§ Considered in Committee.
§ (In the Committee.)
§ Motion made, and Question proposed, "1. That it is expedient that the power to levy the duties on certain local taxation licences in England and Wales should be transferred to county councils, and that Section 17 of The Finance Act, 1907, should not apply to such duties, and that an annual sum be paid out of the Consolidated Fund to the local taxation account to be distributed amongst the county councils in England and Wales in connection with the transfer.—(Mr. Lloyd-George.)
§ SIR A. ACLAND - HOOD (Somersetshire, Wellington)thought they might ask some explanation in regard to this Resolution. It was a very important change in their financial arrangements. It carried out a pledge which he thought was made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer last year, and it was a matter in which county Members especially took a very great interest.
§ MR. LLOYD-GEORGEsaid it was explained fully by the Prime Minister in his Budget speech and was really part of the arrangements in regard to old-age pensions. In order to liberate the Excise officers for the purpose of administering the pension fund it was found desirable that the collection of the duties should be transferred to the county councils for a consideration. These were sums which belonged to them. Although collected by Imperial officers they were transferred afterwards to the county councils and for all practical purposes they were local money. The Prime Minister proposed that the collection of these local duties should be transferred to the county councils themselves, and an allowance was made to them for the collection. It would benefit them financially.
§ MR. HICKS BEACH (Gloucestershire, Tewkesbury)asked if this was not a return to the system which the present Prime Minister sought to abolish last year. He understood that he had in the Finance Act of last year enacted that the duties instead of being paid to the county council 1031 were to be paid in future direct to the Imperial Exchequer and then transferred by them to the county council. He understood that the right hon. Gentleman proposed to re-enact the system which existed before, and make the county council collect the taxes which were paid to them under the present system out of the Imperial Exchequer. He hoped the right hon Gentleman would give them a further explanation of this point, because it appeared to him to be a rather serious matter for the local authorities and the country. At the present time an Excise officer was collecting these taxes; next year this officer was to have some of his duties taken away and transferred to the county council, and as recompense the excise officer was to have the pleasure of carrying out the provisions of the Old-age Pensions Bill. Therefore, the county councils were going to have the duty forced upon them of providing somebody else to collect these taxes and they were to be paid a sum of £40,000 for the purpose of enabling them to collect duties formerly collected by Excise officers. That seemed to him a very unsatisfactory way of collecting the excise duties of the country, and he could not see what the object of making this change was or what would be gained by it.
§ LORD R. CECILasked why it was necessary to take the Resolution that evening, because it occurred to him that it did not refer to the Finance Bill but to the old-age pensions scheme. If it did affect the Finance Bill, evidently it should be put off until to-morrow. If it related to the Old-age Pensions Bill it was quite a different matter.
§ MR. LLOYD-GEORGEsaid that the Resolution affected the Finance Bill and not the old-age pension scheme. It was intended to liberate the excise officers for the purposes of the old-age pension fund, but it had nothing to do with the scheme. It was more convenient also that the local authorities should collect gun, carriage, dog, and armorial bearing licences. The officers of the local authorities could collect these taxes more easily than the Excise officers, because they were on the spot and it would pay them to do it; and the Exchequer consequently made an allowance to the local authorities 1032 for their collection. Thus the Resolution would be embodied in the Finance Bill.
§ MR. LAURENCE HARDY (Kent, Ashford)said the right hon. Gentleman had not answered the question put to him by the noble Lord the Member for East Marylebone. His question was what was the necessity for having this Resolution passed before they had got the Finance Bill? Until they had seen the Bill upon which this Resolution was founded they did not know exactly what was intended except through the explanation of the right hon. Gentleman. He thought the best course would be to put off the consideration of this Resolution until they had discussed the Finance Bill, and then they would be able to see clearly what they were being asked to do.
§ MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAINsaid there was a good deal in what his hon. friend had said. This Resolution dealt with a matter which the Prime Minister mentioned in his Budget speech, and there was a good deal of doubt as to what it actually was that the right hon. Gentleman proposed. The right hon. Gentleman said that the local authorities had better opportunities and more officials for the collection of these duties than the Imperial Government, but certainly the Prime Minister, in suggesting the change, did not base it upon that ground. He put it on the ground that he wished to set free the Excise officers so that they could become the administrators of the new scheme of old-age pensions. He did not think that this was a convenient opportunity to discuss the proposal, and they ought to know exactly what was intended. If the Government insisted upon taking this Resolution now they must ask for a little more information. He did not think the Excise officer was a good person to employ for administering the new pension scheme, because it was something entirely outside his present function, and he was the last man one would think of associating with old-age pensions and inquiring into the qualifications of the particular individuals who were to receive them. It was difficult to deal with this question before they were in receipt of the Report of the Poor Law Commissioners, because it was generally expected that they would recommend 1033 very considerable changes which if adopted might provide some other official far better qualified to administer the new pension scheme than the Excise officer. If that were so it was a reason for not hastily making this change.
§ MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAINsaid that the object of this Resolution as explained by the Prime Minister was to set free the Excise officer to administer the pension scheme.
§ MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAINsaid the ruling which had just been given showed that when a question was put from the Chair they might be at once confined by the rules to discussing, not the real issue, but a subsidiary and a side issue. He would like to know if the handing over to the local authorities of the collection of these duties in any way affected the change which the Prime Minister effected last year when he took these duties from the local authorities and paid them an equivalent sum in lieu of them.
