term, could be called conservative. To many the proposal had a flavour of revolution. He did not deny that the Liberal Party were frankly committed to this proposal. It was well known that there was in previous years an effort on the part of the present Government to defeat it; but this year, unless the Government deliberately insisted upon it, this measure had passed out of the category of necessary Party controversy. This was not his Bill; it was not a Party Bill. It was the result of prolonged, careful, business-like deliberation on the part of a Conference of Municipalities representing no fewer thanl501ocal authorities, including some of the greatest cities in the country, such as Bolton, Bradford, Cardiff, Dublin, Dundee, Glasgow, Halifax, Liverpool, Manchester, Salford, Sheffield, Sunderland, West Ham, the London County Council, and a large number of the most important of the London boroughs. There were also very many, not on the list, which supported the principle, and so far as he knew there were hardly any, if any, that had made a declaration against it. In many of the councils supporting it, such as Liverpool, there was a definite Conservative preponderance, and therefore in no sense could the Bill be regarded as a Party measure. In regard to the Bill itself, they had to confine it to England and Wales. There were technical difficulties practically insuperable to including within its scope Scotland and Ireland; hut the municipal feeling in both these countries was as advanced as in England. In Ireland, Dublin and other corporations had taken part in the conference, while Scotch opinion was even more ripe for this change. The responsibility and labour of the conferences on the subject had been undertaken chiefly by the Glasgow Corporation and though it had been impossible to 859 incorporate clauses in this Bill to deal with Scotland, he and his friends who agreed with him, hoped that, if the House approved of the principle, a fortiori they would send a Scotch Bill to the Committee upstairs; for it could hardly be denied that on the further side of the Tweed there was a more matured conviction in favour of this as an equitable reform.No one, like himself, who applied his mind to the subject, would ever be inclined to regard the methods and machinery by which the intention of the Bill could be applied as easy of settlement. They were not asking that day, be it understood, for an endorsement of all the details of this Bill at once. They hoped the House would trust one of its Standing Committees, which were not very busy at present, to deal with the many admitted complications which necessarily surrounded this far-reaching change. There was only one thing to consider that day would the House assent to two underlying principles? First, that in case of undeveloped property the real selling value of the land should be the basis of assessment, not the use value at which the land was let for the moment; and second, that land values were a proper subject of separate rating from buildings and improvements. Just for a moment before dealing with those underlying principles on which they would vote that day, he would ask the House to pay close attention to the difference between this Bill and that introduced last year by the lion. Member for Camberwell. The main features of this Bill, and those which the House had previously discussed, were the same, the goal sought to be attained was the same, and the final results to be reached were the same. In both Bills the land valuation was based on the selling value of the land. In both there was a separate column of land valuation standing side by side with the present assessment which was based on the letting value of the land and buildings together. In both, the same person paid the rate as now, and it was not proposed to break existing contracts, or interfere in any sudden or disturbing way with the humble investor in ground rents who was the object of so much, and at times some just, solicitude. In the case of new 860 leases, the land rate might be deducted from the rent as provided for by Clause 3. So far his Bill and that of the hon. Member for Camberwell were alike. The differences between them were—in his hon. friend's Bill there was to be an entirely new rate levied on the land value of every hereditament in relief of existing rates. It was to be no great rate; it might not exceed 1d. in the £ on capital value, which would be equal to from 2s. to 2s. 6d. annual value. Of course those who promoted the Bill contemplated the increase of the tax as time went on and public opinion ripened. The tax on unoccupied land would, in the first instance, be small, and would not be in accordance with the value of the site. In the Bill now before the House it was proposed to tax unoccupied land to the extent of the full current rate on its real value, the annual value being taken as 3 per cent, of the selling value, which would mean a very substantial addition to taxation where land was held out of use, as he thought, unsocially, and would be a great encouragement to building. But, where the land had been considerably developed and the present assessment was greater than the new land valuation, the new rate would not be greater than at present. Relief to existing rates would depend on the amount of land, ready to be developed, now escaping taxation within the area of the rating authority in the outskirts of towns. But though there was no difference in appearance, there was in fact a vital change. There would be a separate column by which it would be possible to compare the burden of taxation on unearned values and the burden on buildings. It would be open to put in the future a higher special rate on the laud valuation, as opinion grew in regard to the existence of the evil.
There was one other feature to which he wished to call attention as showing the spirit in which the Bill had been introduced. At the present time in arriving at the assessment of hereditaments deductions were made to allow for repairs and depreciations. These deductions obviously should be applicable only to buildings. It was manifestly absurd to allow for wear and tear of land which was increasing in value every year. He hoped he had made clear the intention of the 861 Bill, whatever its merits might be. And now he came to the chief questions which underlay it. First of all, was the House ready to accept the principle that undeveloped or half-developed land should be taxed at its real value in such a way as to force owners to part with it or to realise. He was uncertain as to how much opposition there was to the taxation of unoccupied land. The President of the Local Government Board, who had not shown himself friendly to such legislation, speaking the other day to a deputation from the municipalities, did not altogether throw cold water on the proposal to tax unoccupied land. When once the matter was faced fairly, it was almost too patent to be rejected. Here, on one hand, they had land in the developed quarters of a town where payers of house rent, hard working improvers, investors of capital, were mulcted in annually increasing rates on their improvements. Side by side they had owners of undeveloped land, the value of which was rising every year, a value realisable either by sale or building. That land ought to be the first and not the last to pay; it ought not to be exempt until the owner in his own good time consented to bring the land into use to relieve the hardly pressed community. Was there any doubt of the existing value? He did not know whether any Members who took the train daily to their homes in the direction of Victoria and Earl's Court from Westminster Bridge Station had noticed an advertisment announcing the sale of freehold land by a Cheapside Land Company. It was worth while reading a few sentences from that poster; hon. Members could read it at greater length themselves. It said—
The best investment now is, undeniably, freehold land. This never shrinks in value, it is ever increasing and the investment is growing more and more profitable without any effort on the part of the owner.… Several of our estates are within the zone of projected electric railways, and are likely to be very rapidly enhanced in value.… Buy to hold and sell at a profit.He should like to give one or two instances which were brought up in the debates in the various corporations while this Bill was being discussed throughout the country. The case of Bradford was perhaps the best. It was stated by the mover of the resolution that the Bradford Corporation should support this Bill, and 862 the statement had been unchallenged that there were four estates in the neighbourhood of Bradford which at a reasonable calculation were worth £2,000,000, and that the rates on these estates only amounted to £761. The mover took one particular instance—Some time ago the corporation were parties in arbitration proceedings with Lord Rosse, certain land belonging to his Lordship being wanted by the Waterworks Committee, It was stated in evidence on behalf Lord Rosse that he was the owner of 1,300 acres of land in Heaton and Shipley, all of it eminently suitable for building purposes. If half-a-crown a yard was taken as the value of this land for building purposes, its total value was £780,000. And yet Lord Rosse, in respect of his estate, contributed the sum of £189 towards the expenses and upkeep of the city of Bradford.A calculation was also made by the same speaker as to what the effect of a Bill of this kind would be in Bradford—In the old city of Bradford, consisting of 10,767 acres, there were 4,512 acres of land unbuilt upon. These figures did not include quarries and other forms of land which would not be available for building. Estimating, as he thought they were justified in doing, that these 4.512 acres of land were worth 3s. 6d. a yard, it would be seen that they would be worth £3,821,644. Under the present system of rating, averaging the value of the land at £40 per acre—well within the mark he thought—it stood in the rate book as though it were worth £180,480. Under the new system of rating, therefore, there would be a very large gain on this land. It would stand in the books as being worth £3,641,184 more than it was represented to be worth under the present system, and it would bring in no less than; £41,872 per year in rates.That might be said to be an exaggerated estimate; but at any rate there could be no denial that there would be an enormous increase in the rateable possibilities of a town like Bradford if such land were brought under rating. But the more important fact than the increase of rating would be the compulsion to those landlords to bring their land into real use which corresponded to its real value.One objection, which might have some weight with certain minds, to the taxation of vacant spaces was that the scheme would destroy the garden streets; that it would be an unfortunate thing to tax these gardens, and so close up the city, and keep out the air from the crowded spaces of the great towns. It was said that they would drive the parks and squares into the market, and 863 that they would be built upon just where the open spaces were wanted. Everyone would agree that that was a danger which it would be well to avoid. But that was a local exception to the general rule that land should be built on where the economic needs of the people demanded it. But there was another way of dealing with it than by exempting that land from taxation. At the present moment in Germany the municipal corporations looked far more ahead than we did. The practice in all German municipal corporations in regulating the development of their towns was to lay down that in certain districts there were to be town houses of a certain kind, houses with gardens; in other districts that there might be closer buildings and working-class houses put up. They insisted to a far greater extent than in our municipalities on having large open spaces even where the municipalities did not own the open spaces. In fact they regulated the development of the land. If they thought it was desirable for the benefit of the town that a particular street should remain a street of villa residences with gardens rather than become a closely built working class district, it would be a perfectly reasonable thing that those houses of the well-to-do should be allowed to remain. There would be no difficulty whatever in giving power to municipalities to make regulations in such a matter if the municipality wished to do so.
Those who advanced the argument that it would be difficult or impossible to make a true assessment of and values relied chiefly on the evidence, purely speculative, of certain experts who had given evidence before the Local Taxation Commission. That evidence was obviously entitled to be considered, but other experts had given evidence before the Commission who expressed the opinion that it was a feasible and inexpensive proposal, and it was somewhat remarkable that in the last year all the great corporations of the country should have been discussing this question, and that none should have found any insuperable difficulty in the proposal. But the promoters of this Bill had rather more than supposition and speculation to back their proposals. Whilst we in this country were pottering 864 about and talking of expenses, other great industrial communities were actually doing this work before our eyes. In Queensland the whole of the local taxation was based on the land values, and it was being done in New Zealand, where local authorities, both in town and country, were adopting land valuation as the basis of all local taxation. New York had, within a year or two, made an assessment of the actual land values of the whole of New York. Paris, which appointed a committee of assessment in the year 1898, had, at an expenditure which did not amount to as much as £50,000, finished the assessment of the city in the course of two years, only one portion of which was the assessment of the capital value of the land. Prussia was the strongest case for the principles of the proposals this Bill now made. Prussia had in the last few years permitted her corporations to use a new basis for their taxation—a tax on the value of land including undeveloped land. On 2nd October, 1899, the Minister of the Interior issued a circular advising corporations to adopt the system, and stating that the object of the new valuation was to insure that the capital value of building plots from time to time should be made fully subject to taxation. There had been a very great response to those proposals by the corporations of Germany, no less than sixty-seven towns and fifty-six urban authorities having adopted them, many of the latter being the great districts that surrounded Berlin. Not a single corporation which had adopted the system had gone back from its opinion, and all found this new system of taxation satisfactory. The experience of Cologne proved that no difficulty was experienced in making the assessment—
In 1893 at the new assessment by the State of the building tax (the old tax) in the case of 21,292 assessments there were no fewer than 2,703 objections. At the assessment on the capital value in 1898–9, out of some 30,000 assessments only 174 objections were raised.The aims and objects of the taxation were identically the same as those of the proposers of this Bill. The magistrate of Düsseldof, in urging his corporation to adopt the tax, said—There is not the smallest ground for allowing a tax to remain upon the agricultural 865 value only of those land plots, whose value had been raised by speculation. The income of such land-plots is yearly increasing by reason of the larger number of buildings which are being erected, and although they begin to yield in a short time ten or more times what they formerly yielded, yet such increase is in no way touched by the present assessment. Whom have the owners to thank for such increase of value? Not themselves and their own endeavours, but the flourishing community in the burden of whose taxation they bear so small a part.The result of the tax in Breslau, although the tax was very low, had been that the land speculators had been forced to pay 315,000 marks a year where in previous years they had only paid 10,000 marks, and that had enabled the corporation of Breslau to remit in general local taxation 105,000 marks which they had previously levied on buildings consisting of small and medium-sized tenements. In Spandau, which was a suburb of Berlin, much as Richmond is of London, the following had resulted—Some owners of large valuable estates were obliged to pay much more than before. The land tax of an owner whose lands were worth many millions (of marks) had come to ninety-six marks hitherto; now lie was obliged to pay 14,000 marks. The landlords had feared that no more sales of land would be possible. But exactly the opposite had happened. In the short time since the introduction of the ground value tax on April 1st, there have been more sales of land in Spandau than in years before and the demand is still very lively.Ultimately a further and even greater intention underlay the Bill. The great object of a separate assessment of land was to obtain a new source of taxation in relief of that levied on buildings and improvements. If the principles of this Bill were brought into operation there would be, for the first time, a rough and ready differentiation between the land value on the one hand and the building on the other, rough and ready because the building value could only be arrived at by subtracting the land valuation from the present assessment. The promoters of the Bill thought when they had land valuation they would have won half their battle and that then all they desired to show would become patent to everyone. People would see on the same rate book two properties standing under the present assessment, say of the value of £250. One of those properties would be in the centre of the town where the land was highly valuable and where the assessment of the land value might be £150, 866 while that of the building would be £100, which would represent the expenditure on the buildings and improvement on the land. In the other case the property would be more on the outskirts of the town where land was less valuable and there the land valuation might be only £50 and the improvements would be represented by £200. Yet both properties would pay the same rates, but in one case the buildings would only pay two-fifths of the rates while in the other it would pay four-fifths. What was our present system but a system to penalise industry? The tax now paid was a house tax, a tax which was as bad as the corn tax. If a house was taxed at 8s. in the£, somebody must pay the tax and it could not be the foreigner. The result was that it took the form of overcrowding, the worst evil of our great cities and great industrial centres. It was almost irrelevant to talk about remedies for overcrowding, such as cheaper building loans and destruction of slums by municipal action, when this pre-eminent fact stood out that almost every house erected was subjected to a tax of a third of its annual value. There was no need to wonder at the extraordinary anomaly that the building trade was depressed, whilst the people of the towns were crying out for more room in which to live. He hoped that the Government would not look upon this proposal in quite so unfavourable a light as hitherto. He had stated the immediate object and some of the hopes he had in taking the course he had taken to-day. All that was asked for was that corporations might be allowed to make this great experiment with all the cautious confidence with which they were accustomed to move, and he hoped that the Government would not by dilatory or antagonistic tactics disappoint those hopes.
