LICENSING BILL.

HC Deb 17 November 1908 vol 196 cc1073-181

As amended, further considered.

* MR. CAVE (Surrey, Kingston)

said that in moving the omission of Clause 10 he wished to express his satisfaction that they had that day something more like sufficient time to discuss what he thought was the second great injustice of the Bill. Yesterday they had only three hours and a half to discuss the time-limit and local veto, but that day they had six hours and a half in which to deal with the very important question of compensation. He wanted to deal with Clause 10 quite generally and to suggest that the provisions for compensation contained in the clause were by no means just and adequate. The question was dealt with by giving for a house dispossessed so many years purchase of the annual value as ascertained under the Bill. The first question was as to how many years purchase of the annual value were they going to give? With regard to the number given under this clause he had always admitted that the number of years purchase must be determined to some extent by the principle of the time-limit, and when once they had admitted time-limit into the Bill it was not logically wrong to limit the number of years purchase by reference to the time-limit imposed, but, speaking for himself, he could not accept in any shape or form the principle of the time-limit. He did not look upon the position of a licensee as that of a man who had nothing but a mere hope or expectation of a renewal of his licence. He had always held that he had a legal and equitable right to renewal, subject, of course, to certain conditions which were now fully understood. It was the law of the land that the renewal of a licence could not be refused except after notice given to the licensee, except on evidence given against him on oath, and except by a decision which must be founded upon legal principles, for the licensee was allowed to appeal against an adverse decision. The moment they allowed an appeal against refusal, they admitted that there were some principles by which a refusal ought to be guided. He wished to enter his protest against the view that the actual, legal, and moral rights of a licensee could be taken away by any system of time-notice. He had said that so far as regarded the number of years purchase of the annuity the Bill was not it logical having regard to Clause 3, but he wanted on this point to raise the question of what was the meaning of the Amendment put down by the Government adding three years to the number of years purchase. Why three years? The Government had given in addition to the fourteen years reduction period a further period of seven years during which monopoly value did not take effect, and yet, in estimating compensation for the purpose of this clause, they only took a further period of three years. The effect of so doing was that instead of buying a man up on the basis of his being entitled to twenty-one years renewal, they bought him up on the basis of seventeen years, or rather sixteen years, viz., thirteen years balance of the reduction period, and three years additional allowed by the Government Amendment. He quite appreciated that in giving the extra seven years they were still allowing the licence to be taken away by the justices, or by a local veto resolution, but he would like to know on what basis the calculation of three years was arrived at. He thought it highly improbable that as regards certain districts a prohibitory resolution would be passed within the seven years, yet the Government's estimate was that in every district the chances of it were so great that they gave a man rather less than ore half of the actual value of the extended period. It must be nothing more than an arbitrary figure put down for the purposes of discussion. There was another point. Why was it that if a licence was refused in the fourteen years they gave the man compensation, but if it was refused during the following period of seven years they gave him nothing at all? This right to renewal was at all events a substantial one during the further seven years, and yet he was to have no compensation. They were not giving him a further seven years run at all, but simply the chance of the seven years run without compensation. In the next place the number of years purchase of the annual value had reference, not to the reel annual value, but to the annual value as estimated under this clause, which was by deducting from the Schedule A value of the house as licensed, the Schedule A value of the house as unlicensed. He pressed upon the Government that that was not a fair basis of assessment for the purposes of compensation. Schedule A value did not rest on valuation. It rested entirely upon the opinion of an official who had perhaps some thousands of houses to value, and whose method of valuation might be different in one place from what it was in another, and they could not fairly take that mail's rough estimate of value, for it was nothing else, as the basis on which compensation for refusal could be put. It had been said in that House before that the methods of assessment differed in different unions, and to say that throughout the country that varying basis of assessment should be taken as the foundation for ascertaining on what principle compensation for the actual deprivation of profits should be based was, he thought, to lay down a basis which was vague and uncertain and arbitrary. On the Government's own showing it was not a right basis. He was glad to see the Under-Secretary for the Home Department in his place, because he thought he had at different periods laid down different rules with regard to the effect of Schedule A value, as to whether it included goodwill, that was, local goodwill, or not. When he was dealing with the question of monopoly value, i.e., the amount to be paid by the licensee when he obtained a new licence, he said that Schedule A did not include goodwill. He said there had been much misunderstanding as to the monopoly value to be taken at the end of the time-limit, and that the monopoly value did not include goodwill. If that was right, then, as monopoly value was to be ascertained by reference to the assessment under Schedule A, it followed that the Schedule A assessment did not include goodwill. But when they came to compensation the Government took exactly the opposite view. It had been stated in the House by the Under-Secretary on behalf of the Government that— The goodwill attaching to the premises was unquestionably included in Schedule A. In each case they were dealing with the same goodwill, and he wished to know if the Government considered that that was included in the Schedule A valuation or not. One day the Government said it was, and the next day they declared that it was not. Which was right? This was a matter which affected the whole amount of compensation to be paid and they ought to have a clear understanding as to what the view of the Government was on this point. His own view was that local goodwill in the case of a public-house ought to be included in Schedule A valuation, but that in practice it was often omitted. Public-houses stood in quite a different position from any other trade premises, because they could not remove a public-house business. A licence was attached to the premises, and if the licence was refused they could not remove the business to other premises. The goodwill was therefore attached to the premises, and if so the Schedule A valuation ought to include goodwill. As a matter of fact in some cases it did, and in others it did not. Many valuers refused to put local goodwill into Schedule A, but others included the whole or some part of it, and certain rough and ready rules were adopted. If they took Schedule A as the basis of compensation the effect would be that in some cases the landlord would not, on the licence being refused, get the value of his local goodwill, but in others the State would take as the monopoly value the value of the goodwill, and in some cases the actual value of the buildings. He would put a case in point to the House. Supposing the owner of a public-house spent £1,000 upon improvements of his premises for the purposes of a public-house. They all knew that the following year the assessment of those premises would go up, and the Schedule A value would increase. That would not come into the account as unlicensed value, but it came into the licensed value. Therefore, in the monopoly value that owner would have to pay upon the improvements he had himself effected. Consequently, they would be taking from that man the actual value of the money he had spent upon improvements. Under this clause, by taking Schedule A as their basis they would be compensating the licensee upon terms which would often give him nothing for the local goodwill of his premises. His first point was that the number of years purchase was wrong, and secondly, the monopoly value was ascertained upon an illogical basis. The only remedy suggested for the grievance he had put was that the licensee could get his assessment raised; or, in other words, they were saying to the parsons engaged in this trade that they must get their own assessments raised in order to get fair compensation. A calculation had been made for the purpose of showing what increase of assessment would be required to give licensees something like the sum which they how got as compensation on the basis of market value. On the present assessment of public-houses in London the average was about £260 per annum. In order to give to the licensees such an assessed value as would produce for them on this basis the market value compensation they would have to raise the average assessment from £260 to £700 a house.

* THE UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL,) Yorkshire, Cleveland

Has the hon. and learned Member made allowance for the additional com- pensation to be paid in respect of the tenant's interest?

* MR. CAVE

Yes. Those assessments would be raised not because they were worth £700, but because without raising them in that outrageous way they would not get fair compensation. They had only to compare the official figures for London, which fortunately had been got out, to prove this assertion. The figures showed a variation in the number of years purchase given by way of compensation, the compensation amounting in some cases to not more than three years purchase of the assessment and in others to 100 years purchase. The figures were very striking and showed that there was no logical relation between the assessment and the market value. The reason was that those figures were ascertained for a totally different purpose, and they did not hang together. That was necessarily unfair to the people whose money interests would be affected by the Bill. He pressed upon the House if there was still time the advisability of rejecting this false proposal which was founded on an illogical basis, and he invited the Government to go back to the only businesslike basis, and that was the value in the market. Any valuer in ascertaining the market value of a licence, if this Bill became law, would take the provisions of the Bill into account, just as he would do in ascertaining the compensation. He pressed upon the House to do the only fair and logical thing, namely, to abandon this unsound principle of assessment and adopt the market value. Under the clause as it stood, compensation was to be ascertained not by any judicial tribunal but by the Inland Revenue Commission. The Government had been asked whether the Commissioners were bound to give a hearing to the persons affected. Would the Commissioners be obliged to give a hearing to the man whose pocket they were dealing with? If not, this was he thought the only instance that had come before the present Parliament in which they had refused to listen to a man whose living they were actually taking away from him. In the next place, he wished to know if there was going to be any appeal. Under the present law the question of compensation really went through three tribunals. In the first place, they had the justices on the county licensing committee, who listened to arguments and evidence as to the amount of compensation to be paid. If the parties were not satisfied with that they could go to the Commissioners; and if they were still unsatisfied, they could go to the High Court. Under this Bill they had only one tribunal sitting by itself, not bound to hear any evidence or to listen to any argument. He put it to any fair-minded man in the House whether it was right to entrust the fixing of compensation to a tribunal sitting under those conditions. They heard it said sometimes in the House, and very often in the country, that although the Bill might operate hardly upon the owners of licensed houses, at all events the actual licensee would be better off. Anything more untrue than that assertion it was impossible to conceive. There was one thing in favour of the licensee and that was that his compensation was separately assessed. Under the present law he did get compensation for the loss of profits, and must receive not less than one year's profits. It was true that that year's profits was taken from the total value of the premises, while under this Bill, it was to be separately assessed, but although that might be beneficial to the owner it was not necessarily beneficial to the actual tenant, who might not get a penny more. But even if that were to his benefit there was a set-off against it. First of all, the levy to be imposed was to be unlimited, although under the present Act it was limited in amount; secondly, the levy was to be spread over the whole country, so that licensees, when the claims in their own districts had been met, would have to go on contributing for the benefit of others in distant parts of the country; thirdly, there was increased risk of refusal owing to the statutory reduction under Schedule I.; fourthly, a man who had a leasehold interest in his public-house got a compensation which was merely a fraction of its value; fifthly, the amount of compensation was fixed by the Commissioners without hearing an appeal; sixthly, when a licence was refused the house was closed at once without waiting for the time when the compensation was to be paid; seventhly, the assessment of all public-houses would be immediately raised whether they were going to be suppressed or not; and eighthly, there was the time-limit and the monopoly value would be taken at the end of twenty-one years. If these eight points were set up against the very shadowy benefit which would come to the publican by reason of the separate assessment, he thought they would find that the balance weighed heavily indeed against any actual licensee who came within the scope of the clause. He had endeavoured to put his objections shortly and clearly. He hoped that, unless the objections were met, his friends would support him in the division lobby. He begged to move.

* MR. G. D. FABER (York)

in seconding the Amendment, said his hon. and learned friend the Member for Kingston had made a transparently clear statement of the objections to the clause. He himself laid no claim to legal learning. All he could lay claim to was general business knowledge, and it was from that point of view that he had the temerity to enter upon the intricacies of the present discussion. The position with which they were face to face under Clause 10 was that the compensation to be paid by the trade to the trade was such a sum as would purchase an immediate annuity at 4 per cent. for tae unexpired term of the reduction period, and that figure would have to be arrived at according to the Government method of calculating the value of the annuity. People were under an entire misapprenhension if they thought that this clause meant that a certain number of years purchase would be given. It was difficult for the lay mind to follow the annuity process adopted by the Government. People not versed in such matters thought that so many years purchase on the rental value were to be allowed. Nothing of the kind. It was a mere annuity. It was not to be so many years purchase in the ordinary acceptation of the term, but only such a sum as would produce this limited annuity. The second point he wished to make clear was that it was not even a fourteen years annuity, because the annuity was based on the reduction period, and under Clause 44 of the Bill the reduction period did not begin on 5th April next as had been imagined. It did not begin until 1st January, 1910, the whole of 1909 being allowed to the Commissioners to get ready. There would only be a thirteen years reduction period and thirteen years compensation, and, therefore, the utmost that could be obtained under the Bill as originally drawn was such a sum as would at 4 per cent. produce an immediate annuity for thirteen years. The value of the thirteen years immediate annuity was just under ten years purchase of the annuity according to the actuarial table. He was well aware that under the recent concession of the Government, after the fourteen years reduction period there would be a seven years additional run allowed to those who were fortunate enough to have got into that period, and to get through it. The Government themselves recognised the impediments put in the way of the further seven years run. At what did they estimate it for compensation purposes? They only valued it at three years. If the Government only valued it at three years, it should not be called a seven years run. He should prefer to call it a further three years reduction period. A three years annuity, if purchased at once on the 4 per cent. table, was only worth one and a half years. Adding the thirteen years to the three years reduction period made sixteen years in all, and he found that the present value of a sixteen years annuity at 4 per cent. was eleven and a half years purchase of the annuity. That was all that the Government themselves professed to give under the clause. Therefore, the first position they arrived at was that instead of the trade compensating the trade on the basis of the full market value of the licence, which was the course followed by the authors of the Act of 1904, the present Bill restricted the compensation to a sum which represented merely the purchase value of an eleven and a half years annuity. That was the best that could happen to a licensee beginning with the first year of the reduction period, but the further they marched along the road the less the annuity became, until they arrived at zero. The second position, which was quite as important as the first, was that even with this narrow term of years it was not proposed to compensate according to the market value, but according to the fallacious canon of compensation adopted by the Inland Revenue after the passing of the Act of 1904. Why were the Government driving the trade into this impossible financial position in regard to the compensation to be provided by the trade itself? It was because of the reduction period and the number of licences which they insisted upon the authorities taking away during the reduction period. Inasmuch as the proposal was to take away 30,000 licences—probably the number would be a great deal more—if they were going to cut their coat according to their cloth, they would be precluded from giving proper compensation because the compensation fund would not go round. There was not enough butter to butter the bread, and, therefore, they would provide bread and scrape instead. The Government now condemned the method of arriving at compensation through market value, laid down by the Act of 1904, because on many of the speakers on the new Government side, when the Act of 1904 was before the House, had the temerity to make estimates for themselves as to how compensation would probably work out. The compensation worked out at much higher figures than the figures in the speeches. But even if the estimates of compensation made by Conservative orators in 1904 were wrong the basis that underlay their whole argument was not wrong. That argument was that they must ascertain the value of the licence in the open market. They never went away from that. The whole underlying proposition of the Act of 1904 was that the estimate of the value was to be the value in the open market. And why not? The only way of ascertaining the true value of any article, whether it was a licence or any other object of property, was what would the public give for it in the open market. That was the only tangible and true test. That was the basis which the late Sir William Harcourt laid down in the Death Duties Act of 1894. The Commissioners of Inland Revenue when assessing any property for death duties took the market value. And it was here that, in his view, the Commissioners of Inland Revenue went hopelessly wrong when trying to assess the compensation due for the extinction of a licence because they went away altogether from the course which they were accustomed to pursue in estimating the death duties. They adopted the altogether fallacious method of proceeding under Schedule A of the Income-Tax, and taking the difference between the value of a house when licensed and when not licenced. That brought him to the Kennedy judgment given in the case of the Ashby Brewery Company. Mr. Justice Kennedy held, speaking broadly, that what had to be ascertained was the value in the open market of the licensed property in question. Mr. Justice Kennedy having laid that down as a basis, proceeded to pursue his own method of ascertaining the market value. There might be many different methods of arriving at the market value, and Mr. Justice Kennedy took his own. That judgment was pronounced after the present Government came into office and they took the opinion of their own Law Officers upon it. Their own Law Officers told them that the judgment was sound, and that if they appealed against it to the House of Lords they had no prospect of success. The only quotation with which he need trouble the House was one from what the Lord Chief Justice said in another case about the Kennedy judgment. It was an obiter dictum, he knew, but nevertheless it was extremely valuable. In the present year, on the 17th March last, the Lord Chief Justice said— You do not attack Mr. Justice Kennedy's judgment. I do not think anybody can, as a matter of fact.

The Lord Chief Justice said that, not in the course of giving his judgment, but in the course of the case under hearing. But when giving his judgment on the 18th March the Lord Chief Justice said— It is not part of my duty in this case, nor have I the right, to criticise or deal with the Kennedy judgment in the Ashby case. Both parties have followed it. But I do desire to say this: that, in so far as it is necessary to consider the Ashby judgment in order to consider its bearing on subsection (2) of the Act of 1904—if I may be allowed to say so with very great deference—I cannot see how it can possibly be attacked. It seems to me to have proceeded on a basis practically admitted by the Law Officers of the Crown, and it has not been appealed against. The Prime Minister when first introducing this measure, and at later stages, talked about the fundamental vice of the Kennedy judgment, and he inferred from these statements that what the Prime Minister objected to was not the Act of 1904 but the erroneous way in which he conceived Mr. Justice Kennedy interpreted that Act. Therefore, it was with considerable surprise that he found that on the 25th October, 1906, the hon. Member for the New Forest division asked the Prime Minister this question— Will His Majesty's Government direct an appeal to be made to a higher Court of justice to reverse the Kennedy judgment? And the Prime Minister, who now talked of the "fundamental vice" of the Kennedy judgment, said in reply to that question— His Majesty's Government do not propose to give directions for an appeal, as they are advised that as the law at present stands under the terms of the Licensing Act of 1904, an appeal cannot succeed. The Prime Minister surely spoke in two entirely different voices. On the first occasion, in 1906, in answer to one of his own supporters he said in effect, the Licensing Act of 1904 standing as it did, that Mr. Justice Kennedy's judgment was perfectly right and that it would be useless to appeal against it. But a year and a half after, when this Bill was initiated, the Prime Minister appeared to have forgotten that answer to the question of his own supporter and made a violent attack on the judgment. It appeared to him that the Act of 1904 was right, that the Kennedy judgment was right, and that the present Government in now turning that Act and that judgment topsy turvey and substituting for that method of arriving at compensation value the Schedule A method, were getting on to an extremely boggy, dangerous, and if he might say so, impossible ground. The hon. and learned Member for Kingston had pointed out that they were now going to base compensation upon what? Why, on a new assessment for income-tax under Schedule A. The old assessment was to be altered and a new one put in its place. What must necessarily follow from any new assessment for income-tax under Schedule A? At present in the London area the assessment for rating purposes was the same as the assessment for income-tax; therefore, if they were going to put the screw on the assessment for income-tax in the London area, the assessment for rating purposes would follow. They would run in harness. That was not the practice in the country, but he was told that the inevitable result in the country would be that the raising of the assessment for income-tax purposes would be sympathetically followed by the raising of the assessment for rating purposes as well. The Government, in their blind desire to disturb the existing sound basis of compensation, were going to upset the rating on licensed houses all over the country. The result would be that on licensed houses the assessment for income-tax purposes and rating purposes would be like hillocks standing up on a flat plain. It would only be the miserable licensed property that would have to be submitted to that exceptional treatment and that exceptional process. It was the first step that counted. The Government had not looked sufficiently far forward to see in what position, this new assessment was going to put them. If they tried to arrive at a proper compensation for the extinguished licensed property on the basis of the present Schedule A assessment for income-tax purposes then they would arrive at a ludicrous result. He had in a former debate instanced the "Coach and Horses." The reserve price of the "Coach and Horses" was £10,000. That house was put up to auction and sold at that reserve price. If they worked out the value according to the Schedule A assessment of the "Coach and Horses" for income-tax purposes they would not get within many thousands of the price obtained, viz., £10,000. Speaking from memory he thought it worked out at no more than £2,000 or £3,000. This proved that to make the present assessment for income-tax purposes the basis of compensation was impossible, and that to raise the whole assessment of licensed property was grossly unfair. The Government were not going to make a friend of the licence-holder. All through the Bill the Government had been playing for the support of the licence-holder He wondered if the licence-holders, realised what was going to be the effect of this re-assessment of licensed property which was not going to stop at re-assessment for income-tax purposes, but was going to extend all round the orbit of local taxation. The licence-holder was not going to be very grateful to the present Government when he realised that fact. The Government were on unsound ground, and they must and did know it. They must and they did know that the only true basis of value was that adopted by the Act of 1904, namely, the value which any man would give for the property in the open market. The Kennedy judgment, having followed that canon of construction, proceeded upon firm and true lines which could not be upset. He begged to second.

Amendment proposed— In page 7, line 11, to leave out Clause 10.'"—(Mr. Cave.)

Question proposed, "That the words proposed to be left out down to the word 'the' in page 7, line 13, stand part of the Bill."

THE SOLICITOR-GENERAL (Sir S. EVANS, Glamorganshire, Mid)

In his speech in moving this Amendment the hon. and learned Member for Kingston said that in his opinion there was a legal estate and a legal title in the licence at the present moment which could not properly be abrogated by time-limit at all. With respect to that matter, the hon. Member is, I think, at variance with a good many Members on his own side of the House. He certainly differs from the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition. But, as I understand the hon. and learned Gentleman, he only threw out his opinion on this matter by way of protesting against any suggestion that he acceded to the opposite view. I am not at all sure that he was raising a discussion upon it at the present moment, and therefore I will not discuss that point, which has been debated over and over again in this House, but I will address myself to the other portions of his speech. He referred to the period of three years, which by the Amendment of the Government will be added to the time in computing the annuity upon the basis of which the compensation is to be made to a person whose licence is taken away. He asked what is the logical basis for the term of three years, but the House will know that the reduction period has not been altered at all by the extension of the seven years after the fourteen years. The period of statutory reduction was and still remains a period of fourteen years. I will not discuss with the hon. Member for York whether it comes down to thirteen or lower or whether it is fifteen or higher, but whatever the reduction period was it still remains the reduction period, and it was only out of concession to the demands made on the other side in order to prevent further financial disturbance to the trade, that the Government made a further extension of seven years—not as a further extension of the reduction period, but as a rest period during which there should be no compensation levy at all, during which no such compensation should be paid, if a licence was taken away, and during which—and this is the main purpose of the concession—no monopoly value should be exacted from the licensee in possession at the end of the fourteen years reduction period. It is very difficult to estimate exactly what the value of that extension is, and I do not propose at the present moment to discuss it in detail. It does not arise on the Motion to leave out the clause, and we shall reach it very soon and discuss it upon my Amendment, or at least I hope so. But lest it should be said that nothing was stated about it from these benches in the event of its not being reached I will make one or two observations upon it. It is almost impossible to calculate the value to those who possess licences which may be taken away during the reduction period, of the possibility of being able to continue beyond the reduction period and going on for a period of rest for seven years. Various views may be taken of this. One view is this, and I think it is sound. If fourteen years is the right period for the reduction of the licences, and if a licence is taken away in that period, whether it is in the first, second, or fourteenth year ex hypothesi it is properly taken away, and therefore it may very well be sound argument that that person who loses his licence at that time or during any portion of the reduction period is not entitled to anything further by way of compensation because those licences which survive the reduction period have a period of rest for seven years. I think that is sound legal argument, but the Government notwithstanding have made the concession. They would have been entitled to say: "Your licence has been properly taken away, and you have no right to take into account the fact that other licences will be allowed to continue for another seven years." But perhaps as a sort of compromise it was said: "Well, at any rate, at the beginning of the reduction period, or during the reduction period there may be the expectation on the part of the holder of a licence that his licence will not be taken away, and if it is not, he will have a further seven years rest." In respect of that, the Government have proposed to move an Amendment later on, giving an addition of three years to the period which is to be calculated for the purpose of arriving at the annuity which is to fix the compensation of the licence-holder. That is more by way of bonus than by way of right, and I do not think it lies in the mouth of anybody who gets that bonus from the Government, to complain that it is not the exact actuarial value of the chance of his licence remaining during the period of seven years. Of course, the licence may be extinguished during the seven years by local veto. That is quite true, but in any event that possibility does not prevent the person whose licence has been previously extinguished getting three years. There are other conditions which are applicable besides the local veto, because during the period of seven years the licence can be taken away by the magistrates just as it could be taken away by them before the Act of 1904, not merely because of misconduct. The hon. Gentleman asked also this question: "Why do you not pay compensation during the further period of seven years?" The answer to that is perfectly simple. We do not exact the compensation levy during the seven years, and, therefore, it would not be right to pay compensation during that period. I am not quite sure, if it be the view of the trade that they ought to receive compensation during the seven years, and if they are willing to pay a compensation levy, that there would be any great objections to that, but the fact is that no compensation levy would be made, and, therefore, no compensation is possible during the seven years. The state of things as regards the seven years would be exactly the state of things which existed before 1904. At that time the licences might be taken away under the judicial discretion of the justices, without any compensation being paid at all.

