Commons Sitting of 10 August 1909

Preamble
Mr. SPEAKER took the chair at a Quarter before Three of the clock.

PRIVATE BUSINESS.
North-Eastern Railway Bill [Lords].—As amended, to be considered to-morrow.
Risca Urban District Council Bill [Lords],
Torquay and Paignton Tramways Bill [Lords],
As amended, considered; to be read the third time.
Dunoon Burgh Bill [Lords] (by Order),—Ordered, That, in the case of the Dunoon Burgh Bill [Lords], the Order of the House [8th March] that all Private Bills promoted by municipal and other local authorities by which it is proposed to create powers relating to police, sanitary, or other local government regulations in conflict with, deviation from, or excess of the provisions of the general law shall be committed to the Local Legislation Committee, be suspended.
Ordered, That the Bill be referred to the Committee on Unopposed Bills.—[The, Chairman of Ways and Means.]

ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS.

  Kertch (Crimea) Robbery.
  Major ANSTRUTHER-GRAYasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he has now received the full report called for on or about 8th May last with regard to the robbery and maltreatment of British-Indian subjects at Kertch, Crimea; and whether His Majesty's Government are demanding compensation to be made to the victims of the outrage?
  The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Mr. T. McKinnon Wood): The supposed assailants have been arrested, and the case has been handed over to an examining magistrate for preliminary examination, but no report has yet been received as to the result of the inquiry. The case would appear to be one of ordinary assault and robbery, and there are no grounds for demanding compensation from the Russian Government.
  Major ANSTRUTHER-GRAY: Is the hon. Member aware that this occurred a month ago, and will he endeavour to accelerate some report on the matter?
  Mr. McKINNON WOOD: A month ago does not appear to be a very long period.

  Heroism of the late Dr. Lalcaca.
  Mr. KEIR HARDIEasked the Under-Secretary of State for India whether it is intended by the Government to in any way recognise the heroism of the late Dr. Lalcaca, who sacrificed his life in an effort to save that of Sir W. Curzon Wyllie?
  The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for INDIA (The Master of Elibank): I was glad to have an opportunity last Thursday of expressing on behalf of the Government their deep appreciation of Dr. Lalcaca's heroic action; and I can only repeat that they share in the fullest degree the feeling which is universal, in this House and outside of it. The Secretary of State has considered whether the particular circumstances of the case are such that appreciation could appropriately be marked by a money grant; but, learning from the Government of India that Dr. Lalcaca was unmarried, and that his surviving relatives are well-to-do, he feels that it is not necessary to take action in that direction.
  Sir GILBERT PARKER: Are we to understand that the Government have communicated with the relatives expressing appreciation on the part of the Government and people of this country?
  The MASTER of ELIBANK: I am not able to say whether any specific representation has been made. In the announcement I made in this House I conveyed hon. Members' views as to the case.

  Wireless Telegraphy in India.
  Mr. REESasked whether the Government of India contemplates the installation of a system of wireless telegraphy for official or private or for official and private use?
  The MASTER of ELIBANK: So far only a few stations for wireless telegraphy have been opened in India, and it is not known what further extensions of the system are contemplated. It is understood that these stations are available for public use as, well as for official purposes.
  Mr. REES: May I inquire whether any extensions are contemplated in view of the great use an installation might have in conceivable circumstances?
  The MASTER of ELIBANK: Yes, Sir.

  Parsee Joint Magistrate (Case of Mr. Kershasp).
  Mr. REESasked the Under-Secretary for India whether Mr. Kershasp, I.C.S., the Parsee joint magistrate and sub-collector, who was recently reduced in official rank by the Government of Madras for his conduct in connection with a riot in his division, was unable on the occasion of the riot to address the mob in Telugu, the language of the district, and had to make use of the sub-magistrate as an interpreter; and, if so, whether he will cause inquiries to be made into the matter in view of the abandonment of the practice of putting natives of India or of Britain in charge of divisions with the chief language of which they do not possess a proper colloquial knowledge?
  The MASTER of ELIBANK: According to the information received by the Secretary of State the answer to the first question is in the affirmative. The Secretary of State has no doubt that in posting officers due weight is given so far as may be to language qualifications, but he will bring this question and answer to the notice of the Government of India.

  Cholera Deaths, Calcutta.
  Mr. REESasked whether the Government of Bengal has instituted inquiries into the 10 deaths reported of cholera in the Presidency European Hospital, Calcutta; whether it has determined whether the deaths are due to cholera, ptomaine poisoning, or other causes; and, if such inquiries have not been instituted, will the Government have them made?
  The MASTER of ELIBANK: An inquiry has been instituted and is still pending. The report of Mr. Haffkine, Government bacteriologist, is awaited.

  Labour Conditions, New Hebrides.
  Major ANSTRUTHER-GRAYasked the Secretary for the Colonies whether he can now state whether the conditions of labour in the New Hebrides affecting women and children are identical for French and British subjects?
  The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for the COLONIES (Colonel Seely): No,
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  Sir. The French Regulations as they appear in the Instructions printed on pages 18–22 of Cd. 3876 of 1908, whereas only men can be recruited for service with British subjects, with the exception that women may be engaged as domestic servants under the provisions of Article LV. (1) of the Convention.
  Sir GILBERT PARKER: Do I understand the hon. Gentleman to say that the Regulation issued by the French Government did not include a prohibition of the recruiting of women and girls outside the New Hebrides, except accompanied by the heads of their families?
  Colonel SEELY: If the hon. Gentleman will put down a question as to the precise conditions under which recruiting for French subjects is carried on, I will give him an answer. I could not say off-hand whether he is accurate as to the details.
  Sir G. PARKER: Did not the hon. Gentleman convey in the answer he has given that women can be recruited for labour outside the New Hebrides?
  Colonel SEELY: I have answered the question put to me. The Regulations remain as they were as laid down in 1908. If the hon. Member will put down a question I will answer it, or perhaps he will look at the Regulations, as I have done an hour or two ago. It would be unwise of me to state from memory.

  Royal Marines (Reserve List of Colonels).
  Sir THOMAS BRAMSDONasked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether he is aware that the former reserve list of colonels, Royal Marines, was abolished by an Order in Council in order to expedite the promotion of junior officers, and for the purpose of causing an even flow of promotion throughout the corps of Royal Marines; whether he is also aware that at the present time there is a stagnation in the promotion of lieutenant-colonels, majors, and captains of the Royal Marine Artillery; and whether the proposed re-establishment of a reserve list of colonels will apply to that portion of the corps?
  The FIRST LORD of the ADMIRALTY (Mr. McKENNA): Under the old arrangement, which was abolished in 1878, a colonel on the reserved list was eligible for promotion to fill a vacancy on the general officers' list, which obviously retarded the promotion of officers on the active list. Under the new arrangement, colonels on

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  the reserve list will not be eligible for promotion to any vacancy on the general officers' list. There will be a reserved colonels' list for both branches of the corps.
  Sir T. BRAMSDON: Are we to understand that the fact of this reserve list will not retard in any way the promotion of any of the active officers of either branch of our Marine forces?
  Mr. McKENNA: There is a further question later on the subject.
  Sir T. BRAMSDON: It does not bear on the question.
  Mr. McKENNA: It is in the name of another hon. Member. I will refer to it later.
  Sir THOMAS BRAMSDONasked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether there is any officer of the Royal Marine Light Infantry other than Colonel Onslow who, during the next four years, will be benefited by the proposed re-establishment of the reserved list of colonels; and, if so, will he say who?
  Mr. McKENNA: I am unaware that any particular officer will be benefited by the change, which is made for the advantage of the corps as a whole.
  Sir THOMAS BRAMSDONasked whether the pay of the proposed reserved colonels, Royal Marines, would be at the same rate of £600 a year as when the rank formerly existed, or was it proposed to in-increase that rate; and, if so, by how much?
  Mr. McKENNA: There is no proposal to increase the rate.
  Captain FABERasked the First Lord of the Admiralty if he would state what necessity arose for the proposed re-establishment of a list of reserved colonels, Royal Marines, seeing that the existing establishment of senior officers was sufficient for all the requirements of the corps, and that the proposed list of reserved colonels would have no duties to perform; and whether the appointment of a reserved colonel to the post of Deputy-Adjutant-General would retard the promotion of other officers junior to him?
  Mr. McKENNA: The post of Deputy-Adjutant-General is filled by selection, and it is obviously desirable that the selection should be as wide as possible in the in-
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  terests of the service. The re-establishment of the reserve list of colonels will enable colonels who complete the period of their command as Colonel Commandant before attaining the age for compulsory retirement to remain eligible for selection for the appointment of Deputy-Adjutant-General. The selection of an officer from this list will only retard the promotion of other junior officers to this extent, that there will not be any promotion to the rank of colonel which there is when a colonel on the active list is selected for the post of Deputy-Adjutant-General; but exactly the same thing would happen if the appointment of the Deputy-Adjutant-General were extended after he had served for the full period of five years, or if the Deputy-Adjutant-General is succeeded by another general officer of the same branch of the corps—and it is to be observed that if the appointment is filled by an officer from the other branch of the corps the branch of the vacating Deputy-Adjutant-General suffers a retardation under existing rules.
  Sir T. BRAMSDON: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether it is a fact that the only person at present on that list is Colonel Onslow, and whether the proposed establishment of the reserve list of colonels will not benefit that officer?
  Mr. McKENNA: No. I have already stated that there is no certainty that the establishment of the reserve list will benefit anybody on that list, but it does give the Admiralty a wider selection than it now has.
  Sir T. BRAMSDON: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there is an impression throughout the Royal Marines that this reserve list has been established for the benefit of one particular individual?
  Mr. McKENNA: No. I am very well aware that there is no such impression throughout the Service. On the contrary, I have had representations made to me denying that any such view is held in the service at the present time.

  Marine Officers (Retirement).
  Captain FABERasked the First Lord of the Admiralty if he would state whether the existing Order in Council governing the retirement of Marine officers lays down that colonels commandant are to be compulsorily retired at the age of 60 or on the expiration of command; whether Colonel-

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  Commandant Onslow's command expired on 10th April, 1909; whether he was then or had since been compulsorily retired; and, if not, under what authority the Board of Admiralty had overridden the Order in Council or suspended its operation in this case?
  Mr. McKENNA: In the first part of the question the hon. Member correctly states a provision of the Order in Council till lately in force, and now superseded. The answer to the second part of the question is in the affirmative. As to the third part, Colonel Onslow has been relieved in his command, but has not been placed on the retired list. With regard to the last part, the Admiralty suspended action because power was being obtained by Order in Council to place Colonel Onslow on the reserved list of colonels. The Order having now been made by His Majesty in Council, this officer will be placed on the reserved list forthwith.
  Captain FABER: Is Colonel Onslow the only officer whose term has expired who has not been put on the retired list?
  Mr. McKENNA: Yes; but the Order in Council has only just been passed. The list will not be confined to Colonel Onslow.

  Boy Bluejackets (Private Company).
  Mr. FENWICKasked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether his attention had been drawn to the fact that a detachment of men from H.M.S. "Calliope," with their band, and trailing a gun, took part in a political demonstration at Holeyns Hall, Wylam, on Saturday, 31st July; if he could state whether the band and gun referred to belonged to the Volunteer Naval Brigade or the ordinary bluejackets, and the name of the officer who gave permission for the use of the gun; whether such proceedings constituted a breach of the King's Regulations; and, if so, what steps he proposed to take in order to put a stop to such practices?
  Mr. McKENNA: There is no truth in the allegation of the newspaper of which the hon. Member has sent me a copy, and on which I understand his question is based. I am told that a private company of boy bluejackets, organised by philanthropic people in Newcastle at their own expense, engaged in some sports in a field some hundreds of yards from the place where a political meeting was held. The company used no Government property, and is quite
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  unrecognised by the Admiralty. I am informed, however, that none of the party went near the political meeting or took the slightest interest in it.
  Mr. FENWICK: As there is a great discrepancy between the information supplied to the right hon. Gentleman and that supplied to myself, from both public and private sources, will the First Lord make further inquiry, with a view to a future question which I shall address to him?
  Mr. McKENNA: I have twice made inquiry on the point, and I shall be happy to show my hon. Friend the answers which I have had, and which, I am sure, will convince him, as they have convinced me, that nobody in or connected with the Navy had anything to do with this particular garden party.