§ *MR. WILLIAM RUTHERFORD (Liverpool, West Derby)said that the Bill presented to-day was the result of a year's very hard work and it had the support of all the largest municipalities of England. It had not been objected to by any. He accounted himself fortunate in that he was allowed to make a few observations in support of the measure, because he claimed to have some municipal experience, having been in close and active connection with the Corporation 867 of Liverpool and having served on its most important committees. A great deal depended on the point of view from which the proposition was looked at. Here was a suggested tax, and there was no doubt that being a tax it must be objectionable, because all taxes were objectionable both in principle and in detail. They were necessary evils and they had to make the best of them. Had this been a suggestion for an entirely new impost, clearly it could not have claimed to be considered in the same favourable light. But the simply involved are-arrangement of existing taxation, a re-arrangement which would make fair and equitable that which was at present unfair and unequitable. In fact, instead of being an addition to the assessment the principles of the Bill, if adopted, would be in relief of the bona, fide taxpayer. The local burdens of our cities and urban districts had of late years swollen to an enormous extent, and the figures were now appalling, so much so that politicians and statesmen regarded with considerable misgiving and disquietude the possibilities of any further increase. All these local burdens were now met by taxation on a certain assessment. What was the assessment that contributed to those burdens, that was, in fact, the sole contributory? It was an assessment only on that property which, was actually occupied, and the basis of contribution was its letting value. The result was that local taxation for public improvements for sewering, paving, and municipal and other amenities also the whole cost of the poor together with that portion of imperial taxation derived from inhabited house duty, fell exclusively on the occupied portion of the hereditament, and therefore, the landlord who, for any reason, wilful or otherwise, neglected, or spoiled, his land, escaped with a reduced taxation, or possibly paid nothing at ail.
He wished, with the permission of the House, to give two short illustrations under existing' conditions capable of being actual fact from his own experience. The first one was this. They took three pieces of land, each of the same area, each fronting the same street, and each belonging to a different owner. On the first of these three pieces the owner built to the value of £2,000; on 868 the second, the owner built to the value of £500; and on the third, the owner did not build at all, leaving his land, there in the main street, occupied as a depository for dead cats and old sardine cans. The Corporation of Liverpool then made this road into a fine street. They spent thousands of pounds at the expense of the general rates on paving, sewering, making handsome footpaths, putting down a system of electric trams, giving the finest water supply in the world, providing excellent police, and providing also a handsome park within a few hundred yards of these throe properties, each of which was equally benefited by this general outlay. Each of them occupied an exactly equal integral portion in square yards, in the area of the city, and each of them had the same advantages of the same main street. Each of these plots contained altogether 500 square yards, worth, say, £3 a yard. Now, what was the result? The value of plot 1, with buildings upon it worth £2,000 and the land itself worth £1,500, was brought to the value of £3,500; plot 2 with buildings worth £500, was brought to the value of £2,000; and plot 3 remained at £1,500, the value of the land. The value of letting to a tenant of each of those three plots arose out of the nature and extent of the buildings, and when compared together the respective assessments were therefore out of all proportion, because the system of contribution was based upon the value to let and not based upon the value of the actual hereditament they had got in the position itself. The owner of plot I was a man of enterprise and he had done something for the city. He deserved consideration; he deserved some favour. But what was his position? He was paying seven-eighths of the taxation which fell on those three pieces of land; plot 2 contributed one-eighth, and plot 3 escaped altogether. The hon. Member submitted that anything more unjust or unfair or contrary to public policy could hardly be imagined than this condition of affairs which he had ventured to describe as possible from actual personal experience. He would trouble the House with another important illustration also from his own study. In every city there were slums, and unfortunately in some of our cities these 869 slums were in a most frightful condition; the property was tumbling down and wretched, and it was in every sense demoralising to those inhabitants whose business and necessities compelled them to live in that particular district. Now the great object of all cities, and he thought of the Legislature and of this House at large—of Members, he believed, on both sides—was that a state of affairs like this should be as rapidly as possible put an end to, and that every facility and inducement should be given in order to bring about a better state of affairs. Now, what was the position with regard to slum property? The present taxation upon it was trifling, but on the other hand it turned out that the sites in a good many instances were extremely valuable. If they wanted to know how valuable some of these sites turned out to be they had only got to be a member of the Liverpool Insanitary Property Committee. For some years he was a member of that committee and his friend the Member for the East Toxteth Division of Liverpool was chairman of that committee for some time; and they knew the difficulty which they had to encounter in their undertaking. But these two illustrations were not all. There was a further point; arising out of both of them, and it was this. The march of progress and the improvement of the city continued for a period of years in that suburban road to which he had referred, and by the expenditure of public money all those three properties continued to rise in value; but the extraordinary part of it was that the fully improved portion of the property advanced, in percentage, less than either of the other two, because it had been brought to its comparatively fully-developed state, whereas the other two maintained the potentiality for further improvement. The consequence was that the greater and most unfair proportion of taxation was contributed by the fully improved property, which gained less by the improvement on the whole. In the slum case this was particularly applicable, because, when the corporation, in improving a district, had pulled down half of the slums and an excellent property had been erected on that site, the site 870 of the other slum property was immensely improved in value, all at the expense of the city.
In conclusion, he wished to point out what he conceived to be the main principles of the Bill before the House. For the purpose of ascertaining the proportions in which local taxation was to be contributed each property was supposed to have two distinct values, a site value first, and secondly the value of the buildings upon it. All these figures were included in the rate book, and the annual value of the site was taken at 3 per cent, of the capital value of such site. What was the result in his opinion and experience and in the experience of all those municipal authorities who had taken a keen interest in these matters, and whom they represented here that day? The first result would be that all the elements of unfairness which he had indicated would be swept away; and secondly the speculator holding front and corner plots would have to pay some tax which would make him inclined to build and improve the land so as to get a return. All existing contracts would be excepted. There was nothing in the Bill, no suggestion, to upset any existing contract so as to wrong any person who was now possessed of any property. This was not to be a tax on the landlords, and he hoped it would not be put in that sense. It was a suggested contribution by the speculator in corner lots who was holding his land for a rise. It would be a tax on neglect, stupidity, and lack of enterprise. It would not increase taxation in any city by a single penny. The object of the Bill was to make fair and enlarge the basis of taxation, in order that those might be brought into contribute who at present unfairly escaped. He took it the Bill was not controversial, it simply aimed at bringing about justice and prudence. It was not a Private Bill except in the technical sense, because it came before the House with the support of the great municipalities of the Kingdom who through their selected representatives had for a whole year been examining into the subject, and who now put forward a considered proposal to which they were entitled to ask that the House should give a patient consideration.
§ Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."
§ *MR. CRIPPS (Lancashire, Stretford)said that the modified form in which this Bill had been introduced from time to time proved that the opponents of the measure had been justified in their opposition. Before proceeding to show why in his opinion the proposals of the Bill were neither just nor prudent, he desired to deal with the arguments by which the Second Reading had been supported. Everyone would agree with the general proposition that land should be taxed at its real value, and his criticism on the Bill was that it proposed to tax land not on its real, but on a fictitious, value, which would put it on a separate plane from that of any other rated property. There was no larger domestic question at present than that of local taxation, and, pending the action of the Government, why should they separate particular classes of property and treat them unfairly? He agreed that if land was specially benefited by local expenditure it ought to be assessed at its benefited value. That was true of all property, because, in ascertaining the true value, its value under conditions as they existed at the moment must be considered. The arguments used by the promoter in favour of the Bill were not as strong as he had hoped they would be. The hon. Member had seemed to rely on the fact that the proposal was supported by a large number of municipalities. That was an important factor, but the House had not to consider in these matters the opinions of any bodies, however powerful, but to see whether the proposals incorporated in the Bill could be accepted as reasonable and right. The hon. Member also referred to a case in which 4,500 acres were concerned. To approach the question as though it were advisable as soon as possible to build over a great area of land to that extent was an entirely false way of dealing with the matter. There was at present quite sufficient temptation to build and overbuild, to crowd and overcrowd, our large municipal areas, and he certainly would not give any inducement to the land speculator to take up sites before they came naturally into the market, and to 872 overcrowd them in his own interest. The hon. Member made a suggestion for dealing with a case of that kind, but did he really think it was a practical proposal? He protested against the principle which would enable the owner of a so-called villa street to be excepted from a principle which, if applied at all, ought to apply to all the property in the area. The Bill, in his opinion, would tend unfairly to push land into the market which was not ripe for building purposes, and to cause it to be crowded with an undue number of buildings. Reference had been made to the system which obtained in foreign towns. But the conditions of local taxation in this country were altogether different from those which existed abroad. Here, certain national burdens were thrown upon local resources, and the incidence of local taxation fell upon certain classes of property only, and while they were dealing with those classes of property they ought to have one system of assessment applicable to all. In New York property was rated on the principle of capitalisation. That might be a bad or a good system, but it was certainly just, if the capitalisation view was taken with regard to one class of property, that it should be taken with regard to all classes of property. It was surely misleading to quote the New York system without at the same time pointing out that the whole system of assessment and incidence was on a totally different basis there as compared with this country. He fully agreed that if anything could be done to improveslum properties, or to better the condition of the poorer parts of our large towns, it was very desirable that it should be done, but this Bill attempted to do it in a wrong way. It was far better to wait for a real remedy than to apply a mere quack remedy, and in his opinion the present Bill would have absolutely the opposite effect to that of furthering the reforms which all desired.