MR. YOUNGER (Ayr Burghs)

said there was then no local veto at all.

SIR S. EVANS

I am not discussing the matter in regard to local veto. I am now answering a question of the hon. and learned Gentleman as to why we do not provide for the compensation for licences taken away during the seven years period. The House will remember that many of these licences were taken away before 1904, and that the right hon. Gentleman was moved to bring in the Act of 1904 because of those cases. Some other questions were put by the hon. and learned Gentleman with regard to Schedule A value. I am not going again, at this time of day, into the question of the Kennedy judgment; it has been argued over and over, with more or less knowledge, by those who have argued for or against it. But whether the Kennedy judgment is right or not, I do not think it can be contended that it was the intention of the proposers of the Act of 1904 that their Act should be as declared by the Kennedy judgment. The Kennedy judgment stands as a matter of law, but that is no reason why the House should not change it. In hundreds of cases compensation was probably awarded both by the justices and by the Inland Revenue authorities before the Kennedy judgment upon a totally different basis. The Kennedy judgment was pronounced in 1906 and during the year 1905 all the licences which were reduced in that year were valued by the Inland Revenue upon a totally different basis.

MR. CAVE

A great many were valued on the same footing.

SIR S. EVANS

I said that they were probably valued by the justices on a different tooting. Whatever the state of affairs was as decided by the Kennedy judgment, this House, by the Second Reading of this Bill, has decided that it ought not to continue to be the basis on which compensation is to be paid, and the question which arises is not whether our proposals are within the Kennedy judgment, but whether they are right. We have put down definitely the basis upon which compensation is to be given, and we have also put down the basis of the monopoly value which is to be exacted both for new licences before the reduction period of fourteen years has expired and for all licences to which monopoly value attaches afterwards. You must take, as intended by the Act of 1904, the difference in value of the premises as licensed premises, and of the premises without a licence. That excludes altogether the brewer's profits. Let me give an illustration of how the Kennedy judgment would work out. A brewer might own one "tied" house, from which he derived considerable profit, but it was so situated as to be worth a considerable amount for other purposes; and he might have, another house from which he obtained a small profit, but so situated that it would be of little use for other purposes, and yet in the latter case, he would obtain under the Kennedy judgment, more compensation than he would on the former.

MR. CAVE

So he would under this Hill.

SIR S. EVANS

No, I think not. Let me take a case from Chester, that of the "Freemason's Arms," which was argued before Air. Justice Bray. It was an ante-1869 beer-house, and the brewer supplied 100 barrels of beer a year. During three years the number of barrels of beer supplied was sixty, but nevertheless upon that a considerable profit was made by the brewer qua brewer. The profit was said to be about 14s. 6d. or 15s. a barrel, and Mr. Justice Bray said 14s. 6d. was nearer the mark but he would take 15s. to make it less complicated, and in that case it was held that the brewer was entitled to £1,250, The Schedule A valuation is intended to mark the difference between the value of the premises with and without the licence, and that is not the case in any valuation that now exists. That ought to be found before you can comply with the law, and, therefore, I submit to the House that the proposals of the Government are perfectly right and equitable. First of all you take the value of the premises with the licence and without the licence, and the difference between the two represents the monopoly value of the licence. The proceedings before the Inland Revenue Commissioners, as to which the hon. and learned Member asked me, are precisely the same under this Bill as under the Act of 1904, save that under the Act of 1904 there is an appeal. The proceedings would also be exactly the same for estate duty purposes. There is no difference in the proceedings which lead up to the valuation under this Bill and those under the Act of 1904. Under the Act of 1904 there is an appeal, but that, so far as mere ascertainment of value is concerned, has been very rarely, if at all, made. Where there have been appeals they have been made, not on a question of fact, but on a question of principle. Is it necessary or advisable that there should be an appeal on the mere question of valuation? The proceedings before the Inland Revenue Commissioners are very like those in regard to arbitration, where when the two parties concerned fix on an arbitrator there is no appeal on a question of fact.

MR. CAVE

The arbitrator is bound to hear evidence.

SIR S. EVANS

I have dealt with that point and I have said that in that matter it is exactly the same as under the Act of 1904. What is the position? The Inland Revenue Commissioners have no duty to perform except to do what they think is right as between the parties. They have the evidence and material before them, and when they have found the difference between the value of the house with the licence and without the licence that is the value of the monopoly.

MR. YOUNGER

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that in Scotland there is an appeal to the Court of Session from the assessment imposed by the Inland Revenue authorities, and it is thought desirable that there should be?

SIR S. EVANS

There is an appeal under Schedule A here, but I am not addressing my argument to that subject. I am addressing it to the figures to be ascertained. The hon. and learned Member said that the actual licence-holder will be better off under the Bill than under the Act of 1904. So he will be and so he ought to be. His exact position under the Act of 1904 depends entirely on the agreement he has with the brewer as to what compensation he receives, but we propose to give him not merely what is due to him as a tenant from year to year, but compensation for loss of profit, and we also provide compensation to the manager, who got nothing under the Act of 1904, if he is not the tenant.

* MR. BERTRAM (Hertfordshire, Hitchin)

desired to say a few words as to the question of assessment which had been imported into the discussion, and with regard to the question of what amount of goodwill should be considered for compensation. The hon. Member for Appleby had spoken with some disgust of the amount of compensation which had under the Act of 1904 and the Kennedy judgment, been awarded to licensed houses whose licences had been extinguished. He spoke of the compensation as being equivalent to forty-one times the value of the annual assessment of those establishments. That might be so, but it was also the amount upon which estate duty had been paid to the Commissioners of Inland Revenue. Compensation had hitherto been given not only for local goodwill, but also for personal goodwill. Compensation was given for both because both were taken away. Under this Bill it was not only that the local goodwill was taken away by the closing of the house, but also the personal goodwill, because it was not intended that the tenant of that house should pursue his calling anywhere else. It was, therefore, only right that the man should be paid compensation for both local and personal goodwill. On the question of assessment, the Prime Minister had spoken, he thought, exceedingly unfairly, for he had imported a certain amount of animus into the discussion by speaking as if the under-assessment of brewery property for income-tax under Schedule A was an evasion not only of local but of national obligations; but the right hon. Gentleman knew perfectly well that so far as they diminished the amount paid under Schedule A, they increased the contribution under Schedule D. When they came to the question of assessment to local rates it had been suggested over and over again on those benches that inasmuch as the annual value of premises was augmented by reason of the fact that the business of a publican was carried on there, therefore the assessment should be raised above the value of similar premises not so profitably used for the purposes of local taxation. He dissented from that view. The obligation of a certain quantity of bricks and mortar to contribute to local taxes was measured by the demands which those bricks and mortar made upon the public services paid for out of the local rates. The amount of money made in business by the man who lived inside the walls formed by the bricks and mortar had nothing whatever to do with the rates. They would find, if they took other businesses, that if it was a question of compensation both of local and personal goodwill, forty-one times the assessment was by no means an extravagant amount to award. He took the figures of the hon. Member for Appleby, who said that forty-one times the assessment was wholly in excess of what ought to be awarded. He would apply this measure to his own case. He was not a brewer; he was a solicitor. He occupied premises which were assessed at something like £230 a year. He lived inside those premises in the exercise of his profession. He was not now giving accurate figures, but suppose that he made £1,000 a year, and that the authorities not only closed his premises, but said that he would not be allowed to carry on business anywhere else—which was what the publican would be told according to the Bill—if they give him forty-one times the assessment of the premises, the award would be rather above eight years purchase. That was not an excessive amount to give to anyone deprived of a business on which he relied for the livelihood of himself and dependents. He should certainly support the Amendment of the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Kingston.

MR. HARMOOD-BANNER (Liverpool, Everton)

said he was rather gratified to hear the speech of the hon. and learned Gentleman opposite in regard to assessment as the basis of compensation. They had heard a great deal about under-assessment of public-houses being one of the reasons for treating them differently from the way in which they would treat any ordinary property. In reference to assessments, at any rate in the north, it was generally known that the basis of assessment was 10 per cent. of the takings of the public-house; that was to say, the takings of the public-house were carefully examined, and the assessment for local taxation was based on 10 per cent. of those takings. The five years takings included beer, spirits, soda water cigars, and all the other various articles sold in the house. Therefore, when they heard statements as to the underassessment of public-houses, he thought there should be some recognition of the fact that the assessments, at all events in the north, were taken on that basis. He founded his statement on a decision of the Lancashire Quarter Sessions. It so happened that he had not the case with him, but it was reported in the Manchester Guardian. In that case Quarter Sessions decided that the basis of assessment of public-houses was five years takings. As to the clause they were now discussing, he regarded it as the most serious one in the Bill for the brewer. He could not understand how the Government could uphold it as a just principle upon which to base compensation in respect of those houses which lost their licences during the fourteen years. How did the Solicitor-General differentiate between the houses which lasted out the fourteen years and those whose licences were extinguished? On the Second Reading and early in these discussions the statement—prompted he thought by the dictator of the Government, the right hon. Member for Spen Valley—was repeated over and over again, that it was a most generous proposal to give the tenants fourteen years profits, which were equal to ten years purchase of the goodwill. That had reference to houses which remained during the whole fourteen years, and in respect of these the Bill gave full profits not only according to the Kennedy judgment, but over and above the Kennedy judgment. It gave them full profits, not only on the sale of beer and spirits, but on the sale of soda water, tobacco and other articles. It also gave to the manager, the servants, the carpenters, the cleaners, the plumbers and everybody connected with the house full employment during those fourteen years, which, as had been stated, was equivalent to ten years purchase of the profits during that period. If that was right, and it was stated to be correct in regard to the period of fourteen years, then how were they to look at the position of those houses the licences of which were extinguished in the course of the fourteen years? Were they to receive the same terms as those which lasted the fourteen years? The answer was: "Decidedly not." Those which lasted the fourteen years were to have the full profits of every sort and kind, but to those whose licences were extinguished within that period nothing whatever was to be given except the wretched difference under Schedule A, which, as had been amply proved by figures given to the House, was a very small sum indeed, and nothing in comparison with the ten years purchase of goodwill. They had, the other day, in answer to a Question, some figures given as regarded the compensation paid since 1st August, 1906. It was stated that in the case of 742 houses the compensation paid amounted to £671,795. In a further Answer given to the Question, it was added that under Schedule A the difference between the value of the houses with the licence and the value without the licence was £14,561, which was the basis on which compensation was now to be calculated. Hon. Gentlemen opposite had admitted that ten years purchase was a fair price to pay. But next year, if this Bill became law, all these houses would be taken as if compensation was to be paid on the basis under this Bill; that was to say, instead of receiving, as they had received since August, 1906, the sum of £671,000, the holders of those houses would only receive £145,000. The right hon. Gentleman the Under-Secretary shook his head. But it was quite clear that under Schedule A, according to the Answer given by the Secretary to the Treasury, they would only receive £145,000, or about one-fifth of the £671,000 which they had actually received since August, 1906. In addition to that enormous loss which those houses would have sustained had the provisions of this Bill been applied to them, there was the fact that the houses which remained during the whole of the fourteen years would receive full profits, including the whole of the brewer's profits, based upon Schedule A, but those houses which lost their licence in the fourteen years would receive compensation based on the difference between Schedule A when the house was occupied with a licence and Schedule A when it was occupied without a licence. Of course, there was this addition, that the licence-holder was to receive a certain amount for loss of business, but it was a very small addition. That compensation was qualified by one very curious provision in subsection (a) of Clause 11, which stated that the amount awarded as compensation, notwithstanding any agreement to the contrary, might be retained by the licence-holder. That appeared to be a very illegal clause, because the licence-holder as a rule was a debtor to the brewer, who he supposed could not enforce his debt. It was a new principle. It was certainly in accordance with the principle of this Bill. It was a curious thing that the brewer was the only person who was said to be doing an improper thing when he had a tied house, and in consequence of his having tied houses he was treated as a pariah and outside the pale of ordinary regulations. The tied house was one of the incidents of the trade of to-day. The Home and Colonial Stores, dairy companies, and millers, all had their tied houses, and were all paid in exactly the same way as the brewer, and there was no bigger instance of a tied house than the banker. But if a banker had his tied house and had his business interfered with for any purpose of legislation, on what basis was the compensation paid? The brewer, the publican, the miller, the grocer, and the co-operative stores were not content, when compensation had to be paid them for removal or disturbance of their premises, to be paid on the basis of what the books showed as the profits of the respective houses which were tied to them. They had to be paid on the profits which they could show not only on the house that was tied, but on the basis of the amount at which the goods were charged, because in all these cases, so far as his experience went, the goods were always charged at a pretty full rate to tied houses, and compensation was charged on the profits made by the wholesale house in reference to its sales to the tied house. But here they were putting the brewer in a different category from other tied houses. The man, under Clause 10, who lost his licence during the fourteen years received nothing in comparison with the others with whom the Bill dealt. If they were going to deal with the two classes let them deal with them on the same basis. The difference between the value of the premises licensed and unlicensed was very frequently little or nothing—£5 or £10—and on that basis they were going to buy the man out and cancel the enormous obligations which he had incurred. One reason given for taking this basis of compensation was that the money would not go round if they had it on any proper legal principle, and therefore the Under-Secretary had to tell them that he had to damage the property. He was like the boy who had a penny and wanted to buy a two penny tart. He stuck his finger through it and asked: "How much for your damaged tart?" That was the principle on which the Bill proceeded. They had not the money to go round and pay the proper compensation due to those who were to be extinguished under Clause 10, and so they paid on a basis which was absolutely illegal in principle and had no honesty about it. They considered that by this means they could reduce licences in consonance with the wishes of their supporters. When they came further to this three years term they found it was entirely rule of thumb. The right hon. Gentleman gave seven years, but he would not admit that he had given it rightly. It seemed to be a sort of gift that he was taking back into his pocket. He had no basis on which he fixed these three years, but he split the difference. Three years was very nearly a half of seven years, so they fixed three years. In no particular was the clause founded on principles of justice and he hoped it would be thrown out.

* MR. LUPTON (Lincolnshire, Sleaford)

was sorry he could not agree with the hon. Member, though by an entirely different mode of reasoning he had arrived at somewhat similar practical results. Hon. Gentlemen opposite regarded compensation as a matter of right. He had always looked at it from the point of view of the outsider who had not a licence but wished he had, who had no position of advantage and no monopoly. Why should these people who had had a monopoly for so long grumble when at last it was taken from them, and they were reduced to the same level as the outsiders who never had a monopoly? If it were a question of paying compensation to the owners of suppressed licences out of taxation, he should furiously oppose, but under the 1904 Act they were compensated by themselves, and not by the public. When it was a question of compensation out of the trade why on earth should not they have as much compensation as ever they liked to pay for? If there was not enough to go round let them raise the levy. They took the point of view of their legal right. Of course, the legal right was qualified. He had always taken, the view that de facto they had no right. Why were they bringing in this Bill? It was because the licence-holders had conducted war against society, and society therefore had a right to war against the trade. They might have had a right if they had conducted their business as if they held a solemn trust to be used in a way that would benefit the community. But they had held it in a way which benefited them solves and not the community. They had broken their trust and must not plead that they were entitled to this compensation as an inalienable right. If they came into Court they must come with clean hands. The question amounted to this. The whole business of the world was conducted by practical business men in a spirit of compromise. In every question of a bargain one man held one view and the other man another. It was no good one man trying to enforce his view. He must come to an agreement with the other man. It seemed to him that the people with licences had it strongly in their minds that this clause would do them a good deal of harm, and would take away their trade without compensation. Supposing a man had invested £1,000 in a licensed house and that licence was taken away from him under this Bill and he suffered a loss of £300. Nothing would make that man satisfied, and both he and his friends would go away saying that he had been robbed. Of course he would not have been robbed, but he would say that he had been robbed, and he hoped the Government would, in order to avoid such injustice, decide to give the market value. He did not care what market value was, but they ought to have it in the Bill, and then that would be a complete answer to anybody who said they were going to be robbed by this measure. The compensation was going to come out of the trade, and why should they quarrel about it? He had listened to the Solicitor-General with an intense desire to follow his arguments, and he had tried to understand why the seven years was not to be added when it was a question of calculating the compensation due under Schedule A. He was not satisfied that the difference in the Schedule A valuation was the correct measure of compensation due. When a man had taken a house with a licence and arranged to pay the rent, then he was in a position to start business, and he would probably go on, and in the course of time make a profit. Under this clause if they took away that man's licence they would not only take away the difference between the two valuations under Schedule A, but they would also take away that man's living.

* MR. HERBERT SAMUEL

And he would receive special compensation for that.

* MR. LUPTON

said he would be only too delighted to listen to any explanation which the right hon. Gentleman could give to the House in order to show where such provision was made. The man who had bought the house was going to lose something and it might be a case where he did not manage the licensed premises himself. He did not think the difference between the two Schedule A valuations represented the legitimate loss. He failed to see that the compensation proposed was sufficient, because they ought to take into consideration the business which a man brought to the premises which he had rented. He hoped the Government would see their way to substitute seven years for three years, and he thought in listening to the Solicitor-General that he was preparing the way forth at alteration, because he said they were giving this bonus of three years although he had no principle to give it upon. If they would only give seven years they would have a clear principle to work upon. This was a very trifling matter as regarded the cost and it would not cost the Government anything. It would be an immense advantage to hon. Members to be able to prove to the country that this was not a confiscatory Bill. He was certain that it was not himself, but the difficulty was to persuade the country.

* MR. BARNARD (Kidderminster)

said this clause appeared to him to be quite the most serious in the whole Bill, and the illustration which the hon. Member had just given happily described the situation in which a great many people would be placed. The hon. Member had mentioned the case in which a man would lose £300, and would then declare that he had been robbed. There would be no doubt that that man had that money a little time ago, but he would not have it when this clause was put into operation. The hon. Member for York, in a closely reasoned speech, had dealt with the reduction period and he thought that that speech was entitled to a more detailed reply than it had received from the representatives of the Government. The hon. Member for York had pointed out that the thirteen years had now been whittled down, and the seven years promised had been put into the form of three years, for no particular reason. The Solicitor-General called it a bonus, but that was the first time he had heard that word applied to this measure. The hon. Member for Lincoln last night said that there would be local option, as well as the justices' discretion over the last seven years during which the compensation levy would not be charged, and the money which they thought was a bonus would really have to go in paying the insurance to meet those two risks. The Solicitor-General whittled down his seven years to three years, and then the hon. Member for Lincoln said that that money would be needed to ensure them against the possibility of local option and magisterial discretion. The real point was that people were in possession of something which was going to be taken away from them, and they had to consider what they were going to receive in lieu thereof. He would like the Government to tell the House deliberately whether they intended to give the market value or not? He would like to know whether the Solicitor-General contended that Schedule A valuation represented market value. It would be illuminating to the House if the Government would state and argue that proposition. This particular scheme would hit the licensed trade in other directions beyond the mere question of compensation. He did not want to state the case too high, but they all knew very well that if suppressed licences were to be bought out on this basis, obviously it would be in the owners' interest, if in no one else's interest, to have placed upon the Schedule A assessment as high a valuation as possible. Of course, owners of the houses that did not expect to be suppressed and did not desire to speculate upon that probability would not place themselves upon such a high assessment under Schedule A. They had not been told whether in the scheme of reduction which the justices had to prepare the magistrates would have access to the valuation books. Would the justices have to contemplate the scheme of reduction simply judicially, or would they have regard to the valuation placed upon the premises, whether high or low, by other people? Whichever way they acted complications and inconvenience would naturally arise unless a public department stepped in to hold a fair balance as to the basis of valuation amongst the parties concerned. The scheme would hit the licensed trade very hardly in another way. It was obvious that the local rates ought to be carefully considered. He ventured the other night across the floor of the House to ask the Prime Minister whether this matter of the valuation would not affect the local rates, and he replied that in his opinion it would not. Since then he had taken an opportunity of looking into the matter, and he found that Assessment Committees had the power of access to the Schedule A valuation, and it was obvious enough when they found themselves assessed on that valuation upon the higher basis they would naturally take advantage of that intelligence and raise the local assessment. But that was not all. They were going a step further. The licence duty had to be paid, and that would be calculated upon the stardard of value. Therefore the licence duty would also rise. Then there was the compensation levy which was collected and assessed in the same way. The result would be that a higher local assessment—he was not saying that it ought not to be higher—a higher assessment of the licence duty, and a higher compensation levy during the fourteen years would all fall upon the publican. He had found it very difficult to get the information which was necessary to discuss this question of Schedule A valuation. It had been stated that the time-limit was taken in a haphazard fashion and that there was no statistical data upon which it was based. He had the answer to the question on this point which he put to the Prime Minister. He had tried to find out himself what would be the effect of this Schedule A valuation, and in answer to repeated questions the Department had stated that they had not got the necessary information which would enable them to answer his question. He admitted that he did get one set of answers in the case of two public houses which were suppressed in the county in which he lived, and where he was himself a member of the compensation authority. The houses were in Hertfordshire and were suppressed under the 1904 Act. He would quote the figures showing the decision of the Inland Revenue Commissioners in regard to these houses, the figures under the Kennedy judgment, and the figures under Schedule A. He asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer in March last— If he will state the compensation which the 'Sawyer's Arms' at Hertford and the 'Queen' at Codicote would receive, respectively, under the 1904 Act if fixed by the Commissioners of Inland Revenue, if fixed on the basis of Lord Justice Kennedy's judgment, and what they would receive, respectively, in each of the fourteen years under the proposal of the present Licensing Bill. And the reply he received was as follows— Although the trade done did not amount to a barrel of beer a week in either case, the compensation actually rewarded on the basis of Lord Justice Kennedy's judgment was £451 for the 'Sawyer's Arms,' and £362 for the 'Queen.' The first awards by the Inland Revenue Department on the basis adopted before the Kennedy judgment were £105 and £175, respectively. If these beer-houses were closed under the Licensing Bill provisions, compensation would be based on new valuations of the premises, licensed and unlicensed, and these valuations I am unable to give. He thought he had better go to another Government Department and at a subsequent date he got this information— Prior to the abolition of the licence, the Schedule A assessment was £18 in the case of the 'Sawyer's Arms,' and £12 in the case of the 'Queen.' The effect of abolishing the licence was to leave the assessment unaffected in the case of the 'Sawyer's Arms,' and to increase it from £12 to £19 in the case of the 'Queen.' It was obvious that under Schedule A these houses would have received nothing at all, except, on the off-chance, a few pounds for the fixtures, whereas under the Kennedy judgment they received the amounts stated. The Solicitor-General had argued about some houses in the north of England; he said that if a brewer happened to own two houses near one another, it would be altogether monstrous, if one house was closed, that he should receive compensation for the loss which apparently on paper he had sustained, because the probability was that the trade would have filtered to the brewer's other house. That might be a perfectly good argument under the Act of 1904, but it could not be used under the present Bill. Under the 1904 Act, he admitted, the brewer would get the trade, but nothing of the sort could occur under the circumstances which would be created by this Bill. They were told the other evening by the right hon. Gentleman representing the Home Office that about 1600 licensed houses had been suppressed in recent years. That number included those extinguished under the Act of 1904, plus those which from other causes had been got rid of. He understood that under the present Bill it was intended to get rid of 2,500 per year. If the Government kept to the principle of getting rid of 2,500 houses, and also of levying, not according to the schedule, but in an unlimited way, why should it matter to them in any shape or form if the parties themselves preferred to pay on a principle which they understood and desired? He could not see why the Government should be contentious in regard to that. This was in no sense whatever an attack on the principle of the Bill. The Government said that they did not know exactly what the levy would be, but that did not matter. If the levy was unlimited and if they knew that they were required to get rid of a certain number of houses, why did they not show that they absolutely believed in this method of making the levy by leaving the parties themselves to compensate themselves? He put that point seriously to the Government. If they accepted the suggestion, he believed it would go a long way towards assisting many people who were very much inconvenienced as the present moment. He did not agree with the hon. and learned Member for Kingston that concessions had not been given to the tenants. On the contrary, he considered that great concessions had been given to the tenants since the Bill was brought in, but he did not think that the concessions had gone quite far enough. The Government and their supporters said that they disliked the tied house system, and anything which was likely to lead to a system of tied clubs. He had given notice of an Amendment dealing with a class of people who were not in tied houses, namely, those who brewed their own beer. He did not believe that 1 per cent. of licence holders brewed their own beer, and sold it in premises adjacent to the place where it was brewed, but they were a class whose interests ought to be protected. He asked the Government whether they intended to do anything in respect of that little class. Their position was unique. If their houses were shut up under the scheme of the Bill, they would not be able so carry on business in any form. They were not like the big brewers, inasmuch as they could not turn to somewhere else to sell their beer. If the Government did not believe in the system of tied houses, here was a good opportunity of encouraging free tenants who existed at the present time. He did not know that any lawyer or statesman would be able to devise a measure which would effectively do away with the tied house system. In the present form he opposed the clause, and he would be extremely grateful to the Government if they could see their way to alter the basis of compensation so that the people who paid would be left to decide how they were to collect and distribute the compensation fund.