  New Battleships (Contractor's Expenditure).
  Mr. PIKE PEASE (on behalf of Mr. Staveley-Hill)asked what was the estimate of the expenditure likely to be incurred by the contractors in the course of the next eight months in respect of the guns and mountings for the four new battleships to be laid down on 1st April; and what was the amount of expenditure already incurred by the contractors in preliminary preparations pursuant to the instructions given by the Government in the early part of this year?
  Mr. McKENNA: The expenditure likely to be incurred this financial year on the guns and gun machinery for these four additional battleships cannot at present be estimated, as it will entirely depend on the arrangements the firms make to advance the manufacture of these particular guns and gun machinery. No information of the expenditure already incurred by the contractors referred to in the latter part of the question has been communicated by the firms.

  Captain Archibald Moore (Promotion).
  Captain FABERasked the First Lord of the Admiralty if he would state for what reason Captain Archibald Moore, Chief of the Staff to Sir W. May, had been given the rank of first-class commodore; how the pay and allowances of that officer compared with those of his former positions as Naval assistant to the First Sea Lord or Captain and Chief of the Staff; whether there was any, and, if so, what precedent for such an appointment; whether there were any captains in the Home or Atlantic

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  Fleets, or Home Fleet Reserve, senior to Commodore Moore; and whether those captains were now subordinate to this officer?
  Mr. McKENNA: The appointment of a Captain of the Fleet in the Home Fleet has been made with the object of relieving the Commander-in-Chief of some of the more routine duties of his office. The rates of pay and allowances are: Captain of the Fleet, £1,100 a year; Chief of Staff, £946 a year; Naval Assistant to the First Sea Lord, £950 a year. There are several precedents; the last Captain of the Fleet was appointed to the Mediterranean Fleet in 1871. There are two captains in the Home Fleet, and two in the Atlantic Fleet senior to Commodore Moore, whose position in regard to them is regulated by paragraph 2 of Article 194 of the King's Regulations. The hon. Member will find full information on this subject in Articles 228, 517, and 519, of the King's Regulations and Admiralty Instructions.
  Captain FABER: Do I understand that there has been no case of this sort since 1871?
  Mr. McKENNA: That is the last.

  Engineer Officers (Status).
  Sir THOMAS BRAMSDONasked the First Lord of the Admiralty if he was aware of the dissatisfaction amongst the engineer officers of the Royal Navy in reference to their status; and whether their Lordships intend to grant to such engineer officers the military position and powers of control which are recognised as necessary for the engineer officers entered under the new scheme who are now at sea as midshipmen?
  Mr. McKENNA: I have nothing at present to add to the reply given to my hon. Friend in answer to a similar question on 1st December last.
  Sir T. BRAMSDON: Has this subject been brought under the consideration of their Lordships, as was promised by Lord Lochee in the Debate on the Navy Estimates last year?
  Mr. McKENNA: Yes. We have discussed this subject during my tenure of office.
  Sir T. BRAMSDON: When may we hope to have the result of their Lordships' consideration?
  Mr. McKENNA: I cannot specify any particular date. It is a matter of the greatest difficulty, but we are not overlooking it.
  Sir T. BRAMSDON: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the subject is affecting the discipline of the Navy?
  Mr. McKENNA: I have no information showing that the discipline of the Navy has been affected in the slightest degree.
  Sir T. BRAMSDON: Will the right hon. Gentleman inquire?
  Mr. McKENNA: Certainly.

  Export of Old Horses.
  Captain FABERasked the hon. Member for South Somerset, as representing the President of the Board of Agriculture, if he would state what steps, if any, foreign Governments had taken relative to the prevention of cruelty in the export of old horses from this country to foreign shores?
  The TREASURER of the HOUSEHOLD (Sir Edward Strachey): The export trade in old horses abroad from this country is practically confined to Holland and Belgium. The Regulations in force in the former country require generally that horses landed there for slaughter are to be moved under veterinary and police supervision to slaughter-houses at the port, or, in specially authorised cases, elsewhere, and there slaughtered within eight days of arrival. The Regulations in Belgium require the veterinary examination of all horses and the marking of those intended for food, which must be slaughtered at authorised slaughter-houses within eight days of arrival.
  Sir GILBERT PARKER: Have the Government taken into consideration the advisability of imposing a heavy export tax on such exportations?
  Mr. SPEAKER: The hon. Member must give notice of that question.

  Small Holdings (Kent).
  Mr. JAMES PARKER (on behalf of Mr. George Roberts)asked the hon. Member for South Somerset, as representing the President of the Board of Agriculture, whether the Kent County Council had yet acquired Crockham Hill dairy farm under the Small Holdings and Allotments Act; whether suitable cottages would be provided in connection therewith; and if he

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  could state that none of the present occupiers of cottages on the land would be deprived of possession under the scheme?
  Sir E. STRACHEY: The county council are taking steps to acquire compulsorily a part of the farm mentioned or the whole of it if approved applicants are forthcoming. It is not proposed to erect cottages on the land, but to adapt the existing ones, possession of which must be obtained by the county council if the requirements of the applicants are to be met.
  Mr. PARKER (on behalf of Mr. George Roberts)asked the hon. Member for South Somerset, as representing the President of the Board of Agriculture, if he was aware that applications had been made to the Kent County Council for 300 acres of land by approved persons, being members of the Pembury Land Club; that the matter was brought to the notice of the Board in November last; and if he could state whether action was being taken to meet this demand, and, if so, to what extent?
  Sir E. STRACHEY: The approved demand in Pembury is for 210 acres, and endeavours have been made to acquire two farms in the neighbourhood, but the negotiations have fallen through. The county council will continue their endeavours to satisfy the demand.
  Captain CRAIG: Would it not be possible to get some suitable land in the South and West of Ireland for this purpose?
  Mr. PARKER (on behalf of Mr. George Roberts)asked the hon. Member for South Somerset, as representing the President of the Board of Agriculture, what steps the Kent County Council had taken to provide land in response to the applications made by members of the Tonbridge Land Club; if he was aware that the land agent to the county council had referred one of the applicants direct to a landowner; and, as such action deterred suitable persons from pursuing their applications, whether the acquisition of the necessary land could be facilitated in the proper course?
  Sir E. STRACHEY: The county council are endeavouring to acquire land to satisfy the demand of the Tonbridge applicants, but they have not as yet been successful in doing so. The owners of three farms in the neighbourhood offered to let land direct to suitable tenants, and some of the applicants were so informed. The Board see no objection to small holdings being let direct to the applicant by the land-
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  owner if the applicant is a willing party to the arrangement. I may add that in Kent 680 acres have been supplied in this manner.
  Mr. BRIDGEMAN: Is it not the duty of the county council to facilitate the dealings between the owner and the applicant?
  Sir E. STRACHEY: It is the duty of the council to provide the applicant with the best possible land and under the best conditions.
  Mr. BRIDGEMAN: Whether under the Act or not?

  Teachers' Register.
  Mr. BRIDGEMANasked the President of the Board of Education if any scheme for the formation of a teachers' register is being considered by the Board of Education; and, if not, whether the Board will themselves formulate a scheme?
  The PRESIDENT of the BOARD of EDUCATION (Mr. Runciman): Schemes for the composition and formation of a Teachers' Registration Council have been submitted to the Board by representatives of certain associations of teachers, and have for some time been under consideration. It has since transpired on the publication of those proposals that a considerable number of persons and bodies in the teaching profession regard them as quite inadequate for the constitution of a council representative of the teaching profession. I understand that a comprehensive conference of various branches of the teaching profession is to be convened in the early autumn to consider alternative proposals, and I think the Board of Education would be well advised to await the result of their deliberations, and to consider any recommendations which they have to make.
  Mr. STANIER: Why was the last teachers' register abandoned?
  Mr. RUNCIMAN: That is a matter of history. I had no control over the Department then.

  Sheffield Union Workhouse.
  Mr. POINTERasked the President of the Local Government Board whether he has any official information showing that in the Sheffield Union Workhouse at Firvale, in consequence of inmates eating food intended for the pigs, the swill tubs are now kept locked to prevent a repetition of the occurrence; and, if so, what action does he intend to take?
  The PRESIDENT of the LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. Burns): No, Sir; I have no such information. On the contrary, I am informed that there is no foundation whatever for the suggestion referred to in the question.
  Mr. POINTER: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he is aware that these statements have been repeated many times over in the local Press of all political persuasions, and that at a meeting of the unemployed the other day a man gave corroborative evidence of his own knowledge that he could vouch that these were facts? In view of this statement will the right hon. Gentleman cause inquiry to be made?
  Mr. BURNS: I have caused inquiry to be made, and I am satisfied that the statement is not true. The fact that this statement appeared in some newspapers is an additional reason for disbelieving it.
  Mr. POINTER: If corroborative evidence is given from other sources, is that a further reason for disbelieving it?
  Mr. BURNS: I shall be pleased to receive any information the hon. Member may send.
  Mr. POINTERasked the President of the Local Government Board whether his attention has been called to the number of the inmates of the Sheffield union workhouse at Firvale who have been sent to prison during recent months, namely, 66 in May, 69 in June, and nine during the first six days of July; and whether, in view of the statement of the master of the union that the inmates preferred prison to the workhouse, he will cause an inquiry to be made into the circumstances causing such a number of punishments?
  Mr. BURNS: I have made inquiry and find that the correct number of the cases taken before the justices is as follows: May, 47; June, 63, and the first six days of July, 8. It appears that in May, owing to the large number of applicants for relief on test labour, 27 single able-bodied men, who had been thus relieved, were given orders for the workhouse. The master of the workhouse has informed the guardians that the reason for the increase in the number of men brought before the justices is that the single able-bodied men above referred to have resented the change, and have repeatedly been insubordinate in consequence.
  Mr. POINTER: May I point out to the right hon. Gentleman that single able-
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  bodied men are mentioned in his reply, and my information goes to show that most of them were married men? [Cries of "Order."]
  Mr. SPEAKER: The hon. Member is not entitled to give information—only to seek it.
  Mr. BURNS: In answer to that portion of the supplementary question that is, I believe, in order, my information is that they were nearly all able-bodied men. The charges against them were:—May: Absconding with union clothing, 5; destroying clothing, 11; refusing to work, 30; abusive language, 1–47. In June the figures under the four heads were 4, 12, 43, and 3, and, in addition, seeking admission when drunk, 1–63. Most were able-bodied.

  Workhouse Unions (Daily Diet Books).
  Mr. BRIDGEMANasked the President of the Local Government Board if his attention has been called to the cost of daily diet books as supplied to the unions, and if he will consider the possibility of supplying them at a less cost than £2 16s. each?
  Mr. BURNS: I may refer to the reply which I gave on 27th July to a similar question put to me by my hon. Friend the Member for the Montgomery District. As I then stated, I am not aware of the precise cost of the book as prepared for any particular board of guardians. This would be settled between the guardians and the bookseller. It is not fixed by me, and I do not think I can take any action in the matter.
  Mr. BRIDGEMAN: Would it not be well if the Government had a printing and stationery office where they could supply these books?
  Mr. BURNS: The guardians, as a rule, accept the lowest tenders for the supply of this very elaborate, very important, and very costly book, and I have no reason to believe that they are paying more for this very elaborate book than they ought to do.
  Mr. BRIDGEMAN: Will the right hon. Gentleman exhibit this very valuable work in the tea-room some time?
  Mr. BURNS: I am very pleased to say that there are a large number of Members of this House who have been members of boards of guardians, and know the charac-

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  ter of this book; but I shall be delighted to bring this bulky tome over from the Local Government Board.