Neither the mover nor the seconder of the Bill had dealt at length with the points really concerned. The first proposal was that in assessing site values the principle of capital value, as against that of annual rental, should be introduced. That was a very important matter. On principle he thought the old-fashioned doctrine was right, namely, that the rate should be raised in relation to the benefit which the ratepayer received. That was the reason 873 that the rate was now raised on annual value, and not on capital value, in respect of which, at the moment, a particular ratepayer might be receiving no benefit at all. This was not a matter to be dealt with as regarded land alone. Its effects should be considered as applied to all classes of property. He had never gone to the extent of saying that double valuation was impossible. Say a man had land worth £100,000, but which at present was producing no income to the owner. It was perfectly clear that if a charge of this kind were put upon the land, there would be a fictitious tendency to push that land into the market. In his opinion it was an advantage to keep land in our towns out of the market, so far as building speculators were concerned. On the other side, let them take the case of a manufacturer who had got £100,000 invested, from which, he was not deriving any interest. Surely they ought not to treat him on the same basis as the landowner, and then they would have to disregard whether he was making any profit or not and rate him on his capitalised value. It would be monstrous to suggest a rate of that kind upon the shopkeeper or manufacturer in the particular instances he had given. What he desired was that, as regarded the various classes of property, they should not put a burden upon one which they refused to put upon another. Not only should no special burden be put upon land but they ought, if possible, to bring in other classes of property upon the same basis in order to spread the burden over as wide an area as possible. That was why in his Amendment he pointed out that what they wanted was not to put a further burden upon a class of property which was now very heavily raved, but rather to bring in other sources of property to be put on the same basis, in order that all classes of property might be taxed alike. Words like "rating" and "real" value had to be further analysed. They wanted all sources of property to be rated equitably and at their real value, but the proposal in Subsection 2 of this Bill was absolutely and wholly unfair as applied to land if they did not apply it for the purposes of local taxation generally. The old principle adopted in Imperial and local taxation was much sounder than the principle of 874 capitalised value. This Bill deferred to urban districts, but in urban districts in this country there were large agricultural properties, and in his opinion agricultural land was much too heavily rated at the present time. If they took the 3 per cent, basis on the capitalised value of land they would undoubtedly put a further burden upon what was already the most heavily burdened of all property in this country. Those were considerations which ought to be threshed out. They wanted to see whether the capitalised idea as applied to site values was fair or not, and if they found it was not fair that went to the whole basis of this Bill. All these site values were properly rated at the present moment upon the basis of their annual value, if they took the same basis for them as for other classes of property. The only possible advantage which this Bill could give as regarded increased income to our municipalities, would be by altering the method of assessment, and such alteration would be unfair, because it would put a special burden upon a particular class of property which ought to be borne equally by all classes of property. With regard to unoccupied hereditaments in certain districts they were rated at the present moment. In the City of London they paid half the rates on unoccupied hereditaments.
He wished to show why it was not right to introduce the system which had come from Scotland and chiefly from Glasgow. Before the Commission the evidence on this point did not come from England but from the more highly educated districts, upon this question, north of the Tweed. A vast number of burdens now put upon the local taxpayer were incident to occupation or population and had nothing to do with the land. Take education, for example. Why should they put a special education rate upon unoccupied land? What were called national matters depended upon population and occupation of property, and why should a special burden be placed upon unoccupied property? There was a great deal to be said for the suggestion contained in the Minority Report of the Royal Commission. It there were particular circumstances which gave a value to land and which were not connected 875 with the occupation of land, if they carefully took those cases out and put them into a particular schedule they might, as regarded those isolated obligations, say that land, whether occupied or not, ought to bear its share of the burdens, but, as a matter of fact, from that point of view there was no unoccupied land in English towns. The occupiers got the chief benefit, and as soon as land was occupied the municipality had increased expenditure, and therefore the new occupiers should find their fair share. If land was unoccupied the services required were infinitely less than for occupied land. If more land was forced into the market it meant that as the population increased upon it the expenses connection with it also increased, and as they arose they ought to get a proper contribution in respect of the population. That was why in England they had adopted the principle of putting those burdens on the occupier who got the greatest share of the advantages. He thought the House should carefully consider whether they could not devise some fair division as between the land on the one side and occupation on the other. He hoped he had shown that he wished to approach this question with a desire to put local taxation upon a fair basis, and he did not think that the proposals of this Bill would conduce to that object. The form of his Amendment was really to call attention to the general position of this question of the incidence of local taxation, and they could never put this matter right, in his opinion, as long as they charged on local funds serious burdens which ought to be borne by the National Exchequer. As long as they had a system of that kind it must be unfair to try to put these national burdens in a particular way upon what had been called site values. The land in its local connection had nothing to do with these great national burdens which formed a great part of local taxation. What hid unoccupied land got to do with education? It was impossible to readjust local taxation until they drew the necessary distinction between national and local services. So far as those services were a benefit to the land he should not dissent from the proposition that land ought to bear its proper share of the burdens. He hoped the House would 876 take the same view as on former occasions, and say that, however desirable some change in this direction might be, the present proposal was not sufficiently wide in its character or well digested in ragard to its details. He begged to move the Amendment which stood in his name.
§ *MR. REMNANT (Finsbury, Holborn)said he welcomed this Bill because it had given them an opportunity of discussing a question which had engaged the attention, not only of this House, but of the country for some considerable time. He differed most profoundly from the provisions of the Bill, but he might be permitted to offer the mover his hearty congratulations on the ability and moderation with which in this session and in the session of 1902 he had brought forward proposals inconsistent with each other, but still intended to give practical form to theories which had no real foundation. The root fallacy which underlay this bill was that it tapped a new source of revenue. This was contrary to fact. Experts were practically unanimous in holding that the real incidence of the rates was already on the owners of property. [An HON. MEMBER: No.] Previous speakers had stated that the London County Council had agreed to this Bill, but, having had the honour of serving on that body for many years, he ventured to say that the Council as a whole had never been called upon to pass an opinion on the measure. The last time the Council came to a conclusion on the question they were, not unanimously, but very strongly, in favour of not respecting existing contracts—a very material point of difference between them and the promoters of this Bill. The valuer of the London County Council, whose conclusions must command respect on both sides of the House because of his special experience, was of opinion that the burden of the rates fell entirely upon the owners of property, and for the most part upon the owners of land. If they were to apply this consideration even to the proposed taxation of vacant land and the sites of empty houses, it would be seen that here also the Bill could confer no ultimate benefit on the ratepayers. The effect would be to relieve of some portion of the rates the owners of land that happened to be occupied, and to 877 cast that portion on the owners of property that happened to be unoccupied. The owners as a body would boar the same amount of rates, but the amount would be evenly distributed between those who were and those who were not receiving income, instead of placing it at a rather higher rate on those who were receiving income. The present practice of taxing owners when they had income out of which to pay taxes was clearly one which was more convenient for them, and caused no loss, so far as he could see, to the public.
This Bill was the latest product of the agitation which started, as those interested in the question would remember, with the cry that ground rents ought to be rated. The Bill now before the House supplied very cogent evidence of the hollowness of this cry. Under the Bill, during existing, tenancies all the rates on occupied premises were to be paid by the present ratepayers— there would be no difference there — and during future tenancies the land value rate was to fall upon the immediate landlord who himself was to have no power of deduction from those to whom he in his turn paid the rent. In short, except in the very rare cases where the ground landlord was himself the immediate landlord, ground landlords were never to be affected by the Bill. So that as far as he could see, the ground landlord, who was principally aimed at in the agitation was to be exempt for all eternity under the Bill.
§ DR. MACNAMARA (Camberwell, N.)Not under future contracts.
§ *MR. REMNANTsaid the Bill put the rate only on the immediate landlord, and this was surely a curious prescription for the cure of what the so-called Progressive Party had so long stated was a deep-seated disease. All he could say was that he did not envy them their reception at the hands of those who had been duped by their promises. Clause 1, Sub-section 4, provided for cases where the annual land value exceeded the total rateable value. In all these cases under Clause 3 occupiers under future leases would pay no rates at all, and this was to happen although far and away the greater part of the rates 878 was spent for the benefit of the occupiers, and occupiers formed an overwhelming majority of the electors who chose the body who had to levy the rates.
§ MR. TREVELYANsaid that Sub-section 4, Clause 1, would obviously only refer to unoccupied land, or to land not used up to its real value.
§ *MR. REMNANTdid not think that interruption affected his argument at all. He was afraid his hon. friend did not see the point. The Bill provided that where the land value exceeded the rateable value the whole of the rates might be deducted from the immediate landlord. Under Clause 3 there was another redudio ad abmirdum, if he might say so without disrespect. Under this clause the identity of the immediate landlord shifted under every sub-lease. Suppose that the hon. Member who had introduced this Bill let a house to the hon. Member for Liverpool, who seconded him for a term of years, a higher rent would of course be payable in consideration of the lessor's liability under the Bill to pay the land value rate. But suppose further that the hon. Member for Liverpool afterwards granted a sublease to a third person—under the Bill the original lessor would be relieved of his obligation, for which he would be receiving consideration in the shape of a higher rent, and it would be transferred to the hon. Member for Liverpool.
§ MR. TREVELYANsaid the intention was that under a now agreement the rate might be shifted back. Supposing there were a series of tenancies, the clause would obviously apply to every new lease, whether made in the second or third place.
§ *MR. REMNANTsaid he was obliged to the hon. Member for telling the House what was the intention of the promoters of the Bill, but he was presuming that they were dealing with the Bill as presented to the House. They could not read into the Bill intentions which were not plain on the lace of it. His contention was that this Bill did not meet the case, and that, on the other hand, it had a directlv contrary effect to what the 879 promoters wished it to have. Provision was made in Clause 4 for the case of several tenants separately rated but comprised within a single building. There was no provision in the Bill for several tenants comprised in a single tenement but not separately rated. In large cities, and especially the city of London, it was an exceedingly common practice for the lessee of a building to let it out in several tenements to be used as offices, or for residential or other purposes. As far as he could see from the Bill the only defence of Clause 3 was that the immediate landlord should always pay the land value rate, because any increment in the land value went immediately to him at the termination of the occupier's lease. It was obvious, therefore, that in the case of all buildings let on the lines he had suggested where the tenements were not separately rated that presumed intention of the Bill, as expressed in Clause 3, would be hopelessly defeated. The Bill enabled the lessee, who got all the benefit of any increase in the rental value, to deduct the rates from his immediate landlord.
Even if the provisions of the Bill were as perfect as they were manifestly imperfect, they were open to the widest possible objection on grounds of public policy. The real object of the Bill was to rearrange the burden falling on land, but it did nothing to bring under local taxation forms of property now exempt, and which it was agreed by people of all shades of opinion should not be absolutely exempt. The promoters in this case seemed so anxious to pull an imaginary mote out of the eye of the landlord that they failed to see the beam in the eye of the owner of personal property. At present the bulk of our local taxation was borne by real property. The House well knew that personal property which was formerly liable to contribute to the rates had by the legislation of the last century become exempt. That personal property at present escaped its fair share of taxation had been admitted by experts of all parties. He hoped the House would allow him to refer to the evidence given in 1890 by the late Mr. Costelloe, a distinguished member of the London County Council, before the Town Holdings Committee 880 appointed by this House. Mr. Costelloe, after explaining his scheme for a municipal death duty, said—
If anyone objects that the scheme I have suggested would be putting a considerable tax upon persons who may have invested in incomes, limited or otherwise, to be derived out of land and that that would place them on a different footing from those who live on the produce of stock, or on dividends, I can only say that I am quite willing to join in levelling the latter up; and I think it is beyond doubt that they now pay far too little.And again when asked. "If the system I of taxation is to be followed as regards land, can you see any reason why it should not be followed as regards other classes of property?" Mr. Costelloe replied—I cordially agree that it should be. I think there are great masses of personal property which may be called unearned income; whether it is simply derived from antecedent saving by the recipient, or by someone else, or is the produce of Stock Exchange gambling or other speculation, or is the fruit of the silent growth of values for general reasons (as with water shares), or is simply a great bonus conferred somehow on capital at the expense of the community as with much of the income that is derived from dividends, I venture to say that the whole of it, even that which consists of honourable savings, is also very much under taxed.The Radical Party, however [OPPOSITION cries of "Bring in a Bill "] both in Parliament and in the London County Council had never made, so far as he knew, the slightest effort to redress that which was obviously the main grievance in regard to local taxation. On the other hand, the Royal Commission appointed by the late Lord Salisbury's Government to inquire into the whole question of local taxa-tion, made in 1901 a final Report containing an elaborate series of recommendations for the amendment of the present system. The Royal Commission pointed out that, while personal property subject to Imperial taxation was about three times as great as real property as chargeable, the non-rateable property contributed to local objects— if elementary education were excluded— only a little over 6 per cent, of the whole expenditure, and nearly 83 per cent, fell on the rates. To remedy that inequality, in some measure, it was suggested that, inter alia, there should be an increased payment from the death duties 881 on personalty for local purposes; that the transfer of trading licences and of establishment licences should be made complete, and that power should be given to increase their amount; while the assignment of a fixed portion of the income-tax was said to be deserving of consideration. The present Government had twice, in speeches of the Secretary to the Local Government Board in 1902 and 1903, pledged themselves to deal with the whole question, and a Valuation Bill had been promised in the King's Speech this session. One of the principal objections to the present Bill was that it would hinder the Government in this task by introducing needless complications into the present system of valuation. He asked the House to prefer the Amendment of his hon. friend, which he had the honour to second, to the Bill itself, because this Bill, while introducing harassing restrictions into free contracts, would confer no benefit upon the community, and because the Amendment pointed the way to a thorough reform of the present system of local taxation in accordance with the recommendations of the Royal Commission, to which they were encouraged to hope the Government would not be slow to give effect. He had much pleasure in seconding the Amendment.
