§ MR. MCARTHUR (Liverpool, Kirkdale)To ask the President of the Board of Trade why he has sanctioned the erection of West Usk gas buoy on the offer of Newport port authority to contribute only one-third of the cost, seeing that it is an admitted principle that local lights should be paid for by the local authority, and it had previously been agreed by the Board of Trade, Trinity House, and the Advisory Committee that the light in question was a local one.
(Answered by Mr. Churchill.) Under the Merchant Shipping Acts the Trinity House are (subject to the powers or rights of local lighthouse authorities) responsible for the superintendence and management of all lights throughout England and Wales and the adjacent seas and islands. It is sometimes a matter of considerable difficulty to draw the line between expenditure on light that should properly fall on the General Lighthouse Fund and that which should fall on local lightning authorities. Both the Board of Trade and Trinity House objected to the proposal to defray the whole of the proposed expenditure on replacing the West Usk buoy by 44 a lighted buoy out of the General Lighthouse Fund, on the ground that the buoy is within the limits of the jurisdiction of the Newport port authority and that the expenditure would be for the benefit only of ships trading to and from that port. As, however, the Trinity House already perform lighting duties within this district and maintain the West Usk unlighted buoy, which it is now proposed to replace, I considered that the General Lighthouse Fund and the port authority might properly share the expenditure, and eventually an arrangement was arrived at under which one-third of the cost is to be repaid by the port authority. The Advisory Committee consented to waive their objection to this arrangement, without prejudice to their views on the general principle.