§ MR. STUART WORTLEY (Sheffield, Hallam)To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether any statistics are available of the number of licences in existence in the United Kingdom year by year from any period anterior to the Licensing Act of 1872; if not, what is the earliest date from which such figures could be given; and whether he would consent to a Return being ordered of the number of licences in each year for such period, distinguishing the number of on-licences from the number of off-licences, and exhibiting separately the proportion of licences in each class to every 10,000 of population, as well as the like numbers and proportion for each of the three Kingdoms separately.
(Answered by Mr. Secretary Gladstone.) If the right hon. Gentleman desires statistics of licensed premises similar to those which are now issued annually from my Department, I have to say that, after causing the existing Parliamentary Papers on the subject for England and Wales to be examined, I am afraid that 711 they, though numerous from the year 1873 onwards, as will be seen from the indexes, are of such a nature that even if it were possible within a reasonable time to condense them into a single Return, the result would not be sufficiently complete and trustworthy to be of any value. The right hon. Gentleman is no doubt aware that the Board of Inland Revenue prepared for the Royal Commission on Licensing Laws a statement of licences issued by them from the year 1829 onwards, see page 426 and onwards of Volume 1 of the Minutes of Evidence, published by that Commission, and that since the date of that statement the Board's annual Reports give similar figures. For various reasons, which the right hon. Gentleman will understand, these figures of Excise licences are not strictly comparable with the figures of licensed premises, and I doubt whether it would serve his purpose to reissue them in a special Return, giving the proportions borne by the various classes of Excise licences to population.