§
Amendment proposed—
To leave out all the words after the word 'that,' to the end of the Question, in order to add the words 'no change in the incidence of local taxation will be satisfactory which does not recognise the unfairness of the existing charges and make further provision for the equitable contribution of all kinds of property to such taxation."—(Mr. Cripps.)
§ Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Question."
§ SIR ALBERT ROLLIT (Islington, S.)said some few weeks ago he had had the honour to introduce a deputation of the municipalities of this country, through their association, to the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board on this very subject, but the reply given by the right hon. Gentleman to that deputation then, was not only a direct negative so far as the present moment was concerned, but by the 882 words, "Never so far as this Government is concerned.". He hoped that the right hon. Gentleman's view had been somewhat modified by the debate which had taken place that morning, and that he would allow the Bill to go into Committee, where the points which alone, apparently, were disputed could be discussed, and that, at any rate, the Government would not treat this as a Party question, but would leave the matter open to their supporters.
§ SIR ALBERT ROLLITsaid it was not a Party question, either politically or municipally, as was shown by the Minority Report of the Royal Commission, which was favourable to the proposals now made. Concessions had been made, and there was now a very near approach to an agreement in the matter. He thought it was common ground that this was no new source of taxation, but he hoped at the same time there would be a re-adjustment and a re-apportionment of the burden of taxation, and that urban land in the future would bear its true proportion of the burden of taxation. There was real respect shown in the Bill for existing contracts, but in the opinion of the municipalities, as expressed by their association, there ought to be further safeguards in this respect. That was, however, a matter for the Committee, if the principle of the Bill was accepted. That this was not a Party question was shown by the resolution which was unanimously adopted by the Association of Municipal Corporations, which included all the county, and nearly every one of the non-county, boroughs, and contained men of all Parties. The resolution was in these terms—
That it is urgent to provide some means by which owners of land, whether occupied or vacant, shall contribute directly to local revenue.That expressed, in one sentence, the main object of the Bill. The Bill showed a real respect for existing contracts, but the principle of the Bill was valuation; and he failed to see how valuation, if properly conducted, would give a fictitious value to land as was suggested by 883 the hon. and learned Member for Stret-ford. Lord Balfour of Burleigh and a minority of the Royal Commission believed it was possible to deal with this matter by valuation, and if the basis wan real valuation, it could not be otherwise than fair. The hon. Member for Stretford had admitted that a valuation could be accomplished, and that was the real answer to the arguments of the hon. Member. It had been said that there would be no accession to revenue, but, in his opinion, there would be a great potential accession to revenue, and a potentiality of distributing fairly the burden of the revenue derived. Owners of land might endeavour by a modification of the rentals to perpetuate something like the present condition of affairs, but having regard to the difficulties of change it would be almost impossible, if the principles of the Bill were accepted, for an owner to impose the present conditions. He thought that there was some force in the argument that the effect of the Bill would be to limit the additions to our large cities. That was one advantage of town life to those who had little or no opportunity of seeing the country, and although the hon. Member for Elland gave an instance in the case of Dusseldorf, the best instance of municipal administration in Europe, he ventured to think that the remedy suggested by the hon. Member was not the proper one. The restriction of particular classes of dwellings to particular parts would be most undesirable, and would not only create quarrels but would also create classes and castes, a thing to be avoided if possible. He ventured to suggest that the real remedy was to give more powers to the municipalities with regard to parks, open spaces, and the like. He did not think any difficulty would arise if corporations had the power of combining rural character with the most urban life. An illustration of the advantages to be derived from the possession of these powers was to be seen in the city of Nottingham. He warned the House against the specious, but delusive and dilatory, Amendment which had been moved. The hon. and learned Member for Stretford asked the House to wait till the general subject of local taxation could be dealt with. His answer to that was that that would be a long time coming, 884 both as to Report and action. Still less, he thought, ought they to await the time of the taxation of personal property.He would like to say one word about the bogey of municipal debt and indebtedness. He did not wish to ignore the large amount of municipal indebtedness, but he thought it was greatly exaggerated, and, compared with the danger in that House, the borough councils need have very little anxiety. People looked at municipal indebtedness with only one eye. They looked at the debit side of the ledger, and ignored the assets, which, in the matter, indirectly, of public health and of reproductive works, were very large indeed. He would remind the House that the Goschen Commission of 1870 came to the conclusion that there ought to be a direct and apparent, as well as a real and indirect, contribution by landlords in reference to local taxation; and for that reason they suggested the division of the rates between the owner and the occupier—another mode of attaining the object they had in view in this Bill. He thought there was an unanswerable case in favour of the measure, the principle of which, though there were points on which the municipalities were divided, commended itself to those who had the responsibility of dealing with local government, and who sought to be aided by proper provision of local taxation.
§ MR. KEARLEY (Devonport)in support of the Bill, said that the hon. Member for the Stretford Division could not have the same knowledge of the urban centres, which this Bill sought to affect, as those who had promoted it. The hon. Member, in the first instance, gave it as his opinion that overbuilding was a greater evil than overcrowding, and that of the two he preferred the latter. Anyone who had any knowledge of those particular urban centres which were overcrowded never found one which was overbuilt, because that in itself would solve the overcrowding. It was to his mind a great evil that land should be held up, and he supported this Bill because he thought it would loosen the hold of the territorial owner, who in this matter had held unbounded sway. The existing state of the land laws of this country had most certainly encouraged the hoarding 885 of land and were responsible for bringing about a state of overcrowding which was a disgrace to our civilisation. A landlord at the present time could hoard his land with impunity, and make a monopoly of it, and by so doing placed the whole of the burdens of taxation upon the community, while he took all the profits. The community were the victims of the landowners. An illustration of that was the town of Devonport. A hundred years ago Devonport was a rural village. When the Government built docks and works there the place began to grow. But the whole of the land was the property of one owner, and he held it up against the community, so that until ten years ago there was not a freehold tenure in the whole place, apart from certain lands belonging to the Government. An extraordinary system of leases for three lives prevailed, resulting in great uncertainty of tenure. Eight or ten years ago, owing to public pressure, the manorial lord consented, as a boon, to sell to the community two acres of land, for which he demanded £1,200 an acre, and so great an event was that that the transfer of the land was conducted with as much ceremony as the cutting of the first sod of a gigantic undertaking such as the building of the Trans-Siberian Railway. In Devonport it was the exception to find one family living in one house. At the present time, of the families living in Devonport, 2,500 occupied one room only—a thing only rendered possible by the existing state of the land laws. Since the loosening of the land much building had gone on; but what had been the result? When buildings were erected on land costing £2,000 an acre, it was impossible to build at a rental which a working man could pay, and the houses which had been built were vacated because the rental value was too high, and the overcrowding still continued, as indeed it would until some Bill was passed in this House to classify taxation as this Bill did. Another instance of the extraordinary powers that had been allowed to exist for generations in the hands of the landlords was to be seen in Devonport. Devon-port was divided from Plymouth by a narrow creek, and a hundred years ago the manorial lords were allowed to get a Bill through this House giving to them, 886 and to them alone, the whole right to build a bridge across that creek which was the main highway, and they imposed toll on every person who passed over.
§ MR. STUART WORTLEY (Sheffield, Hallam)asked, on a point of order, whether this was a Bill for the amendment of the land laws generally or merely for the purposes of amending the rates.
§ *MR. SPEAKERsaid that the hon. Member appeared to be going somewhat beyond the scope of the Bill.
§ *MR. KEARLEYsubmitted that the argument was germane, as it was an illustration of the state of things which cropped up under the present law. The fact was that enormous advantages were derived at the expense of the community under existing conditions, but if this Bill were passed the land upon which all this had taken place would have to bear its share of taxation, and it would be impossible in future to hold land in the way complained of against the community in general. Devonport illustrated also the very worst effect of absenteeism. The whole of the revenue of the community in the shape of rent, to the amount of £80,000 a year, went to an absentee landlord who contributed nothing to the taxation of the place. The result was that a neighbourhood which ought to be prosperous and rich was very poor. He was amazed when he first went to the place to see how poor the tradespeople were compared with those in towns of a similar size. He could not then explain it, but as he became more thoroughly acquainted with the system in existence, and the abuses to which it gave rise, he began to apprehend what it was that brought about tins state of affairs. The other day the municipality wanted to buy an additional piece of ground for the purpose of expending the Infectious Diseases Hospital. They originally erected it on a piece of ground bought from the lord of the manor for which they paid at the rate of £500 an acre. The additional piece of land required was offered to them at £1,500 an acre. This was an illustration in the direction of showing that the man who got the enormous enhancement contributed nothing to the local taxation. In granting the additional piece of land at 887 three times the price of the original portion the lord of the manor made it an absolute condition that if this site should at a later period be used for any purpose other than that of an infectious hospital the land should revert to him. This Bill was directed towards the amelioration of such a condition of things, and he believed the mere fact of levying a tax on land occupied or unoccupied would lessen the grip of the owner, and would throw the land more into use for the benefit of the community. It was the first step, in his judgment, in the direction of solving the housing problem, and of getting rid of overcrowding, and unless they passed some legislation of this kind they would never be able to grapple with the difficulty, the existence of which all admitted, and which he was sure all desired to ameliorate.
§ MR. FIELD (Dublin, St. Patrick)remarked that this Bill was probably required even more in Ireland than in England, and he had been desired by an unanimous resolution of the Black-Rock Urban District Council, of which he was a member, to attend and support the Second Reading of the measure. In so doing he wished to urge the promoters to extend the Bill to Ireland. Why was Ireland always left out of this kind of remedial legislation? In almost the whole of the world, outside Ireland and England, ownership and occupation went together, and the difficulty with which this Bill proposed to deal did not arise. The measure had been clearly explained to the House; its provisions had been criticised by the legal subtlety of the hon. and learned Member opposite; and he suggested that it ought now to be referred to a Committee upstairs in order that its details might be threshed out. As an illustration of the condition of things which existed, he might say that Kingstown a hundred years ago was an agricultural holding, and the Government built a harbour there as being the most convenient place for communication with Holyhead. As soon as the harbour was built, the people began coming in, taking the land, and building houses. Thus a town grew up. In 1869 the township was started, and since then no less than £350,000 had been paid in town's rates, in addition to poor and other rates, of 888 which the landlords paid nothing what ever. In May, 1903, all the leases fell in, and he was a living example of what had happened. The ground landlords came along, and took not only the houses which had been built—
§ *MR. SPEAKERpointed out that the hon. Member's remarks were outside the scope of the measure under discussion.
§ MR. FIELDsaid the residents had contributed £350,000 in rates while the landlords had not contributed a shilling, but when the leases fell in the landlords seized all the property. He would not pursue the subject, but would conclude by repeating his request that the promoters of the Bill should extend its provisions to Ireland.
§ *MR. WHITE RIDLEY (Stalybridge)said he did not propose to follow the two preceding speakers into their interesting, but somewhat unfruitful disquisitions on land tenure in general, but the hon. Member for Devonport had made a scries of statements with regard to a particular landlord in Devonport. A reference to Hansord would show that these statements had been explicitly and categorically denied by the agents of the particular landlord referred to.
§ *MR. KEARLEYOne of the hon. Gentlemen who gave, a denial or rather defended the manorial system three years ago and is now a member of the Government told me a few days ago that what had come to his knowledge since then showed that I was thoroughly right and that he would never defend the system again.
§ *MR. WHITE RIDLEYsaid his complaint was that when the hon. Member gave his history of the matter, and no one knew of any subsequent proceeding, he did not refer to the fact that the accuracy of his version had been explicitly and categorically denied by the agent concerned.