* MR. J. M. HENDERSON (Aberdeenshire, W.)

said he wished to revert to the question of what was meant by the phrase "market value." He had no objection whatever to the market value being paid for licences, but the difficulty arose when they proceeded to find out what the market value was. He had no objection to the Kennedy judgment in so far as the learned Judge decided that the market value was to be paid. He joined issue with the learned Judge in the method he adopted of finding the market value. The learned Judge said that the probable purchaser would be a brewer. That might be so, but a brewer would not buy if the public-house was not making money qua public-house. If they imagined that a brewer would give ten years purchase of the profits he might make by supplying a public-house, that seemed to him, as a business man, a great absurdity. Take the profits at £100 a year, was there any business man in the City of London who would give £1,000 for the purpose of earning £100 a year? He had never heard of such a man. A man no doubt would invest £1,000 at 5 per cent., but then he would not have to make the £50 interest himself. The Kennedy judgment in this respect failed to find the market value. In a previous debate he mentioned a case which came under his notice where £1,000 was paid for a business which was losing money every day. In another case a firm of brewers leased a public-house in Poplar. They offered to pay the landlord £200 to cancel the lease. The landlord declined. The house was put up for sale, and not a single bid was obtained. Last year under the Kennedy judgment the compensation paid for that house was £1,700. He was not a teetotaller, but he professed to be a business man. Hon. Gentlemen opposite were alarming themselves a very great deal about this matter, but he firmly believed, from the inquiries he had made and from figures he had seen, that ninety out of every 100 of the suppressed houses during the last two years had been failures, and as public-houses insolvent. He believed that the great bulk of the Kennedy judgment money paid by the brewers themselves to the trade had been paid for practically nothing. He had seen and communicated with clerks to licensing justices and asked why this and that house had been suppressed, and the reply was that it had been done because they were redundant. If they were redundant, they were not paying. [An HON MEMBER: No.] He quite agreed with the hon. Member that that did not necessarily follow. But if they asked any licensing justice why he had selected this or that house to be suppressed the answer in 99 cases out of 100 would be that he had not selected it; that there had been ever so many volunteers asking to be suppressed—not ostensibly asking, but practically offering. The valuers of public-houses and the brewers were laughing at the whole thing, because they knew that they could not sell the houses. To return to the Kennedy judgment, they were supposed to find out the market value of the house to be suppressed. He had given two cases, each of which was offered for sale in the open market. The owner went to brewer after brewer and offered the house for sale. Not only that, publicans came and inspected the figures and in both cases they would not touch either. Then both were put up for auction—and was there any known way of more effectively testing the market value—and there was no bid.

MR. YOUNGER

In what year was that?

* MR. J. M. HENDERSON

In the year 1906, before this Bill was ever mentioned or thought of. The Kennedy judgment was given in 1906, and then these compensations were given. But why did he believe that the bulk of the houses to be suppressed would not be able to show under Schedule D a sensible profit? It was because the brewers had helped to kill the public-houses. What did the brewers do twelve years ago? Some of them got tied houses, but some not. Those who did not get tied houses, and some of those who did, were not content with doing a wholesale trade, but entered into the retail trade. He could remember the time when the lowest quantity of beer that a man could get from a good brewery was a nine gallon cask. Then it dropped to a 4½ gallon cask; but now it was a gallon jar. He knew of a firm of potters in the neighbourhood of London who sold 500,000 of these gallon jars to brewery firms. One bought 40,000, another 40,000, another 30,000, another 20,000, and so on. These gallon jars, which were equal to six bottles, were sent out by the brewers all over the place, and delivered at houses of customers of their own tied houses. How could the poor publicans live against that competition? Not only that; three years ago the six bottles dropped down to four bottles, and any hon. Member could now write to a first class brewer and get a case of four bottles of beer delivered at his house for 1s. 6d. The Leader of the Opposition asked why they were attacking all on-licences and not off-licences. But if they attacked off-licences the greatest sufferers would be those brewers who did large retail businesses. It had been said that the best way to ascertain the market value was by arbitration. Well, he protested against the idea of arbitration ever being treated as arriving at true market value. They all knew what happened at arbitrations; they had all been there. How was the market value ascertained by an arbitrator? They had first counsel on the one side and counsel on the other. The counsel for the claimant brought forward a valuer of the highest eminence in his profession who said that the subject of arbitration was worth £1,000; and then the counsel on the other side brought forward an equally eminent valuer who said it was not worth £100, and after the counsel and the solicitors had had their fees—they had always to be satisfied first—in a couple of days they met together and found that £500 was the market value. Now, who would say that such an amount so found was the market value? How were they going to ascertain what was the market value of a house that was about to be suppressed? They could not put the house up to auction because they could not offer it by the necessities of the case, in the open market, just because it was to be suppressed. Some simple form of reaching the value of the house had to be found, and that was by means of the Schedule A for income-tax. Why was Schedule A objected to in dealing with public houses? It was because all sorts of different methods had been adopted by the brewers in dealing with public-houses. A brewer who acquired a public-house might deal with it in four different ways. He might put a manager in, and then he got both the wholesale and the retail profit. But that was a system not very much used in the south, because it was found that the manager did himself too well and ate and drank up the larger part of the retail profits. Another way was to put a tenant into the business with a mortgage and the tenant paid interest on the mortgage. Still another way was to charge the tenant a premium, and lend him the money which he paid off by instalments. In all these three methods the rent was fixed as low as they possibly could. Why? Simply because Schedule A did fix the compensation fund contribution and did fix the rates, and, therefore, the rent was kept as low as possible; and the difference was made up by not allowing the full discount on the beer which was supplied to the tied tenant.

MR. BARNARD

Who controls Schedule A?

* MR. J. M. HENDERSON

said that Schedule A was controlled by the local assessors in conjunction with the owners of the public-houses. [OPPOSITION cries of "No."] Well, he had asked Inland Revenue Surveyors who told him that it was done through the local assessor and the brewer's accountant—and what a brewer's accountant did not know of Schedule A was not worth knowing—and they worked up Schedule A. But there was a fourth way—a straightforward way. The brewer charged to the publican a rent which included everything, and there was no difficulty then about Schedule A, and the publican would be compensated on a true basis. He had never listened to anything more absurd than the talk about the "Coach and Horses." He would take that as an instance of what would happen under Schedule A. Here was a business for which a man gave £10,000—[An HON. MEMBER: "And worth how much"?]—The purchasers would have no difficulty in getting £11,000 for it—and he paid a rent of £120. But nobody knew what was the retail profit on the business of the "Coach and Horses," or what was the wholesale profit.

MR. YOUNGER

That was under Schedule D; you ought to know that.

* MR. J. M. HENDERSON

said that what he wanted to get at was what did the purchaser give the £10,000 for? When he was told that, then he would say whether he had been fairly treated or not. They knew that the business was manifestly making a large profit and the rent of £120 for the "Coach and Horses" was ridiculous. That was a manifest injustice. The Government had been consistent. They gave the compensation on Schedule A and they gave the monopoly value on Schedule A. The basis of payment was the same in both cases. The houses which were to be struck out during the fourteen years reduction period would be the smaller houses, and the remainder would do a better trade, and no harm would be done. Did anybody imagine that the justices would pick out the big, prosperous houses to be suppressed? Not at all; they would select the rotten houses. He was not a teetotaler or a prohibitionist—he only wanted to see done what was fair and just. What he maintained was that at the end of fourteen years they would get rid of any number of houses which were not paying, and were only preventing the others from paying. If compensation could be paid on a fair and just basis—not an extravagant basis—at the end of the fourteen years period the trade would be in a very much sounder position than it was to-day.

* MR. GRETTON (Rutland)

said he had listened to the experiences of the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire with some surprise, but it seemed to him that the whole question before the House was as to the efficacy of the Schedule A as a means of arriving at the real value of a licence which had been taken away. He was not going now to argue about the Kennedy judgment, although he might have a few words to say about it later on. But he had in his hands a schedule of the licences which had been taxed for probate duty between the years 1901 and 1908. These licences were all in the London district, where Schedule A was practically the same for income-tax and rating purposes. He had there the value of certain freehold premises unlicensed, and the value of them licensed. There were twelve of them taxed for probate on a valuation of £255,000.

MR. HERBERT SAMUEL

What is the date?

* MR. GRETTON

said that all the twelve licences dated from 1901 to 1908. These figures had been verified. The estimated assessment under Schedule A of these licences had also been given to him. They were all in the London district. The difference in the value worked out in the period of the time-limit which was given in the Bill, to the amount of only £51,400, or with the full three years added £66,800, or on the annuity basis of the Bill, £59,700— in round figures, a difference of nearly £200,000. He gave that as an illustration of the revolutionary changes which were proposed by the method of valuation under Schedule A for the purposes of compensation.

* MR. HERBERT SAMUEL

The figures of the hon. Gentleman, like the other figures in many cases quoted on that side of the House, make no allowance whatever for the additional sum given to the tenant for his compensation, which would be in the total a very large sum.

* MR. GRETTON

asked if the right hon. Gentleman maintained that the tenant's compensation would amount to between three and four times the amount paid under Schedule A, because he must base his contention on some such line as that or he would not upset the figures which had been given. The State had actually taxed these twelve licences on that amount and now the Government came down to the House of Commons and desired the State to stultify itself and offer as compensation for the value of these licences a sum of less than one-third—little more than one-quarter—of the value which the State had already taken to be the value of the licences. It would be found that the valuation under Schedule A was really of no account—or practically of no account—as regarded the taxation which the State derived out of the licensed premises. Brewery companies and others had been accused of robbing the State because Schedule A was too low. Take the case of premises with a fair rental of £40, and earning a profit of £120. In one case those premises were only assessed at £20, and it would be found that the amount which they paid under Schedule A was £1, and under Schedule D £7—a total of £8. If the same premises were assessed at £60, and also earned £120, they would pay under Schedule A £3, and under Schedule D £5. There would be a total of £8 in each case, and it did not matter whether the licensed premises were over-assessed or under-assessed in Schedule A because their assessment for taxation was completed and adjusted under Schedule D. Therefore, the whole of that argument, which had been introduced for the purpose of creating prejudice, could be dismissed. As he understood the Kennedy judgment the profits were taken per barrel. These were the retail profits although it might happen, and did often happen, that a portion of those profits by the discounts, mortgages, or other arrangements, might go into the coffers of the wholesale house. That was so, but the basis of valuation was retail profits, and he thought he could show that the basis was very low. The cheapest kind of ale sold in London was 33s. per thirty-six gallons, with a 5 per cent. discount. Two gallons were wasted, for which the retailer got an allowance, but he sold thirty-four gallons at 1s. 4d., which brought him in £2 5s. 4d,. leaving him a profit of 14s. 1d. Of course as the value of ale increased the profit increased. Take the 60s. ale at 20 per cent. discount which cost the retailer 48s. for thirty-four gallons. For those thirty-four gallons he obtained £4 8s. Therefore, the gross profit to the retailer on that transaction was £2. Of course the proportion of cheap ale and dear ale varied at different houses, but there were many houses in the London district which sold a large proportion of the 60s. ale. He, therefore thought he had shown very clearly that the 13s. or 14s. profit given in the Kennedy judgment was a very low average to be taken as the basis of gross profit per barrel when the cheapest ale made a profit of 14s. 1d. This basis of Schedule A had a very remarkable history. It had been publicly considered on many occasions, and upon every occasion every competent authority actually and practically condemned it as a method of ascertaining the value of the licences. This question was discussed before the Licensing Commission, and the Majority Report was to the effect that a little consideration of the way in which licensed premises were assessed would show that it was wholly inadmissible. This part of the Report was signed by seventeen Members of the twenty-four who sat on the Commission, including the independent panel consisting of those gentlemen who did not go on the Commission with any declared opinions before they heard any arguments. All the independent party signed that portion of the Report with the exception of Lord Peel. It was signed by Sir Algernon West, who was one of the independent members, and a past member of the Board of Inland Revenue, and by two gentlemen of pronounce I temperance views, the late Dean Dickinson, and the late Mr. Allan, who was Member for Newcastle-on-Tyne. The only gentlemen who would not sign this part of the Report were Lord Peel, Archbishop Temple, and Sir William Houldsworth, who were members of the Church of England Temperance Society, and Sir Charles Cameron, well known for his strenuous support of extreme temperance views in Scotland. It was also signed by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Spen Valley, and the late Mr. Caine. Seventeen out of twenty-four members of that Commission, after full consideration, condemned the financial proposals which were now embodied in the Government Bill. The Inland Revenue endeavoured to establish the Schedule A as the basis of compensation under the Act of 1904. They issued a Memorandum that was the subject of appeal to the Law Courts, and was the cause of the Kennedy judgment. In the course of that hearing he believed the counsel who argued the case on behalf of the Treasury practically admitted that their case could not be carried any further, and the Solicitor to the Treasury in a very remarkable interruption said that he repudiated all responsibility for that Memorandum, as he had never been consulted. The learned Judge pronounced against the Memorandum and the Court of Appeal approved of the judgment. Every competent and independent authority which had considered this scheme of basing monopoly value and compensation upon Schedule A had practically condemned the proposal which the Government had put in their Bill. The hon. Member for Kidderminster had impressed upon the Government that the amount of the levy should be increased in order that the compensation given under this clause should also be increased. He wondered why the Government would not increase the amount of levy and so satisfy those who were to be compensated during the reduction period. The reason was extremely obvious. The Government were obliged to write down, at the lowest possible figure, the licence value for which they were going to pay compensation during the reduction period, because if they were to accede to the principle which the hon. Member for Kidderminster had urged upon them they would immediately acknowledge and embody in their own Bill a high value of licences and would stand convicted of a scheme of confiscation and spoliation when they assumed public control at the end of the reduction period. That was the reason the Government could not take the market value. Directly they took market value and put it into this clause they would at once stand convicted before the country of having proposed a scheme of spoliation and robbery.

* MR. LEIF JONES (Westmoreland, Appleby)

said that nobody hereafter would be able to say that this question had not been fully discussed. It was a main topic of the debate on the Second Reading, two days had been given to it in the Committee stage, and there had been some hours discussion that day upon Report. Anybody who had listened to the debate would admit that very little new argument had been brought forward, and he could not flatter himself that he had anything very novel to say to the House. But the hon. Member for one of the divisions of Hertfordshire had referred to some statements he (Mr. Leif Jones) had made in Committee, and he had risen to say a few words in reply. His hon. friend had laid down a new theory of rating, if he had understood him aright. It was that the assessment for local rates should be in proportion to the demand made upon the rates by the bricks and mortar—

* MR. BERTRAM

I said that in my judgment, so far as I could ascertain, the basis of assessment for rating purposes should be founded on the demand which the particular block of bricks and mortar made on local services and improvements for which the rate was required.

* MR. LEIF JONES

That was to say that the assessment should be in proportion to the demand made by the particular block of buildings on the local resources, police and so forth. He did not quarrel with that, because his argument had always been that licensed premises did make a demand on the local resources, police and so on, out of all proportion to the rates they paid, as owing to the wrong method of assessment they paid a very small contribution to the expenditure they caused. His desire was that the licensed premises in this country should be taxed in proportion to the burden they laid on the local rates. Another reason why the temperance reformers welcomed this provision in the Bill was that the present system was very unequal throughout the country. In London the basis of assessment was very much that of Schedule A, but that was not so throughout the country. One great advantage of this Bill would be that as the result of Schedule A becoming the basis of assessment for compensation that assessment would be resorted to for all purposes, compensation, taxation, and rating. The hon. and learned Member for Kingston had said that to raise the assessment in regard to the liquor trade alone was unfair. Why, asked the hon. Gentleman, was this particular trade picked out? They were not responsible for their assessment. Why was this trade alone picked out for having its assessment raised? He should have thought the answer was plain. What other trades made such demands as were made by the licensed trade on the country? What other trade was so dangerous as to necessitate the Government in self-defence granting a monopoly to it? In the public interest there could not be free trade in licences. The danger of the trade had prevented their having free trade in licences in order to destroy the monopoly, and the result was that the nation were now called upon to give an extravagant value in order to get rid of that monopoly which never ought to have been allowed to pass into private hands. The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition himself had said that if they were starting de novo the monopoly created by public action in that trade would never be allowed to grow up. It had been asked, why should there be no compensation at the end of the reduction period. But why should there be? The compensation was not payment for a public improvement, and it was not so regarded by the authors of the Act of 1904. Their whole argument was that it was a State insurance scheme; and the premiums were paid by the trade. It was, he believed, an insurance scheme which the trade could have carried out for themselves if the Government had not instituted it. The right hon. Gentleman opposite thought it necessary to yield to the brewers and licensees who came to him.

MR. YOUNGER

And the magistrates.

* MR. LEIF JONES

And perhaps some magistrates, although it was on record that the right hon. Gentleman refused to receive the magistrates of Manchester, who were a reforming bench, when they asked for an interview with him. It was a mutual insurance scheme. The trade paid the insurance premiums, and now they would by this Bill receive notice that compensation would come to an end in fourteen years. When it came to an end they could institute another insurance scheme. The hon. Member for Kidderminster had asked why the Government objected to paying a little more compensation seeing that the trade themselves paid it. If it was really the case that the compensation proposed by the Government was insufficient and that the premiums of this compensation were paid by the trade, what was there to prevent the trade from carrying on alongside the scheme of the Act of 1904 a voluntary scheme of their own? He thought fourteen years was a reasonable notice to give to the trade, and at the end of the reduction period there was nothing against which they could not easily insure. His own belief was that the trade would be able to insure against the risks of the action of the magistrates in shutting up houses and imposing conditions and the action of local option for a great deal less than the compensation levy, and that the trade would be in the extra years left in a very favoured position, because then they would have only to insure against these risks and there would be no compensation levy to pay. Some complaint had been made that the seven years that would remain at the end of the reduction period could be commuted for a payment of three years monopoly value He thought that was a misunderstanding. He did not think that the three years had anything to do with the seven years at the end of the reduction period. The three years, as he understood it, represented a sort of admission on the part of the Government that possibly fourteen years annuity was insufficient, and therefore they proposed to add three years in every case. He did not altogether agree with them in that. In fact he had voted against the seven years, and he was equally against this increased compensation. The optional reduction by the justices, the further reduction by local option, depended on there being money in the compensation fund. The Government had given an effective undertaking, in fact it was in the Bill, that except for compulsory reduction there was to be no increase of the present levy. That being so the more they increased the sum for the reduction of houses during the fourteen years, and the more they paid out for compensation, the less they would have for optional reduction and for further reduction in Wales; and for that reason he personally felt that in giving anything beyond the fourteen years—a limit which he regarded as ample, and which the Government themselves had stated to be sufficient—they were making a concession at the expense of temperance reform which they must watch with the greatest possible care. With regard to Schedule A the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Kingston, who made searching criticisms and analyses of the clauses, and who, as they all knew, in his searching questions said about the worst that could be said against the Bill, agreed with them in saying that local goodwill should be included in the Schedule A assessment, and admitted that personal goodwill was excluded from that assessment. The hon. and learned Gentleman had also referred to the possible improvements which might be carried out if the house was used as licensed premises, but which improvements, if the house was closed, would be useless for any other purpose. The hon. and learned Member suggested that these improvements might be included in the Schedule A assessment. He was bound to say that he thought there was certain force in that argument. It seemed to him that occasionally such improvements might find their way into the Schedule A assessment, and he did not really see any answer to that. It did not seem to him that it would be a frequent case or that it would be a very large element in it. In such a case there was in the Bill full compensation for the loss of fixtures which were useless for any other purposes than those of a licensed house.

MR. CAVE

said he had referred to the buildings, and his point was that the occupier would not only have to pay for his improvements of the buildings under the assessment, but he would have to pay for them again under the monopoly value.

* MR. LEIF JONES

said it seemed to him that the assessment might be made applicable to fixtures—[An HON. MEMBER: Buildings.]—well, fixtures might be part of the building, But after all, that was a risk which practically every tenant of a house ran if he made alterations of which the landlord might afterwards deprive him. The hon. and learned Gentleman, he thought, had put his finger upon a difficulty, though he did not think that any method would be absolutely perfect. The method chosen by the Government had fewer difficulties about it than any other method which had been proposed, and certainly far less than the Kennedy judgment, which had been canvassed so much during these debates. He did not think it was in dispute any longer that the Kennedy judgment gave far more compensation than was intended by the authors of the Act of 1904. They might dispute it if they chose, but hon. Members had only to look at the speeches which were made to see that he was correct in what he said. The Home Secretary of the late Government said that compensation was given for an on-licence not on loss of business profits, but on the fact that the extinction of the licence prevented the house from being used for the purposes to which it was adapted.

SIR E. CARSON (Dublin University)

said that if the hon. Member read the succeeding passages he would find that the right hon. Gentleman also said that the market value would have to be an element.

* MR. LEIF JONES

said he would come to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Dublin University, because he was perhaps more precise and clear in his language. The late Solicitor-General said— What was estimated was the depreciation of property, and that was the whole basis and foundation of the Bill. It was said that the bulk of the compensation would go to the owners, who in many cases were brewers. He totally and absolutely denied it. The right hon. Gentleman was capable and learned, but he doubted whether he could explain away those words. He had never done so yet, and they stood as a perfectly clear exposition of the intentions of the Government of that day in regard to the Act of 1904. It had been proved in the course of the debates that more than was just had been paid in compensation under the Kennedy judgment. His hon. friend beside him had given a great number of cases of compensation in respect of houses which were not paying the brewer-owners. The hon. Member for Ayr Burghs winced.

MR. YOUNGER

I never wince.

* MR. LEIF JONES

said the hon. Member was exhibiting appearances which other Members showed when they winced. He had asked the date of those cases.