§ MR. LLOYD-GEORGEsaid he quite agreed with what had fallen from the right hon. Gentleman as to the inconvenience of discussing formal Resolutions. They did not afford the best opportunities for discussion, and they were purely formal and very inconvenient. All this Resolution did practically was to enable him to bring in the Bill, and he could not proceed with the Finance Bill unless he had this formal Resolution. He suggested that the best time to discuss the merits of the proposal to liberate these officers from the duties imposed upon them and to consider whether they were the best agents for the purpose would be when the Old-Age Pension Bill was under consideration. The second point was whether it was desirable to transfer the collection of these duties to the local authorities at all. He agreed that that was a debateable point, but it struck him that that was not the best opportunity for discussing 1034 either that or the other question. He hoped, therefore, they might be allowed to get through this part of the business with a view to getting a discussion on the two questions he had referred to, and which he did not want to prejudge. The right hon. Gentleman opposite had had very considerable experience in these matters, and he must know how important it was to get formal Resolutions out of the way before they proceeded to deal with the substance of the proposals.
§ MR. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAINsaid he did not wish to do anything antagonistic after the appeal which the right hon. Gentleman had just made. He had expressed the opinion earlier, that this was a stage which might well be abolished in their Parliamentary procedure. At the same time as long as the Government of the day did not take steps to abolish it, the right hon. Gentleman must not complain if hon. Members took advantage of the opportunity to discuss the Resolution. He would like an answer to the question whether this Resolution made any alteration of the arrangement made by the Prime Minister in his Budget last year.
§ MR. LLOYD-GEORGENo, it makes no change.
§ MR. COURTHOPE (Sussex, Rye)said he did not understand why this money Resolution was essential to the introduction of the Finance Bill. He supposed that he must accept the right hon. Gentleman's statement that it was so. It was very unfortunate that the House should be asked to take the Committee stage of a Resolution dealing with proposals which they had never considered at all. He asked the House to consider what the position would be. The Prime Minister last year, in changing the system under which these local licences were paid—
§ THE FINANCIAL SECRETARY TO THE TREASURY (Mr. HOBHOUSE,) Bristol, E.There is no change.
§ MR. COURTHOPEsaid the Prime Minister stated last year that if he saw fit to raise the duties in respect of any of the licences the benefit of the increase would go to the Imperial Exchequer, and not to the local authority. Assuming 1035 that that suggestion would be carried out next year, or at some other time, and that the licence duties on motor cars would be raised, what would the position be? The officials who were paid by the local authority would be collecting the duties, not for the local authority but for the Imperial Exchequer. The local authority would not get any advantage from the increase in the duties. Surely that would be an even greater anomaly than the system which had prevailed up to last year when the duties were collected Imperially and handed over to the local authority. He did not think that the Financial Secretary to the Treasury was justified in saying that there was no change. While there had not been a change in the duties, the amount actually received by the local authority had changed. Now the Chancellor of the Exchequer had power to change the duties without allowing the increase to go to the local authority at all. He thought they might press the Chancellor of the Exchequer to explain what he would do when these duties were raised, if they were raised, and whether he imagined that such increased duties could fittingly be collected by the officials of the local authority for the advantage of the Imperial Exchequer.
§ LORD R. CECILasked why on earth the Government wanted this Resolution to-night. It would not be wanted until they got into Committee on the Finance Bill. At present they did not know what it meant. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had rightly said that it was impossible to have a relevant discussion on a Resolution of this kind until they knew what it meant. Surely that was a good reason for postponing it.
§ MR. LLOYD-GEORGEsaid he might reply by asking why on earth it should not be passed to-night. The transaction was a very simple one. They proposed, making an arrangement for the collection of certain duties by the local authorities for a consideration and for the liberation of certain officers for other purposes. All he wanted this formal stage for was to authorise him to put that in the Bill. The whole subject could be discussed on the several stages of the Bill. He thought it would be found that, when the arrange- 1036 ment was made, the local authorities on the whole would be satisfied with it. The whole trend of finance in the last ten or twenty years had been to encroach on the domain of Imperial finance in the interests of the local ratepayers. In this case the local rate payers had everything to gain by getting this into the hands of its own officers. The arrangement come to was in order to save the expense and trouble of remitting the money and getting it back in some other shape. When they came to discuss the matter in Committee then would be the time when it would be permissible to enter into details asking terms and conditions.
§ MR. CARLILE (Hertfordshire, St. Albans)said that this was a most extraordinary position. First of all the Chancellor of the Exchequer told them that they could not get on with the Finance Bill without this Resolution, and then afterwards that he would like to have the Resolution now. The right hon. Gentleman would not tell them whether the local authorities were to have the power to increase the cost of licences on dogs, game, and armorial bearings. He did not tell the Committee anything about motor-cars, and whether their licence was to be £4 under two tons, per ton, or £40. [Cries of "Order."] But these were the things they ought to know about.
THE DEPUTY-CHAIRMANsaid that the hon. Gentleman's remarks had no reference to the Resolution before the Committee.
§ MR. CARLILEsaid that what he wanted to know was whether the Government would still fix the amount of these licence duties, or would it be handed over to the local authorities to decide what they would get out of them? It was quite conceivable that some local authorities would wish to tar their roads. [Cries of "Order."] What he asked the right hon. Gentleman to do was to enumerate the licences.
§ MR. LLOYD-GEORGEI have done so twice already.
§ MR. CARLILEsaid that the right hon. Gentleman had only referred to 1037 three—dogs, game, and armorial bearings. Were there no others, or did these comprise them all? He hoped the House would not allow the right hon. Gentleman to get this Resolution until he gave some information.
§ 2. Resolved, That it is expedient that the surplus of income over expenditure for the year ended 31st March, 1908, to the extent of £600,000, instead of being applied as provided by The Sinking Fund Act, 1875, be applied to defray expenses incurred by the Commissioners of Works in connection with public offices.
§ 3. Resolved, That it is expedient to authorise the payment, out of moneys to be provided by Parliament, of increased allowances to assessors of taxes.—(Mr. Lloyd-George.)
§ Resolutions to be reported To-morrow.