  Alleged Shooting, County Cavan.
  Captain CRAIGasked the Chief Secretary for Ireland whether he is aware that an emergency man, named Thomas Walker, was fired at from behind a hedge and shot in the face and chest as he was returning from a fair in the county Cavan on the 29th July; and whether the police have since succeeded in arresting the murderous assailant or assailants; and what steps they have taken to protect him against further outrages of a like nature?
  The ATTORNEY-GENERAL for IRELAND (Mr. Cherry): I have seen a newspaper report to this effect, but the constabulary authorities inform me that there is no truth in it. Thomas Walker is not an emergency man, and has not been fired at. He received a wound in the face, which he told the police was caused by a fall. It is believed by the police that he and some others were shooting rabbits when the accident occurred.

  Colchester Garrison (Suicides).
  Mr. WILLIAM THORNEasked the Secretary of State for War if he will state the result of the inquiries into the cause of the four suicides at Colchester during the months of June and July, 1909?
  Mr. H. C. LEAasked the Secretary of State for War whether his attention has been drawn to the evidence given at the inquest held last Monday at Colchester Garrison Hospital on the death of a private soldier in the Bedford Regiment, who committed suicide as a result of brooding over his sentence of punishment picquet by his commanding officer, although he had himself committed no offence; whether the punishment of a whole company on account of one man in that company getting drunk is authorised by military regulations; and, if not, why has the officer commanding the Bedford Regiment been allowed to pursue this system of punishment?
  The FINANCIAL SECRETARY to the WAR OFFICE (Mr. F. D. Acland): I would like to point out, first, that my reply to the question put on the 29th ultimo referred to the two cases of suicide which occurred on the 24th ultimo, and that special inquiries have been made accordingly into those two cases only. As regards the
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  case of the colour-sergeant in the King's Royal Rifle Corps, no special circumstances affecting it have been brought to light by the inquiry. As regards the case in the Bedford Regiment, there is no reason to doubt that the cause of suicide was, as found by the jury, one of unsound mind. It has been ascertained that while serving in India the man had been struck on the head by natives, and had on two previous occasions threatened to commit suicide. There has lately been a slight outbreak of drunkenness in this battalion, to check which the commanding officer instituted a system of picquets from companies in proportion to the number of cases of drunkenness in the various companies. This practice has been stopped, as being contrary to Regulations. There is no reason to connect this man's suicide with any disciplinary action that may have been taken in the battalion, as he had not been warned for a picquet. I may observe that there was no question of his proficiency pay being affected by not being able to keep up with his battalion on parade. As regards the funeral, the brigadier-general considered it was expedient to avoid the publicity of a burial with military honours, but, in deference to the wishes of the officer commanding King's Royal Rifle Corps, withdrew his objection. The officer commanding Bedford Regiment considered that the matter was left to his discretion, and adhered to the brigadier-general's original instructions.
  Mr. W. THORNE: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the man belonging to the Bedfordshire Regiment bore an exceedingly good character, and had two medals and 17 years' service; why should he have been punished for the wrong done by another man?
  Mr. ACLAND: He was not punished; he had not been warned to go on picquet duty.
  Captain FABER: Is not the Bedford Regiment a sober regiment?
  Mr. ACLAND: The regiment has just come home from India, and these cases of drunkenness are far too frequent.
  Mr. THORNE: Has the hon. Gentleman read the evidence at the inquest and the remarks of the coroner?
  Mr. ACLAND: Yes; very carefully.

  Rural Telegraph Sub-Offices.
  Captain CRAIGasked the Postmaster-General whether he can state if the Parliamentary Committee's recommendations in favour of restricting the hours at rural telegraph sub-offices on bank holidays have been acted upon; if so, was effect given to them to the same extent in Ireland as in England; and can he state in how many rural telegraph sub-offices in England and Ireland respectively shorter hours were permitted the staff on the last bank holiday?
  The POSTMASTER-GENERAL (Mr. Sydney Buxton): I am trying to lessen as much as possible the work to be done on bank holidays at rural sub-offices, and I have laid down in general terms the lines to be followed so as to minimise inconvenience to the public. Applications are dealt with as they arise, and no distinction is made between English and Irish offices.
  Captain CRAIG: Will the right hon. Gentleman answer the last part of my question?
  Mr. BUXTON: The information would take some trouble to collect, and I do not see what public advantage would be served by giving it.

  Post Office Typists and Shorthand Writers.
  Mr. SNOWDENasked the Postmaster-General if he has received a petition, dated 22nd June, from the Association of Shorthand Writers and Typists, asking him to receive a deputation to lay before him complaints about the low scale of pay for typists and shorthand writers in the Pest Office; what reply has been sent; and does he propose to bring the Post Office rate of pay for this work up to the Treasury standard?
  Mr. BUXTON: The scales of Post Office typists are the same as those recommended by the Select Committee for telephonists, and in this way interchangeability is secured. There appears to be, however, some misapprehension in regard to the scale for shorthand writers and typists in the Post Office. The maximum for typists in the case of the Treasury is 26s., and in the case of the Post Office 28s. In addition, in the Post Office a shorthand writer and typist can at once receive an additional allowance of 3s. for shorthand, whereas under the Treasury scale shorthand writers and typists do not obtain anything extra for shorthand until they have attained the
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  maximum of the scale, when they go up by 2s. to 31s., and in any case not more than one-half of the total number of typists are to be so graded. As regards the minimum, nearly all the typists in the Post Office service enter at 20 or over. A typist entering the Post Office service at 20 would receive 19s. 6d., as against 20s. under the Treasury scale, but if qualified for the shorthand allowance she would receive an additional allowance of 3s., making 22s. 6d., an allowance which, as already stated, does not come into force in the case of the Treasury typists and shorthand writers until the maximum is reached. I am putting these facts before the Association in question, and will then consider any further communication they may desire to make to me on the subject.

  Ballintoy (Antrim) Sub-Postmastership.
  Mr. HUGH BARRIEasked the Postmaster-General whether he is aware that the person who has been appointed to the sub-postmastership of Ballintoy is the owner of a public-house, and that he proposes to conduct postal business on the licensed premises; whether it is contrary to the rules of the Post Office for officers of the Department to be connected directly or indirectly with the ownership or management of an inn or public-house; and will the newly appointed sub-postmaster be allowed to carry on the post office in licensed premises?
  Mr. HUGH BARRIEalso asked whether the daughter of the late sub-postmaster at Ballintoy, Miss Jane E. Donnelly, was the only candidate who fulfilled the Department's regulations, both as to lengthened service and suitable premises; whether, on her father's death, she was immediately put in charge of the office by the surveyor of the district, and satisfactorily conducted it for over five months; and will he state on what grounds she has been passed over in favour of a local publican without any postal experience?
  Mr. BUXTON: It is the general rule that officers of the Post Office should not be connected with the ownership or management of an inn or public-house. But it is occasionally necessary to make an exception to this rule in the case of a, sub-postmaster. The recently appointed sub-postmaster of Ballintoy, who is the proprietor of a good-class hotel, was selected because in all the circumstances of the case he was considered the most desirable of the three candidates for the position. Care has been

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  taken that persons approaching the post office shall not pass through, or near, the premises where drink is sold.
  Mr. BARRIE: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman what were the circumstances to which he referred in his answer?
  Mr. BUXTON: Unfortunately in this particular case a good deal of local feeling prevailed in favour of the different candidates, and it appeared to me, looking at the amount of local feeling, that to appoint either would not have been conducive to the public advantage or to the Post Office. In these circumstances, and there being only one other candidate, I felt bound to appoint him.
  Mr. WILLIAM MOORE: Has the right hon. Gentleman seen a report of a public meeting at which this transaction was condemned?
  Mr. BUXTON: Oh, yes, I saw the report.
  Mr. MOORE: As that opinion is general in the North of Ireland to those in possession of the facts, will the right hon. Gentleman grant a full inquiry by an impartial Commission into the circumstances which led to the present appointment?
  Mr. BUXTON: I do not see why people should be so solicitous for public inquiry into the appointment of a sub-postmaster. I went into the whole case, and as there was so much local feeling on both sides I concluded it would not be in the interests of the public service or of the Post Office to appoint either of the candidates. I regret this feeling should have been aroused, and I regret to have had to appoint the third candidate with the disqualification of licensed premises. But the whole case of this sub-postmaster is a tempest in a teapot.
  Mr. BARRIE: Is it not the case that the right hon. Gentleman originally appointed a candidate not mentioned to-day, and found later that the person was not qualified, and that he has now made a second appointment, passing over the only person who had 18 years' previous experience?
  Mr. BUXTON: The first suggestion was that another postmistress should be appointed. She was not really appointed. Then this local friction arose.
  Mr. LEIF JONES: Is there a separate entrance to the post office, so that people need not pass through the public-house?
  Mr. BUXTON: I must have notice of that question.
  Mr. JOHN CULLINAN: Is the person who has been appointed a Unionist?
  Mr. BUXTON: I do not know.

  Brewers and Beer Tax.
  Captain FABER: I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade a question, of which I have given him private notice, whether in view of the fact that he has stated that if beer went up in price it was not because the working classes were taxed by the Government, but because they were swindled by the brewer; would the right hon. Gentleman give the name of the brewer with a view to his prosecution?
  Mr. CHURCHILL: I take full responsibility for the statement to which the hon. Member refers. I see no reason to amplify it, and still less to modify it, in any respect. I am much obliged to the hon. Member for securing it a wider publicity.
  Captain FABER: Would the right hon. Gentleman be afraid to state the name of the brewer outside this House?
  Mr. CHURCHILL: I think that is a very offensive question.
  Mr. W. W. ASHLEY: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman if he thinks it consistent with his position as a Minister of the Crown to make charges which he does not substantiate?
  Mr. CHURCHILL: The facts justifying the general statement I made are obvious and apparent to everybody.

WOMEN'S FREEDOM LEAGUE.
Mr. KEIR HARDIE: I desire to ask you, Mr. Speaker, whether you are aware that women who formed a deputation outside the House of Commons have been debarred from entering St. Stephen's Hall even when accompanied by a Member of this House; by whose authority they have been so prohibited, and whether you can state the reasons which justify that prohibition?
Mr. SPEAKER: I understand that certain ladies wished to obtain admission to the House, accompanied by the hon. Member himself, yesterday. These ladies, I understand, form part of the deputation from the Women's Freedom League. That is the league which on more than one occa-

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sion—two or three occasions, I think—have disturbed the proceedings of the House during the last three years, and, therefore, acting in accordance with the Sessional Order of the House against disturbances in the passages leading to the House, the police, by my direction, have refused them admission.
Mr. KEIR HARDIE: I was not aware of that until I endeavoured to introduce the ladies yesterday. May I ask whether this prohibition applies only to those ladies who are on picket duty, or whether it applies to them all?
Mr. SPEAKER: I really know nothing about picket duty. I know that certain ladies who by their dress show that they are members of a particular league hold themselves out as being a deputation who wish to come into the House for purposes of their own. I know that certainly on former occasions this league has disturbed the proceedings of the House, destroyed some of the furniture of the House, and openly violated the Sessional Order of the House. Under these circumstances, there is no other course open for me except to forbid them coming into the House.
Mr. KEIR HARDIE: May I ask whether the fact of the ladies being brought into the precincts of the House by a Member does not remove your prohibition? I understand that on the occasions to which Mr. Speaker has referred the ladies came in alone and unattended. Is it to be understood that no member of that organisation is to be admitted to the precincts of the House even when accompanied by a Member?
Mr. SPEAKER: Unfortunately, hon. Members are not always able to restrain the ladies.
Mr. W. THORNE: Is there no possibility of giving them a chance of reforming?