MR. YOUNGER

And then the hon. Member winced on the other side.

* MR. LEIF JONES

said that in 1906 the Government came into power and this Bill was looming in the distance; and then what became of "The Coach and Horses." which was the mainstay of hon. Members opposite? If the fact of the election of a new Government was to make these houses unsaleable, what became of their argument? Under the Kennedy judgment the brewer-owner received more than the owner who was not a brewer. He contended that this had never been intended. Mr. Justice Kennedy himself, in dealing with the case of a house which was owned by a brewer, said that the rack rent was a fair basis of compensation value. In the case of a free house he took the difference between the value of the house licensed and the house un- licensed, and said that that was the right way to arrive at a valuation. Their contention was that when they turned to the case of a tied house, the wholesale profits of the brewers were included, and that they could not be included if the owner of the house were not a brewer. He had listened with great interest to the statement made by the hon. Member for Rutland as to brewers' profits. He hoped that they might see the speech in print so that they might be able to follow the extraordinary figures which the hon. Member gave as to the immense profits, retail and wholesale, made by the liquor trade on a barrel of beer. They were most useful figures. It was those wholesale profits to which they referred under the Kennedy judgment, profits which could not enter into a case where the owner was not a brewer. The Government in the basis they had taken had placed all owners of licences on the same footing. He believed their proposal with regard to the new assessment did justice all round, and he congratulated the Government on having chosen a definite and equitable standard of monopoly value.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR (City of London)

The hon. Gentleman who has just sat down has been in the painful position of voting against the Government, although it was only by way of protest; but I have always admired the enthusiasm with which the hon. Gentleman supports the predatory portions of this measure. Unless I am greatly deceived, right hon. and hon. and learned friends below him winced considerably when the hon. Member gave his own version, absolutely inconsistent with the version given two hours ago by the learned Solicitor-General, of the transmutation of what the hon. and learned Gentleman humorously called the period of seven years rest into a period of three years compensation. The Solicitor-General gave an argued defence of that, period of rest, but it was wholly contradictory of the defence given almost formally on its behalf by the hon. Gentleman who now enthusiastically supports the clause. The hon. Gentleman, I need hardly say, could not get away from the Act of 1904. He was perpetually referring to it and perpetually dealing with what he conceived to be the principles of its authors. I have heard him do this before, and I confess it is with a certain feeling of jealousy I notice that every one of his colleagues who took part in the defence of the Bill of 1904 is quoted and I am never quoted. I was, as it happens, Prime Minister at the time, and the author of the Bill and the Minister principally concerned in the Bill, and I think it very hard that when the hon. Gentleman wants to explain what really were the principles that animated the Government, he thinks me beneath his notice, and never condescends to quote from any of the innumerable speeches which I made in explanation and in defence of that measure. Evidently the hon. Member's researches have been carried very far into those long debates, though I do not know whether his patience equalled that of the hon. Member for Lincoln, who told an astonished House at an earlier stage of our proceedings that he had actually sat through all the debates upon that Bill. I never admired the hon. Gentleman's enthusiasm in the cause of temperance more strongly, and I feel that if he asks sacrifices of others he is prepared to make sacrifices himself. But however that may be, anybody who reads the debates on the Licensing Bill of 1904 will admit that, whether you can or cannot pick out a phrase from its context in the speeches of any Gentleman on this bench, there can be no doubt in the minds of any impartial student of the question that the. Government of the day based their whole contention upon this particular proposition, that when you take away a man's property you should pay him the market value. There is really no use in quoting from this or that speech. I did not gather that the quotation even apparently carried out the views of the hon. Gentleman, but it is a small matter. That is the broad contention on which we went.

SIR S. EVANS

I do not think the right hon. Gentleman ever used that phrase.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

The hon. and learned Gentleman probably knows far better than I do what phraseology I used. I do not in the least pretend to remember the speeches I made, though I remember the general principles on which the Government of the day acted in carrying them through. But I have not attempted to maintain a verbal consistency between my speeches then and now, and I am sure any gentleman who thinks it worth while wading through all I said then will have an advantage over myself, of which I make him a full present, and I have no doubt his ingenious researches will find out that there are verbal inconsistencies, though what they are no one has yet discovered, since, for reasons I have not been able to discover, the students have rather devoted themselves to the speeches of my hon. friends than to my own. But after all we are not dealing with the Act of 1904 now, although nobody who listened to the speech of the hon. Gentleman who has just sat down would have supposed that was the case. We are dealing with the Bill of 1908, and I think everybody who has listened to the laboured defences which have been given from the other side of the propriety of dealing on the basis of Schedule A alone, apart from the question of market value—indeed substituting Schedule A for market value—will have come to the conclusion that the Government themselves do not believe in their defences. A far better defence was put forward on their behalf by the hon. Member for Westmorland than they put forward themselves—a more candid, open defence, one which really touched the facts. He said, "Well, after all, if you attempt to base your compensation either on the Kennedy judgment, or on market value, or anything like the Kennedy judgment or market value, you will not have enough money to carry out temperance reform in Wales." Temperance reform in Wales may be a very excellent thing, but if that be the reason why you are going to take Schedule A as the basis of your compensation, let the Government frankly admit that they cannot take enough money out of the pockets of the trade to carry out all the schemes they have in view on the basis of a fair and logical method of compensation, and they have therefore adopted an illogical method. They have cut their coat according to their cloth, not because they did not think the coat would be becoming, but because they could not get the necessary cloth to make it. That would be, I do not say a statesmanlike, but a quite simple and intelligent argument. Is it not a fact that, as everybody knows, the assessment under Schedule A does not represent in any sense the market value of the property, that the rating may be high in one district and not so high in another? What is the reply to that argument which nobody can deny? It is, Make it equally high in all districts. You do not do that in this Bill. This is not a general rating Bill. It is not even a Bill by which you can raise the rating of the licensed houses under Schedule A. Let us suppose that it is a Bill under which you can raise the rating on licensed houses, or that the Government think they have power through the income-tax collectors or otherwise to raise these ratings to the level which they think appropriate to the case. What a gross and indefensible injustice would thus be committed. Everybody knows that if you are going to use the rating in your Schedule A merely for the purposes of compensation it might be a possible way of doing it. You have only to raise the rating until the compensation based upon it approaches or equals the market value, and you have an equitable system. But does not everybody see that if you are going to try to get equitable compensation in that way you incidentally produce the grossest injustice in other ways? And for this plain and simple reason—that the rating for local purposes is sometimes absolutely dependent upon Schedule A, and is always practically dependent upon it. Therefore, if the Government are going to raise the rating to such a point as would make the system uniform throughout the country and approaching anything that could be described as equitable, they are actually going to require of owners of licensed premises that they should pay more than the share their neighbours pay to all local purposes. I hope the right hon. Gentleman who proposes to reply to my remarks will say whether he thinks that a just arrangement, that the valuation of licensed premises and licensed premises alone, for income-tax purposes under Schedule A. should be raised in every district above the surrounding level of Schedule A rating. If the right hon. Gentleman does not think so, how could the rating be raised, unless we had a general valuation Bill? I do not suppose the right hon. Gentleman would suggest that this Bill is not to come into operation until the Government has first devised and then passed that reform of valuation so long promised, so earnestly desired, and which still delays its coming. Supposing Schedule A is really no indication of the true market value of the premises and the Government are going to base their monopoly value upon it, it seems to me that at the end of their period they may be in danger of finding that in many cases you do not get the full monopoly value. After all, our definition of monopoly value was perfectly plain and simple. It was the difference between the value of the premises licensed and unlicensed. But that is not the definition of the Government. They have so altered it that it is impossible to see whether they are not grossly overcharging, or whether, in the long run, they may not find that a new monopoly value may grow up, because Schedule A is improperly adapted to meet the requirements of the case. The truth is that if you on once take a standard which is intrinsically unfit to carry out the conditions that you intend to put upon it—which is unfit to measure that which you desire to measure, and does not supply a real ground for estimating the value—you are liable to the double danger of doing a gross injustice by charging too much or finding at the period when the monopoly value is to be absorbed by the State that you do not get the whole monopoly value after all. There is no security so long as you do not have a rational system of measuring the worth of the property you are taking away. When the learned Gentleman opposite described the period of rest, did he have in his mind the position of the unfortunate licence-holder during that period of rest? The licence-holder after the fourteen years has elapsed will have, or be liable to have, new conditions put upon him by the magistrates. He will be in a position from which the Act of 1904 relieved him, or intended to relieve him, namely, the arbitrary action of particular teetotal benches of magistrates, and in addition be will be exposed to the action of the parochial authorities, who may at any moment take away the whole of his property. That is the period of rest promised to the licence-holder by the Government after the fourteen years. I am not surprised to find that the seven years period of rest is valued at three years purchase. I will not say that they have shown a fair estimate of the boon they are giving to the licence-holder. But, at all events, do not let them go about the country and say that they have modified in a generous spirit their original proposal of fourteen years by adding another seven years without payment to the compensation fund. Their own estimate of their own performance will be sufficient answer to their profession. There is one more question upon which I should like some information from the Government. They propose to deal by way of compensation not merely with the holders of licences, but with the managers of licensed houses. I am entirely in favour of the managers being generously dealt with. I should like to know on what principle the Government are acting in this matter. Do they propose to give the market value of any possession which the managers have, or is it something outside the market value of anything the managers may have lost? I understand that the licence-holder is to get less than the market value. Is the manager to be treated in the same way or in a different way? If in a different way, on what principle? We have never been told about that. We have been told indeed that the Government, with a speculative eye directed not so much to the fundamental principles underlying their Bill as to the electoral consequences which they anticipate, are dealing with great generosity towards the managers. That is all excellent. But let us know what the underlying principles are. Observe that when you know what the principles are when the Government are dealing with the managers we shall be able to see whether they are consistent in the manner in which they are dealing with other persons interested. We have always contended that you ought to give a man market value for what you take from him. Is that the principle? I want to know whether they are dealing with managers on the market value, or on something else with no relation to market value at all. That is not the only question I wish to ask about the managers. The view of the Government is that any manager dispossessed within fourteen years should have a solatium. With that we all sympathise, but I do not quite understand, and perhaps I never shall understand, why a manager should have compensation before fourteen years and not after fourteen years. Why not after fourteen years? Is it temperance in Wales again that stands in the way? I really am very much puzzled by this. There is clearly danger to the managers under local option, which comes in at the end of fourteen years. If the managers have—and I am sure the Government have concluded they have—some equitable right to compensation, why doss that cease after the fourteen years? We are not talking of accumulating assurance and reserve by the trade against possible loss; these managers are not capitalists in any sense of the word, and therefore you cannot ask them to accumulate capital to the end of fourteen years. If that is so, on what grounds of justice should people whom you think ought to have compensation up to fourteen years, be handed over after fourteen years to the arbitrary action of these licensing benches and local authorities? Necessarily I speak in ignorance, because so far the Government have not told us what principle they are acting upon in regard to that. I am quite sure the First Lord of the Admiralty will tell us in a perfectly clear manner exactly the case, and the whole equities upon which the Government are proceeding, and we shall be able to judge whether these equities suddenly cease at the end of fourteen years, or if they do not. One other subject I want to ask about is this. The Tight hon. Gentleman is connected with the greatest spending department of the Government, the production of ships and warlike stores. There must be a large number of estimable public servants in the position of managers in the Government employment, and I should be glad to know whether the principle exists of giving compensation when work is stopped, at Woolwich, for instance, and, if not, whether it would be a good thing to extend to a class of workmen not less deserving than the managers of licensed premises, the principles which the Government embody in this Bill. I am sure the Government will recognise that I put these questions not with a view of raising meticulous objections. I really want to know what we have not been told exactly—the ethical basis of this compensation. This is the only speech I shall trouble the House with upon Clause 10 of the Bill. The truth is, I do not attach myself anything like the same importance to this clause as I did, for instance, to the clause we discussed yesterday, because, as the money is raised in the way we know from the people you are plundering, it really is not a question more or less of injustice to the class as a whole, but as to the distribution of the injustice among the different members of that class. The Government in the earlier clause on the Bill have chosen to act like sixteenth century buccaneers levying forced contribution on some city in the West Indies. The House is now discussing not the amount of the contribution or the honesty of those who levied it, but the method of apportionment among the unhappy inhabitants. Though that may be of considerable importance, it is not nearly as fundamental as the question whether you should have levied a forced contribution at all. When we have once agreed to the earlier clauses by which this gross act of injustice was perpetrated all the questions raised in Clause 10 are necessarily of a subordinate character. They deal with the question of whether "A" is robbed more than "B," or "B" more than "A," and not with the question of whether the robbery ought ever to have been committed. Though the questions of my hon. and learned friend the Member for Kingston, and some questions I have put are of great interest and importance, and are deserving of a much fuller answer than they have yet received, I have to admit that the problem we are discussing to-night is far less fundamental than the great question we discussed yesterday. It is rather the comparatively insignificant balancing of relative injustices than the consideration as to whether you are going to pass a just or an unjust Bill in itself. Whatever decision the Government may come to on these points, it cannot mitigate the objection we feel to-the whole scope and purpose of the Bill.

THE FIRST LORD OF THE ADMIRALTY (Mr. MCKENNA,) Monmouthshire, N.

I had no intention of intervening in this debate, because my hon and learned friend appeared to me to cover the whole ground in relation to this clause; but as the right hon. Gentleman has addressed certain questions directly to me, I rise at once to give him an answer to the best of my ability. The last question put by the right hon. Gentleman was a very interesting one. As I understand it, he says that under this Bill the Government propose to compel brewers to pay compensation to their servants in a business in which, those servants are engaged in public-houses closed by reason of the licence being taken away. Without challenging our action, the right hon. Gentleman asks, if this method of procedure is right under this Bill, why it is not right that the State as an employer of labour, if it discontinues any work at Woolwich or elsewhere, should pay compensation to its discharged servants.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

Yes; I did put that question. I also put another question, which was—Why should you stop at fourteen years?

MR. McKENNA

The question is—If we compel brewers to pay compensation to their managers if they are dispossessed of their work, why do the Government not do the same in the case of State employment? Whether we are right or wrong in proposing to give compensation to these managers, we are only extending the same principle as the right hon. Gentleman himself adopted in the Act of 1904. Under that Act the Leader of the Opposition himself admitted that the holder of the licence was entitled to compensation, and the only difference between our Bill and that proposed by the right hon. Gentleman is not one of principle, but the Government now propose to give managers a more adequate and reasonable compensation than was proposed in the Act of 1904. Therefore, I would ask the right hon. Gentleman rather to direct his question to himself. If he considered in the case of this particular trade which he was defending in 1904 that these people have suffered through the abolition of the licence and were entitled to receive compensation, why did he not give compensation to discharged State servants when he was Prime Minister? I can only assure him that the present Government are acting upon precisely the same principle as he did in the course they have adopted. It is only when the manager is the licence-holder that he receives compensation, and, as a matter of fact, under the right hon. Gentleman's own Bill at this moment compensation is paid to the manager when the licence is withdrawn; so that, whatever objection the right hon. Gentleman may have, it can only be an objection to the amount of compensation, and not to the principle which we have borrowed from himself. Then he asks—If it is right that managers should get compensation now, why should they not also receive compensation on the expiration of the fourteen years period? The answer on that point is extremely simple. The closing of a certain number of licensed premises under the operation of this Bill will take place by statute. It is compulsory, and it is conceded that, although the right to compensation has never been admitted, in the circumstances it is a case in which compensation might be properly giver. It is regarded that this operation of compulsory closing is to affect a great trade in a summary manner, and that the individuals who suffer may reasonably receive compensation. But we establish no new principle. The moment the trade reverts to the old condition as it was before the Act of 1904—

MR. BARNARD

What about local option and magisterial discretion?

MR. McKENNA

Magisterial discretion existed before 1904, and the only change is the condition of local option. That risk is insurable, and the risk which the licence-holders may have to ensure themselves against is one which, I am bound to say, in my judgment will not involve a very heavy premium. The point we are considering now is why at the end of fourteen years the State does not compel the brewers to compensate their servants if a licence is taken away from them. We are here not establishing a new principle. We are going back to the position in which the law stood prior to 1904 when the magistrates could take away a licence at their discretion. No compensation was then given or asked for, and we conceived that there was no need for introducing such an alteration into the present Bill. The right hon. Gentleman asked us for a fuller, or at any rate a clearer, explanation why the period of three years was added when the valuation was taken for compensation. The view of the Government in this matter is a very simple one. Following the principle of this Bill we conceive that if a licence is cancelled during the next fourteen years it is a licence which is redundant and ought not to exist. We say that it is properly taken away, and that if nothing but bare justice was done no compensation would be given. The principle of compensation has been admitted, and it is considered that the law will work more smoothly if compensation is paid. The Government had to consider what amount of compensation should be given. The period of reduction is fourteen years, and we conceived that the proper period for ascertaining the factor by which the monopoly value should be determined would be the present value of the remaining number of years. Very well, that was the Bill as originally introduced—perfectly clear and perfectly consistent. Violent opposition was raised to that part of the Bill under which the monopoly value was to be taken at the end of the period of fourteen years. There is obviously no necessary connection between the period when the monopoly value should be taken and the period of the suppression of the licence. In answer to the violent attacks which were made on that part of the Bill, the Prime Minister gave a period of seven years during which no monopoly value would be taken.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

A period of rest.

MR. McKENNA

The right hon. Gentleman will allow me to state the facts exactly as they are. I have never spoken of it as a period of rest; and if it was spoken of as such by my hon. and learned friend, I take it that it was only a period of rest in the respect that no monopoly value would be taken. The great argument against the Bill has been that by taking the monopoly value at the end of fourteen years the Government did not give the trade time to make a compensation fund in order to meet the loss. Well, for that purpose the additional period of seven years was given—a period, I will not say of rest to the trade, inasmuch as it remains subject to the very necessary control of the justices—but a period during which they can make provision for the loss of the monopoly value. The position then was this. If a licence was taken away in the last year of the reduction period, that was to say, in the fourteenth year—and inasmuch as it was only taken away in the fourteenth year, it was on the border line of those licences which should be suppressed by law—the holder of such licence would find himself, in the fourteenth year, deprived of compensation; whereas, if he had only survived the fourteenth year, he would have had a seven years certain run, only subject to the discretion of the magistrates to take away the licence, and to local option. Therefore, in the thirteenth or fourteenth year of the reduction period he would have conceived himself suffering from a great injustice owing to the fact of these seven years being granted as a concession to the trade. The Government felt that the claim of those licence-holders who lost their licences during the ending years of the reduction period would be very strong to have some compensation given in addition to that for the short term of the reduction period still unexpired when their licences were extinguished. Accordingly it was determined that some general addition should be given to the whole of the compensation for all classes of licences, but in such a way that those licence-holders whose licences were extinguished in the last year or two would reap the greatest advantage. The addition of three years to the present value gave a very small amount of additional compensation to those licence-holders whose licences were extinguished in the earlier years of the reduction period, while those licence-holders whose licences were extinguished in the last years of the reduction period would get almost the whole of the three years. We had been asked. Why three years? Why not two years, or why not four years? The principle on which the period of three years was settled was—I will not say very simple, but it was settled upon an estimate of what could be done with the money available out of the present compensation levy. I remember that the hon. Member for Kidderminster, on the Committee stage of the Bill, was strongly of opinion that the present compensation levy would leave a large balance over at the end of the reduction period after paying all compensation, and for such additional reductions as the justices might make. Although the Government do not agree with the hon. Member's estimate, still, so far as we could make an estimate in this very uncertain matter, we did consider that the funds at the disposal of the Commission will enable them to pay such extra amount of compensation all round without any increase on the existing amount of the compensation levy, and consequently the Government, actuated by those principles, and those principles only, have added three years to the compensation period. The last challenge which the Leader of the Opposition addressed to us was as to how we could reasonably justify Schedule A as the proper valuation for determining the monopoly value. If the right hon. Gentleman will excuse my saying so, he seemed to be somewhat in error as to our system of assessment. There is at the present time, as he knows, an assessment for the Poor Law and an assessment for Schedule A. Except in London, these two assessments are not the same. It would be perfectly possible to increase the assessment for Schedule A without increasing the assessment for the Poor Law, and, therefore, without increasing the assessment for the ordinary rates in the rest of the country except London. In London there is uniformity between the two assessments, and, therefore, the whole of the right hon. Gentleman's argument, which was directed to show that if you increase the assessment of Schedule A you will increase the assessment for rating purposes, and that the wretched holders of licensed premises will be rated more than their neighbours, has not really any substantial basis.

MR. BARNARD

The assessment committees have the right under the Union Assessment Act of access to Schedule A, and they invariably use it when it suits their purpose.

MR. McKENNA

I can assure the hon. Member that the assessment committees do not use Schedule A, taking the whole of the country through. If you take the assessment under Schedule A all over the country you will find that the total is materially in excess of the total assessment for the Poor Law.

MR. BARNARD

I am chairman of a committee within twenty-five miles of London, and we invariably take the Schedule A assessment.

MR. McKENNA

I have no doubt that my hon. friend endeavours to get the assessment in his area as high as he can.

MR. BARNARD

I endeavour to take it at the proper amount.

MR. McKENNA

It cannot be argued that the assessment for Schedule A is the same, or need be the same, as the assessment for Poor Law. The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition went on to say that to increase the assessment under Schedule A would be exceptionally hard on the holders of licensed premises, because even under Schedule A they would have to pay something else besides the compensation levy. Under Schedule A they would be taxed at a larger amount if their assessment were raised. We are agreed on this side that licensed premises have been to a considerable extent under-assessed. The reason has been that in too many cases the assessing authorities have taken the rent as a guide, and in the case of tied licensed premises the rent is not a true guide to the value. Personally, I have not a doubt that the effect of this Bill, if it becomes law, will be to ensure that licensed premises are assessed at their proper value; that the assessment authorities will look behind the rents paid to the brewers who own the premises, and will look at the true value of the premises, and that Schedule A will form a true guide to the monopoly value. We contend that Schedule A valuation of licensed premises, with a time-limit, corresponds to their market value as a place of retail trade. I can assure the hon. Member for Kidderminster that we believe that Schedule A assessment subject to certain limitations—that is to say, with a time-limit and a measure of the retail trade added—furnishes a just and simple means of determining market value. Let me remind the hon. Gentleman that until the Kennedy judgment under the Act of 1904 the principle of this Bill was the identical principle adopted by the Inland Revenue of that day in determining the market value of the licence. We have adopted exactly the same method as was pursued by the Inland Revenue authorities whilst the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition was himself Prime Minister.

MR. A. J. BALFOUR

No, no; the right hon. Gentleman must not say that. He implies that the Chancellor of the Exchequer of that time was in some way responsible for the action of the Inland Revenue authorities. He must know quite well that that was not the case.

MR. McKENNA

If the right hon. Gentleman will allow me I will complete my sentence. I was saying that while he was himself Prime Minister, had the action been so startlingly unfair and such a gross breach of justice as he suggests, it would have been brought to his notice, and would have constrained him to introduce an amendment to his own Bill. It is perfectly true that the Chancellor of the Exchequer of the day had no responsibility for the administrative action of the Inland Revenue officials, but if it had been so gross an injustice as the right hon. Gentleman says it is, surely a complaint would have been made to him, and he would have felt it his duty, responsible as he was for the Act of 1904, to have introduced an amending Bill at the first opportunity.

MR. CAVE

said an appeal was brought in respect of one of the first licensed houses to be assessed. The remedy; was to go to the High Court, and that remedy was adopted by the owners.

MR. McKENNA

It is perfectly true that a case was brought to the High Court, but it was not soon after the passing of the Act; the case was not tried until the middle of 1906.