§ *MR. KEARLEYasked what had been denied.
§ *MR. WHITE RIDLEYsaid the income was one thing. But the general history 889 of the transactions had been denied by the agent of the particular landlord referred to.
§ *MR. KEARLEYI have simply stated historical facts.
§ MR. WHITE RIDLEYsaid he would not pursne matter further with the hon. Member; he had not had time to refer to Hansard, but the statements to which he had alluded were to be found in the official Debates. It was an unimportant point, and did not really touch the principles of the Bill. He agreed that this was not a question which should be dealt with in a Party spirit. In fact, he could hardly conceive that this measure had been brought forward in a Party or any other spirit except that of desiring an academic debate on an interesting subject. In no other spirit could a Bill have been brought forward containing so many inconsistencies and carrying out in so incomplete a manner the objects its promoters professed to have in view. It was extremely difficult to find out what the objects of the promoters really were, because, as explained by the mover and by the seconder, they were totally different. The hon. Member for the Elland Division did not seem to have any particular pride in the child he, had created this year; his hope was in the promise of its future, for he had said that as time went on and public opinion ripened, there would be an increase in the amount of money to be derived under the Hill, and that there might then be a higher rate. Hut the hon. Member for the West Derby Division of Liverpool put forward quite a, different view, viz., that this was not a suggested tax on landlords and that it would not lead to any increase of taxation. The Bill had appeared three years running, each time in a different form; it had been rejected on each occasion, always to reappear in a now garb by which its promoters hoped to attract more votes to its support. He contended that these constant changes proved that public opinion on the subject had not yet reached a sufficiently crystallised state to enable a clear and definite conclusion to be arrived at. The real desire of the supporters of the Bill was probably to get at what was called "unearned increment." It would be easy to quote high authorities to the effect that unearned increment was not a proper subject 890 of taxation, and that if unearned increment in land was a proper subject of taxation it followed that unearned increment in stocks and shares, and in other articles, was an equally proper subject of taxation. ["No."] On this point lie would quote one authority which would carry weight with hon. Members opposite. On 26th February last, a writer in the Daily Chronicle said —
The phenomenon of 'unearned increments' is now widely recognised not to be confined to rises of land values, but to apply to gains derived from any superiority of economic opportunity.Therefore, on the showing of the Daily Cronicle, it unearned increment of land was a proper subject of taxation, public opinion was now agreed that unearned increment arising from superiority of economic opportunity was equally a proper subject of taxation. The Bill proposed to tax the unearned increment of land, but of nothing else. The corollary to that was that if landowners were taxed on their unearned increment they ought to be compensated for their unearned decrement. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Monmouth, speaking at Oxford, used these words—I shall not discuss with you the unearned increment of land. That is an idea so illogical, so unreasonable, so perfectly unjust, and so absolutely philosophical, that it does not require any refutation.[Cries of "What date?"] That was in 1874. [OPPOSITION laughter]. He had yet to learn that opinions expressed in 1874 carried less weight than opinions expressed in 1846. At any rate, it would not be denied that hon. Gentlemen opposite attached considerable importance to views expressed in 1846 on another subject. But the whole idea upon which the taxation of the unearned increment of land rested was whether land could be valued separately from the houses upon it. The land could, of course, be valued separately, but could it be valued well? A valuer would put a value upon anything he Wits asked to value, but the valuation of land apart from the buildings gave a value of so hypothetical a character that, according to the Majority Report of the Royal Commission, it could not be relied upon. Not one of the experiments which had been made abroad or in the Colonies could be proved to have succeeded. ["Question."] He would not say that they could be proved to have 891 failed; but he did say that they had not been in operation long enough to afford a satisfactory trial, and that there was a considerable body of opinion abroad which held that the experiment in the separate valuation of land had not been a success. With regard to the valuation of land in France, of which so much had been made, he might quote from Justice, the organ of the Social Democratic Federation. That paper concluded with these words an article in which it set forth at great length that the system of land taxation in Paris had acted to the detriment of that city—The experiment has shown that the taxation of land values will not abolish landlordism, and may easily intensify its evils.The same view was held in the Colonies, the United States, and other countries where the experiment had been tried. It was proposed to arrive at the separate taxation of land values by taking the capital value of the land. The very words of the Bill showed that that was a fictitious value, for it was there set forth that the value of the land should be "deemed" to be the sum of money which would be given "by a willing buyer to a willing seller." There would be neither a willing buyer nor a willing seller, and the value arrived at would be a fictitious, unreal, and artificial value. It was proposed to find out what the land, under circumstances which had not arisen, could be bought or sold at, and upon that value a tax of 3 per cent, was to be imposed. One might as well take the annual value of a picture which might or might not be sold at Christie's to-morrow. Land had no value until it came into the market, except on the regular system pursued in this country of taxing it according to the annual value to its possessor.He fully sympathised with the desire to solve the housing problem, and lie did not deny that a reform in the rating system was required. With regard to the housing question it had been conclusively shown in both the Majority and the Minority Reports of the Royal Commission that there was a grievance which could and ought to be remedied, viz., the system whereby, in Loudon in particular, 20 per cent, reduction was made on the gross value of a hereditament in order to arrive at its net value. 892 Obviously a 20 per cent, reduction on a hereditament, four-fifths of the value of which was in the land, pressed very unequally as compared with a corresponding reduction on a hereditament four-fifths of which was in houses. As the Majority Report pointed out, that particular grievance could be remedied by taking into account the actual circumstances of the case, without resorting to the cumbrous, unnecessary, and almost impossible process of making separate valuations of the land and of the buildings. Another question which could be easily dealt with was that of unoccupied land which was supposed to be ripe for buildings, and which it was supposed would be thrown into the market by the operation of this Bill. Doubtless there were cases which required to be dealt with. But in a great number of instances where land ripe for building remained unoccupied, it was due to the fact that mortgages on the property prevented the owner selling. If it could be shown that public benefit would really arise, compulsory sale of the land, a process of which instances could be seen every day, was available, although he admitted there was considerable danger in putting into the hands of municipalities unlimited powers for the purchase of land.
In regard to improvements of which the landowner was alleged to get the benefit without paying any of the rates caused thereby, a distinction should be drawn between improvements effected by the community and improvements which come through the natural course of time. In the case of the former, by a wise use of its powers a municipality could always secure the recoupment which it was right and proper the community should have. A municipality or other body carrying out an improvement had power to acquire land in the vicinity which would be benefited by the improvement, and to get for the community the increased value resulting therefrom, thus putting into the pocket of the general taxpayer the result of the improvement which had been carried out with the taxpayers' money. The operation of this Bill would be to make the building on vacant land a more and more speculative matter, because it would throw the burden of the rates 893 more heavily upon the builder, thus entirely changing the character of house property, and making the incidence of the rates upon those who were inclined to deal in house property more uncertain and variable. The whole character of a class of investment the most sought after, both by the rich and by the poor, would be fundamentally altered. The Bill also proposed to deal with the unequal incidence of rates. Where did the promoters think the rates ought to fall— upon the occupier or upon the landlord? If the intention of the Bill was to make the landlord pay more visibly what he certainly paid invisibly now, why did it not do it more definitely? If that was the intention, why was there not some provision for the fuller representation of the landlord upon the local authority? One of the first principles in this matter was that those who paid taxes or rates should have due representation on the body by whom those taxes or rates were raised and spent. He conceived that the House would determinedly oppose the principle of taxation without representation encouraged by this Bill. Even if he knew the principle of the Bill to be as sound as he knew it to be unjust he could not vote for this measure, because the number of inconsistencies and absurdities it contained was so great that he did not believe any Committee could make it workable. He opposed it both on the ground of principle and on the ground of detail. The attack of the last three years upon the money which was supposed to go into the landlords' pocket, which began with an open and avowed attack on the ground landlords, had decreased year by year until it had reached the miserably insignificant proportions contained in this Bill, and it was obvious that the commonsense of the community need only carefully examine the measure to see how absurd it was and how unreal were the objects it aimed to secure.
§ MR. ASQUITH (Fifeshire, E.)said he did not intend to detain the House long, partly because they were already more than familiar with the main arguments on the one side and the other, but still more because his object was not so much to develop what he might call the controversial aspect of the question as to 894 point out how large a measure of agreement had been come to, and to invite the Government to recognise the change in the situation. The Bill had been met by an Amendment which proposed to put it off on the ground that it dealt with a matter which ought not to be dealt with piecemeal, and which ought to wait until the whole subject of rating could be presented under some comprehensive Government scheme. But he could not help pointing out that during the lifetime of this Government that canon had been more than once violated by Bills dealing with the questions of agricultural rating and the tithe-rent charge. If special circumstances were alleged, and were deemed to be sufficient—he did not say they were adequate—for dealing with those questions in an exceptional manner, surely the same argument was applicable to the Bill now before the House. If they were to wait until a general and comprehensive measure of rating reform was introduced on the authority of the Government, or, indeed, anybody else, with any prospect of being carried into law, they would probably have to wait until the Greek Kalends. The Bill of his hon. friend, with which he was in hearty sympathy, was a modest, unpretentious step in the direction of a larger and more important reform of which many of them were in favour, and the fact that his hon. friend who introduced the Bill had behind him 200 of the great urban representative authorities was a very important fact in itself, as showing the genera! tendency of opinion; and he thought it was still more important from the practical point of view, because it meant that if the Bill was carried it would have behind it, not the reluctant consent, but the hearty goodwill of the very authorities on whose co-operation they must largely depend for carrying it into effect. As he understood the Bill—and it was the ground on which he supported it as a matter of principle—it embodied two propositions. The first was that all land ought to be rated at its real value, and the second was that for the purpose of carrying that object into effect there must be a separate assessment of the land and of the buildings. As regarded the first proposition, he did not believe, even after the 895 able speech of the hon. Member for Stalybridge, that there was any real dispute among them. It rested on the simplest principles both of justice and of policy. Let them take one of the most elementary illustrations. Without going into the question of unearned increment, he would take the ordinary case where a community expended money out of its own resources, and therefore at the cost of the rates, for the purpose of a public improvement—the creation of a new street, the provision of an open space, a tunnel from one side of a river to another, or one of the hundred different objects by which a governing body improved the conditions of life. That improvement involved an annual burden on the rates. The effect was to increase the value, in nine cases out of ten, of all land adjacent to, or within the sphere of influence of, the improvement itself.
§ MR. GRIFFITH BOSCAWEN (Kent, Tunbridge)It may depreciate some of the land in the neighbourhood.
§ MR. ASQUITHinquired if the hon. Member meant to suggest that a work like the Thames Embankment or any other great improvement did not necessarily have the effect, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, of enhancing the value.
§ MR. GRIFFITH BOSCAWENBut you are going to put a rate on the hundredth case as well.
§ MR. ASQUITHsaid that was just what they were not going to do, but the hon. Member had admitted that in nine cases out of ten at any rate the value of the land was enhanced by the expenditure of money which had to be provided by the ratepayers. If that land remained vacant or unoccupied, if the owner neglected to develop it or to exploit it for building purposes, that did not pay the same proportion of rating as land built upon. Then, again, when vacant land was required for a public purpose, then, although it had not paid any equivalent portion of the rating burden for its enhancement of value, the community at whose expense the greater value had been created had to 896 acquire it on the basis of its enhanced capital value. So long as the landowner could thus obtain an enhanced value for his land when required by the community without contributing anything to the cost of its enhancement they had a case of plain and indefensible injustice. The consideration of justice was not the only consideration involved. There was the consideration of public policy. No one had attempted to meet the argument put forward by the minority of the Royal Commission on Local Taxation as to the injurious effect of the present system on building operations as bearing on what was called the housing problem. There could be no doubt whatever that so long as the existing law of rating prevailed, building would be discouraged. The Royal Commission said that in the outskirts of a community where it was desirable to encourage it the effect of the present law was to discourage building. The experience of Queensland under a different law was illustrated by the report of the town clerk of Brisbane, that landowners had been induced to build more rapidly than before, with great benefit to the community and the general acquiescence of all concerned. What had happened there we might reasonably expect to happen here. Having regard to these facts it appeared to him that the first of the two principles which this measure embodied ought to receive the assent of the House.