FINANCE BILL.
Mr. A. J. BALFOUR: I understand that neither the Prime Minister nor the Chancellor of the Exchequer is able to be present to-day. In these circumstances may I ask whoever is in charge of the business a question with regard to the Finance Bill? The Chancellor of the Exchequer indicated yesterday that he proposed to put down Amendments dealing with valuation. Those Amendments are not on the Paper, and I wish to know when they will be
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placed on the Paper. Another question of even greater importance is that relating to the Amendments to Clause 12. Do the Government intend any substantial modification of Clause 12, and when shall we see those Amendments? As the House is aware, great inconvenience arises from hon. Members not knowing what these Amendments are, in consequence of changes made at the last moment. It would be a great convenience if, when the Government have made up their minds in regard to a change of policy they will in future give the House full notice.
The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the TREASURY (Mr. Joseph A. Pease): Perhaps, in the unavoidable absence of the Prime Minister, I may be allowed to answer the right hon. Gentleman's question. In regard to Clause 12, there is an Amendment already on the Paper indicating the view of the Government, and, therefore, I do not need to trouble the House further with that matter. With regard to the other question which the right hon. Gentleman has addressed to me, I may say that to-morrow the Prime Minister proposes to place on the Paper as the First Order the Finance (Expenses) Consolidated Fund (Committee thereupon), which appears as the Second Order on to-day's Paper. That will enable the Prime Minister to make a statement with regard to the valuation proposals of the Government to-morrow.
Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: Is the right hon. Gentleman correct in saying that there is an Amendment to Clause 12 already on the Paper?
Mr. JOSEPH PEASE: Yes, there is an Amendment on the Paper proposing to omit Clause 12. An alternative proposal to that Clause has been handed in to the Chairman to-day, and it will appear on the Paper to-morrow.
Mr. BALFOUR: Will the Government give the House an undertaking that we shall not be asked.to discuss the new Clause 12 on the day on which it is put for the first time before the Committee?
Mr. JOSEPH PEASE: Perhaps I may be allowed to remind the right hon. Gentleman that it is usual for new clauses to come at the end. There are 16 pages of Amendments to Clause 11 which we propose to proceed with to-day. After securing the Finance Consolidated Fund Resolution to-morrow we shall proceed with

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Clause 11, and I hope we may be able to secure that clause to-morrow. At any rate, we shall not approach Clause 12 until Thursday.
Mr. JAMES HOPE: Why was the Government Amendment to omit Clause 12 not circulated with the Votes before?
Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: Will the new Clause 12, which is going to be put on the Paper, require another Resolution in Committee?
Mr. JOSEPH PEASE: I am informed that it will require another Resolution.

CUSTOMS AND INLAND REVENUE (STAMP DUTIES) BILL.
Motion made and Question proposed, "That this House will to-morrow resolve itself into a Committee to consider of authorising the non-payment of draw-back on certain kinds of tobacco, and the abolition of certain limitations and exemptions under the Stamp Act, 1891, the Income Tax Act, 1842, and the Revenue Act, 1889, and the Tithe Rent Charge (Rates) Act, 1899, in pursuance of any Act of the present Session to amend the law relating to Customs and Inland Revenue, and for other purposes connected with finance."—(King's recommendation to be signified).—[Mr. Joseph Pease.]
Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: I do not know whether it is technically necessary to object, but I want to ascertain what this Resolution is. I understand that this is not the Resolution which the Government have already given notice of, but another going very much beyond what has before been proposed. Therefore, we are entitled, before we assent to a Committee, to consider that Resolution, to know why it is required and what it is all about. It is very difficult to follow proposals of this kind when read from the Chair, and when half-a-dozen references are made to various Acts of Parliament, it is quite impossible to consult them at the moment. The only reference to taxes which I clearly caught was one in regard to the Income Tax, as to which we have no explanation at all, and there was another in regard to the draw-back on tobacco. If I rightly heard the Resolution, it was not intended to grant a draw-back in respect of the new duty, which would very naturally be the result of the increased
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duty that is proposed, but to withdraw a draw-back already in existence. We have had no kind of suggestion from the Government that any such proceeding was in contemplation, and this is obviously a matter of complicated detail concerning the working of which we ought to have the fullest notice.
Mr. SPEAKER: The Resolution I have read out is to allow the House to consider the matter to-morrow. When it comes before the House to-morrow the right hon. Gentleman can raise all the points upon which he wishes to obtain information. This Resolution is to enable the House to consider the matter to-morrow, and, therefore, it is contrary to the Resolution to consider it to-day.
Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: Under those circumstances, may I put a question to the Government in regard to this new business of which this is the first notice we have received? Will this Resolution come first?
Mr. JOSEPH PEASE: This is only a formal stage in regard to Order No. 7 on the Paper to-day, setting up the Committee to enable the House to have some future opportunity—not necessarily tomorrow, because that is only the formal way of putting it—of taking the Committee stage of the Finance Resolution dealing with the Customs and Inland Revenue Bill which passed Hs second reading last Friday.
Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: Will the hon. Gentleman give us due notice when he proposes to take that stage?
Mr. JOSEPH PEASE: Certainly.
Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: Under those circumstances I shall not divide.
Question put, and agreed to.

SECRETARY TO THE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE AND FISHERIES (SALARY).
Resolved, "That this House will tomorrow resolve itself into a Committee to consider of authorising the payment out of monies provided by Parliament of the salary of a second Secretary in pursuance of any Act of the present Session to enable a second Secretary to be appointed for the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries."—[Mr. Joseph Pease.]

FINANCE BILL.
Considered in Committee.—[16th Day.]
[Mr. CALDWELL, Deputy Chairman, in the chair.]
(IN THE COMMITTEE.)

FINANCE BILL.
  DUTY ON UNDEVELOPED LAND AND MINERAL RIGHTS.

    Clause 10.—(Duty an Site Value of Undeveloped Land.)
    Question proposed, "That the Clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill."
    Mr. W. W. ASHLEY: We are asked to approach the consideration of this clause under circumstances of considerable difficulty. We were yesterday compelled by the Government to sit some 15 hours, and now, after an interval of nine hours only, we are compelled to be here again with the prospect of another all-night sitting. It is not in accordance with the traditions of the House or of good business that we should be asked to consider a highly important matter, which will affect the conditions of land tenure in this country for all time, under such circumstances as prevailed last night, and must prevail this afternoon owing to the fatigue of Members who sat up last night. I, therefore, hope and trust the Government will allow the discussion to terminate at a reasonable hour to-night, so that Members may get some well-needed rest. There is another reason which makes the discussion of Clause 10 considerably difficult. We are asked to authorise the imposition of this halfpenny tax on the capital value of so-called undeveloped land, but we have not yet been told by the Government how they are going to arrive at the value of the land, and what the cost of the valuation is to be. We are to be told in the future what machinery is to be set up to put the clause into operation. Surely it is asking the Committee to approach an important subject under very difficult circumstances to ask us to accept the principle and fix the amount of the tax, and not to be able to say when we are discussing it how the site value is to be ascertained and what the cost is to be. How can we say whether it is worth while having the tax at all? It may very probably be the cost of arriving at the site value, and the salaries of the officials will amount to more than the whole tax will bring in. If nothing else stands out clear from the discussion of the Finance Bill,
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    this does: the Government have not made up their minds what their proposals will be in the end. They have been ill-thought out, and, owing to the Government putting off from day to day the real decision as to what their proposals are to be, the Committee is asked to discuss this very important question under circumstances in which they ought not to be placed.
    The clause embodies two very startling propositions. First, that land is not, for the first time, I think, to be employed as the owner wishes when it remains in his possession; and, secondly, that it is better to use land for anything rather than for agriculture. Those are two very large and sweeping propositions. What justification is brought forward for the proposition that a man should not be allowed to use his land as he wishes? It is that land is wilfully held up from development. I do not think any real instances have been brought forward to support that case. It is contrary to human nature and all business instinct. Surely, if a person has land ripe for building purposes, he would be only too willing, if he can get a fair price for it, to part with it and get an addition to his income. I do not think therefore the suggestion that it is necessary to pass this clause in order to deal with the wicked landowner who withholds his land from putting up houses or factories, or opening brickyards upon it, will hold water. No doubt these two or three Commissioners will be men of the highest integrity and experience, but surely it is a very large proposition to lay down that officials of some office in London should go down into the country districts and say they think land would be better used as a brickfield than as a farm. Surely to give such unlimited power to men is to ask us to assent to a most amazing and far-reaching proposition, and one to which I, for one, cannot agree for an instant. I have here a letter from one of my Constituents, a nursery gardener, and as I think his case must be typical of many thousands all over the country, I would, with the Committee's permission, read it:—
    "Sir,—In the Budget proposals now before Parliament, the duty to be levied on undeveloped land is a grave consideration for nursery-men, and, if imposed, it would throw upon them a heavy and most unfair burden. The halfpenny tax over and above the ordinary rates in nursery land would be a great hardship to the nursery trade. The great majority of nurseries are situated near, if not actually in, town areas, and consequently all are heavily rated. The produce of such land is not so much inherent yield as it is the result of applied, skilled, and expensive labour and great outlay in stocking the land, quite on a different footing from ordinary agricultural work."

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    I think the Committee will agree nursery work is quite different from ordinary agricultural work.
    "There is really no undeveloped land in nursery holdings. Nursery land is, indeed, practically a factory for producing plants and trees, and is as much an industry as any other kind of factory or mill, any assistance from the land, although essential, being a small matter in proportion to the capital employed. The competition with our Continental neighbours has recently become most acute, and a further burden would mean comparative ruin to many nurseries throughout the country, which, as it is, yield a poor return for the money invested in them."
    Surely the Government do not consider that this land which is used for nurseries and market gardens is not put to good use, but is being wilfully held back? What better use could it be put to than providing vegetables, fruits, and other necessaries for consumption? Surely hon. Members who are always talking about factory life, who want to see a smiling peasantry on the soil and to improve the physique of the nation, ought to hesitate very much indeed before they impose this new and grievous burden on nurserymen and market gardeners. We already see they have great qualms of conscience about the tax they are going to impose on these smaller holders of land. We have on the Paper already an Amendment by the Chancellor of the Exchequer to exempt small holdings of 15 acres from the Increment Value Tax, and if that is done why should nurserymen and gardeners be penalised in the way it is proposed to penalise them under this clause? Take the case of a market gardener. He must, from the necessity of his trade, live on the outskirts of a town; he naturally lives as near as possible to the market at which he sells his products, and if you impose this heavy tax upon him you will compel him to move further afield, to go away from the place where he has lived his life, and to more widen the distance between his garden and his market. I hope the Attorney-General, if he replies on this Amendment, will deal with these cases, and that he will agree that these are instances in which exemptions might be made in favour of people whose whole means of livelihood are bound up in these particular industries. Inasmuch as the exemption has been made in the case of the Increment Duty it can also be made in the case of this tax. There is another aspect of this Undeveloped Land Duty which, I think, has not been, perhaps, quite sufficiently considered by hon. Gentlemen opposite, and that is the damage to the aesthetic side of our suburbs which this Undeveloped Land Duty will effect. Any-
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    body who walks out from any of our big towns must be pleased when he gets away from the wilderness of bricks and mortar, and instead of passing through dreary roads and streets, with, perhaps, a tree or two at the end or on the corner of some square, where orators spout on Sunday evenings, to get into a district with old-fashioned houses and old trees, sometimes with historic associations—houses with three or four acres attached to them where the owner cultivates a large garden, where, perhaps, he keeps a cow, and generally carries on, on a small scale, country life. Under this clause all this will cease, unless the man who lives there has a large income out of which he can pay the tax in the future. As I understand, only one acre of land is hereafter to be allowed in these cases, and on any excess of that this heavy tax will be imposed. Under such circumstances it will prove, in the case of land near our big towns, a crushing tax, and the land will consequently have to be built upon. Why do away with these old-fashioned houses and gardens? Why should they not continue to exist? What harm have they done? They are open spaces, where people get away rather more quickly than they otherwise could from the bad air of the towns. We do not want to cover all these gardens with buildings as soon as possible, and thus to destroy the amenities of the neighbourhood. It is not only near London that this will occur. It will equally affect many small country towns. I have a town in my mind at the present moment, in the middle of which are a good many gardens. There is no question of building; indeed there is very little going on in the outskirts of the town. But what guarantee have we that the Valuation Commissioners will not come down and treat these gardens as undeveloped building land? I presume they will have to do so, as all these gardens are inside the borough boundaries and are surrounded by houses. They add greatly to the health of the town, and, if they are built upon, that health will suffer, as will also the amenities of the locality. People who have not got gardens benefit from the fact that these gardens exist, and they certainly have the pleasure of looking out upon trees and bushes instead of on brick walls and stones. This matter should be considered by the Government. I hardly dare to mention the name of a duke in this House. There is no close time for dukes here; they are liable to be shot at all the year round. But even dukes are entitled to have some little