MR. CAVE

It related to a house assessed in 1905.

MR. McKENNA

These gross injustices affecting the property of individuals, if they are gross injustices, are never borne silently; and if there had been gross injustices, the trade would have represented those injustices to the Chancellor of the Exchequer of the day. I never heard in the House of Commons that any question was raised with regard to the monopoly value as measured by the Inland Revenue Commissioners of the day, and I am bound to say that the whole of the present attack on the principle which the Government has adopted is not justified by the experience of what was done in 1904, or by the defence of that measure made from the Treasury bench. It is quite true that in quoting various speeches made in 1904 from the Treasury bench none were quoted as having been made by the right hon. Gentleman himself, for the very good reason that the right hon. Gentleman himself never expressed any opinion on the point one way or the other. Two hon. friends of mine have been good enough to go through his speeches on this part of that Act, and they find that he was judiciously silent upon it. Therefore, if we turn from him to those gentlemen who spoke on his behalf, if he does not repudiate them, we are bound to consider the statements of those gentlemen as the authoritative statements of the Government of the day upon the subject. Guiding ourselves by the principles laid down in the Act of 1904 by our prede- cessors, and guiding ourselves by the practice of the Inland Revenue Commissioners in their construction of the Act of 1904, we are entitled to say that whatever construction may subsequently have been placed upon the Act by a Judge, the Government in this respect are following the principles in that Act. The fundamental difference is that the authors of the Act of 1904 gave a larger number of years purchase, while we are limiting the compensation to fourteen years purchase. I will conclude by-saying that we do think that in taking away, not what the right hon. Gentleman calls a man's property, but an expectation we are giving them the full market value for what we are taking away.

MR. JAMES HOPE (Sheffield, Central)

wished to say a word as to an expression used at an early period of the debate by the Solicitor-General. The hon. and learned Gentleman described the seven years which followed the reduction period as a period of rest. He really thought that there could not have been a worse description of that period.

SIR S. EVANS

What I meant by the phrase was a period of rest for brewers from the burden of paying compensation and the burden of paying monopoly value.

MR. JAMES HOPE

said that a period of rest was not an accurate description; it might be a period of relief. The licence-holders would be subject to the fear of local option and of justices' discretion, and also to the fact that they would have the prospect of an annual fight before the licensing authorities and the great probability of having during two periods of the term to fight the local vetoists. Therefore, to describe it as a period of rest was, he submitted, a most complete misnomer. It would not be a period of rest but a period of nightmare; a period in which the unhappy licence-holder would know for certain that in seven years at the most the guillotine of monoply value would come down upon him, and that in the meantime he would be subject to the risk of being privately assassinated by the licensing justices, or being taken out by a mob of local vetoists and summarily lynched. He knew that the defenders of the Bill could quote from various authorities exactly what suited them and no more. For example, in the long discussion raised about the Kennedy judgment, the Solicitor-General in defending the Bill, spoke as if the contention of the Inland Revenue Commissioners at the time when this particular case was argued before Mr. Justice Kennedy was perfectly correct, and was unfairly and unjustly brushed aside by Mr. Justice Kennedy in his judgment. What was their contention? It was that while it was true that Schedule A should be adopted as a basis of compensation, there should be twenty-five years purchase allowed. He asked the hon. and learned Gentleman if he would be willing to grant to licence-holders, or if the hon. Member for Westmorland would be willing to grant to licence-holders twenty-five years purchase of the difference between the premises as licensed and unlicensed under Schedule A. It was no use attacking the Kennedy judgment and quoting the basis taken by the Inland Revenue unless they adopted the whole contention of the Inland Revenue, and took the twenty-five years purchase as a basis. The hon. Member for Aberdeenshire said that he had no objection to taking the market value. He himself did not contend for a moment that all the procedure started in consequence of the Kennedy judgment was necessarily right. Possibly it might not be a right way of arriving at market value. All he contended for was that the market value should be taken as a basis of compensation, and if the hon. and learned Gentleman offered them (he was not speaking as a representative of the brewing interest) twenty-five years purchase of the difference between licensed and unlicensed value, he would admit that in the great majority of cases that would be a very handsome and large addition to the basis of compensation actually adopted in the Bill. But it would not be so in all cases. There would be some cases in which anything like that basis would entirely break down. The hon. Member for Kidderminster quoted two instances in which the un- licensed value according to Schedule A was greater than the licensed value. When the discussion on this point was opened in Committee he quoted various other cases to the same effect. They were challenged by the hon. Member for Lincoln, but he reiterated the figures that he then gave, which showed that in certain instances, especially in the Metropolitan area, there were licensed premises in which, owing to improvement in position or site, or the particular position of the premises concerned, the unlicensed value was greater than the licensed value. As he had said the hon. Member for Kidderminster had quoted other instances. What was the result? The result was that in those cases no compensation was to be paid at all, and very curious consequences would follow from that. He knew the hon. Member for Lincoln, who was not then in his place, challenged his figures at that time, and he hoped some hon. friend would repeat to the hon. Member the statement that those figures were not the figures of any odd valuer. The figures were supplied by Messrs. Orgill Marks and Company, but they were not their figures, but agreed figures as to the value of the premises under Schedule A, and what was their value unlicensed—they were agreed figures for compensation under the Act of 1904, before any of these present questions involved in this Bill were raised, and the hon. Member could not say that these were in any sense fancy figures. They proved in several cases in the Metropolitan area that the unlicensed value under Schedule A was larger than the licensed value and that consequently no compensation would be payable under the operation of this Bill at all. Yet when it came to the goodwill and the question of trade and value, these profits would be absolutely and entirely eliminated. He wanted to draw the attention of the hon. and learned Gentleman to what he had described as a curious consequence of the wording of this clause. He did not want to speak dogmatically, but at any rate he thought it was a point to which the hon. and learned Gentleman should devote his attention. He questioned whether any licence-holder or manager would get any compensation whatever, owing to the way in which Section 10 had been drafted. The section ran— Where compensation is payable in respect of the extinction of an old on-licence the amount payable shall be determined by the Commissioners of Inland Revenue and shall be such sum as will purchase (with interest reckoned at the rate of 4 per cent. per annum) an immediate annuity for the unexpired years of the reduction period equal in amount to the annual value of the licence as ascertained under this section with the addition of such sums (if any) as the Commissioners of Inland Revenue think just to add.

When they got the sum equal in amount to the annual value of the licence they had to look at subsection (2) and there it said— The annual value of the licence shall be taken to be the sum by which the actual annual value of the licensed premises, as adopted for the purpose of income-tax under Schedule A at the time when the renewal of the licence is refused, exceeds the amount which the Commissioners of Inland Revenue determine, for the purpose of this section, would be the annual value of the premises for that purpose if the premises were not licensed. But in these instances the unlicensed value was greater than the licensed value. Therefore no compensation would be paid and if no compensation would be paid what would the meaning of the words "with the addition of such sums (if any) as the Commissioners of Inland Revenue think just to add"? If there were no sums payable for compensation there could be no addition of any sums to the licence-holders, and therefore under these particular conditions it seemed to him that, under the drafting of this section, although he did not say it was the intention of the section, the licence-holder would get nothing at all, although he in many cases, if he were an ordinary tenant or if he were the manager, would not be concerned with the annual value under Schedule A. He would not in any way be concerned with that, and yet he would entirely lose his livelihood.

SIR S. EVANS

I think there are words which are better than the words "with the addition of" because that implies, I think, that there is something to add to. Therefore I have already got an Amendment on the Paper to leave out the words "with the addition of" and to insert the word "and." What the hon. Member says would be met by that change.

MR. JAMES HOPE

said he was glad that the Solicitor-General had seen that point, because otherwise there would be danger that the licence-holder would get nothing. But he thought the hon. and learned Gentleman must go further and add that where there was any compensation payable the licence-holder must get this amount. Then he thought that there must be a consequential Amendment in the next clause where "additional sums" were spoken of. He thought the hon. and learned Gentleman would require some further words at line 22 of Clause 11.

SIR S. EVANS

was understood to say that that point had also been met. At any rate it was not his fault if it had not.

MR. JAMES HOPE

said he was very glad that he was justified in his criticism on the clause as it stood and that the hon. and learned Gentleman would take care that the actual manager or tenant of the premises did not suffer. But this was one proof out of twenty that the original draft of the Bill left a good deal to be desired. The hon. Member for Aberdeenshire had said that under the present circumstances the licence which was reduced was really in respect of premises which were of no value at all, and he suggested quite distinctly that the reason why this was done was that the brewers or owners concerned managed to get a particular house put before the licensing justices in the first instance, and thereby secured compensation for premises which were of no value at all. It was quite easy to out forward exoteric knowledge of the number of wicked things that were done in the world, and especially in the licensing world, but he did not think there was any foundation for this charge at all. At any rate he submitted that the hon. Member ought not to have made such a statement unless he could put forward some grounds upon which it could be vindicated, but the hon. Member did nothing of the kind. His own experience in this matter was limited. He did not profess to be a specially active justice, but he knew the practice of his own bench, which was that the magistrates took a survey of all the licences in their area without exception. They sent two of their number to report on the licences in each parish. The whole of the licences reported on were brought up to the bench and carefully-considered in the light of that report, and to suppose that any priority was given to any one licence rather than to another, and to suggest that the owners of those licences had any means, or if they had any means would have exercised them, of bringing one particular licence before the justices sooner than another, was, he believed, absolutely false and there was not a particle of evidence to support it. He supposed that what had been the practice of the bench to which he belonged had been the practice of all the benches in the country, and he was sorry that the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire should from his place in Parliament have said what he had. The hon. Member ought not to have ma le that insinuation without giving some evidence in support of it. Now let him say a word about the question of assessment. It was suggested that in order to secure more compensation the owners of licensed premises ought voluntarily to promote a rise in their own assessments. On what possible principle could this be argued? The owners of licensed premises apart from the possibility of local option and reduction, would still remain, at any rate to the extent of two-thirds of the existing licences, up to the end of the reduction period. It was a little unfortunate that there was no member of the Government at present in charge of this Bill, so he supposed he must address his remarks to the hon. Member for Westmoreland, as the Treasury Bench was for the moment deserted. Under ordinary circumstances he should move the adjournment of the debate, but he supposed he might take it that for the moment the hon. Member for Westmoreland was in charge of the Bill.

MR. LEIF-JONES (Westmoreland, Appleby)

said his hon. and learned friend the Solicitor-General whispered to him that he had been fetched out, but that he would be back in a moment.

MR. JAMES HOPE

said that from the fact that the hon. and learned Gentleman whispered to the hon. Member he would take it that he left him in charge of the Bill, At the end of the reduction period the licensed premises existing would be two-thirds of the present number; roughly speaking, one-third would have been extinguished. Now it was suggested that all the licence-holders should voluntarily hiring about an increase of their own assessment, although at the end of the period only one-third of the licencees would have been abolished. That was a preposterous suggestion, because if their assessments were raised, they would pay more for the compensation levy and more for local rates, and they did not know whether they would be affected by these compensation proposals at all. But apart from that it was not fair to put upon any individual the obligation to bring about a change in the assessment which might be made against him. If the assessment was too low, it ought to be put right by the public authority, but no attempt should be made to put the onus of raising it upon the owner.

MR. REMNANT (Finsbury, Holborn)

called attention to the fact that not a single Member of the Government was present, and that not forty Members were present.

* MR. DEPUTY-SPEAKER (Mr. CALDWELL, Lanarkshire, Mid.)

said that at that period of the evening (the dinner hour) under the Standing Orders a count could not be taken.

MR. JAMES HOPE

said he felt some difficulty in addressing the House when no responsible Member of the Government was present and when the hon. Member for Westmoreland could not reply and had no authority. With regard to the question of assessment, he would come to what was really the fundamental fault of the clause, which had been alluded to by the hon. Member for Sleaford and others in the course of their argument. The fundamental fault of the clause was, that amend it as they would, they could only shift the basis of injustice. They did not relieve the burden under such circumstances. They only shifted it. If it were only a question of compensation without any reference to the further point of to whom the compensation was to be paid, he should then submit that not only Schedule A, but Schedule D should come into question, but as it was they were met with this difficulty. If they increased the compensation they increased the charge of the levy, and if they increased the charge of the levy they added to the burden on the other licence-holders. In either way there was an injustice. The fundamental defect of the Bill was that this clause was so peculiarly framed that any attempt to amend it would simply shift the injustice from one part to another. The Opposition contended that the compensation was too little and that it ought to be increased. But the only means of increasing it would be by making a higher charge on the levy, which meant that a greater burden would be put upon the other licensees. As had been pointed out, that was justifiable under the Act of 1904, because the extinction of licences then resulted in an enhancement of the value of those that remained. That was not so under this Bill. However much they tried to amend this clause, it could not be made to work justly; and the fact that the clauses of the Bill were so interdependent only emphasised the injustices which were so interwoven that any attempt to amend the clause would only put a further burden on the shoulders of a deserving, respectable, and highly taxed section of the community. They were entitled to emphasise that point and to say that, though no Amendment would make it right, still they had demonstrated the injustice of the Bill. He hoped that nothing would be left of it but waste-paper with which they might light their Christmas fires.

AN HON. MEMBER

called attention to the fact that there was no member of the Government in the House, and moved the adjournment of the debate.

* MR. DEPUTY-SPEAKER (Mr. CALDWELL, Lanarkshire, Mid.)

said that under the Resolution of the House relating to this Bill he could not accept such a Motion.

* MR. REES (Montgomery Boroughs)

complained that the hon. Member for Appleby, who sat behind the hon. and learned Solicitor-General, and was apparently advising the Government, had said, in answer to the hon. and learned Member for Kingston who had so dissected this Bill— We know the worst that can be said of this clause. The only natural construction that could be put on those words was that the hon Member was speaking for the Government.

MR. LEIF JONES

said he spoke on behalf of the supporters of the Government.

* MR. REES

said the hon. Member had no right to speak for them or for the majority of the House or for the majority on his own side of the House. He was no doubt entitled to speak for the majority, possibly a large one, of the electors of Appleby, but for no one else except himself. He asserted that the hon. Member by the use of the word "we" did speak for the Government.

MR. FINDLAY (Lanarkshire, N.E.)

on a point of order, asked if the hon. Member was speaking to the Amendment.

* MR. DEPUTY-SPEAKER

said he thought that the hon. Member's personal remarks were going too far.

* MR. REES

pointed out that he only wished to protest against anyone using the word "we" outside His Majesty's Ministers and the Leader of the Opposition, but he would not pursue the matter. The Leader of the Opposition seemed to have been a little exercised in his mind that under the joint operation of the Bill and the income-tax Schedule A, Wales might get a little more money than he thought she was entitled to. If Wales should get a little more money than she was exactly entitled to, there would be no great harm, seeing how much she gave to the rest of Great Britain and how little she received.

* MR. DEPUTY-SPEAKER

pointed out that the remarks of the hon. Member had no bearing on the Amendment before the House.

* MR. REES

regretted that he should have been so unfortunate as twice to be called to order. If it was not in order to discuss the position of Wales under the section, he had no desire to pursue the matter further. He had presumed that what was in order for the Leader of the Opposition was in order for himself.

* MR. YOUNGER

said that the First Lord of the Admiralty had endeavoured to make the very strong point against the trade that they had calmly suffered an injustice until some period in 1906, when the High Court gave a decision. As a matter of fact, the moment Sir Henry Primrose's memorandum was issued the trade authorities protested against it as being grossly unfair and entirely out of harmony with what they believed to be the principle of Section 4 of the Act, and so impressed were the Inland Revenue authorities with that protest that they arranged with the trade protection society to take an agreed on case to the High Court in order to have the point settled. Surely the right hon. Gentleman must have known perfectly well that the ordinary licence-holder was hardly in a position to go to the High Court. As a matter of fact, it cost over £2,000 to pay the costs of getting the decision by Mr. Justice Kenned v. That was by no means an excessive sum of money to fight a case of that description. It included the costs of both sides. He made that statement on behalf of the trade in order to controvert, at the earliest possible moment, the statement by the First Lord of the Admiralty, which no doubt was made in entire ignorance of what was now stated. So far as the First Lord of the Admiralty's impassioned sentences dealt with this particular part of the question, they were quite uncalled for, unnecessary, and wholly irrelevant. He expressed his regret that Clause 10, as now drafted and settled, appeared to be the last word of the Government on the question. He thought the Government should have done something to modify the harshness of the clause. Apparently they had no intention of doing so. That was surprising, because if the discussions in Committee had done anything at all they had brought home to the supporters of the Government some appreciation of the harsh and ruthless clauses of the Bill. He had a copy of a letter written to The Times soon after the introduction of the Bill, in which the writer, the hon. Member for Sleaford, said that the argument was used that the. Bill would entirely destroy the property of brewers after fourteen years. The hon. Member proceeded— For that reason, I understand, he (the hon. Member for the Walton division of Liverpool) opposes the Bill.…I should have thought that if the effect of the Bill were entirely to destroy the property of the breweries and distilleries, it would be the most beneficent measure that had ever been introduced into Parliament, and would have the support of all good men of all parties. Let the House compare that with the sentence in the speech delivered by the hon. Gentleman to-day, in which he pleaded for greater generosity, and regretted that by the passage of this clause a sense of injustice would be left behind. He was bound to say that he was surprised and bitterly disappointed that the Government had not done something to modify the ruthless injustice of the Bill, Under the Act of 1904, the market value of the premises was given as compensation, but under the provisions of this clause they were taking away a man's entire business and giving him a mere solatium in return—a derisory compensation. It had been claimed by the Prime Minister and also by the Solicitor-General that the trade had really no reason to complain, because the basis of compensation which had been adopted by the Government was the same as that which had been taken for monopoly value. But to start with, Clause 10 dispossessed a man of his livelihood at the end of fourteen years. They were taking from him everything which he possessed, everything on which he had to live. They were taking his personal goodwill as well as his local goodwill, and all those other accumulations of capital which had been the result of his energy and hard work. Surely while the basis taken by the Government might be perfectly fair in regard to monopoly value—he would not argue that now—it was no argument in the world for using that basis to compensate a man for the loss not only of monopoly value, but of goodwill and everything else. The hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire had made a speech which was somewhat astonishing. He had talked as if there were no objection to giving the market value, but that he did not know how it was to be ascertained; and he then discussed the proposition of the Government from the point of view that they were going to give ten and a half years purchase for what they were taking. It was not anything like ten and a half years purchase. Ten and a half years purchase on that particular basis of the valuation in no sense represented the value of the property, profit, or anything else. How the hon. Gentleman could possibly find any foundation for a proposition of that kind was more than he could understand in one of his acuteness and knowledge. That, however, was what the hon. Gentleman had said, and it led him to think that there was still in the minds of hon. Gentlemen opposite very great confusion indeed as to what was the real effect of Clause 10. There was not, he was afraid, in the minds of the trade the slightest doubt as to the very great burden it placed upon them, nor about the very heavy losses which would be incurred by them. They would have to provide for these losses within a comparatively short period of years, and he feared that the extra period which had been offered to them at the end of that time would not do very much to help them over the stile. "The period of rest," as it was so inaptly described by the hon. and learned Gentleman, was a period without the payment of compensation for loss or withdrawal, and, if he were asked to define a state of purgatory so far as the publican was concerned, he could not find a better one than the position in which he would be placed under the seven years so-called free run for the insurance of the loss of monopoly value which the Government were now going to give him. The hon. Member for Appleby who had gone into the question of rent, no doubt had in his mind the speech made by the hon. Member for Lincoln when this clause was under discussion some time ago, and when the hon. Member for Lincoln brought before the House some very startling figures as to what he considered the deficiency in the valuation of licensed premises under Schedule A for the purpose of income-tax. The Schedule A valuation was an extremely difficult problem. He intended to say something about it when the Prime Minister's new definition of monopoly value was before the House, and he had in fact said some words about its effect on public-houses in Scotland. He did not recede from anything he then said, but he had been making inquiries since about this particular system of valuation under Schedule A, and he found that there had been a very great change in the valuation of public-houses under Schedule A, in consequence of a recent decision of the Court of Session in a succession duty case. In making the assessment of public-houses there was more and more a tendency to add the personal goodwill to the local goodwill. He supposed that the hon. Member for Appleby would think it unfair to pay compensation on that method, just as it was extremely unfair to take as the local-monopoly value the result of a valuation which included something which was not local but personal to the man carrying on the business. Therefore, the arguments which had been used that day about the policy of adopting Schedule A for this purpose or the other, were arguments which were much more forcible perhaps than those who used them were well aware of. This system had been in operation many years in Scotland, and in the hands of Government assessors. The alterations, upon it had been so great that one of the most prominent assessors in Scotland told him the other day that he did not believe the Schedule A valuation, as used in Scotland, would be at all a fair basis for charging monopoly value to publicans in Scotland or elsewhere. So that the Schedule A valuation presented a far greater difficulty than hon. Members opposite were aware of. They had heard three versions of the Government's proposal of the fixing of a three years annuity for the seven years period. They had the version given by the Solicitor-General, they had the version of the hon. Member for Appleby, and they had the version of the First Lord of the Admiralty. He did not know that any two of them entirely agreed. He thought the most interesting and perhaps the most correct was the version given by the hon. Member for Appleby, who, they were told, spoke for himself and not for anybody else. There was one very important factor connected with, the seven years which had not been mentioned, and it was this, that at the end of the fourteen years all the licences dealt with would be treated as new licences. A man would not know whether he would get his licence again; he would have to fight for it. At present, the renewal was subjected to none of the conditions which might then be attached to it by the justices; and the man would have to fear local option, which was hanging over him, and also the untrammelled discretion of the magistrates; although hon. Gentlemen opposite had pointed out, as against this, that there would be the compensation levy which had been accumulating during a possible seven years run against the insurance of the loss of monopoly value. From its being an argument in support of the generosity of this extension of seven years in regard to taking the monopoly value, this saving had now become merely an instrument for the insurance of the publican against the risk of losing his licence during the seven years; so that what was compensation now merely became an insurance fee for the chance of carrying on the business after the end of the seven years—the gracious permission and authority of hon. Gentlemen opposite for the shadow of hope of existence. He doubted very much whether it would be possible to insure. He knew that before the Act of 1904, when justices were refusing licences on account of redundancy or for other such reasons, insurance companies which had suffered losses from this risk, in later years absolutely refused to insure against it. He believed it was a fact whatever hon. Gentlemen might say that they absolutely refused to insure that risk. He did not know about Lloyd's, but Lloyd's did not always pay, and he did not think a Lloyd's policy was as a rule regarded as quite as good a security as the policies of some of the larger insurance companies.

MR. LEIF JONES

Very much better than the Licences Insurance Corporation.

* MR. YOUNGER

said it depended on the names on the policy. Even Lloyd's he thought would find some difficulty in making a quotation for a policy which not only covered loss from redundancy, but all the other risks of local veto, and one thing and another. He knew what the experience of licence-holders was in the years before 1904, and he saw no reason to suppose that that position would be improved in the seven years after 1923. Therefore, he did not think there would be a possible insurance. In this clause the Government had shown a carelessness of ordinarily decent generosity which, to his mind, was colossal. They were dealing in Clause 10 with a levy provided by the trade itself. They did not even show generosity with other people's money. No doubt it arose largely from the fact that they had adopted a scheme of compulsory reduction, the results of which they had not taken the trouble to make themselves or the House acquainted with. They did not know how many licences would go under the scheme. They had no idea of the calls which would be made upon licence holders for compensation, and, therefore, they were obliged to alter wholly not only the basis on which they were going to pay compensation but also to make the fund national instead of local in its working. That last change made an enormous difference. Under the present Act those who paid compensation for the reduction of licences were receiving some benefit, in some cases large benefit, from the cancellation of the licences which were taken away. If there were 1,000 licences in a particular locality and they took away 300, would those who remained have gained no advantage through the closing of these houses?