With regard to the second question raised by the Bill, and he agreed that it was a very important one, i.e., the practicability of separating the assessment of land from that of buildings, they were not moving in the atmosphere of theory, because they had got, in regard to the actual proposals of the Bill, the unanimous opinion of communities so widely separated in space, and so diverse in economic conditions, as Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, and, he supposed he might add, London.
§ MR. REMNANTNo resolution has been passed by the London County Council in support of this Bill.
§ DR. MACNAMARAThere was one in support of last year's Bill.
§ MR. REMNANTThat was absolutely different.
MR. ASQUTHsaid he was quite willing to leave London out of consideration. It was clear that all our great communities were committed to the practicability of this scheme. He would advise waiting to see what the new County Council's opinion would be, but was content with the endorsement of the towns he had mentioned, and with Bradford and Dublin. He understood the hon. Member for the Stretford Division to have admitted the practicability of separate rating. In New Zealand the law allowed an option to municipalities in this matter, and no fewer than fifty had exercised the option and only nine had refused. That was a sufficent proof that the thing could be worked. In the London suburb of Finchley an honest attempt had been made with the aid of skilled valuers to see how the scheme would work out there. The population of Finchley was 30,000. The present valuation was £160,000, of which £20,000 was estimated as the share attributable to land separated from buildings and improvements. A careful estimate had been made of the capital or selling value of the land alone. After deductions for the shrinkage which would undoubtedly take place in the value of the land consequent on its being brought into rating, and after allowance for all other relevant considerations, the conclusion arrived at was that the capital or selling value of the land of that district would amount to £1,874,000. Three per cent, on that—the figure named in this Bill—wouldrnean £56,000 a year as the actual rateable value of the land. As land at present paid £20,000, this would be an addition of £36,000 to the annual rateable value of the district. The result, translated into terms of rates, would be this—that whereas the rate at present paid was 8s. 2d. in the pound, it would be reduced to 6s. 3d.
AN. HON. MEMBERWhat is going to happen to the land in the meantime? You could not get purchasers for it all at that price.
§ MR. ASQUITHsaid he was informed that the valuation had been put lower than the prices being actually realised 898 from day to day and week to week in the open market. The point was, was the land ripe for residential purposes? But he did not think he need go further into details. A prima facie case for the practicability of the scheme having been made out, he appealed to the Government to allow the Bill to be read a second time, leaving its details to be examined in Committee. He certainly hoped the House would, that afternoon, not lose the opportunity afforded it by that debate of affirming the principle which lay at the root of the Bill.
THE SECRETARY TO THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. GRANT LAWSON,) Yorkshire, N.R., Thirsksaid the right Hon. Gentleman had appealed to the Government to give the Bill a Second Reading. The matter, however, did not rest with the Government, which was disposed to leave it to the decision of the House; but that being so, he would venture to offer a few reasons why the House should carefully consider what it would be doing if it passed the Second Reading. He had the highest respect for the local authorities who had been quoted; but a conference of rating authorities would be more than human if they did not see some advantages in a proposal which would enable them to send some of their increasing bills to be paid by a more limited class of owners. It was only natural that they should do so. Tax collectors were not the best authorities to consult on the principles upon which taxes should be levied. In that House they had to consider the views of minorities as well as of majorities. It was not an abstract Resolution which the House was asked to discuss, but a Bill. They were not merely asked to express a pious opinion that something should be done in this matter. With the feeling that some relief ought to be given to ratepayers he most thoroughly coincided, hut no shifting of burdens from one ratepayer to another would ever deal with that which was the real crux of the matter. That was dealt with by the Amendment rather than by the Bill. In certain ignorant classes of the community the opinion prevailed that when there was something wrong with them they ought so take something, no matter what; but he desired to submit the dose they were now asked to swallow to a somewhat 899 critical analysis. Three new principles would be introduced by this Bill into the law and practice of rating—first, that there should be a separation for valuation purposes between a site and the building which stood on it; secondly, that rates should be placed on unoccupied houses; and, thirdly, that there should be taxation not on the actual annual value, but on the estimated capital value applied to one class of rateable property alone—land in what were technically known as urban districts in this country. The right hon. Gentleman had mentioned New Zealand, but he disputed altogether the similarity of the conditions in this country and New Zealand. He wished to show that what was now dealt with as one indivisible whole was divided by this Bill into two distinct parts, and this separation proposal was justly described by the Royal Commission as uncertain, complicated, and costly. Those were unpleasant characteristics for a basis of taxation under which heavy burdens were to be placed upon one class of individuals. [An HON. MEMBER: That is the Majority Report.] Yes, and when he quoted anything as representing the views of the Commission, it would be from the Majority Report. As regarded the rating of vacant houses, this would take from those who had not tenants for the benefit of those whose houses were occupied. The levying of an annual tax on the capital value of one class of property alone was opposed to all principles of local taxation in this or any other country.
He agreed, and the Government entirely agreed, that all property should pay on its full value for public purposes, but that was in the Amendment, not in the Bill. He would take the last point first. What would be the result of taxing this land—the whole area of such land in an urban district—on what the Bill called its "annual value." The basis of annual charges ought to be as now, the annual advantage received by the owner or occupier. He dared say there were hon. Members who had the misfortune to hold investments on which they were receiving no dividend. How would they like the Chancellor of the Exchequer to levy taxation on the estimated capital value of those investments? That was the treatment which 900 the Bill proposed to mete out to owners of land in urban districts. Land in the suburbs now in occupation of nurserymen, allotment holders, butchers and others, and rated on the annual value for the purposes for which it was used, would under this Bill be rated at its value for a purpose for which it was not being used. He had heard of a holding in an urban district let at £3 a year for grazing. Under this Bill it would be rated at £15 a year. What would happen to private gardens and to some of the gardens in public squares? The whole of the lungs of our big towns would be choked by this method. No man could afford to keep open spaces in a town if rated at 3 per cent, on the capital value of the land. The evil of crowding houses together would be intensified. Trades requiring large pieces of ground, such as the timber trade, would have to migrate from the urban districts and extra costs for carriage would be placed on their goods. In many cases it was necessary for workmen to live near their work and rents would rise enormously on account of this enormous increase in rates which must necessarily take place. He would give to the House another concrete instance of a person who held a lease for sixty years of a poor house on a very valuable site. Under this Bill he would have to be rated on the capital value of that site just as if he had built upon it a palace, and as if it had been put to the best use it could possibly be put either for a palace or for a magnificent residence, although his interest in the site only consisted of a very poor house. Those were absolute cases that would occur under this Bill. Was there any reason for this drastic treatment of those who owned land and had not put it to the most remunerative purposes. He would take the most extreme case which had excited most interest, namely, the case of a plot of land in the centre of a town unoccupied by build ngs. He did not know where such plots existed unless they contained notice boards offering to let or sell them. Such plots of land did not by existing there put any direct charge upon the ratepayers. They did not require policing, the maintenance of roads, or tramways and they had nothing to do with education because there were no people upon them to enjoy those 901 advantages. If they accepted the principle that such plots of land ought to be rated in proportion to the benefits they received, upon that ground there was obviously no reason why such land should be rated. He should like to ask whether it was true that the existence of this land in an undeveloped state put an indirect charge upon other ratepayers? A vacant plot of land was the cause of no direct or indirect charge upon the rates; and if the neighbouring owner who built a house on his plot had a slight grievance in the matter of rates, on the other hand the owner of the house and plot had the value of his property increased by the absence of a competing house. Land might or might not rise in value as building developed, but the rise was certainly not due to increase in rates. As the population of a town increased property became more valuable; but "so also the shopkeeper did more business and other classes had more employment; but it was not proposed that they should pay 3 per cent, on the advantages they received from increase of population. Then there was the proposal to rate empty houses which all owners of property knew were a most costly form of property.
§ MR. TREVELYANMy proposal is to rate the land and not the house.
MR. GRANT LAWSONsaid it was very difficult to separate the two. It could not be said that a vacant house involved no charge on the rates, as was the case with vacant land; but the remarkable logic of the Bill would place the rate not upon the structure, which required police protection and other services, but upon the site that did not. If a charge were placed on empty houses, undoubtedly to some extent a check would be placed on the willingness of people to build houses for the future, and rents would be in proportion to the added cost. A builder built a house which he let on the understanding that the tenant paid the rates, taking the risk of their rise or fall—a convenient arrangement universally adopted; but the Bill contemplated that the builder's income should be liable during the term of a lease to decrease from change in the rate of the land upon which his house stood. If the Bill was to work at all, it 902 would be necessary to assign separate annual values to the house and the site for rating purposes. It was obvious there could be no actual value, because the site could not be used for any other purpose. The annual value the Bill suggested was 3 per cent, on the capital value, if there was a willing purchaser and a willing seller. Present assessment committees did their work cheaply and on the whole well, because they dealt with things actually in existence and subject to everyday transactions; but they could not be expected to enter the wide field of conjecture and imagination for future valuation without expert assistance. The experts would be asked to say with respect to every house in an urban district what would be the saleable value of the site of a house if the house were not there, and the land were devoted to the best possible use to which it could be put. That in itself was startling; but the problem became still more complicated when it was remembered that there were rights and covenants attached to leases, and the valuer would have to consider the effect of these restrictions without access to the documents governing them or the legal knowledge for their interpretation. What was the value of a valuer's opinion 'I This point had been very well defined by the late Lord Farrer, who pointed out that the only value of a valuer's valuation rested on his experience, and it was the valuer's experience of previous transactions in regard to similar duties that guided his judgment. Therefore the value of a valuer's opinion lay in his experience; but since the world began nobody has had experience of such a problem as was presented, but upon the reliability of uncertain valuation would depend the relative proportions of the rating burdens of every citizen. Never was there a suggestion that more violated every principle laid down as the basis of taxation by every writer since Adam Smith, that taxation should be certain and not arbitrary. It used to be maintained that ground-rents should be subject to taxation, though less had been heard of that since small investors had begun to take an interest in the question, and, whatever might be said against the proposal, at least the amount would be ascertainable; but here everything was to depend on valuation by a man, having no experience of similar transactions, of the hypothetical value of a 903 hypothetical commodity, if that were put to a hypothetical use by a hypothetical purchaser. The Royal Commission said that the system would he not only complicated but uncertain and costly. He would give the House some idea of the cost. The hon. Member for Islington had tried to sweep away all the arguments of the Royal Commission by saying that the witnesses gave such divergent estimates of the cost that it need not be considered at all. It was true that in London the estimates varied from £40,000 to £2,000,000, though one valuer, Mr. Harper, said he was willing to value at the rate of a shilling a sits, exclusive of costs of litigation. These litigation costs would no doubt be considerable.
§ *MR. MCCRAE (Edinburgh, E.)But the work would be done by the corporation officials.
MR. GRANT LAWSONsaid that in that case he was inclined to think that the ratepayers would object to the work being done by the corporation officials, for the suggestion not only showed that the local authorities would levy the duties, but fix the amount themselves. What they gained in surveyors' fees they would lose in law fees. Mr. Wainwright had put the cost at several millions for sites in London if experts were employed, and the cost of litigation might be as much as the cost of the valuation. In the area over which the Bill would extend it was estimated that in respect of rateable hereditaments in the shape of houses the Bill proposed to put a charge of £10,000,000 on the local authorities in order to arrive at a valuation, and after that there came the law costs. For what would all this great expense be incurred? The only suggestion was that deductions could be more easily made from the gross value to the rateable; but that difficulty could be overcome under the present system. The Bill, however, was only a part of the ultimate scheme which hon. Members opposite desired to see carried. The right hon. Gentleman said it was a modest, unambitious start. But this annual measure disclosed less and less of the mind of those who were behind it, in order that the House might possibly be induced to accept the larger scheme in time. He warned his hon. friends that 904 once they accepted a Bill like this they would find it very hard to secure a logical foothold which should hinder them from going still further down the incline. Would right hon. Gentlemen opposite not only not support this Bill but actively oppose the candidates of their Party who were prepared to go beyond its terms? If he went into the details of the Bill he could very speedily show how entirely unworkable the measure was. The Bill was not only unworkable, but it touched only a little corner of a very large question. Some of its principles were ridiculous and impossible, and it ran counter to the decision of one Commission and one Committee which had considered the question for years, and whose majorities had decided against such proposals. It was objected that the Government did not carry out the Reports of Royal Commissions; but it would be a new departure to carry out a measure which was absolutely opposed to their findings.