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    consideration shown them, and I would ask the Attorney-General if he can tell us, from his legal knowledge, what will be the position, as far as the undeveloped land clauses are concerned, of the land on which Devonshire House stands. There is more than an acre of land there. Is it the intention of the Government to reserve one acre and to treat the rest as undeveloped building land? Here we have absolutely in the very centre of London large gardens. Is it the wish of the Government that these open spaces should be built upon, because, if there is no exemption for Devonshire House or for Holland House, or similar places, the land surrounding them will have to be built upon, because its site value will be so enormous that the owners will not be prepared to pay this annual duty upon it? There was a case mentioned yesterday by the hon. Member for Montgomery Boroughs (Mr. Rees), to which no answer was given. It referred to the position of land which is held by Harrow School for the use of the school. Will the undeveloped land clause be applied to that school ground or not?
    The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN: The hon. Member is going a long way into Clause 11. Exemptions are dealt with in that clause.
    4.0 P.M.
    Mr. ASHLEY: Of course, I bow to your ruling, and I will not pursue that point any further, but I hope that when we come to Clause 11 an opportunity will be given us, outside the Closure, to discuss these very important matters which affect the public schools and many other institutions. Consider this. I must again refer to dukes, although I may offend hon. Members opposite; but, after all, dukes are British citizens and deserve consideration, like other people. I want to draw the attention of the Committee to the case of towns which have been practically built up through the instrumentality of one individual. That individual has spent large sums of money in building up that town, and if an Undeveloped Land Tax is imposed, he will probably be taxed upon the very value which he has created and which, in this case, the community has not created.
    I will take the case of the town of Eastbourne, because hon. Members know perfectly well that if it had not been for the Cavendish family, who for years have
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    been pouring money into that town, it would not be what it is to-day. I do not know anything about the true inwardness of this case or about the Duke of Devonshire, I only know it is a fact that Eastbourne's prosperity is owing to the Cavendish family. They have spent their money and are looking forward to some return. Do the Government say that they shall not have any return for their money because the community has created the whole of this increased value and not the Cavendish family; and are they going to say to that family, "We are going to tax you upon the undeveloped land round Eastbourne and you shall get no advantage from your expenditure"? Surely that is a point which has escaped the attention of the Government or they would not have refrained from putting down Amendments to meet it. I will take another instance which occurs to me because I am to some extent interested in it. I own an estate consisting of a certain amount of land in the West of Ireland. That estate, during his lifetime, belonged to Lord Palmerston, and he spent some £25,000 upon it with a view of turning it into a watering-place where visitors would come and spend their holidays in the summer. Unfortunately, like other things in Ireland, his project did not succeed. Another watering-place, a few miles off, took the popular fancy, and the small village still remains in the position in which it was thirty or forty years ago Supposing the Commissioners come down there to me and say, "You must develop that land. Here is every material for a watering-place; you must pay development duty on that land which you have not developed." Is that fair, when the houses which are let barely pay for the repairs which I spend upon them? I think there are cases, therefore, which are not covered by the Government Amendment, and that they ought to be considered, and I hope, when the right hon. Gentleman answers, he will deal with those instances.
    Mr. JAMES HOPE: There are a few more cases, arising out of this duty, which I should like to present to the Committee, but first let me say that there is one root objection which I have to this tax. It is an attempt to realise taxation, out of unrealised and in many cases un-realisable assets. That, I think, is the root objection to this tax on land, which has a potential value, greater than agricultural value. It is to be taxed, although

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    it is perfectly certain that all attempts to realise that land at once would be absolutely futile. The hon. Member for Paddington (Mr. Chiozza Money), who, whether we agree with him or not, thinks rather clearly on this matter, said yesterday that the Committee must be aware that it is dealing with property on the basis that it could be put into the market at once, whereas the whole value of such property would be destroyed by any such attempt. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, in attempting to meet the point, said it is not true only in the case of land but of all other kinds of property, such as securities on the Stock Exchange, and he said that the soundest securities, if you put them on the market all at once, would be destroyed by such a step. He said he could conceive a case where, if the debentures of the London and North-Western Railway Company were thrown upon the market they could not obtain a purchaser. That is true, but then you do not propose to do in the case of the North-Western Debentures what you propose to do in the case of this land. You do not propose to put a tax upon their annual value, and any such principle would be scouted as impossible. Would it be possible for the registers of Somerset House to be ransacked so that everybody who possessed a nominal amount of stock should be taxed upon the annual amount of stock? It is only because the Chancellor of the Exchequer drew an analogy between the case of land, which could not be thrown upon the market en bloc or its value would be destroyed, and the case of stocks, that I press upon him to explain the analogy, and let him put a tax upon stocks, which would be futile, or abandon the attempt to defend this annual tax upon the reputed, but not the true, annual capital value in land.
    Coming away from the root objection, however, there are, I submit, some grave difficulties in practice in regard to this tax. In the first instance, the tax goes far beyond the ground on which it is defended. The ground on which it is defended is the holding up of land, but many people will be hit who not only do not hold up their land, but wish to dispose of it for a mere ordinary return without taking any exorbitant profit, and at the very first moment that they can do so. I know there are certain exemptions and abatements which we cannot discuss now, but the theory of the tax is that any land which is worth over £50 per acre for site value and is not
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    covered with houses, or used for some industry, shall be taxed. Surely that would result in cases of extraordinary hardship. For instance, in the South of England and sometimes in the North, but there are more in the South, there are residential estates of 100 acres, with a house, home farm, a certain amount of woodland, and two or three acres of garden. It may happen that just one corner of such property situated on high ground has a special building value, simply and solely because of the view and amenities. Supposing someone comes along and says to the owner of this property, "You have a beautiful site there of five acres on high ground, and I will give for that £80 an acre, or £400." Is the owner to be forced to accept an offer like that or else to be subject to the duty? Clearly that part of his estate has a value greater than agricultural land, but if he accepts the offer the value of the rest of his property will be seriously impaired, and perhaps destroyed, and yet you put him in this position: that he is to be taxed or to close with that offer and inflict irreparable damage to his estate; and, be it observed, there is no question of public advantage here. The purchaser wants to suit his pleasure just as much as the owner wishes to keep the land for his pleasure, and in this case you have the value of a residential estate either impaired or destroyed or it must come under the Development Land Duty.
    I will take another example of a plot of land in the suburb of a town—in rather what the house agents would call a good suburb. That particular plot of land is not occupied by the owner, who lives at some distance, and what becomes of it does not very much matter to him. Suppose someone comes along and offers him a good price for his plot of land for the purpose of a tannery or a soap factory, and he refuses to let it for any such purpose because he says there is plenty of other land which is available for it, but if he lets this particular plot he would be doing very serious mischief, not to himself, but to the owners of the land adjoining. He might say that if he lets it he would impair the whole of the neighbourhood and his neighbours would justly complain, and he might therefore refuse. But is he to be subject to Undeveloped Land Duty because this land could be developed for certain purposes, and because, perhaps not in his own interests, but in the interests of others, he refuses to allow it to be developed for that purpose, although he is quite willing that it. I should be developed for others? There

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    really should be a greater definition of what is the meaning of development. Take a further instance of a case of an estate which is being developed, on a definite scheme, for buildings of a high class. Of course, if the landlord really wanted it for housing purposes, those æsthetic considerations and the consideration due to neighbours would not stand in the way; but I will take the case, I will not say of Eastbourne, because it has been mentioned, but of any watering-place which is being developed by the owner or some company on a definite scheme. The land is sold or let upon very tight restrictive covenants, compelling those who take the land or buy the land to put up houses of certain types. That makes the process of development slow, but it produces results satisfactory from the financial and æsthetic point of view.
    Supposing one of these watering-places, or the suburb of a large town, is in process of development in that way—it is partly in process of development, but it is by no means built over, and there are many vacant plots. Here, again, some of these plots could be sold for the purpose of some factory, or for the purpose of tenement dwellings, or for any similar purpose, which is contrary to the original scheme. Is the owner, in a case like this, to have his land treated as undeveloped and pay Undeveloped Land Duty when he only wishes to develop it, in a perfectly legitimate way, which he has set before himself to do, and which hurts no one by its being done? Is it to be said that if some-some came along who wished to erect tenement dwellings, or to use it for some other purpose, which, if the owner assented to, he would injure, not only his own property, but the comfort and amenities of the whole leasehold and freehold property of those who are already living on the estate—is it to be said that he must accept the offer or else pay the tax? I do not think this point has been paid sufficient attention to. Again, I would ask what do you mean by "development"? Do you mean getting rid of the land for any purpose for which it may be used, so long as the land is covered? I think in this connection that a great deal of evasion would be resorted to, and temporary buildings would be put up to evade this tax.
    I take another instance of how the tax will work. Take land let on lease, with a dwelling house, of more than one acre. It may be perhaps 15 or 20 acres. Is the tax going to be charged, and, if so, who is
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    going to pay it? I am told, to go no further, that in Addison-road there are six houses which have grounds of between one and two acres, and in some of these cases there are more than 50 years of the lease to run, and in other cases there is less. In these cases the land cannot be developed. The landlord cannot develop it because he has let on lease. He will not be able to develop it for 20 or perhaps 50 years, and the lessee, who is treated as the owner when there are more than 50 years to run, cannot develop it either, because he is bound by his lease not to do so. He has to hand back the property in the same state in which he found it. In all these cases you are in a perfect impasse. You are taxing the people for not doing something which the law prevents them from doing for a great many years to come. I do not know whether this case has been contemplated by the Government, but where in their Bill is there any provision to meet it? There is nothing in the Reports of previous Commissions which justifies this tax. I have looked at the Report of the Housing Commission and the subsequent Commission, which entirely overthrew it—even the Minority Report did that. It is a perfectly fair thing that where land is really wanted a municipality should have the right of saying "We want this land, and we will give you a fair price for it." In fact I would go further, though some of my hon. Friends would not agree with me, and I would accept Lord Balfour's suggestion in that Report that where there was land which primâ facie was being held back the local authorities should have a right to rate it, and if the owner disapproved of the rate put upon him he should have a right to call upon them to buy it. Up and down you may find instances, though this Minority Report thought there were very few, of land being unduly held up, and if there are these enormous possibilities in land like that I do not say for a moment that municipalities should not have the future benefit of it. In such cases let them pay the present price, let them do the development and get the increment if they want it. But this is an entirely different proposal. This is a proposal which can neither be justified in theory nor in practice. It will hit those whom you do not want to hit, and it will not effect the end which we all have in common.
    Mr. J. A. SIMON: The hon. Member has referred to the deliberations of Commissions and Committees dealing with the subject with which this tax deals. There