* SIR THOMAS WHITTAKER (Yorkshire, W.R., Spen Valley)

What I was thinking of was a large county. You may have contributors paying in parts of that county for public-houses taken away scores of miles away, and no benefit whatever will accrue to them.

* MR. YOUNGER

said that was perfectly true, and he admitted there were cases in which no benefits would arise, but they narrowed it very much when they confined it to a locality. When they made it national there would be very harsh cases in which people would have to pay very heavy levies without a single house being closed within miles of them. It was impossible to avoid cases of hardship now, but they were, of course, much more unlikely to be so acute, and advantages did arise. But it was not so here. They had that disability, therefore, as well as the other. If Clause 10 had been drawn in a more fair and reasonable and generous spirit, and if it had dealt with the situation more on the lines of the 1904 Act, which was working very well, it would, at all events on this particular point of machinery, have minimised very much the serious opposition which they were obliged to offer to the clause.

MR. HART-DAVIES (Hackney, N.)

said the difficulties and complexities of this clause seemed almost to be greater than ever. It was a very difficult thing to arrive at the real value of a public-house. He did not think Schedule A was at all a satisfactory way of arriving at it, and neither was the rateable value. The only real way, to his mind, was to see what was the actual trade done in the house. He wondered it had never struck the Government to impose a licence duty based upon the actual trade of the house, which would have carried out all the objects aimed at in the Bill with infinitely less friction, worry, and trouble. There were a great many small houses which were kept alive simply for the purpose of compensation, or rather for the purpose of a transfer of licence. If they had a reasonable licence duty it would have the effect of closing down these houses, and then there would not be any compensation to be paid at all. That would get rid of all their difficulties, and it would arrive at the monopoly value—a small duty based on actual sales, getting higher and higher as the years went on, so that at the end of a certain period, they would acquire the whole of the monopoly value. The Government would have saved a great deal of trouble and time in discussing these exceedingly difficult and to the ordinary layman, almost incomprehensible questions. He hoped, if any accident happened to the Bill, that in future legislation on this subject the Government would seriously apply their minds, not to these complicated questions of periods of reduction and taking the monopoly value by these wave which were entirely unsatisfactory, but to the adoption of the simple plan of gradually increasing licence duties, and they would arrive at exactly the same results as if the Bill became law.

SIR GILBERT PARKER (Gravesend)

associated himself with the hon. Gentleman who had just sat down in at least one particular. He had suggested to the Government that if the Bill should fail they would have brought home to them very strongly the lesson that logic was not a bad thing even on the part of a Cabinet Minister. He was not associating himself with the idea that high licence duties might solve the question, but the idea was a perfectly logical one. At any rate, if they had that question before them it would be a straight, fair fight which everyone could understand. He did not pretend to understand all the intricacies of the Licensing Bill. He had not tried to understand them. There were experts enough in the House without the intrusion of the amateur. But they were obliged to consider these questions, because there was not a constituency but would be affected by the Bill. He had heard every speech that had been delivered from the benches opposite except two, but there was one difficulty which he had not heard surmounted. It was this. Why had Schedule A been taken as the basis for reckoning compensation; and, having been taken, would the results give fair compensation? They had in the Act of 1904 a perfectly clear statement of the intentions of the Government then in power, and that was to provide adequate compensation upon the basis of market value. The hon. Member for Appleby, and no doubt the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Spen valley, would say: "Yes, but you are entirely wrong in putting public-house property upon the basis of any other kind of property." If that was a fair interpretation of their views, did the owner of the property, whether a private owner or a brewer, buy it as he would buy other property or not? He thought he did. He said to himself: "With good conduct and with ordinary consideration for the management of my house my licence will be renewed from year to year," and he bought accordingly, expecting to have continuity in his property. After the Act of 1904 the publican was justified in saying with regard to compensation: "At any rate if I am dispossessed now I shall have full market value for what I have been dispossessed of." If he was putting that point fairly, would the House go one step further? Why the Government had descended from the full market value to the depth represented by Schedule A he did not know. Schedule A, as he understood it from the speeches by hon. Members opposite, would not give the owner of a licence goodwill or the market value of his personal energy and all those other things which had gone to build up and make the business of value. The Secretary for the Home Department would probably tell the House that special compensation was provided for such a business; but that could not be sufficient, and the only just and fair basis would be what that property would bring in if offered for sale in the open market. The Government had discarded that consideration altogether, and he wondered if the Government had actually realised how grave an injustice would be done to a great number of people who had honestly invested their money in these businesses. The Solicitor-General that afternoon, in regard to the extra three years which had been spoken of several times, had said it was not intended to represent any right whatever; it was simply a gift, a bonus that the Government in a fit of generosity had given. They did not allow compensation on the basis of twenty-one years. The Solicitor-General had added three years, which made sixteen years altogether, and he said the additional three years was a gift. But what did the acute and careful Under-Secretary of State say on this point? Speaking on 23rd October last, he said— that no licence would be taken away after the fourteen years, but during the fourteenth year a man would get some compensation in respect of what he lost. He would get not merely his monopoly value for one year, but the prospect of seven years free from monopoly charge. It was only just and equitable that he I should receive a sum in respect of that. That was not at all. The Under-Secretary for the Home Office said that for these seven years there would be some compensation, but the Solicitor-General did not agree with him, for he said something which was quite the opposite.

SIR S. EVANS

I do not at all disagree with my right hon. friend. What I argued was that we should be perfectly right in saying that as the reduction period was fourteen years a licence taken away during that period would be properly taken away by the authority of Parliament, and we should have been within our right in saying that no extension should be made in the period for which the annuity was calculated in respect of the licence so taken away. I said at the time, and I indicated it, that inasmuch as there might be an expectation in some of those houses the licences of which were taken away within the fourteen years, they might reasonably ask for a portion of the seven years.

SIR GILBERT PARKER

said he was much obliged for the explanation, but the situation as far as he understood it remained the same. The Solicitor-General did not agree that any compensation at all should be reckoned for those seven years, but the Under-Secretary for the Home Office held the opposite view. Under the Act of 1904 they had two forms of compensation carried out. First of all, there was the estimate by the Commissioners of twenty-five years purchase. That was considered fair, being based upon Schedule A. The Kennedy judgment carried things much further, because it said: "No, that is not equitable; we must have the market value." The Government had thrown aside the original estimate made upon Schedule A, and they had thrown aside also the Kennedy judgment. He wondered if hon. Members opposite were really satisfied in their own minds that what was now being offered was equitable. He did not believe that hon. Members opposite, with the exception of those few who were deadly opposed to the licensed trade, would willingly say that every licensed victualler and brewer should be cut off without any compensation at all. He knew hon. Members on the Ministerial side were obliged to support the Government. Inadequate compensation he considered to be a very deep wrong. Values once accumulated represented energy of some kind or other which had crystallised into a commodity that was saleable, and every public-house business which had been built up in that way had been built up legitimately. It might be that the business was bad, and that it was not a good thing to drink or to be drunk. It might be that the whole business was bad, but it had been built upon the basis of accumulated energy, and for any Bill to destroy energy would be striking at the very foundation and root of national enterprise. That was what he believed would occur when Clause 10 was put into operation if ever this Bill became law. Parliament was a High Court and he regretted extremely that it was so much permeated by party prejudices. When they came to a great financial measure such as this—for it was more largely a financial measure than anything else—he regretted to see that prejudice existed regarding the brewing trade, which was represented by vast numbers of people who were not themselves brewers but had taken stock in businesses absolutely legitimate and entirely respectable. It did not speak well for a free deliberative Assembly such as the House of Commons that, when they came to deal with something which in its essence was financial, they could not at the same time give the gravest consideration to those who were going to be dispossessed of their property. The Under-Secretary would perhaps explain to the House why it was that the Government said when dealing with a publican's property for probate: "will have the market value to the last penny." but when it came to taking away from those people who inherited property then the Government said: "We will value this upon an entirely lower scale." They had not had during the afternoon a single statement from any responsible person on the Treasury bench or anybody behind them showing that the value to be given under Clause 10 would in any way nearly approach the market value. The hon. Member for Huddersfield made a very able speech and a very severe criticism upon this Bill, which he said was most inequitable. He pointed out that under the Schedule of the Bill the London publican would pay 9.7 per cent. levy; in a city of 500,000 people the publican would have to pay 12 per cent., and in small urban districts he would have to pay on the rateable value 16 per cent. He saw financial experts sitting opposite and on the front bench, and he would like to ask them were they going to leave that kind of levy and imposition upon the trade as a whole? Was it fair, just, or usual? Would the Government explain why, as the hon. Member for Sleaford and the hon. Member for Kidderminster had already asked, they would not allow the trade adequately to compensate themselves? One would think from the attitude of Ministers in these debates that they, as trustees for the people of the country, were safeguarding their financial interests by diminishing the compensation to be paid to those who were to be dispossessed of property. Whatever the property was—whether it represented goodwill, or monopoly value, or bricks and mortar—it still was property, and he could not understand why the Government had not gone on a broader basis. Hon. Members opposite would acknowledge that the basis on which compensation was to be reckoned was extraordinarily narrow. In ordinary circumstances when property was taken away for public purposes the broadest view was taken of the situation. It had been pointed out that when the London County Council took property in the Strand for public purposes they gave the men who were dispossessed the market value with 10 per cent. added. No one could estimate really the amount that ought to be paid for disturbance in connection with any business. A man who went into possession of a public-house brought what was called custom, and that was a great factor, and in respect of it he deserved great consideration. In all private affairs and dealings human justice said that when compensation for disturbance was being assessed the person disturbed should get something over and above the market value. The Government had not allowed anything whatever for disturbance.

MR. G. D. FABER

They have taken off 50 per cent.

SIR GILBERT PARKER

said he did not know that, but if they had taken off 50 per cent., they had taken off a great deal of the value and given nothing whatever in exchange. It seemed as if the Government had a fixed idea to give as little as possible, or rather to permit other people to tax themselves as little as possible. He honestly thought, speaking without any party prejudice, that in dealing with the finance of this Bill the Government had been querulous, grudging, lacking in vision, and lacking also in ordinary human sympathy. [An HON. MEMBER: Justice.] He was not considering the question of justice under this Bill; he did not want to be disagreeable; but he had not seen from beginning to end in the action of the Government any thing like the element of justice.

SIR S. EVANS

Does the hon. Gentleman wish an increase in the compensation levy?

SIR GILBERT PARKER

said he was urging that the basis of compensation should be different—a basis by which the proper value should be given to the men whose property was to be taken away. The basis of compensation laid down by the Government was inadequate. He believed the basis of the clause was wrong. He wished to say a word about the tenant or licence-holder. The Government were deeply concerned to injure the brewer. The Prime Minister said in his Second Reading speech that the brewer was the possessor of inflated values which he himself had inflated. The inference was that the Government were determined to pay the brewer out, and to break the bubble of inflation, but by injuring the brewer they injured everybody else interested in the brewery business. He was not an advocate for the brewer or anybody else in this matter. He was an advocate for general justice and fair play. The Government said that under this Bill the licence-holder would have a much better time than under the Act of 1904. The compensation to be given to the licence-holder for loss of business was a second thought on the part of the Government. They did not agree to give it until they were pressed from every side of the House. Finding that the tide was running strongly against them, they realised the difficulties of the position, and they tried to do some- thing for the licence-holder by compensating him to a very limited extent. If, as had been argued on both sides of the House, the compensation was, in many cases, a fifth of what it ought to be, then the licence-holder's share of the compensation would be exceedingly small.

SIR S. EVANS

It is an addition to the compensation given under the Act of 1904. The compensation is fixed for those interested in the property, and over and above that compensation is given to the licence-holder.

SIR GILBERT PARKER

said the licence-holder would get compensation for the loss of business if the licence was extinguished, but if he was not dispossessed he would enter upon the seven years period which was to be added, subject to all the restrictions which the Bill imposed. There would be 60,000 of these houses, and they would be subject to local veto, constant supervision, and the increased vigilance of the licensing benches. He assumed that the licensing justices would grow more and more temperate. He did not complain of the growth of temperance, but, at the same time, he hoped that if restrictions were to be put on with respect to the sale of intoxicants justice would be done to those who were engaged in the trade. It was a poor prospect to hold out to the licensed holder that when the fourteen years were out he might have a period of genial quiet subject to yearly and daily re frictions which might be put upon him by any fanatics who might happen to be on the licensing bench. During the seven years no protection whatever was given to licence-holders. The Government would find, whatever approval their so-called high moral purposes might win from their supporters in the House, that a vast number of people outside would take the view that they had not been just or fair, and that this clause alone represented an element of cruelty and inconsiderateness which one would not expect from an enlightened administration.

MR. CLEMENT EDWARDS (Denbigh District)

said he preferred the hon. Member for Gravesend as an expert on the taxation of the raw material of the brewing industry rather than as an expert on the finance of the brewing trade. The hon. Member said he was an advocate for neither the brewers nor anybody else. If that was so, why did he advocate a tax on the raw material of the brewing trade?

SIR GILBERT PARKER

I never did so.

MR. CLEMENT EDWARDS

said his memory might be at fault, but he understood that the hon. Member advocated the taxation of hops.

SIR GILBERT PARKER

Never.

MR. CLEMENT EDWARDS

said it might go forth now that the hon. Member for Gravesend was not in favour of the taxation of hops. Indulging in a cheap sneer, the hon. Member said it was a mistake to look into this Bill for justice. He was not sure that he did not agree with the hon. Member, for it would be found that the Bill was extremely generous to the whole of the brewing and the licensed trade. Was he to understand the hon. Member to lay it down as a principle that whenever a property was taken from an individual in the interests of the community that individual should receive full market value for his property? If so, that principle had not always' been carried out by the party of which the hon. Member was so distinguished an ornament. In the Housing of the Working Classes Act it was laid down that when slum property was acquired for public improvements, the owner should be deprived of compensation if he allowed illegal overcrowding in that property. He thought that there should be some exceptions to the hon. Member's rule that the public should pay full market value for property taken over for public purposes. So he also said that in the case of illegal adulteration of beer which had gone to swell the profits—[OPPOSITION cries of "Oh, oh!" and "Name."]—there should be a deduction from the full market value of the house. The representatives of the brewing trade had not suggested until in recent debates that compensation should be paid for suppressed houses on the basis of full market value. The brewing representatives on the Royal Commission on licensing in dealing with the question of compensation expressly excluded from their proposed compensation the case of a certain artificial value due to what was called the surrender system. This was what the Report said— An artificial value has temporarily accrued to many low-class houses, owing to their suitability for surrender purposes. These are the very ones which would be the most likely to disappear under our proposals. It should, therefore, be made clear that in valuing them no account is to be taken of such past and temporary value, which will by that time have ceased to exist together with the system that gave rise to it. That was taking a very large slice out of the market value of that particular type of house. The hon. Member for Gravesend had asked why should the Government have taken Schedule A as a basis for compensation. He submitted that there was one very good ground why they should do so, because it embodied the very essential principles which the representatives of the brewing trade on the Royal Commission themselves advocated as the basis on which compensation should be paid. In other words, the essence of the Schedule A proposal was that the owner himself should declare the value for the purpose of taxation, aid that that value should be used as the basis of compensation. That was the very proposal of the representatives of the brewing interest in the Report of the Royal Commission; and he was rather surprised that it had been lost sight of throughout the discussions. Here was the paragraph in the Report— We have come to the conclusion that, if compensation is to be paid, it must be raised from the trade itself. We now proceed to describe the machinery by which we propose to ascertain the true and fair value of all licensed houses, whether for the purpose of suppression, or taxation for the provision of a compensation fund. Several of the proposed Bills explained to us contained a provision for a declaratory value by the licensee, which might be taken as a basis for compensation if suppressed, or taxation if it survive, thus compelling the owner of a licence to consider either contingency. This principle we adopt. He submitted that if an excessive value was declared, in expectation of getting compensation for the house to be suppressed, it should be taxed on that basis; but on the other hand, if, anticipating that the house might not be suppressed, a fraudulent return as to the value of the property was made, then that should be taken as the value of the property for compensation purposes. The hon. Member for Gravesend and several other speakers had suggested with regard to the licensee that the basis upon which compensation might very well be considered should have some reference to the personal energy, or what he would call the custom-bringing value of the licence-holder. This custom-bringing value was to be compensated under this clause. He presumed the hon. Member did not suggest that personal energy was an attribute of the brewers.

MR. GRETTON

Why not?

MR. CLEMENT EDWARDS

said that at any rate it was true that in that debate they had manifested a great deal of energy. The custom-bringing energy was an attribute of the tenant and not of the brewer or owner, and, therefore, it was right that he should be compensated upon the basis of the value of the house and loss of business to him if the licence was suppressed. That was what the Bill proposed. An hon. Member had suggested that a tenant under this Bill, should it become law, would not be compensated on any more liberal a scale than he would have been under the Act of 1904. That statement he entirely denounced. He had taken cases in different parts of the country where compensation had been paid to specific individuals when the licence was suppressed and had compared it with what they would be entitled to under the provision of Clause 10. Here was a case from his own constituency. A man received the sum of £25 as compensation, which represented the annual rental value of his place. If he had been compensated on the basis of the provisions of this clause, he would have received the sum of £280. In another case, a tied tenant was compensated on the basis of annual rental £34, whereas the net value of the business to him was £370, which sum he would have obtained at the very minimum under the provisions of this clause. Another tied tenant three months ago received £57 compensation, whereas the net value of his business for one year was £400, and that sum he would have received under the provisions of this clause. He would particularly remind the hon. Baronet that the compensation fixed here was a minimum compensation, and that it was within the discretion of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue to expand that sum to any sum which they might deem reasonable.

MR. GRETTON

Will the hon. Gentleman explain in what way this Bill makes his position better than it is under the Act of 1904?

MR. CLEMENT EDWARDS

said he was rather glad that the hon. Gentleman had put his interruption in the form of an interrogative instead of in the form of a statement that what he had said with regard to the value of tied and free houses was untrue. In his view the advantage of this Bill in regard to compensation to the tenant as compared with the provisions of the Act of 1904 lay in this one very short point, that in the first place under the Act of 1904 a lump sum compensation was fixed upon the real property value of the place, plus the licensed value, and then out of that lump sum, the tenant, the licensee, got his share regulated by the annual rent that he paid, and the compensation was therefore fixed in definite relation to the amount of rent paid, whereas under this Bill the compensation was fixed in definite relation to the loss which he would suffer from the whole business as a tenant.

MR. GRETTON

asked if the hon. Gentleman would read the words of the Bill.

MR. CLEMENT EDWARDS

said he would do so. The Bill said— As compensation for the licence-holder's loss of business, or, where the licence-holder is managing the business on behalf of some other person, for the licence-holder's loss of employment, having regard to his conduct and the length of time during which he has been the holder of the licence not in any case being less than the amount of one year's net profits, to be determined in accordance with the rules and regulations of the Acts relating to income-tax. In other words, while under the Act of 1904 the compensation to the tenant was fixed in definite relation to the amount of rent paid, under this Act it was fixed in definite relation to the net profits of the business.

MR. GRETTON

asked if the hon. Gentleman would refer to the words of the Act.

MR. CLEMENT EDWARDS

said the Act of 1904 provided that in the case of the licence-holder, regard should be had not only to his legal interest in the premises or trade fixtures, but also to his conduct and the length of time that he had been the holder of the licence, and it was provided that the tenant should in no case receive a less amount than he would be entitled to as tenant from year to year of the licensed premises. He did not want to detain the House at any length, but to summarise what he was saying he would point out that it was perfectly clear, perfectly notorious, that the net profits of the business were very much in excess of the sum paid by way of rental by the tenant, and when they took the case of the tied tenant it was notorious that the rent was fixed low by design, so as to keep the rates down on the one side, and the amount of compensation levy payable on the other. The disparity between the rent paid and the net profits of the tenant was, therefore, still greater. The tenant under this Bill would get a sum which was above and beyond what the tenant could have got under the Act of 1904, by a sum which represented the difference between the annual rent paid and the total value of the net profit of that business to him. In a great many of the houses it was well-known that the licensees were not tenants at all. Under the Act of 1904 the manager did not get any compensation, but by the express provision of this clause the manager was to receive compensation which would be represented by one year of the value of the employment to him, so that where a man had received a salary of £3 a week, with coal and gas and certain service, he would be entitled to one year's full value of that salary, plus the cash value of the emoluments as compared with absolutely nil which he would get under the Act of 1904.

* MR. GRETTON

said he was sorry to interrupt the hon. Member, but the clause was only applicable to the manager who was also a licence-holder. The licence-holder and the manager got compensation under the Act of 1904, as the hon. Member would see if he looked at the Home Office Rules for the guidance of compensation authorities.

MR. CLEMENT EDWARDS

said that one's own experience was worth a deal more than any matter of that kind. He challenged the hon. Member for Rutland to cite any case in which the manager as licensee had received compensation under the Act of 1904. In these cases he carefully guarded himself by saying that in many cases the licensee was manager. He did not say, where they had a case of a manager who was not a licensee, he would get compensation. There was no provision of that kind, but where he was a licensee and manager he was entitled to compensation under this Bill, and he was not entitled to it under the Act of 1904.

MR. WILLIAM RUTHERFORD (Liverpool, West Derby)

said the hon. Member who had just sat down in the course of his exceedingly interesting and amusing speech had stated that the principle of this particular clause was the principle of "tax and take." He did not know that that was quite the English way of expressing it, but it evidently met with a good deal of support from the benches on the other side of the House, and he thought it really was true that they were face to face that evening with this particular clause, which might very well be described in the words of the hon. Member, as being a measure to tax all the unfortunate licensed victuallers in the country, and when they had all been taxed and the Government had got all they could out of them, they were to finish them off by taking all their property from them. Therefore it might be described very properly as a Bill to "tax and take." He thought that all of them who had seen and measured this piece of gross injustice might be grateful to the hon. Member for having furnished them in his speech with an observation which was uncommonly apt and correct. A good deal of misapprehension seemed to have been created in the mind of the hon. Member as to what was the precise subject matter of this section. He took it that if a licence was suppressed, if property was put an end to as a licensed house at some time during this period of fourteen years what was taken away was the goodwill of a business attached to and carried on upon these premises. The premises themselves were not taken away, but the goodwill of the business that was being carried on at the moment in them was the thing which was being put an end to. Speaking with some experience he could say that at all events in the neighbourhood that he was acquainted with, namely, Liverpool, there were a large number of licensed houses which owed a very considerable amount of their present high value to having come into the hands of brewers of means, position, ability, and honesty—men who had taken the trouble to make these houses all that they ought to be, in point of structural and sanitary accommodation, and to see that all the articles supplied in the houses were of the highest possible quality, and by the most constant supervision to ensure that the business should be carried on in a first class manner in those houses. The consequence was that a large number of those houses owned and carried on as he had described, had obtained a value quite different from the value which they previously possessed, and that particular value and goodwill was not incident to the premises as premises, or to the ordinary carrying on of a licensed house. It had been brought about by the express conduct of the brewer who owned the house. The hon. Member who had just sat down had asked in a scoffing tone, as though there could only be one answer to the question— Is there a case where the brewer has ever done anything to add to the good will of the house? He could give a number of cases. He knew of seventy or eighty licensed houses where a very considerable portion of the special goodwill which those houses had got, had arisen from the fact that they were owned and carried on in the way that he had described. The hon. Member had told the House that the Report of the Royal Commission recommended Schedule A—the income-tax assessment—as the basis of compensation. He was astonished at that statement—

MR. CLEMENT EDWARDS

I did not say that the Report of the Royal Commission recommended Schedule A as the basis. What I did say was that the principle of declaratory value which they recommended was the essence of the Schedule A method.