Some of his hon. friends would no doubt vote for the Bill because they thought that something should be done to tax those who held this one commodity of land for a rise. They might hold everything else for a rise, but they must not hold land. He believed there were some cases of hardship in connection with this matter, but was it worth while to use all this machinery to inflict injury on many innocent persons for the sake of catching one or two individuals. He did not think those cases were nearly as common as some people believed. Lord Balfour, with the best intention, hunted for cases of land which was supposed to be kept off the market for a rise in price, but he reported that that was not very usual, although, of course, there were cases. Though something ought to be done to deal with those cases, surely it could not be argued that the method of securing a remedy was by this Bill with all its absurdities. He sympathised with the desire to relieve the heavy burdens on the ratepayers, but, in his judgment, they would be much heavier if the Bill were adopted, and if the local authorities were allowed to imagine that they had discovered something like a new gold mine. Though the burdens of the ratepayer's should be fairly adjusted in proportion to the capacity of those who had to bear them, the end was not to be attained 905 by means of this Bill. The Amendment, on the contrary, rather expressed his view and he would vote for it in the hope that his hon. friends would take the same coarse. By supporting the Amendment his hon. friends would be voting for the true and salutary remedy of a real grievance felt by the ratepayers, while rejecting a quack proposal containing dangerous elements. This was a difficult problem, and they all desired a remedy which would touch the spot. By his analysis of the Bill he had shown at any rate that it contained principles which could not be worked out to a satisfactory conclusion. If any suggestion were made to the House which they could consider, and which did contain the terms of a settlement, he for one would welcome it and give it every sort of consideration. What he did not want was that the House, by passing the Second Reading of this Bill, should commit itself to the opinion that this was the proper remedy for meeting evils which they all deplored.
§ *MR. LAWSON WALTON (Leeds, S.)said the Secretary to the Local Government Board began his speech by stating that the Government was disposed to leave the decision of the Second Reading of this Bill to the unbiassed judgmentof the House-But that statement was the preface to what he presumed might be called the official opinion of the Department which the hon. Gentleman represented with reference to the measure. The House had now ascertained that this Bill was officially regarded as objectionable in principle, as impossible in its application, and as so dangerous to the future of this country that the hon. Gentleman described it as the first step towards the introduction of the doctrines of Socialism. The hon. Gentleman warned his hon. friends behind 906 him that if they once put their foot on this slippery plane there would be no stopping until they were launched in the abyss to which he referred. The House had heard speeches in opposition to the Bill, but no one had risen so endowed with the gift of prophecy of evil as the Secretary of the Local Government Board. It had been admitted that the Bill was conspicuous for its moderation, that it indicated an evil of considerable compass, and that it pointed to a remedy. He should like to deal briefly with the objections urged against the principle of the Fill. It was acknowledged that in each large rateable area there was land which had benefited by the public improvements, which was increasing in annual value as the result of the growth of the inhabitants of the district, and which was contributing in no way to the advantages it was receiving. If that was so the question for consideration was: Why should it not contribute some return in the shape of taxation for the public benefits of which the owner was the recipient? His hon. and learned friend the Member for the Stretford Division said this was a new principle in the law of rating. He challenged that proposition. If it was said it was a new principle in this sense, that the hereditament it was proposed to rate was not fairly within the scope of the rating law as now administered, he agreed; but it clearly was a proper subject for rating. It was fixed and real property, it was within the local area, it called for services which were rendered to it by the local authority and it participated in the advantages which followed from local government, and therefore it might fairly be assessed. The fact simply was that it had slipped out of rating, and a moment's study of the development and growth of the law 907 of rating would show how that mishap had occurred.
We had adopted as the measure of the valuation of land the value of the occupation of land, and in order to ascertain the value of the occupation of land we had assumed a hypothetical tenant, and therefore the existence of some tenancy was the basis of property subject to assessment. But in principle land, whether in fact occupied or not, should be equally rated provided it participated, just as the property occupied participated, in the advantages of local government and created a call upon the local administration of the district. Although that proposition would scarcely be denied, yet, in practice, unoccupied land had escaped because there was no application of the standard of valuation which had been applied to the subject. The value of land was the price at which at any moment a man could dispose of the property in the open market for money; that was to say, if a man had a piece of land which he could exchange for £1,000, and he preferred to keep it rather than exchange it for that amount, he was foregoing the annual and fair interest which he could obtain on this sum. Three per cent, was presumed to be the annual value of the money, and therefore the Bill said that the annual value of the property should be taken as the annual value of the amount at which the owner at any moment might exchange the property. He thought he had made it clear that, if the main proposition was right, the owner of the land ought to contribute to the local taxation and not be absolutely free. They had here a fair standard by which they could ascertain the value of the property, and by which 908 they could measure the annual value to the owner. If it was worth the owner's while to forego the interest on £1,000 for a period of years, it was obvious that the land had a value to him in the shape of some prospective profit which he would obtain by the growth of the neighbourhood in which the land was situated. Ought that or ought that not to contribute to local taxation? He had not heard any sound argument adduced against it. He had heard it said that arguments of policy were against it. He had heard it said that the result of the application of the Bill would be to force all the open spaces into the market. Would not that be an advantage to the community? If open spaces were forced into the market; land would be more widely held, there would be more owners of property, there would be greater freedom in handling it and greater freedom in dealing with it; and that was more conducive to the advantage of the community than the attracts of unoccupied land should remain in the hands of single persons who were subject to no burden, and who got without any contribution all the advantages which attended the development of the area. This Bill proposed to bring unoccupied land within the scope of our rating law by introducing, not a hypothetical tenant but a hypothetical purchaser. If they had a hypothetical purchaser they got a standard of value which was quite as accurate as if they had a hypothetical tenant and no more difficult of application.
The fear that they would encourage building which was not wanted was chimerical. He agreed that what was proposed would force land into the market, for there were many owners who could not hold; but it was wrong to say 909 that buildings would be put up which were not wanted. If land was more widely held there would be a more ready response to the demand for building accommodation than under any other system. Let him deal with the fallacy with which the Secretary to the Local Government Board tried to frighten them, namely, the prospect of all the London squares being built over. The answer was that these open spaces were rated at this moment. [An HON. MEMBER: Not on capital value.] Let him instance Belgrave Square. If they rated that square they would diminish pro tanto the rateability of the remainder of the hereditaments not included in the open space. The only difference was that under the present system they rated both. They rated the hereditament which was occupied, namely, the house in the square, the rateability of which was increased by the fact that one of the incidents of that occupation was the right of using the open space in front. That added to the value of the house in the square, and therefore if they took the square separately and capitalised it, and took the rateable value at 3 per cent., they would no doubt get a separate subject of assessment altogether; that was to say, they would have an assessment on so much of that open space as was detached from the house, but they would pro tanto diminish the rateability of the house. [An HON. MEMBER: No.] Logically they would do that, because the present subject of rating was the house plus the incident and advantage of being able to use the open space.
Unoccupied houses at this moment were not rated at all, but he would show that what was proposed by the Bill was not a new principle. He had the 910 curiosity to get the Acts relating to the government of the city of London, and he found that there, by special legislation, all unoccupied houses were rated to the extent of one-half of the rates in respect to the sewer rate and other rates. He was told that in the case of some estates in London—in St. Pancras, for example—a similar rule had been applied. Really this Bill was a very mild application of this principle. The Bill proposed to treat unoccupied houses as land. They would not cease to be rated as land because there were houses upon it which happened to be unoccupied. Therefore the application of the measure in that case was simply the logical pursuit of the principle that they must follow the land wherever it was. They must annually ascertain the value by the application of this principle. It might vary from year to year. If land was going up in value by the development of the neighbourhood they would get increased rateability, and if the value was going down, owing to reasons applicable to the locality, they would get decreased rateability. These were views which he trusted would satisfy the House that this was a perfectly logical and simple measure, and that really there had been no answer to the arguments brought forward by its promoters.
§ MR. STOCK (Liverpool, Walton)said he should not have intervened in the debate had it not been for the speech of the seconder of the Bill, his hon. friend the Member for the West Derby Division of Liverpool. He would not like the House to suppose, as it might, that this Bill had the support of the various corporate bodies of Liverpool outside the municipal authorities. He believed it received the sanction of the Finance 911 Committee of the Corporation of Liverpool by a small majority, but there were other important bodies in Liverpool who were strongly opposed to it. He held in his hand a letter from the Mersey Dock Board who opposed the Bill and he would road a few sentences. It said—
This Bill proposes to empower local authorities to levy rates on land values altogether differing from the basis on which the rateable value of such land is now ascertained. It appears to be the intention of the Bill to assess both occupied and unoccupied land on a percentage of some assumed value. If passed, the Bill will seriously handicap and affect bodies like this Board who own a large estate used for the benefit of the public trading to and at the port of Liverpool, and who, in anticipation of the growing wants of the trade of the port committed by Parliament to their care, have acquired land for future development.He had to oppose this Bill on principle for the reasons given by the hon. Member for the Stretford Division, and he was glad to feel that his action was endorsed by so important a body as the Dock Board of Liverpool.
§ SIR GEORGE BARTLEY (Islington, N.)said that as this was a matter that deeply concerned London he desired to say a word or two upon it. He could not agree with what fell from the Secretary to the Local Government Board. The Bill, as it stood, seemed to divide rating between the land and the build-
§ ings. He thought it was a very conservative measure. There were many people who were under the impression that land did not bear its fair share of taxation. He did not agree with that view, and he thought it would be an advantage to levy taxation in such a way that it would show on the face of it the sources from which it was derived. He could not see anything revolutionary in the Bill, though no doubt certain parts were capable of amendment in Committee. Whether 3 per cent. was the right figure to name was a detail which was not important at this stage of the Bill. He thought it would conduce very much to the greater contentment of the ratepayers of London if the two rates were separated. His own opinion was that hon. Members would be disappointed if they thought the proposed change would lead to a large increase of rateable property. He thought, however, it would do a great deal to do away with the existing idea that the ground landlord did not pay a fair share of taxation. He could not regard this as a Party measure in any sense, and therefore he would support the Second Reading.
§ Question put.
§ The House divided:—Ayes, 223; Noes, 156. (Division List No. 52.)