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    is one sentence in the Report of the Commission of 1884 which seems to me so exactly to state the central circumstances, and which is at once the justification and the cause of this tax, that I should like to read it:—
    "At present land available for building in the neighbourhood of our popular centres, though its capital value is very great, is probably producing a small yearly return until it is let for building. The owners of this land are not rated in relation to the real value but to the actual annual income."
    It cannot be more neatly stated. The position it appears to me is this. You have land close to a large town appropriate for building, but not yet built upon, and its actual yearly return this year bears no sort of relation to its real capital value, in other words, its yearly return this year is not its true annual value at all. You are rated on it as though it was, but it is not. The true annual value of any profitable property necessarily bears some relation to its capital value. It bears a relation which depends upon the rate of interest which a person who invests in that sort of property would expect to get for his money, when invested, and it is impossible that there should be such a thing as the relation of this artificial return of the present year from such land to the capital value of such land on any capitalisation of annual value. So far you have two things quite distinct. One is the return of the few shillings or pounds which the land is producing in the present year in point of fact. The other is quite distinct. It is the real annual value, having regard to its real capital value at the time. The central situation, it appears to me, that is created by the proposal of this tax is this, that inasmuch as the only contribution which is now asked from the occupier or owner of such land in respect of its occupation is a rate not based upon its real annual value, but upon some very small fraction of its real annual value. Is there anything unfair or revolutionary or improper in asking for a more substantial contribution?
    What is the suggested criticism in point of principle? The two hon. Members (Mr. Hope, and Mr. Ashley) have made certain criticisms which were rather criticisms of machinery and hard cases which they thought needed special consideration than criticisms which go to the root principle of this tax. But there are, of course, criticisms of weight and substance which have to be regarded and fairly met, and which do go, or endeavour to go, to the root and substance of the tax. It appears to me they really are two. First of all, it is said
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    you are here perpetrating this wrong, that you are claiming to levy an annual toll on the basis of the capital value. It has been put again and again by hon. Members opposite, and by no one with more force than the hon. and gallant Gentleman (Mr. Pretyman). With great respect, it appears to me that, once the distinction is clearly observed between what I have called the return for this particular year and the real annual value, that criticism disappears. It is a matter of perfect indifference to me whether, if land of this sort is worth 20 years' purchase on its true annual value, you say you are going to tax it at the rate of one halfpenny on its capital value or 10d. on its true annual value, because 10d. on its true annual value and one halfpenny on its true capital value produce exactly the same thing. That really is the answer. Of course, if there is no such distinction as that between the return which the land happens to bring in while it is being let out to ponies to graze on and the real annual value of the land, considering its situation and circumstances, and having regard to its capital value, then I agree the criticism I make is without foundation. But if there is that distinction it is perfectly immaterial whether you describe the tax which you are going to levy as a halfpenny on the capital value of the land or upon 20 times a halfpenny on the real annual value; they are two formulâ which produce the same result. If you take any reasonable number of years' purchase at all—20, 25, or 30—and if you treat this land, which is not built upon, as though it was an investment as well secured as a ground rent, you would still produce a claim upon the annual value of 10d., 1s., or 1s. 6d., whatever it is, which is a very small trifle compared with the ordinary rates which are levied in towns and in connection with municipalities. Not only is the contribution, properly regarded, one which is based upon real annual value, but one which in point of amount is a very reasonable contribution. That is the first substantial criticism made against this tax, and I submit that the answer I suggest is the real answer to the point.
    What is the second criticism? It is said you are perpetrating this injustice, this fiscal vice. You are calling upon people to make a contribution out of something they have not got. I am stating what many Gentlemen opposite feel to be a real, substantial criticism. But is it? There seems to me to be at least two answers to it. The first is this: It is not true that

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    that value upon which it is proposed to calculate this annual tax is unrealisable. What is perfectly true is that you cannot now get for your land that which in 10 years' time you hope to get, and perhaps wall get. But if you want to discover whether the land can be sold or not there is a very simple test. Assume the case of undeveloped land, occupied, say, at £2 an acre, as though it were merely agricultural land when it is really nothing of the sort, and let us suppose that £40 or £50 an acre is the agricultural value. Offer the land at that price, and see if anyone will buy it. Of course they will. Hundreds of people will buy it, and it follows necessarily that if 100 people would offer to buy it at that price there is a point between that price and the ultimate price on which you have fixed your expectant eyes 10 years hence which is its market value now, and it is that market value upon which it is proposed to levy the halfpenny tax. Take the same instance as I took before. You have land suitable for building, not yet built upon, which the owner one day hopes will be built upon, and at present it is bringing in a mere £2 an acre. But then in 10 years' time he may be able to sell it for £1,000 an acre. Does he really mean to say he could not sell it now for £500 or £400? There must be a point at which he can sell it, and that is the point at which you arrive at the site value upon which you put your halfpenny tax, and the delusion which possesses those who say that this is a tax not based upon present value but upon future value, not upon realisable value, but on unrealisable value, not upon something which it is now, but on something which it is hoped or expected will exist in the future, is that they seem to think the halfpenny tax is to be levied on the £1,000. The tax is to be levied now upon what the land will fairly fetch now. If it will not fetch more than agricultural value, it is not undeveloped land; if it will fetch more than agricultural value, it is undeveloped land, and it is precisely that distinction which provides you with the test by which you can get in practice, with the help, it may be, of valuers and surveyors, at the value of the land now.
    These gentlemen profess difficulty in arriving at any real value of their land now, and say it cannot be arrived at for 10 years to come. If a railway company comes along and wants to take some of their land under compulsory powers, what would they say if the companies said, "We will pay you, but we will not pay for
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    10 years. You did not expect to sell for 10 years, and we will not pay for 10 years"? The answer is, "You must pay me now, not what I should get in 10 years' time, but that small sum which is the real market value of my property to-day." Everyone does that in ordinary business under the Lands Clauses Act every day of the week.
    Then I am told that this is an enormously complicated calculation which nobody can ever be expected to work out in a reasonable time accurately. I am a little amazed to hear that, for the Lands Clauses Act of 1845 has stood on the Statute Book all these years, and one of the provisions is that if a railway company or a local authority comes along and wants to take, under notice, land, such as undeveloped land, in 21 days the owner of the land has to send in his claim and put on his valuation, and I believe they constantly do so. If I am right that these two criticisms are seriously made in regard to this Undeveloped Land Tax, I do submit to the Committee that the answers I have given are answers which bear on these points. It is said in the first instance: "You are here attempting to levy an annual toll upon a capital sum," and my answer is that we are not really attempting to do anything of the kind. It does not matter whether you regard it as a toll on a capital sum or on an amount which represents annual value. In the second place, when I am told that this tax is sought to be imposed on a thing which is not in hand, and which cannot be realised, but on some future expectancy, I venture to submit that every landowner is perfectly willing to say here and now what is the value of his land if he is called upon to do it in connection with any compensation case throughout the length and breadth of the land. It is absurd to say that we have no instance in our fiscal system in which we call upon people to make contributions, although they have not the money in their pockets. The Income Tax is not levied on what you have in your pocket, but on the income which you had in your pocket. It is no answer to the Income Tax collector to say: "I have spent all my income, and, therefore, it is monstrous to call upon me to pay the tax." I will give an instance which is closer still. Is it really stated by those who claim to have a knowledge of the working of land in this country that the ordinary local rates are paid out of capital or upon hypothetical value? The whole basis of our system

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    of local rates is a hypothetical landlord and a hypothetical tenant. If you take the case of a great landowner living in a house which he owns so that he is owner as well as tenant, he has got to pay rates on this hypothetical calculation. He has to say to himself, "What is the rate which somebody would pay me for such a house as this, after making certain deductions?" Can he say, "This house is so large that nobody will live in it"? [An HON. MEMBER: "They do so now."] I am always willing to live and learn. I possibly have not made my instance quite plain. I was supposing the case of a landowner who is living in his own house, and who is called upon to pay rates. In order to pay his rates he has to go through a hypothetical calculation by supposing that the house is let to somebody else. It is no answer to say, "I live here because I cannot find anybody to take the house." The whole English law of rating is based upon the hypothesis of letting. If hypothetical letting is a good and sufficient reason for exacting rates, as it has been for centuries, then I should have thought that the hypothesis of sale is an equally good reason for exacting this tax.
    The real justification for this and for every other tax so far as I am concerned must be that it is calculated to raise money, and to raise money fairly. So far as I am concerned I do not care in the least for other arguments in favour of the tax unless these two conditions are satisfied. Hon. Gentlemen opposite say that the proceeds of the tax for the next year or two are not going to exceed the cost of collecting it. What is the reason of that? It is because the Chancellor of the Exchequer in proposing this tax says he is prepared to frank everybody's property up to the present moment. If we had adopted the method which the Germans did we should have gone back 20 years. [An HON. MEMBER: "That was in the case of the Increment Tax."] It was in connection with the Increment Tax that the Germans went back 20 years, I admit, but let me assume that the Chancellor of the Exchequer had gone back 20 years with this tax. [An HON. MEMBER: "You could go back for ever."] I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman should say that we could go back for ever. I should have thought he must have known that by the provisions of Clause 10, Section (3), "for the purposes of Undeveloped Land Duty, the site value of undeveloped land shall be taken to be the value adopted as the original site value." Does the original
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    site value go back for ever? The original site value goes back to April of this present year. There is one aspect of the tax which I should have thought would prove particularly attractive to hon. Gentlemen opposite. It is a very unusual thing, but in this case the tax is one which is really going to make things cheaper. [Laughter.] I thought hon. Members opposite would be amused. I can imagine that it should be thought at first sight that that is curious. There are some hon. Gentlemen who are impressed, no doubt, by the argument that if you put a tax on tea you make it dearer, and who ask, "If you put a tax on land why should it be different?" This is not really a tax upon land at all. It is a tax upon those who have got land, and who prefer not to sell it until it becomes more valuable. The true analogy is not the tax on tea. The true analogy would be the case of the forestaller who, having made a "corner" in something, refused to sell until it had reached a particular price. The real analogy also would be the case of a man who instead of spending his income year by year put the greater portion of it for many years in a particular investment in order to have a large capital sum. That is what happens, and that is the strictest analogy in this case. Supposing this man did that with his income he would pay Income Tax every year, but the landowner does not It is to secure that contribution that this tax is devised, and that is the reason why it receives support from this side of the House and in the country.
    Lord ROBERT CECIL: The hon. and learned Gentleman (Mr. Simon) has made a very interesting speech, as he always does, but I cannot think that he was well advised when he cited, in support of this tax, the rating system of the country. It is universally admitted to be a most unsatisfactory way of arriving at the contributions either for national or local purposes. The hon. Gentleman instanced the case of the owner of a big house living in that house. Everybody knows that such houses do not pay their full share of the contribution to the rates, and for the very reason that it is impossible to get at your hypothetical tenant who will take such a house from year to year. I was amazed at the hon. and learned Gentleman holding up the rating system of this country as an example and a precedent for this tax. The truth is that one of the greatest political objections to this tax is that it will greatly impede that which I thought was desired

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    by everybody—namely, a reform of local taxation. It is admitted by everybody that we cannot go on with the ridiculous hypothetical system indefinitely, and everybody assumes that some form of valuing the land must be a part of the reform. One of the difficulties of this tax is that it already interferes with the contribution to local purposes by definitely taking for Imperial purposes that which on a conceivable modification of the rating system would be really devoted to local purposes. The hon. and learned Gentleman submitted an interesting argument to show that the objections to this tax, based upon the view that it did not tax really annual value, was not well founded. Those questions of terms are always very difficult to discuss anywhere, and even in this House, because it is so difficult to arrive at a clear understanding of what you mean by the terms you use. I do not mean by real value something which I might receive but do not. Apparently that is what the hon. and learned Gentleman does mean. Does he think that real annual value—if you can attribute such an expression to any other article—is what you might receive for it but do not? It is really only darkening counsel by words to talk of the real annual value unless it represents something which comes into your pocket. Annual value means something paid annually, and if it does not mean that it has no meaning at all. It is not true that this tax will tax real annual value. Several instances have been given in the course of the Debate where land has no annual value at all at present, or only a very small value. It is not realisable in the sense the hon. Gentleman thinks it is. You cannot obtain the price which a valuer will put upon it as the value it has to you. It makes a great difference whether you say it is the value which it has to a man or the value which he might obtain by realising it.
    If this Bill contained words that the tax was to be put upon realisable value, there would be some force in what the hon. Gentleman said, but that is not what the Bill says or means. The Attorney-General, in one of his charming and rather discursive speeches yesterday afternoon, did suggest that that was the meaning of the Bill, but when he was asked specifically if that was what he meant, he said that is the very last thing that he meant. He said it meant that the owner of the land could say to the Commissioners, "I have tried to obtain this price, and I cannot obtain it, and, what is more, you cannot show me any
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    person who will give me that price." Does the hon. and learned Gentleman really think that the tax would only be leviable if the Commissioners could show a buyer who was prepared to give the price at which the land was to be taxed? That is the real test. I have put down an Amendment on the Paper to raise that very point, and I trust to receive the support of the hon. and learned Gentleman in the Lobby. Unless he is prepared to put words to that effect into the Bill, it is not time to say that this Bill proposes to tax in any sense the value which a man might get, and only that, but which he deliberately for his own purposes refuses to accept.
    I take another illustration to show that the hon. Gentleman's conception of the Bill is not accurate. Are the Temple Gardens going to be taxed or are they not going to be taxed? As far as I can see, it is practically plain under the Bill as it stands that the Temple Gardens are taxable. [An HON. MEMBER: "They are open to the public."] They are not open to the public. Certain school children are admitted for an hour or two during certain months of the summer. Does the hon. Member mean that that would satisfy the condition of being open to the public? Everybody knows that they are not. They are closed to the public. Nobody would maintain, and I am sure that the hon. and learned Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Simon) would not maintain for a moment that they were open to the public. Yet they have unquestionably an enormous building value. If they were thrown into the market they would realise an enormous value. Does not that show the fallacy of the hon. and learned Gentleman's contention? Here is a piece of land which has an enormous value, but it is not realisable, that is to say, not practically realisable, because, as a matter of fact, I should doubt whether they would be entitled to sell to the public or not; but whether they major may not, clearly they would be committing a gross breach of duty if they did so; yet it would have an enormous building value, which in the words of Clause 14 would be the value which, if sold at the time in the open market by a willing seller in their then condition, might be expected to realise. If it was sold in the open market it would be expected to realise an enormous sum of money. That is not in any sense the real annual value of the property, because evidently it cannot be sold. Now, the hon. Gentleman repeated the old taunt that when landowners come to an