MR. WILLIAM RUTHERFORD

said that when he referred to the Report of the Royal Commission he found this— We further regard rateable value as altogether outside the mark as a basis for compensation, and it cannot according to our scheme be entertained as a basis of the taxation to which the compensation fund might be brought. He failed to recognise the Report of the Commission quoted by the hon. Member.

MR. CLEMENT EDWARDS

asked the hon. Member to read what the Report said specifically as to the income-tax basis further on. It said this— There were two objections to this, first that it would be a somewhat inquisitorial process; and, secondly, that it would not take into account the interest of the owner of the property which was recognised by the law and the Income-Tax Commissioners.

MR. WILLIAM RUTHERFORD

said the hon. Member and himself read Acts, Bills, Reports, etc., and brought the best intelligence they could to bear upon them, and being two people, naturally came to two different conclusions. Let him give an illustration as to how this clause would work. Supposing the assessment of a licensed house were £100 a year, and supposing in the case which he had before his mind at the moment, if that licence were taken away the piece of property would in all probability be assessed in Schedule A at £50 a year, it was obvious that the difference there for the purpose of subsection (2) of this section would be £50 a year; and supposing they were in the tenth year of the period when this particular licence was to be put an end to, according to the way the Bill was expressed £50 a year would be given for five years. He supposed that this would be a sum of £200; £200 would be paid as compensation for taking away the business, and in this case, which was not an imaginary one, supposing the licence was put an end to, what would be the position? This was a managed house. The manager would get £500, whilst the man who owned the business and who had been paying to the compensation fund for ten years would get only £200. Why? He did not know whether the Government had considered what would be the astonishing effect to the servants towards the close of the reduction period—the giving of the whole of the profit to the servants who were subject to a month's notice. He did not want to cut down anybody's compensation. If the State were going to compensate the man he would have nothing to say, but when the Government proposed a provision under which a man who was a servant and, in all probability, had done little or nothing to build up the business, was to receive the whole of the profit, he asked himself on what principle the Government were proceeding. The answer was obvious. The man had got a vote. He supposed the idea was that if the Government could get hold of the funds contributed, and then, by some subterfuge such as this clause, only pay out about a half, or something less, of the moneys to which they were reasonably entitled, on the basis on which they had contributed, at some future day they might appropriate the balance, and take it over themselves. He had not been able to read the Act of 1904 otherwise than from the basis of market value; this was the first time in his experience that the State had proposed that anybody's business should be taken from them when it was a legitimate

business, and that they should receive practically no compensation for it. The remark made by the last speaker as to adulteration by brewers ought not to have been made. He was not interested in the trade, but to make a remark like that in the House of Commons against a business which had been carried on—taking it all round—under very great difficulties by respectable men, who had a legitimate trade, and to cast a reflection upon the whole trade, was not the right way to treat the House of Commons.

MR. RICHARDSON (Nottingham, S.)

said the more one listened to the legal arguments on either side in regard to this question the more one became mystified, and therefore he could only rely upon his common sense and knowledge of business. He only rose to say that if the Government would come to Nottingham and offer compensation to the tea trade there in the way they proposed to give it to the licensed trade it would be accepted, and a good profit would be made. The Government could afford to be generous in the matter. It was more than a question of finance; it was a question of the lives and the homes of the people. He hoped the Bill would pass. If it were not no Bill would be passed and no Government would tackle this matter again for twenty years. The people of the country were looking to this Bill to remove a very great stumbling block in the way of social reform.

And, it being half-past Ten of the Clock, Mr. Deputy-Speaker proceeded, in pursuance of the Order of the House of the 17th July, to put forthwith the Questions on the Amendment already proposed from the Chair.

Question put, "That the words proposed to be left out, to the word 'the,' in page 7, line 13, stand part of the Bill."

The House divided:—Ayes, 287; Noes, 96. (Division List No. 390.)

AYES.
Acland, Francis Dyke	Armitage, R.	Barnes, G. N.
Agar-Robartes, Hon. T. C. R.	Armstrong, W. C. Heaton	Beale, W. P.
Agnew, George William	Balfour, Robert (Lanark)	Bell, Richard
Alden, Percy	Baring, Godfrey (Isle of Wight)	Bellairs, Carlyon
Allen, A. Acland (Christchurch)	Barker, Sir John	Benn, Sir J. Williams (Devonp'rt
Allen, Charles P. (Stroud)	Barnard, E. B.	Bennett, E. D.
Bethell, Sir J H. (Essex, Romf'rd	Hardie, J. Keir (Merthyr Tydvil	Molteno, Percy Alport
Bethell, T. R. (Essex, Maldon)	Hardy, George A. (Suffolk)	Mond, A.
Black, Arthur W.	Harmsworth, Cecil B. (Worc'r)	Money, L. G. Chiozza
Boulton, A. C. F.	Hart-Davies, T.	Montagu, Hon. E. S.
Bowerman, C. W.	Harvey, A. G. C. (Rochdale)	Morgan, G. Hay (Cornwall)
Brace, William	Harvey, W. E. (Derbyshire, N. E.	Morgan, J. Lloyd (Carmarthen)
Bramsdon, T. A.	Harwood, George	Morrell, Philip
Branch, James	Haslam, James (Derbyshire)	Morse, L. L.
Brocklehurst, W. B.	Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth)	Morton, Alpheus Cleophas
Brodie, H. C.	Hazel, Dr. A. E.	Muldoon, John
Brooke, Stopford	Hedges, A. Paget	Murray, Capt. Hn A. C. (Kincard)
Brunner, J. F. L. (Lancs., Leigh)	Helme, Norval Watson	Myer, Horatio
Brunner, Rt Hn. Sir J. T. (Cheshire	Hemmerde, Edward George	Nicholls, George
Bryce, J. Annan	Henderson, Arthur (Durham)	Nicholson, Charles N. (Doncast'r
Burnyeat, W. J. D.	Henderson, J. M. (Aberdeen, W.)	Norton, Capt. Cecil William
Burt, Rt. Hon. Thomas	Henry, Charles S.	Nussey, Thomas Willans
Byles, William Pollard	Herbert, Col. Sir Ivor (Mon., S.)	Nuttall, Harry
Cameron, Robert	Herbert, T. Arnold (Wycombe)	O'Donnell, C. J. (Walworth)
Carr-Gomm, H. W.	Higham, John Sharp	O'Grady, J.
Cawley, Sir Frederick	Hobart, Sir Robert	Parker, James (Halifax)
Chance, Frederick William	Hobhouse, Charles E. H.	Partington, Oswald
Channing, Sir Francis Allston	Hodge, John	Paulton, James Mellor
Cherry, Rt. Hon. R. R.	Holland, Sir William Henry	Pearce, Robert (Staffs, Leek)
Clough, William	Hope, W. Bateman (Somerset, N.	Pearce, William (Limehouse)
Clynes, J. R.	Horniman, Emslie John	Pearson, W. H. M. (Suffolk, Eye)
Cobbold, Felix Thornley	Horridge, Thomas Gardner	Philips, Col. Ivor (S'thampton)
Collins, Stephen (Lambeth)	Howard, Hon. Geoffrey	Philipps, Owen C. (Pembroke)
Collins, Sir Wm. J. (S. Pancras, W.	Hutton, Alfred Eddison	Pickersgill, Edward Hare
Compton-Rickett, Sir J.	Hyde, Clarendon	Pollard, Dr.
Cooper, G. J.	Illingworth, Percy H.	Ponsonby, Arthur A. W. H.
Corbett, C H (Sussex, E. Grinst'd	Isaacs, Rufus Daniel	Price, C. E. (Edinb'gh, Central)
Cornwall, Sir Edwin A.	Jacoby, Sir James Alfred	Price, Sir Robert J. (Norfolk, E.)
Cory, Sir Clifford John	Jardine, Sir J.	Priestley, Arthur (Grantham)
Cotton, Sir H. J. S.	Jenkins, J.	Radford, G. H.
Craig, Herbert J. (Tynemouth)	Johnson, John (Gateshead)	Rainy, A. Rolland
Crooks, William	Johnson, W. (Nuneaton)	Rea, Russell (Gloucester)
Crosfield, A. H.	Jones, Sir D. Brynmor (Swansea)	Rea, Walter Russell (Scarboro')
Crossley, William J.	Jones, William (Carnarvonshire	Rees, J. D.
Curran, Peter Francis	Jowett, F. W.	Rendall, Athelstan
Dalmeny, Lord	Kearley, Sir Hudson E.	Richards, Thomas (W. Monm'th)
Davies, Ellis William (Eifion)	Kekewich, Sir George	Richards, T. F. (Wolverh'mpt'n
Davies, Timothy (Fulham)	Kelley, George D.	Richardson, A.
Davies, Sir W. Howell (Bristol, S)	King, Alfred John (Knutsford)	Ridsdale, E. A.
Dilke, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles	Laidlaw, Robert	Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln)
Dobson, Thomas W.	Lamb, Edmund G. (Leominster)	Roberts, G. H. (Norwich)
Duckworth, Sir James	Lamb, Ernest H. (Rochester)	Roberts, Sir J. H. (Denbighs.)
Duncan, C. (Barrow-in-Furness	Lambert, George	Robertson, Sir G. Scott (Bradf'rd
Duncan, J. H. (York, Otley)	Lamont, Norman	Robinson, S.
Dunne, Major E. Martin (Walsall	Layland-Barratt, Sir Francis	Robson, Sir William Snowdon
Edwards, Clement (Denbigh)	Leese, Sir Joseph F. (Accrington	Roch, Walter F. (Pembroke)
Edwards, Sir Francis (Radnor)	Lehmann, R. C.	Russell, Rt. Hon. T. W.
Erskine, David C.	Levy, Sir Maurice	Rutherford, V. H. (Brentford)
Esslemont, George Birnie	Luttrell, Hugh Fownes	Samuel, Herbert L. (Cleveland)
Evans, Sir Samuel T.	Lyell, Charles Henry	Scarisbrick, T. T. L.
Everett, R. Lacey	Lynch, H. B.	Schwann, C. Duncan (Hyde)
Fenwick, Charles	Macdonald, J. R. (Leicester)	Schwann, Sir C. E. (Manchester)
Terens, T. R.	Macdonald, J. M. (Falkirk B'ghs)	Scott, A. H. (Ashton under Lyne
Fiennes, Hon. Eustace	Mackarness, Frederic C.	Sears, J. E.
Findlay, Alexander	Maclean, Donald	Seaverns, J. H.
Foster, Rt. Hon. Sir Walter	Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J.	Seddon, J.
Fullerton, Hugh	M'Callum, John M.	Seely, Colonel
Gibb, James (Harrow)	M'Crae, Sir George	Shackleton, David James
Gill, A. H.	M'Kenna, Rt. Hon. Reginald	Shaw, Sir Charles Edw. (Stafford)
Glen-Coats, Sir T. (Renfrew, W.)	M'Micking, Major G.	Shaw, Rt. Hn. T. (Hawick, B.)
Glover, Thomas	Maddison, Frederick	Shipman, Dr. John G.
Goddard, Sir Daniel Ford	Mallet, Charles E.	Silcock, Thomas Ball
Gooch, George Peabody (Bath)	Mansfield, H. Rendall (Lincoln)	Simon, John Allsebrook
Greenwood, G. (Peterborough)	Marks, G. Croydon (Launceston)	Smeaton, Donald Mackenzie
Greenwood, Hamar (York)	Marnham, F. J.	Snowden, P.
Griffith, Ellis J.	Massie, J.	Soames, Arthur Wellesley
Gulland, John W.	Masterman, C. F. G.	Soares, Ernest J.
Gurdon, Rt. Hn Sir W. Brampton	Menzies, Walter	Spicer, Sir Albert
Harcourt, Robert V. (Montrose)	Micklem, Nathaniel	Stanger, H. Y.

Stanley, Albert (Staffs, N. W.)	Vivian, Henry	Wilkie, Alexander
Steadman, W. C.	Walker, H. De R. (Leicester)	Williams, J. (Glamorgan)
Stewart, Halley (Greenock)	Walsh, Stephen	Williams-Llewelyn (Carmarthen
Stewart-Smith, D. (Kendal)	Walters, John Tudor	Williams, Osmond (Merioneth)
Straus, B. S. (Mile End)	Walton, Joseph	Williamson, A.
Stuart, James (Sunderland)	Ward, W. Dudley (Southampt'n)	Wills, Arthur Walters
Summerbell, T.	Wardle, George J.	Wilson, Henry J. (York, W. R.)
Taylor, John W. (Durham)	Waring, Walter	Wilson, John (Durham, Mid)
Taylor, Theodore C. (Radcliffe)	Warner, Thomas Courtenay T.	Wilson, J. W. (Worcestersh, N.)
Tennant, H. J. (Berwickshire)	Wason, Rt. Hn. E. (Clackmannan	Wilson, P. W. (St. Pancras, S.)
Thomas, Abel (Carmarhten, E.)	Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney)	Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)
Thomas, David Alfred (Merthyr	Waterlow, D. S.	Winfrey, R.
Thomasson, Franklin	Watt, Henry A.	Wodehouse, Lord
Thompson, J. W. H. (Somerset, E.	Wedgwood, Josiah C.	Wood, T. M'Kinnon
Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton	White, Sir George (Norfolk)	Yoxall, James Henry
Thorne, William (West Ham)	White, J. Dundas (Dumbart'nsh.
Tomkinson, James	White, Sir Luke (York, E. R.)	TELLERS FOR THE AYES—Mr. Joseph Pease and Mr. Herbert Lewis.
Toulmin, George	Whitehead, Rowland
Trevelyan, Charles Philips	Whitley, John Henry (Halifax)
Verney, F. W.	Whittaker, Rt Hn. Sir Thomas P.
NOES.
Acland-Hood, Rt. Hn Sir Alex. F.	Gibbs, G. A. (Bristol, West)	Percy, Earl
Anson, Sir William Reynell	Goulding, Edward Alfred	Powell, Sir Francis Sharp
Aubrey-Fletcher, Rt. Hn Sir H.	Gretton, John	Ratcliff, Major R. F.
Baldwin, Stanley	Guinness, Hon. R. (Haggerston)	Rawlinson, John Frederick Peel
Banbury, Sir Frederick George	Guinness, W. E. (Bury S. Edm.)	Remnant, James Farquharson
Banner, John S. Harmood-	Haddock, George B.	Roberts, S. (Sheffield, Ecclesall)
Barnard, E. B.	Hamilton, Marquess of	Rutherford, W. W. (Liverpool)
Beach, Hn. Michael Hugh Hicks	Hardy, Laurence (Kent, Ashford	Salter, Arthur Clavell
Beckett, Hon. Gervase	Harris, Frederick Leverton	Sandys, Lieut.-Col. Thos. Myles
Bignold, Sir Arthur	Harrison-Broadley, H. B.	Scott, Sir S. (Marylebone, W.)
Bowles, G. Stewart	Hill, Sir Clement	Smith, Abel H. (Hertford, East)
Butcher, Samuel Henry	Hills, J. W.	Smith, Hon. W. F. D. (Strand)
Carlile, E. Hildred	Hope, James Fitzalan (Sheffield)	Stanier, Beville
Carson, Rt. Hon. Sir Edw. H.	Houston, Robert Paterson	Starkey, John R.
Cave, George	Kennaway, Rt. Hon. Sir John H.	Staveley Hill, Henry (Staff'sh.
Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor)	Kerry, Earl of	Strauss, G. A. (Abingdon)
Cecil, Lord John P. Joicey-	Keswick, William	Talbot, Rt. Hn. J. G. (Oxf'd Univ
Cecil, Lord R. (Marylebone, E.)	King, Sir Henry Seymour (Hull)	Thomson, W. Mitchell-(Lanark)
Chamberlain, Rt. Hn. J. A. (Worc.	Lambton, Hon. Frederick Wm.	Thornton, Percy M.
Clive, Percy Archer	Lane-Fox, G. R.	Walker, Col. W. H. (Lancashire)
Cochrane, Hon. Thos. H. A. E.	Law, Andrew Bonar (Dulwich)	Warde, Col. C. E. (Kent, Mid)
Collings, Rt. Hn. J. (Birmingh'm	Lee, Arthur H. (Hants, Fareham	Whitbread, Howard
Courthope, G. Loyd	Lockwood, Rt. Hn. Lt.-Col. A. R.	Willioughby de Eresby, Lord
Craik, Sir Henry	Long, Col. Charles W. (Evesham)	Wilson, A. Stanley (York, E. R.)
Cross, Alexander	Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. Alfred	Winterton, Earl
Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-	Marks, H. H. (Kent)	Wortley, Rt. Hon. C. B. Stuart-
Du Cros, Philip Arthur	Mason, James F. (Windsor)	Young, Samuel
Duncan, Robert (Lanark, Govan	Morrison-Bell, Captain	Younger, George
Faber, George Denison (York)	Nicholson, Wm. G. (Petersfield)
Faber, Capt. W. V. (Hants, W.)	Nield, Herbert	TELLERS FOR THE NOES—Viscount Valentia and Mr. Forster.
Fardell, Sir T. George	Nolan, Joseph
Fell, Arthur	Oddy, John James
Fletcher, J. S.	Parker, Sir Gilbert (Gravesend)
Gardner, Ernest	Pease, Herbert Pike (Darlington

Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER

then proceeded to put forthwith the Questions on the Amendments moved by the Government, of which Notice had been given, which were necessary to dispose of the Business to be concluded this day, in pursuance of the Order of the House of 11th November.

Amendment proposed— In page 7, line 15, after the word 'for,' to insert the words 'a number of years being the number of.'"—(Sir S. Evans.)

Amendment agreed to.

Amendment proposed— In page 7, line 16, after the word 'period, to insert the words' with three years added thereto in each case, and.'"—(Sir S. Evans.)

Question put, "That the Amendment be made."

The House divided:—Ayes, 293; Noes, 97. (Division List No. 39.)