915| AYES. | ||
| Abraham, William (Cork, N. E. | Black, Alexander William | Causton, Richard Knight |
| Ainsworth, John Stirling | Blake, Edward | Channing, Francis Allston |
| Allen, Charles P. | Boland, John | Churchill, Winston Spencer |
| Ambrose, Robert | Brigg, John | Clancy, John Joseph |
| Ashton, Thomas Gair | Broadhurst, Henry | Coghill, Douglas Harry |
| Asquith, Rt. Hn. Herbert Henry | Brotherton, Edward Allen | Condon, Thomas Joseph |
| Atherley-Jones, L. | Brunner, Sir John Tomlinson | Craig, Robert Hunter (Lanark |
| Bain, Colonel James Robert | Bryce, Rt. Hon. James | Cremer, William Randal |
| Baird, John George Alexander | Buchanan, Thomas Ryburn | Crombie, John William |
| Barran, Rowland Hirst | Burke, E. Haviland | Crooks, William |
| Bartley, Sir George C. T. | Buxton, Sydney Charles | Cross, Alexander (Glasgow) |
| Bayley, Thomas (Derbyshire) | Caldwell, James | Cullinan, J. |
| Beaumont, Wentworth C. B. | Cameron, Robert | Dalziel, James Henry |
| Bell, Richard | Campbell, John (Armagh, S.) | Davies, Alfred (Carmarthen) |
| Bhownaggree, Sir M. M. | Campbell-Bannerman, Sir H. | Davies, M. Vaughan (Cardigan. |
| Bignold, Arthur | Carvill, Patrick Geo. Hamilton | Delany, William |
| Dewar, John A. (Inverness-sh. | Joyce, Michael | Redmond, William Clare |
| Dickson, Charles Scott | Kearley, Hudson E. | Reid, James (Greenock) |
| Dickson-Poynder, Sir John P. | Kilbride, Denis | Reid, Sir R. Threshie (Dumfries |
| Dilke, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles | Lambert, George | Roberts, John H. (Denbighs.) |
| Dobbie, Joseph | Lambton, Hon.Frederick Wm. | Roberts, Samuel (Sheffield) |
| Donelan, Captain A. | Langley, Batty | Robertson, Edmund (Dundee) |
| Doogan, P. C. | Laurie, Lieut.-General | Robson, William Snowdon |
| Douglas, Charles M. (Lanark) | Layland-Barratt, Francis | Roche, John |
| Duncan, J. Hastings | Leese,Sir Joseph F.(Accrington | Roe, Sir Thomas |
| Dunn, Sir William | Leigh, Sir Joseph | Rollit, Sir Albert Kaye |
| Edwards, Frank | Leng, Sir John | Rose, Charles Day |
| Elibank, Master of | Levy, Maurice | Runciman, Walter |
| Ellice,Capt E.C (SAndrw'sBghs | Lloyd-George, David | Russell, T. W. |
| Emmott, Alfred | Lough, Thomas | Samuel, Herbert L. (Cleveland) |
| Esmonde, Sir Thomas | Lowther, C. (Climb., Eskdale) | Samuel, S. M. (Whitechapel) |
| Evans, Sir F. H. (Maidstone) | Lundon, W. | Sassoon, Sir Edward Albert |
| Faber, George Denison (York) | Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J. | Schwann, Charles E. |
| Farquharson, Dr. Robert | MacNeill, John Gordon Swift | Shaw, Thomas (Hawick B.) |
| Ferguson, R. C. Munro (Leith) | MacVeagh, Jeremiah | Sheehan, Daniel Daniel |
| Ffrench, Peter | M Arthur, William (Cornwall) | Sheehy, David |
| Field, William | M'Crae, George | Sinclair, John (Forfarshire) |
| Fisher, William Hayes | M'Hugh, Patrick A. | Sloan, Thomas Henry |
| Fitzmaurice, Lord Edmond | M'Kean, John | Smith, Samuel (Flint) |
| Flavin, Michael Joseph | M'Kenna, Reginald | Soames, Arthur Wellesley |
| Flynn, James Christopher | M'Killop, W. (Sligo, North) | Soares, Ernest J. |
| Foster,Sir Michael(Lond. Univ. | M'Laren, Sir Charles Benjamin | Spencer, Rt.Hn.C. R(Northants |
| Foster, Sir Walter (Derby Co.) | Mitchell, Edw. (Fermanagh, N. | Stevenson, Francis S. |
| Freeman-Thomas, Captain F. | Mooney, John J. | Strachey, Sir Edward |
| Fuller, J. M. F. | Morgan, J. Lloyd (Carmarthen | Sullivan, Donal |
| Furness, Sir Christopher | Morley, Rt. Hon. John(Montrose | Taylor, Austin (East Toxteth) |
| Gladstone,Rt.Hn.HerbertJohn | Morton, Arthur H. Aylmer | Taylor, Theodore C. (Radcliffe) |
| Goddard, Daniel Ford | Murphy, John | Tennant, Harold John |
| Grant, Corrie | Nannetti, Joseph P. | Thomas, Abel (Carmarthen, E.) |
| Grey, Rt. Hon. Sir E. (Berwick | Nolan, Col. John P.(Galway, N. | Thomas, Sir A. (Glamorgan, E. |
| Gurdon, Sir W. Brampton | Nolan, Joseph (Louth, South) | Thomas, David Alfred (Merthyr) |
| Haldane, Rt. Hon. Richard B. | Norman, Henry | Thomson, F. W. (York, W. R.) |
| Hammond, John | Norton, Capt. Cecil William | Toulmin, George |
| Harcourt, Rt. Hon. Sir William | O'Brien, James, F. X.(Cork) | Tuke, Sir John Batty |
| Harmsworth, R. Leicester | O'Brien, Kendal (Tipperary, Mid | Wallace, Robert |
| Harwood, George | O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny) | Walton, John Lawson (Leeds, S. |
| Hatch Ernest Frederick Geo. | O'Connor, James (Wicklow, W. | Walton, Joseph (Barnsley) |
| Hay, Hon. Claude George | O'Doherty, William | Warner, Thomas Courtenay T. |
| Hayden, John Patrick | O'Donnell, T. (Kerry, W.) | Wason, Eugene (Clackmannan) |
| Hayter, Rt. Hn. Sir Arthur D. | O'Dowd, John | Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney |
| Helme, Norval Watson | O'Kelly, James(Roscommon, N | Weir, James Galloway |
| Hemphill, Rt. Hon. Charles H. | O'Malley, William | Whiteley, H.(Ashton und. Lyne |
| Henderson, Arthur (Durham) | O'Mara, James | Whitley, J. H. (Halifax) |
| Holland, Sir William Henry | O'Shaughnessy, P. J. | Whittaker, Thomas Palmer |
| Hope, J. F.(Sheffield, Brightside | Parrott, William | Williams, Osmond (Merioneth) |
| Hope, John Deans (Fife, West | Partington, Oswald | Wilson, Fred W. (Norfolk, Mid. |
| Horniman, Frederick John | Pease, Herbt. Pike (Darlington | Wilson, John (Durham, Mid.) |
| Humphreys-Owen, Arthur C. | Pemberton, John S. G. | Woodhouse, SirJ. T.(Huddersf'd |
| Hutchinson, Dr. Charles Fredk. | Power, Patrick Joseph | Wortley, Rt. Hn. C. B. Stuart |
| Hutton, Alfred E. (Morley) | Price, Robert John | Young, Samuel |
| Jacoby, James Alfred | Priestley, Arthur | Yoxall, James Henry |
| Johnson, John (Gateshead) | Randles, John S. | |
| Joicey, Sir James | Rea, Russell | TELLERS FOR THE AYES—Mr. Trevelyan and Mr. Watson Rutherford. |
| Jones, David Brynmor (SwanSea | Reckitt, Harold James | |
| Jones, William(Carnarvonshire | Reddy, M. | |
| Jordan, Jeremiah | Redmond, John E. (Waterford | |
| NOES. | ||
| Acland-Hood, Capt, Sir Alex. F. | Atkinson, Rt. Hon. John | Bathurst, Hon, Allen Benjamin |
| Agnew, Sir Andrew Noel | Aubrey-Fletcher, Rt. Hon. Sir H. | Beach, Rt. Hn. Sir Michael Hicks |
| Aird, Sir John | Balcarres, Lord | Bentick, Lord Henry C. |
| Allsopp, Hon. George | Balfour,Captain C. B. (Hornsey | Bigwood, James |
| Anson Sir William Reynell | Balfour, Kenneth R. (Christch. | Blundell, Colonel Henry |
| Arnold-Forster, Rt. Hn. HughO. | Banbury, Sir Frederick George | Bond, Edward |
| Arrol, Sir William | Barry, Sir Francis T. (Windsor | Boscawen, Arthur Griffith |
| Boulnois, Edmund | Houston, Robert Paterson | Rankin, Sir James |
| Bowles, Lt.-Col. H. F.(Middlesex | Howard, J. (Midd., Tottenham | Rasch, Sir Frederic Carne |
| Brodrick, Rt. Hon. St. John | Hozier,Hon. James HenryCecil | Robertson, Herbert (Hackney) |
| Burdett-Coutts, W. | Hudson, George Bickersteth | Robinson, Brooke |
| Campbell, Rt. Hn. J. A(Glasgow) | Hunt, Rowland | Rolleston, Sir John F. L. |
| Campbell, J. H. M.(Dublin Univ. | Jeffreys, Rt. Hon. Arthur Fred | Round, Rt. Hon. James |
| Carson, Rt. Hon. Sir Edw. H. | Jessel, Captain Herbert Merton | Rutherford, John (Lancashire) |
| Cavendish, V.C.W. (Derbyshire | Johnstone, Heywood (Sussex) | Sadler, Col. Samuel Alexander |
| Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor) | Kennaway, Rt. Hon. Sir JohnH. | Sandys, Lieut.-Col. Thos. Myles |
| Chamberlain, Rt. Hn. J. A (Worc | Kenyon, Hn. Geo. T. (Denbigh) | Seely, Charles Hilton (Lincom) |
| Chaplain, Rt. Hon. Henry | Kerr, John | Seton-Karr, Sir Henry |
| Charrington, Spencer | Kimber, Henry | Sharpe, William Edward T. |
| Clive, Captain Percy A. | King, Sir Henry Seymour | Simeon, Sir Barrington |
| Coates, Edward Feetham | Lawson, JohnGrant(Yorks, N. R | Sinclair, Louis (Romford) |
| Coddington, Sir William | Lee, Arthur H.(Hants., Fareham | Skewes-Cox, Thomas |
| Colomb, Sir. John Charles Ready | Lees, Sir Elliott (Birkenhead) | Smith, James Parker (Lanarks. |
| Cook, Sir Frederick Lucas | Legge, Col. Hon. Heneage | Smith, Hon. W. F. D. (Strand) |
| Cox, Irwin Edward Bainbridge | Leveson-Gower, Frederick N.S. | Stanley, Hn. Arthur (Ormskirk |
| Crossley, Rt. Hon. Sir Savile | Lockwood, Lieut.-Colonel A.R. | Stanley, Edward Jas.(Somerset |
| Dalkeith, Earl of | Loder, Gerald Walter Erskine | Stanley, Rt. Hon. Lord (Lancs. |
| Dalrymple, Sir Charles | Long, Col. Chas. W. (Evesham) | Stewart, Sir Mark J. M'Taggart |
| Davenport, William Bromley | Long, Rt. Hon. W. (Bristol, S.) | Stock, James Henry |
| Digby, John K. D. Wingfield | Lowe, Francis William | Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester) |
| Dimsdale, Rt. Hon. SirJoseph C. | Lucas, Reginald J.(Portsmouth | Talbot, Rt. Hn. J.G.(Oxf'dUniv. |
| Disraeli, Coningsby Ralph | Maconochie, A. W. | Thorburn, Sir Walter |
| Dixon-Hartland, SirFred D'xon | Malcolm, Ian | Thornton, Percy M. |
| Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers | Martin, Richard Biddulph | Tollemache, Henry James |
| Duke, Henry Edward | Maxwell, Rt Hn Sir H. E.(Wigt'n | Tomlinson, Sir Wm. Edw. M. |
| Durning-Lawrence, Sir Edwin | Maxwell, W.J.H.(Dumfriessh.) | Valentia, Viscount |
| Dyke, Rt. Hon. Sir William Hart | Meysey-Thompson, Sir H. M. | Vincent, Col. Sir C.E.H(Sheffield |
| Egerton, Hon. A. de Tatton | Milner, Rt. Hon. SirFrederickG. | Walrond, Rt. Hn. Sir William H. |
| Fellowes, Hon. Ailwyn Edward | Molesworth, Sir Lewis | Warde, Colonel C. E. |
| Fielden, Edward Brocklehurst | Montagu, G. (Huntingdon) | Welby, Sir CharlesG. E. (Notts. |
| Finlay, Sir Robert Bannatyne | Moon, Edward Robert Pacy | Wharton Rt. Hon. John Lloyd |
| Fison, Frederick William | Mount, William Arthur | Whitmore, Charles Algernon |
| FitzGerald, Sir Robert Penrose | Murray, Rt. Hon. A. G. (Bute) | Williams, Colonel R, (Dorset) |
| Flower, Sir Ernest | Murray, Col. Wyndham (Bath) | Willox, Sir John Archibald |
| Forster, Henry William | Nicholson, William Graham | Wilson, A. Stanley (York, E. R |
| Fyler, John Arthur | O'Neill, Hon. Robert Torrens | Wolff, Gustav Wilhelm |
| Gardner, Ernest | Percy, Earl | Wyndham, Rt. Hon. George |
| Gore,Hn.G.R.C Ormsby-(Salop | Pierpoint, Robert | Wyndham-Quin, Major W. H. |
| Greene, Henry D. (Shrewsbury | Pilkington, Colonel Richard | |
| Grenfell, William Henry | Plummer, Walter R. | TELLERS FOR THE NOES—Mr. Remnant and Mr. Matthew Ridley. |
| Greville, Hon. Ronald | Powell, Sir Francis Sharp | |
| Hamilton, Marq. of (L'nd'nderry | Pretyman, Ernest George | |
| Helder, Augustus | Purvis, Robert | |
| Henderson, Sir A. (Stafford, W.) | Pym, C. Guy |
Bill read a second time.
§ Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be committed."
§ And, it being after half-past Five of the clock, and objection being taken to Further Proceeding, the debate stood adjourned.
§ Debate to be resumed upon Friday next.