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    arbitration where their land is being taken compulsorily, they find no difficulty in putting a value on the land.
    Mr. J. A. SIMON: I did not intend in the least any taunt at all. I merely stated what is a common well-known fact.
    Lord ROBERT CECIL: I am very glad to hear that the hon. and learned Gentleman did not join in the somewhat ignoble chase of landowners; but he is surely quite wrong even m the statement which I understand him now to have made. The landlords have the greatest possible difficulty in putting a value upon their land. What do they do? They put such a value upon the land as will certainly be sufficient to cover its real value. Then they go to the arbitrator and say, "What do you think is the value?" And the purchaser does precisely the opposite. He suggests a perfectly farcical value. An instance occurs to me on this point where land which was admittedly worth several thousands, if not several hundreds of thousands of pounds, and the purchaser suggested £50 as its value. That was merely in order to set the arbitration going. But there is no true valuation on one side or the other until you get the arbitrator. Then you employ the highest skilled men, very often at the highest price, to value for you on one side, or the other. They state on oath with the most elaborate reasons what they conceive to be the value and you have an arbitrator sitting in the middle who has to make the best he can of the varying estimates submitted to him. The thing is an extremely difficult and costly process, as anyone who has had anything to do with it, either as principal or professionally, is well aware, and the suggestion that it is quite a simple one is really not worthy of the hon. and learned Gentleman. That brings me to what I quite agree with him is really the essential matter. We are discussing a Finance Bill, and we have a right to know, and we want to know, what is to be the proceeds, that is, the net proceeds of this tax? And this brings me to what my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition said yesterday. The figures which he repeated showed that on the statement of the Government this tax could not possibly bring in more than £87,000 to the Exchequer. We have every reason to believe that it must bring in a, great deal less. We do not know what the cost of valuation of the land of the country is going to be, but it is going to be an enormous sum of money. I leave out the exemptions, because the
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    Chancellor of the Exchequer told us yesterday, with very undue optimism, that they were not going seriously to diminish the return of the tax. But whatever it may be upon that, that £80,000 is the outside which you are going to get from this tax, and you have got a perfectly unknown sum which you are going to pay for valuation. It really is absurd to suggest that that Land Tax can be justified on financial grounds. [An HON. MEMBER: "That is only for the first year."] An hon. Member says that that is only for the first year. That is a perfectly proper observation to apply to some of these Land Taxes. There is something to be said for it when dealing with Increment Duty and reversion; but I see no particular reason why the Undeveloped Land Tax should go up. There is only a certain amount of undeveloped land in the country that will be taxed, and I do not see any reason to suppose that there will be more undeveloped land next year. On the contrary, if the Government are right, there is going to be less. So far from bringing in more than £80,000 next year, it will bring in less next year. The hon. and learned Gentleman said, and also the Attorney-General said yesterday, that that is easily remedied by increasing the amount of the tax. Everybody knows that.
    Mr. SIMON: I did not say it.
    Lord ROBERT CECIL: We labour under very strange delusions on this side of the House to-day. What the Attorney-General did say undoubtedly was: "You make two contradictory pleas. You say that this tax is going to bring in nothing and yet is going to be a hardship on individuals." They are not in the least contradictory. On the contrary, it is the universal experience of history that taxes that have been very harsh on individuals have in fact been very little remunerative to the State. I may remind the hon. and learned Gentleman that a most elementary form of tax very frequently indulged in in mediæval times was: You took a member—then it was not of an unpopular class but of an unpopular race—and you extracted his teeth one by one until ultimately you induced him to pay up a certain sum of money. That was a hardship, I think, on the individual. Even the Attorney-General will admit that. But I believe it was not abandoned as a means of raising money on the ground of hardship on the individual, but because it was found that, in point of fact, it did not raise money in a convenient form for

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    the State or raise money in sufficient amount. This tax is not finance at all. It may be introduced for the purpose of a universal valuation. It may be introduced, as the authors of the tax themselves say, for the purpose of preventing the holding up of land. I personally disbelieve in remedies of that description. You are not going to stop the wicked holding up of land by a tax of this kind. It will fail. The only effect will be to hit not the forestaller of land referred to by the hon. and learned Gentleman, but you will hit the people who are not selling their land very often, from motives of the highest possible public importance. The, whole history of the Liberal party during the last 50 years has been concerned with the preservation of open spaces and open commons; and who are the people to preserve those? Why, the landowners who have declined to sell land for which they could realise enormous sums of money by selling because they desired, for their own purpose, I quite admit, and their own amenities, but also in the public interest, to keep them. It will be the owners of heath land and down land that will be mainly hit by the penal character of this tax. I do not say that they are the people from whom you will get the greatest amount of money. You are preparing for yourselves precisely the same experience as you have been through with reference to the taxation of works of art under Death Duties. You found the result was so far from raising money from luxurious persons who chose to possess these works of art that the luxurious persons sold them and the works of art left the country, and you are now seeking a remedy. Precisely the same result will accrue from this tax. The truth is it is a thoroughly vicious principle to use taxation for the purpose of obtaining an indirect result, and the hon. and learned Gentleman seems to me to be utterly mistaken in believing that the effect of this tax or any other tax of this kind will be to render land cheaper. On the contrary the ultimate result must be, whatever the immediate result may be, to diminish the number of people who are going to invest in this commodity, and ultimately to make the transference of it more difficult and less desirable, and to promote the state of affairs which the hon. Gentleman professes to dislike, that it will be the possession and the luxurious possession of a small class of the community.
    5.0 P.M.
    Sir W. ROBSON: The Noble Lord has not chosen a very happy illustration of
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    what he considers the precise results of this tax may be when he says that we shall see happen in this case what happened to works of art which were being sold and leaving the country. At all events, we are quite sure that if the sale of land is brought about as a result of this tax it will not diminish the national assets in that manner or to that extent. The Noble Lord has used another phrase which I should be sorry to see becoming current in this controversy. He spoke of the penal character of this tax. It seems to me an unjust view with regard to a tax of this character. Of course, the tax has the disadvantages which are incidental to every tax. Those who defend it, as those who do not, do not profess to say that it is a tax which diminishes nobody's property and which hurts nobody, though it adds to the national wealth. That is not the class of tax which we on this side of the House profess to construct. This is a tax which, like every other tax, will take money out of somebody's pocket, and to that extent will be a hardship on the individual, and to that extent it will confer some benefit on the community as a whole. The money which comes into the pockets of the subjects of a great commercial country like this is in a substantial degree devoted to their own necessary expenditure and also to their investments. I think it ought to be recognised on both sides of the House, as it certainly is recognised here, that we ought never to take any tax at all except for the most urgent reasons, and with full recognition that somebody is going to suffer. That, therefore, is common ground between us with regard to this tax, and I wish it were common ground between us with regard to other taxes. On the other hand, there are no advantages in regard to this tax which other taxes do not show. The main object of the tax is, must be, and ought to be, fiscal; but a tax produces almost invariably other than merely fiscal results. We are entitled, as hon. Members have done with such great astuteness during the last few weeks, to examine the effects of the tax; and I would ask hon. Members, when they denounce it, whether the advantages we claim for it can really be denied by them? What has been denied by them during the whole of these Debates? The denunciations poured upon this tax have been of a very general character—general propositions couched in strong language, and backed up by concrete cases of particular hardship. That has been the line

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    they have followed; but look at the general character of the tax. I ask whether it does not possess, as compared with any other tax, some great advantages? First of all, it is a tax carefully adjusted, so as not to fall on any trade or industry. When the scope of the tax comes to be looked at it will be seen that this remark is scarcely susceptible of qualification or denial. It falls really upon no trade or industry; it is a tax on land. One does not quarrel with a short word describing a tax. Taxation is upon persons, but phraseology is used which gives the shortest description of a special tax, and we use the term "Land Tax," but, as I said, the tax is, of course, levied on persons. A tax which is imposed on particular profits accruing to particular persons in respect of their property is really not a tax on trade or industry.
    We have exempted the agricultural industry connected with land. We have wholly exempted agricultural land from taxation. ["No."] I think we have wholly exempted agricultural land. If I am wrong, then no doubt some critic will make some observations later which I daresay will be fresh to me. We have exempted agricultural land, and I would commend that fact to the hon. Member for Blackpool, who made a speech for which, if he will allow me to say so, I was very grateful, because it was an admirable, temperate, and clear statement of all the popular misconceptions with regard to this tax. It was a brief compendium of the most pertinacious misapprehensions, and I am sure the hon. Member will forgive me if I refer students of the subject to his speech. The hon. Gentleman put his arguments temperately, and, of course, as ho always does, sincerely and effectively. He gave us the case of the market gardener, and said, "Here is an industry you are going to touch." The market garden has a very much higher value than that which ordinarily attaches to agricultural land. If the hon. Member were to refer to the definitions himself, in that case he would probably destroy the value of his speech as the vade mecum of misconceptions, because the definitions tell us that the market garden and horticulture are included in the expression "agriculture," and therefore come within the exemptions from this tax before the tax is imposed.
    Mr. ASHLEY: Surely market gardeners are liable to be dispossessed if the Commissioners think that their land ought to be built upon?
    Sir W. ROBSON: That is rather a different matter. The hon. Gentleman read a letter from a market gardener, who said that market gardens are not undeveloped land. He went on to say, "Why tax the market gardeners, whose gardens are not undeveloped land, but are fully developed land?" In that case I think the hon. Member should have written back to the market gardener to say that he was unnecessarily disturbing his mind. He will not be taxed if there is no undeveloped land, and if the land is being put to its full economic use.
    Viscount HELMSLEY: If it has a building value over and above the market-garden value, then surely it is liable?
    Sir W. ROBSON: The Noble Lord should have waited until I had finished my sentence before interrupting. In the case he puts the land has not been put to its best economic use. I think hon. Members have not listened to the speech of the hon. Member for Blackpool with the attention which it deserves. Where you have a value over and above the agricultural value, and over and above the market garden value, then you have undeveloped land. But that is exactly what the hon. Member's market gardener has denied. His complaint was that we were going to tax him, although there was no undevelopment about his land, and that he was putting it to the best economic use he could. I say we are going to do nothing of the kind. If his land is being put to the best economic use, which represents its highest value, in that case in escapes taxation. Why is the complaint put before the House as a just one? The market gardener said, "The value of my market garden, as of all market gardens, is due to special skill." If the value of the market garden is due to his special skill, he can rest with perfect peace of mind amid all the terrible declamations against and denunciations of this tax. It is only when the market garden has ceased to represent the best economic use, when it begins to have a greater value for necessities, which from the point of view of the community are paramount necessities, that then, and then only, does it come under the tax. Let us consider what are the paramount needs of the community in relation to land. That brings me, I think, to another great advantage of this tax. The paramount needs of the community are undoubtedly its housing and its trade. They are not the only needs. I attach great weight, and listened with great sympathy, to what the