AYES.
Acland, Francis Dyke	Edwards, Clement (Denbigh)	Laidlaw, Robert
Agar-Robartes, Hon. T. C. R.	Edwards, Sir Francis (Radnor)	Lamb, Edmund G. (Leominster)
Agnew, George William	Erskine, David C.	Lamb, Ernest H. (Rochester)
Alden, Percy	Esslemont, George Birnie	Lambert, George
Allen, A. Acland (Christchurch)	Evans, Sir Samuel T.	Lamont, Norman
Allen, Charles P. (Stroud)	Everett, R. Lacey	Layland-Barratt, Sir Francis
Armitage, R.	Fenwick, Charles	Leese, Sir Joseph F. (Accrington)
Armstrong, W. C. Heaton	Ferens, T. R.	Lehmann, R. C.
Balfour, Robert (Lanark)	Fiennes, Hon. Eustace	Levy, Sir Maurice
Baring, Godfrey (Isle of Wight)	Findlay, Alexander	Luttrell, Hugh Fownes
Barker, Sir John	Foster, Rt. Hon. Sir Walter	Lyell, Charles Henry
Barnard, E. B.	Fullerton, Hugh	Lynch, H. B.
Barnes, G. N.	Gibb, James (Harrow)	Macdonald, J. R. (Leicester)
Beale, W. P.	Gill, A. H.	Macdonald, J. M. (Falkirk B'ghs)
Bell, Richard	Glen-Coats, Sir T. (Renfrew, W.)	Mackarness, Frederic C.
Bellairs, Carlyon	Glover, Thomas	Maclean, Donald
Benn, Sir J. Williams (Devonp'rt)	Goddard, Sir Daniel Ford	Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J.
Bennett, E. N.	Gooch, George Peabody (Bath)	M'Callum, John M.
Bethell, Sir J. H. (Essex, Romf'rd	Greenwood, G. (Peterborough)	M'Crae, Sir George
Bethell, T. R. (Essex, Maldon)	Greenwood, Hamar (York)	M'Kenna, Rt. Hon. Reginald
Black, Arthur W.	Griffith, Ellis J.	M'Micking, Major J.
Boulton, A. C. F.	Gulland, John W.	Maddison, Frederick
Bowerman, C. W.	Gurdon, Rt. Hn. Sir W. Brampton	Mallet, Charles E.
Brace, William	Harcourt, Robert V. (Montrose)	Mansfield, H. Rendall (Lincoln)
Bramsdon, T. A.	Hardie, J. Keir (Merthyr Tydvil)	Marks, G. Croydon (Launceston)
Branch, James	Hardy, George A. (Suffolk)	Marnham, F. J.
Brocklehurst, W. B.	Harmsworth, Cecil B. (Worc'r)	Massie, J.
Brodie, H. C.	Hart-Davies, T.	Masterman, C. F. G.
Brooke, Stopford	Harvey, A. G. C. (Rochdale)	Menzies, Walter
Brunner, J. F. L. (Lancs., Leigh)	Harvey, W. E. (Derbyshire, N. E.	Micklem, Nathaniel
Brunner, Rt. Hn Sir J. T. (Cheshire)	Harwood, George	Molteno, Percy Alport
Bryce, J. Annan	Haslam, James (Derbyshire)	Mond, A.
Burnyeat, W. J. D.	Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth)	Money, L. G. Chiozza
Burt, Rt. Hon. Thomas	Hazel, Dr. A. E.	Montagu, Hon. E. S.
Byles, William Pollard	Hedges, A. Paget	Morgan, G. Hay (Cornwall)
Cameron, Robert	Helme, Norval Watson	Morgan, J. Lloyd (Carmarthen)
Carr-Gomm, H. W.	Hemmerde, Edward George	Morrell, Philip
Cawley, Sir Frederick	Henderson, Arthur (Durham)	Morse, L. L.
Chance, Frederick William	Henderson, J. M. (Aberdeen, W.)	Morton, Alpheus Cleophas
Channing, Sir Francis Allston	Henry, Charles S.	Muldoon, John
Cherry, Rt. Hon. R. R.	Herbert, Col. Sir Ivor (Mon., S.)	Murray, Capt. Hn. A. C. (Kincard.
Clough, William	Herbert, T. Arnold (Wycombe)	Myer, Horatio
Clynes, J. R.	Higham, John Sharp	Nicholls, George
Cobbold, Felix Thornley	Hobart, Sir Robert	Nicholson, Charles N. (Doncast'r
Collins, Stephen (Lambeth)	Hobhouse, Charles E. H.	Norton, Capt. Cecil William
Collins, Sir Wm. J. (S. Pancras, W.	Hodge, John	Nussey, Thomas Willans
Compton-Rickett, Sir J.	Holland, Sir William Henry	Nuttall, Harry
Cooper, G. J.	Hope, W. Bateman (Somerset, N.	O'Donnell, C. J. (Walworth)
Corbett, C. H (Sussex, E. Grinst'd	Horniman, Emslie John	O'Grady, J.
Cornwall, Sir Edwin A.	Horridge, Thomas Gardner	Parker, James (Halifax)
Cory, Sir Clifford John	Howard, Hon. Geoffrey	Partington, Oswald
Cotton, Sir H. J. S.	Hutton, Alfred Eddison	Paulton, James Mellor
Craig, Herbert J. (Tynemouth)	Hyde, Clarendon	Pearce, Robert (Staffs, Leek)
Crooks, William	Illingworth, Percy H.	Pearce, William (Limehouse)
Crosfield, A. H.	Isaacs, Rufus Daniel	Pearson, W. H. M. (Suffolk, Eye)
Crossley, William J.	Jacoby, Sir James Alfred	Philipps, Col. Ivor (S'thampton)
Curran, Peter Francis	Jardine, Sir J.	Philipps, Owen C. (Pembroke)
Dalmeny, Lord	Jenkins, J.	Pickersgill, Edward Hare
Davies, Ellis William (Eifion)	Johnson, John (Gateshead)	Pollard, Dr.
Davies, Timothy (Fulham)	Johnson, W. (Nuneaton)	Ponsonby, Arthur A. W. H.
Davies, Sir W. Howell (Bristol, S.	Jones, Sir D. Brynmor (Swansea)	Price, C. E. (Edinb'gh, Central)
Dilke, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles	Jones, William (Carnarvonshire)	Price, Sir Robert J. (Norfolk, E.)
Dobson, Thomas W.	Jowett, F. W.	Priestley, Arthur (Grantham)
Duckworth, Sir James	Kearley, Sir Hudson E.	Radford, G. H.
Duncan, C. (Barrow-in-Furness)	Kekewich, Sir George	Rainy, A. Rolland
Duncan, J. H. (York, Otley)	Kelley, George D.	Rea, Russell (Gloucester)
Dunne, Major E. Martin (Walsall	King, Alfred John (Knutsford)	Rea, Walter Russell (Scarboro')
Rees, J. D.	Soames, Arthur Wellesley	Warner, Thomas Courtenay T.
Rendall, Athelstan	Soares, Ernest J.	Wason, Rt Hn. E. (Clackmannan)
Richards, Thomas (W. Monm'th)	Spicer, Sir Albert	Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney)
Richards, T. F. (Wolverh'mpt'n)	Stanger, H. Y.	Waterlow, D. S.
Richardson, A.	Stanley, Albert (Staffs, N. W.)	Watt, Henry A.
Ridsdale, E. A.	Steadman, W. C.	Wedgwood, Josiah C.
Roberts, G. H. (Norwich)	Stewart, Halley (Greenock)	White, Sir George (Norfolk)
Roberts, Sir J. H. (Denbighs.)	Stewart-Smith, D. (Kendal)	White, J. Dundas (Dumbart'nsh)
Robertson, Sir G. Scott (Bradf'rd	Straus, B. S. (Mile End)	White, Sir Luke (York, E. R.)
Robinson, S.	Stuart, James (Sunderland)	Whitehead, Rowland
Robson, Sir William Snowdon	Summerbell, T.	Whitley, John Henry (Halifax)
Roch, Walter F. (Pembroke)	Taylor, John W. (Durham)	Whittaker, Rt. Hn. Sir Thomas P.
Rowlands, J.	Taylor, Theodore C. (Radcliffe)	Wiles, Thomas
Russell, Rt. Hon. T. W.	Tennant, H. J. (Berwickshire)	Wilkie, Alexander
Rutherford, V. H. (Brentford)	Thomas, Abel (Carmarthen, E.)	Williams, J. (Glamorgan)
Samuel, Herbert L. (Cleveland)	Thomas, David Alfred (Merthyr)	Williams, Llewelyn (Carmarth'n
Scarisbrick, T. T. L.	Thomasson, Franklin	Williams, Osmond (Merioneth)
Schwann, C. Duncan (Hyde)	Thompson, J. W. H. (Somerset, E.	Williamson, A.
Schwann, Sir C. E. (Manchester)	Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton)	Wills, Arthur Walters
Scott, A. H. (Ashton under Lyne)	Thorne, William (West Ham)	Wilson, Henry J. (York, W. R.)
Sears, J. E.	Tomkinson, James	Wilson, John (Durham, Mid)
Seaverns, J. H.	Toulmin, George	Wilson, J. W. (Worcestersh, N.)
Seddon, J.	Trevelyan, Charles Philips	Wilson, P. W. (St. Pancras, S.)
Seely, Colonel	Verney, F. W.	Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)
Shackleton, David James	Vivian, Henry	Winfrey, R.
Shaw, Sir Charles Edw. (Stafford)	Walker, H. De R. (Leicester)	Wodehouse, Lord
Shaw, Rt. Hon. T. (Hawick B.)	Walsh, Stephen	Wood, T. M'Kinnon
Shipman, Dr. John G.	Walters, John Tudor	Yoxall, James Henry
Silcock, Thomas Ball	Walton, Joseph
Simon, John Allsebrook	Ward, W. Dudley (Southampton	TELLERS FOR THE AYES—Mr. Joseph Pease and Mr. Herbert Lewis.
Smeaton, Donald Mackenzie	Wardle, George J.
Snowden, P.	Waring, Walter
NOES.
Anson, Sir William Reynell	Goulding, Edward Alfred	Pease, Herbert Pike (Darlington)
Aubrey-Fletcher, Rt. Hn. Sir H.	Gretton, John	Percy, Earl
Baldwin, Stanley	Guinness, Hon. R. (Haggerston)	Powell, Sir Francis Sharp
Banbury, Sir Frederick George	Guinness, W. E. (Bury S. Edm.)	Ratcliff, Major R. F.
Banner, John S. Harmood-	Haddock, George B.	Rawlinson, John Frederick Peel
Beach, Hn. Michael Hugh Hicks	Hamilton, Marquess of	Remnant, James Farquharson
Beckett, Hon. Gervase	Hardie, Laurence (Kent, Ashford	Roberts, S. (Sheffield, Ecclesall)
Bignold, Sir Arthur	Harris, Frederick Leverton	Rutherford, W. W. (Liverpool)
Bowles, G. Stewart	Harrison-Broadley, H. B.	Salter, Arthur Clavell
Butcher, Samuel Henry	Hill, Sir Clement	Sandys, Lt.-Col. Thos. Miles
Carlile, E. Hildred	Hills, J. W.	Scott, Sir S. (Marylebone, W.)
Carson, Rt. Hon. Sir Edw. H.	Hope, James Fitzalan (Sheffield)	Smith, Abel H. (Hertford, East)
Cave, George	Houston, Robert Paterson	Smith, Hon. W. F. D. (Strand)
Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor)	Hudson, Walter	Stanier, Beville
Cecil, Lord John P. Joicey-	Jones, Leif (Appleby)	Starkey, John R.
Cecil, Lord R. (Marylebone, E.)	Kennaway, Rt. Hn. Sir John H.	Staveley-Hill, Henry (Staff'sh.)
Chamberlain, Rt. Hn. J. A. (Worc)	Kerry, Earl of	Strauss, E. A. (Abingdon)
Clive, Percy Archer	Keswick, William	Talbot, Rt. Hn. J. G. (Oxf'd Univ)
Cochrane, Hon. Thos. H. A. E.	King, Sir Henry Seymour (Hull)	Thomson, W. Mitchell- (Lanark)
Collings, Rt. Hn. J. (Birmingh'm)	Lambton, Hon. Frederick Wm.	Thornton, Percy M.
Courthope, G. Loyd	Lane-Fox, G. R.	Walker, Col. W. H. (Lancashire)
Craik, Sir Henry	Law, Andrew Bonar (Dulwich)	Warde, Col. C. E. (Kent, Mid)
Cross, Alexander	Lee, Arthur H. (Hants, Fareham)	Whitbred, Howard
Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-	Lockwood, Rt. Hn. Lt.-Col. A. R.	Willoughby de Eresby, Lord
Du Cros, Arthur Philip	Long, Col. Charles W. (Evesham)	Wilson, A. Stanley (York, E. R.)
Duncan, Robert (Lanark, Govan	Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. Alfred	Winterton, Earl
Faber, George Denison (York)	Marks, H. H. (Kent)	Wortley, Rt. Hon. C. B. Stuart-
Faber, Capt. W. V. (Hants, W.)	Mason, James F. (Windsor)	Young, Samuel
Fardell, Sir T. George	Morrison-Bell, Captain	Younger, George
Fell, Arthur	Nicholson, Wm. G. (Petersfield)
Fletcher, J. S.	Nield, Herbert	TELLERS FOR THE NOES—Sir Alexander Acland-Hood and Viscount Valentia.
Forster, Henry William	Nolan, Joseph
Gardner, Ernest	Oddy, John James
Gibbs, G. A. (Bristol, West)	Parker, Sir Gilbert (Gravesend)

Amendments proposed— In page 7, line 18, to leave out the words 'with the addition of,' and to insert the word 'and.' In page 7, line 19, to leave out the word 'add,' and to insert the word 'allow.' In page 7, line 23, after the word 'regard,' to insert the words 'in each case.' In page 7, line 25, after the word 'licence,' to insert the word 'but.' In page 8, line 1, to leave out the words 'shall be,' and to insert the word 'is.' In page 8, line 13, to leave out the word "additional.' In page 8, line 13, after the word 'sums,' to insert the word 'payable.' In page 8, line 22, to leave out the word 'additional.' In page 8, line 22, after the word 'sums,' to insert the word 'payable.'

"In page 10, line 12, at end, to insert the words, 'Provided that for the purposes of this provision statutory reduction does not include further reduction.'"

"In page 11, lines 20 and 21, to leave out the words '(which provides for appeals in the case of the refusal to renew or transfer a licence).'"—(Sir S. Evans.)

Amendment proposed— In page 11, line 36, after the word 'exercise,' to insert the word 'all.'"—(Sir S. Evans.)

Question put, "That the Amendment be made."

The House divided:—Ayes, 300, Noes, 95. (Division List No. 392.)

AYES.
Acland, Francis Dyke	Compton-Rickett, Sir J.	Harmsworth, Cecil B. (Worc'r.)
Agar-Robartes, Hon. T. C. R.	Cooper, G. J.	Hart-Davies, T.
Agnew, George William	Corbett, C. H. (Sussex, E. Grinst'd	Harvey, A. G. C. (Rochdale)
Alden, Percy	Cornwall, Sir Edwin A.	Harvey, W. E. (Derbyshire, N. E.
Allen, A. Acland (Christchurch)	Cory, Sir Clifford John	Harwood, George
Allen, Charles P. (Stroud)	Cotton, Sir H. J. S.	Haslam, James (Derbyshire)
Armitage, R.	Craig, Herbert, J. (Tynemouth)	Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth)
Armstrong, W. C. Heaton	Crooks, William	Hazel, Dr. A. E.
Baker, Joseph A. (Finsbury, E.)	Crosfield, A. H.	Hedges, A. Paget
Balfour, Robert (Lanark)	Crossley, William J.	Helme, Norval Watson
Baring, Godfrey (Isle of Wight)	Curran, Peter Francis	Hemmerde, Edward George
Barker, Sir John	Dalmeny, Lord	Henderson, Arthur (Durham)
Barnes, G. N.	Davies, Ellis William (Eifion)	Henderson, J. M. (Aberdeen, W.)
Barran, Rowland Hirst	Davies, Timothy (Fulham)	Henry, Charles S.
Beale, W. P.	Davies, Sir W. Howell (Bristol, S.	Herbert, Col. Sir Ivor (Mon., S.)
Bell, Richard	Dickson-Poynder, Sir John P.	Herbert, T. Arnold (Wycombe)
Bellairs, Carlyon	Dilke, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles	Higham, John Sharp
Benn, Sir J. Williams (Devonp'rt	Dobson, Thomas W.	Hobart, Sir Robert
Bennett, E. N.	Duckworth, Sir James	Hobhouse, Charles E. H.
Berridge, T. H. D.	Duncan, C. (Barrow-in-Furness)	Hodge, John
Bethell, Sir J. H. (Essex, Romf'd)	Duncan, J. H. (York, Otley)	Holland, Sir William Henry
Bethell, T. R. (Essex, Maldon)	Dunne, Major E. Martin (Walsall	Hooper, A. G.
Black, Arthur W.	Edwards, Clement (Denbigh)	Hope, W. Bateman (Somerset, N.)
Boulton, A. C. F.	Edwards, Sir Francis (Radnor)	Horniman, Emslie John
Bowerman, C. W.	Erskine, David C.	Horridge, Thomas Gardner
Brace, William	Esslemont, George Birnie	Howard, Hon. Geoffrey
Bramsdon, T. A.	Evans, Sir Samuel T.	Hudson, Walter
Branch, James	Everett, R. Lacey	Hutton, Alfred Eddison
Brocklehurst, W. B.	Fenwick, Charles	Hyde, Clarendon
Brodie, H. C.	Ferens, T. R.	Illingworth, Percy H.
Brooke, Stopford	Fiennes, Hon. Eustace	Isaacs, Rufus Daniel
Brunner, J. F. L. (Lancs., Leigh)	Findlay, Alexander	Jacoby, Sir James Alfred
Brunner, Rt. Hn. Sir J. T. (Chesh)	Foster, Rt. Hon. Sir Walter	Jardine, Sir J.
Bryce, J. Annan	Fullerton, Hugh	Jenkins, J.
Burnyeat, W. J. D.	Gibb, James (Harrow)	Johnson, John (Gateshead)
Burt, Rt. Hon. Thomas	Gill, A. H.	Johnson, W. (Nuneaton)
Byles, William Pollard	Glen-Coats, Sir T. (Renfrew, W.)	Jones, Sir D. Brynmor (Swansea)
Cameron, Robert	Glover, Thomas	Jones, Leif (Appleby)
Carr-Gomm, H. W.	Goddard, Sir Daniel Ford	Jones, William (Carnarvonshire)
Cawley, Sir Frederick	Gooch, George Peabody (Bath)	Jowett, F. W.
Chance, Frederick William	Greenwood, G. (Peterborough)	Kearley, Sir Hudson E.
Channing, Sir Francis Allston	Greenwood, Hamar (York)	Kekewich, Sir George
Cherry, Rt. Hon. R. R.	Griffith, Ellis J.	Kelley, George D.
Clough, William	Gulland, John W.	King, Alfred John (Knutsford)
Clynes, J. R.	Gurdon, Rt. Hn. Sir W. Brampton	Laidlaw, Robert
Cobbold, Felix Thornley	Harcourt, Robert V. (Montrose)	Lamb, Edmund G. (Leominster
Collins, Stephen (Lambeth)	Hardie, J. Keir (Merthyr Tydvil)	Lamb, Ernest H. (Rochester)
Collins, Sir Wm. J. (S. Pancras, W.	Hardy, George A. (Suffolk)	Lambert, George
Lamont, Norman	Pickersgill, Edward Hare	Taylor, Theodore C. (Radcliffe)
Layland-Barratt, Sir Francis	Pollard, Dr.	Tennant, H. J. (Berwickshire)
Leese, Sir Joseph F. (Accrington)	Ponsonby, Arthur A. W. H.	Thomas, Abel (Carmarthen, E.)
Lehmann, R. C.	Price, Sir Robert J. (Norfolk, E.)	Thomas, David Alfred (Merthyr
Levy, Sir Maurice	Priestley, Arthur (Grantham)	Thomasson, Franklin
Lupton, Arnold	Radford, G. H.	Thompson, J. W. H. (Somerset, E.
Luttrell, Hugh Fownes	Rainy, A. Rolland	Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton)
Lyell, Charles Henry	Rea, Russell (Gloucester)	Thorne, William (West Ham)
Lynch, H. B.	Rea, Walter Russell (Scarboro')	Tomkinson, James
Macdonald, J. R. (Leicester)	Rees, J. D.	Toulmin, George
Macdonald, J. M. (Falkirk B'ghs	Rendall, Athelstan	Trevelyan, Charles Philips
Mackarness, Frederic C.	Richards, Thomas (W. Monm'th)	Verney, F. W.
Maclean, Donald	Richards, T. F. (Wolverh'mpt'n)	Vivian, Henry
Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J.	Richardson, A.	Walker, H. De R. (Leicester)
M'Callum, John M.	Ridsdale, E. A.	Walsh, Stephen
M'Crae, Sir George	Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln)	Walters, John Tudor
M'Kenna, Rt. Hon. Reginald	Roberts, G. H. (Norwich)	Walton, Joseph
M'Micking, Major G.	Roberts, Sir J. H. (Denbighs.)	Ward, W. Dudley (Southampt'n
Maddison, Frederick	Robertson, Sir G. Scott (Bradf'd)	Wardle, George J.
Mallet, Charles E.	Robinson, S.	Waring, Walter
Mansfield, H. Rendall (Lincoln	Robson, Sir William Snowdon	Warner, Thomas Courtenay T.
Marks, G. Croydon (Launceston	Roch, Walter F. (Pembroke)	Wason, Rt. Hn E. (Clackmannan
Marnham, F. J.	Rowlands, J.	Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney)
Mason, A. E. W. (Coventry)	Russell, Rt. Hon. T. W.	Waterlow, D. S.
Massie, J.	Rutherford, V. H. (Brentford)	Watt, Henry A.
Masterman, C. F. G.	Samuel, Herbert L. (Cleveland)	Wedgwood, Josiah C.
Menzies, Walter	Scarisbrick, T. T. L.	White, Sir George (Norfolk)
Micklem, Nathaniel	Schwann, C. Duncan (Hyde)	White, J. Dundas (Dumbart'nsh.
Molteno, Percy Alport	Schwann, Sir C. E. (Manchester)	White, Sir Luke (York, E. R.)
Mond, A.	Scott, A. H. (Ashton-under-Lyne	Whitehead, Rowland
Money, L. G. Chiozza	Sears, J. E.	Whitley, John Henry (Halifax)
Montagu, Hon. E. S.	Seaverns, J. H.	Whittaker, Rt. Hn. Sir Thomas P.
Morgan, G. Hay (Cornwall)	Seddon, J.	Wiles, Thomas
Morgan, J. Lloyd (Carmarthen)	Seely, Colonel	Wilkie, Alexander
Morrell, Philip	Shackleton, David James	Williams, J. (Glamorgan)
Morse, L. L.	Shaw, Sir Charles Edw. (Stafford	Williams, Llewely'n (C'armarth'n
Morton, Alpheus Cleophas	Shaw, Rt. Hon. T. (Hawick B.)	Williams, Osmond (Merioneth)
Murray, Capt. Hn A. C. (Kincard	Shipman, Dr. John G.	Williamson, A.
Myer, Horatio	Silcock, Thomas Ball	Wills, Arthur Walters
Nicholls, George	Simon, John Allsebrook	Wilson, Henry J. (York, W. R.)
Nicholson, Charles N. (Doncast'r	Smeaton, Donald Mackenzie	Wilson, John (Durham, Mid)
Norton, Capt. Cecil William	Snowden, P.	Wilson, J. W. (Worcestersh, N.)
Nussey, Thomas Willans	Soames, Arthur Wellesley	Wilson, P. W. (St. Pancras, S.)
Nuttall, Harry	Soares, Ernest J.	Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)
O'Donnell, C. J. (Walworth)	Spicer, Sir Albert	Winfrey, R.
O'Grady, J.	Stanger, H. Y.	Wodehouse, Lord
Parker, James (Halifax)	Stanley, Albert (Staffs, N. W.)	Wood, T. M'Kinnon
Partington, Oswald	Steadman, W. C.	Yoxall, James Henry
Paulton, James Mellor	Stewart, Halley (Greenock)
Pearce, Robert (Staffs., Leek)	Stewart-Smith, D. (Kendal)	TELLERS FOR THE AYES—Mr. Joseph Pease and Mr. Herbert Lewis.
Pearce, William (Limehouse)	Straus, B. S. (Mile End)
Pearson, W. H. M. (Suffolk, Eye)	Stuart, James (Sunderland)
Philipps, Col. Ivor (S'thampton)	Summerbell, T.
Philipps, Owen C. (Pembroke)	Taylor, John W. (Durham)
NOES.
Acland-Hood, Rt Hn Sir Alex. F.	Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor)	Fardell, Sir T. George
Anson, Sir William Reynell	Cecil, Lord John P. Joicey-	Fell, Arthur
Aubrey-Fletcher, Rt. Hn. Sir H.	Cecil, Lord R. (Marylebone, E.)	Fletcher, J. S.
Baldwin, Stanley	Chamberlain, Rt. Hn. J. A. (Worc	Gardner, Ernest
Banbury, Sir Frederick George	Clive, Percy Archer	Gibbs, G. A. (Bristol, West)
Banner, John S. Harmood-	Cochrane, Hon. Thos. H. A. E.	Goulding, Edward Alfred
Barnard, E. B.	Collings, Rt. Hn. J. (Birmingh'm	Gretton, John
Beach, Hn. Michael Hugh Hicks	Courthope, G. Loyd	Guinness, Hn. R. (Haggerston
Beckett, Hon. Gervase	Craik, Sir Henry	Guinness, W. E. (Bury S. Edm.
Bignold, Sir Arthur	Cross, Alexander	Haddock, George B.
Bowles, G. Stewart	Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-	Hamilton, Marquess of
Butcher, Samuel Henry	Duckworth, Sir James	Hardy, Laurence (Kent, Ashford
Carlile, E. Hildred	Duncan, Robert (Lanark, Govan	Harris, Frederick Leverton
Carson, Rt. Hon. Sir Edw. H.	Faber, George Denison (York)	Harrison-Broadley, H. B.
Cave, George	Faber, Capt. W. V. (Hants, W.)	Hill, Sir Clement

Hills, J. W.	Nicholson, Wm. G. (Petersfield)	Staveley-Hill, Henry (Staff'sh.)
Hope, James Fitzalan (Sheffield)	Nield, Herbert	Strauss, E. A. (Abingdon)
Houston, Robert Paterson	Nolan, Joseph	Talbot, Rt. Hn. J. G. (Oxf'd Univ)
Kennaway, Rt. Hn. Sir John H.	Pease, Herbert Pike (Darlington)	Thomson, W. Mitchell- (Lanark)
Kerry, Earl of	Percy, Earl	Thornton, Percy M.
Keswick, William	Powell, Sir Francis Sharp	Walker, Col. W. H. (Lancashire)
King, Sir Henry Seymour (Hull)	Ratcliff, Major R. F.	Warde, Col. C. E. (Kent, Mid)
Lambton, Hon. Frederick Wm.	Rawlinson, John Frederick Peel	Whitbread, Howard
Lane-Fox, G. R.	Remnant, James Farquharson	Willoughby de Eresby, Lord
Law, Andrew Bonar (Dulwich)	Roberts, S. (Sheffield, Ecclesall)	Wilson, A. Stanley (York, E. R.)
Lee, Arthur H. (Hants, Fareham)	Rutherford, W. W. (Liverpool)	Winterton, Earl
Lockwood, Rt. Hn. Lt.-Col. A. R.	Salter, Arthur Clavell	Wortley, Rt. Hn. C. B. Stuart-
Long, Col. Charles W. (Evesham)	Sandys, Lieut.-Col. Thos. Myles	Young, Samuel
Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. Alfred	Scott, Sir S. (Marylebone, W.)	Younger, George
Marks, H. H. (Kent)	Smith, Abel H. (Hertford, East)
Mason, James F. (Windsor)	Smith, Hon. W. F. D. (Strand)	TELLERS FOR THE NOES—Viscount Valentia and Mr. Forster.
Meysey-Thompson, E. C.	Stanier, Beville
Morrison-Bell, Captain	Starkey, John R.

Question put, and agreed to.

Amendments proposed— In page 11, lines 36 to 38, to leave out the words 'to the renewal and transfer of licences under the Licensing Acts, 1828 to 1906, and this Act,' and to insert the words 'licensing justices except their powers as to the confirmation of new licences.' In page 12, line 20, at end, to insert the words 'In the absence from any cause of the chairman of the Court from any meeting of the Court, the members of the Court present shall choose one of their number to act as chairman.' In page 12, line 33, at end, to insert the words '(6) The licensing appeal authority may make rules as to the costs to be incurred in any proceedings for confirmation of new licences, and as to the person by whom those costs are to be paid.' In page 12, line 40, after the word 'last,' to insert the word 'published.'"—(Sir S. Evans.)

Amendments agreed to.

And, it being after Eleven of the Clock, further consideration of the Bill, as amended, stood adjourned.

Bill, as amended, to be further considered To-morrow.