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    hon. Member spoke of, namely, the imperilling of the aesthetic aspect of our suburbs; so that there are other needs besides those described as "paramount," which I hope will be adequately safeguarded. But nobody will deny the enormous importance of housing and of trade to a community like ours with so small an amount of land as this country possesses. What is the best indication of the value of land? I would ask hon. Members to remember this, in reference to the time when land ought to come under use for the paramount needs, even at the cost of some inconvenience to those who are using land for less important purposes, that the best indication is its value. It is the value of land which indicates the public needs. There have been put down to this and later clauses a great number of Amendments proposing that the Commissioners should be the judges whether it is reasonably proper or reasonably necessary that land should be taken away from agricultural purposes and devoted to building. We have a far better test, and a far better measure of the necessity than the opinion of the Commissioners on a point like this. We have the demands of the community, expressed in the price that it is willing to give for the land, and expressed in the value of the land. That is the best test, and whenever land gets to a value in excess of that which it commands for agricultural purposes it has reached a value at which the other needs of the community have a greater claim to be considered. Housing and trade are the more important.
    On what does the tax fall? It does not fall on trade; it falls, to use the old phrase, upon unearned increment, which attaches to this form of property. When we are looking round for the subject matter of taxation, is there any better subject than that which comes to a man without any labour of his own—coming to him under our present social and commercial system? Is there any better subject of taxation than profit coming to him in that way, as compared with profit coming to other people as the result of their labour or their capital? Hon. Members opposite do not face that argument, and in all their denunciations of this tax they have never ventured upon that comparison. In all the Debates, if anyone reads the record of them in "Hansard," there will not be found the report of any hon. Member opposite who has boldly taken up this comparison and said it is a better thing to tax
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    trade, a better thing to tax profits and the processes of labour, than it is to put a burden on the profits which come to a man without efforts of his own, but are really the result of the efforts of the community from whom you are demanding this tax. Nobody has ventured to make that proposition. Then there are other results attaching to the tax. As I have said, first it does not fall on trade; secondly, it falls on unearned profits; and, thirdly, there are other incidental advantages, not by any means the object of the tax, but important as collateral advantages to a tax of this kind. When you are selecting your burdens you ought to consider their collateral effects. It has been said again and again that this tax has not really a fiscal object. The object, we are told, is in order to prevent the holding up of land. We are quite entitled to consider the question of the holding up of land in connection with this tax, just as you are entitled to consider the question of temperance in connection with taxes upon alcoholic drinks. Everybody knows that the taxes on alcoholic drinks were not demanded simply from the point of view of their excellence as a means of temperance. They are imposed for the sake of revenue. but it is recognised as a great collateral advantage that they aid the cause of temperance by diminishing consumption. That is the real relation between the fiscal aspect of this tax, and the question of what is called holding up. We recognise that it is a tax upon a practice which is undesirable, and having that as an incidental effect, we are entitled to claim it as one of the reasons why this particular form of tax should be chosen rather than any other.
    What is meant by holding up? Like many other phrases it receives a great many meanings. It is often attacked in one sense, and defended in another, in a way that perhaps would be convenient for controversy. I would venture to say that the case of holding up by no means refers to the case which I think is most in the mind of hon. Members opposite when they deal with this subject, that is to say, the case of a man absolutely refusing to part with his land. You may have holding up of the most effective character far short of that. If you speak of holding up in the absolute and unqualified sense, I agree with hon. Members opposite that there is some of it, but not much of it. But I think in cases where it prevails, serious and substantial cases, this tax may have some effect, although I am afraid it will not have

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    as much as I should like it to have. We were being told yesterday that this tax is too much. I need only refer to Germany where it has been in operation at very nearly the same amount, and where it has been found inadequate to prevent holding up. The Germans move much more rapidly in these things than we do, and they are proposing to increase the tax. I am not suggesting or desiring that that should be done, but still it is a comment upon those who say that the tax is already excessive on the land. You get holding up far short of absolute holding up. I would rather cut the phrase "holding up" out altogether, or use it only in regard to the actual refusal to sell land at any price whatever, because whenever you get a I value over and above your agricultural value then that is an indication, as fair as any indication that you can get, that the needs of the community in respect of this particular piece of land are now in excess of their needs in respect of that land for merely agricultural purposes. In other words, their agricultural interests have become less important as indicated by the value than their building or trade interests. Therefore, that is an indication that the time has come for a change in the purpose for which that land is used. That seems to me quite sufficient. If we take the value as the indication of the public need, then the moment the value reaches a point at which this tax attaches, then we have the clearest indication that the land is needed for something else. Therefore, we have adopted the plan of taxing value instead of use. My hon. Friend behind me (Mr. Simon) and the Noble Lord (Lord R. Cecil) engaged in a discussion upon the meaning of annual value. I do not know that these discussions on phraseology carry one very much further. They clear the ideas of those who are writing on the subject, but I do not think they aid very much those who are going to vote on it. A somewhat simpler statement is required for them than for the learned economists who quarrel about terms. Undoubtedly it is clear we have proposed to tax value, the value in the market, the saleable value rather than the value which arises from existing use.
    Our present rating system is based, of course, on existing user. What the land is actually fetching at the moment, that is a subject matter of the tax. We propose to tax not merely its value in existing use, but its realisable value in the market.
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    We are told that that cannot be done, and the Noble Lord has given instances of the difficulty of ascertaining valuations under the arbitration with which we are all familiar. I have not the slightest doubt if the valuation of the land of England, instead of being put into the hands of Commissioners, were put into the hands of the profession, of which I am the humble and unworthy head, and if we had arbitrators, with counsel on each side, in order to decide the value of every piece of land in separate occupation, then this country might give up all other pursuits, abandon every other ideal, and turn itself to litigation for the rest of its natural life. That I do not think is necessary. [An HON. MEMBER: "Why not?"] The business of valuation goes on every day without friction and without difficulty. In the case of the Death Duties we already have a capital valuation. In the case of the Death Duites we do not value according to existing use, but we value according to market saleable value, while apparently, according to the argument of hon. Members opposite, taken literally, that would be wholly impossible. Experience teaches us that it is not impossible, and that it is not even difficult. Undoubtedly those who collect the tax receive great assistance from those who have to pay it, and I believe that will be the case in the tax with which we are now called upon to deal. They receive great assistance, and no doubt there is some measure of compensation in the form of very lenient and considerate treatment on the part of those who are imposing this tax. No doubt the assistance the Inland Revenue receives in this tax will receive a similar return. When one talks about the valuation of the whole of England owners will be left at liberty to send in their valuation. They may be relieved, and I hope they will be relieved, of the burden of penalties laid down in the present form of the Bill to send in their own material for valuations. They may be relieved of that plan, but they will still be left at liberty to do, as in the case of the duties under the Finance Act, to send in a valuation giving particulars which will enable the Inland Revenue Commissioners to judge of its accuracy. In the great majority of cases I venture to say that no further trouble will be caused by the valuation of the land. Where you are dealing with great estates, and where building value comes into question, there is really no doubt about the valuation. Nine-tenths of the land of England will come

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    into this category—land where the existing rateable value enables everybody to decide its character.
    Hon. Members are forgetting that already we have a complete valuation of all the landed property of England. I agree not a site value and not a value sufficient for our purposes, which would have saved a great deal of trouble, but we have got a valuation which will be a very useful basis in many cases and save an enormous amount of trouble, and which will reduce the amount of the figure which has gained currency, I think, by somewhat inflamed views. As to the possibility of the valuation for this tax costing 30 millions, I venture to say that to talk of 30 millions is an extravagant and impossible assumption, especially when it is remembered that the great volume of the land is already valued. That value will be of enormous assistance in dealing with the more complicated form of value. I think that really covers the observations I have to make and the ground so far as it has not been already covered by other speakers. The hon. Member for Blackpool (Mr. Ashley) made one observation I would like specifically to deal with. That is as to cur suburbs. I am glad to find that someone does appreciate the suburban charms of our great cities. No one desires to lessen them in any way whatever. When the hon. Member spoke of the tax as making it impossible to have any open spaces he was, I think, for the moment, letting his practical judgment be overcome by hypothetical fears. It is true we have already exempted an acre of land attached to a house. There are many cases where the land round a house is more than that—cases, I think, where the land is, by being attached to the house, already put to its best economic use, and in such cases where the land is really put to its best economic use by being attached to a house it is dealt with sympathetically under this Bill. Take the very worst case of land on which the tax has to be paid. Supposing that the owner of a villa in a suburb has got two acres, one of which is exempt, and that he has to pay on the other. Let us suppose it is worth £1,000. That is an enormous sum, because remember that the site value of £1,000 represents a total value of much more than £1,000. You are entitled before you get the site value to make certain deductions which have been already dwelt upon. You have considerable deductions
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    before you reach the site value, but take the actual site value as £1,000. That would amount to £2 per year for this tax. Now, said the hon. Member, the owner would be driven to give up that acre intended for the amenities of his house, but ex hypothesi the owner has been content to forego interest on the £1,000, and is it that he is to be driven out by this last straw? He will only be driven out if, like too many owners of this property, they have not been applying their practical judgment to this tax but reading the speeches of the hon. Member.
    Sir WILLIAM ANSON: The hon. and learned Gentleman has ranged over a wide field. I think his principal point was as to what the object of the tax was. The Chancellor of the Exchequer described the constitutional aspect of the tax, and the hon. and learned Gentleman the Attorney-General said that the real object of the tax was to prevent the holding up of land, or, rather, he said it was not a question of holding up, but when once you could show that land had a value in excess of its agricultural value, that that showed that the community had a need for it. I think that that proposition extends the character of this tax a good deal further than we have understood it. I believe that both sides of the House will agree that the real annual value of the thing is something which you can realise; but that is not what this tax is intended to touch. The real annual value, as understood by hon. Gentlemen opposite, is the produce of such value, not that a buyer is willing to give now, but that the Government valuer is pleased to put on the property some years hence. The valuer is to say, "Your property is producing, say, 30s. an acre. Its capital value, looked at from the point of view of agriculture, will not be more than £50 or £60, but we think there is some promise about it. Therefore we capitalise the value which we think it would have if there was a buyer forthcoming, and we charge you upon that." That does not seem to me to be a just way of dealing with property, but that is what is going to happen in connection with this tax. You set aside the exising produce of the land, you calculate what the land is likely to produce some years hence, you consider the income which can be derived on that basis, and you tax a man on that income. The Attorney-General appears to assume that for every bit of land which has more than its agricultural value there is a hypothetical buyer willing to give that value. It is conceivable that land, if it were put

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    on the market at reasonable intervals, might fetch that value, but this tax is not based on that sort of calculation; it is based on the calculation that all the land of the country is put on the market at the same moment. When you are estimating the value of a country house to a hypothetical tenant, you ought, carrying that analogy to its logical conclusion, to assume that every country house was thrown on the market at the same moment. In that case I think the value of those country houses would be considerably diminished. The Government are calculating this tax on the assumption that a buyer can be found who will give more than the present agricultural value of the land, and they are dealing with the whole of the land of the country at once. That, to my mind, is not a fair way of estimating the value.
    As regards the object of the tax, the Members of the Government speak with different voices. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, when introducing the Budget, spoke of land which was not used to the best advantage. The object of this Land Tax, as indicated by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was incidentally to promote the better development of land, and mainly to bring into the market land which is wanted for housing or industrial purposes; but last night the right hon. Gentleman spoke of this land as land not fully developed, and said that the Government required the tax for a penal purpose. The Attorney-General rather objected to that expression, but I think if he looks at the Report of the Debate of last night he will find that the Chancellor of the Exchequer used those very words. So far we have had two purposes indicated for the tax—to promote the better development of land, and to punish those who hold up land which is wanted by the community. The Secretary of State for War told us that the object was to tax people on what they have got. It was pointed out that the Government were proposing to tax people not on what they had got, but on what somebody expected they were likely at some future time to get. The Secretary of State did not accept that view, and he said that if the Amendment of the hon. Member for North-West Manchester (Mr. Joynson-Hicks) were accepted, it would destroy the value of the tax—although that Amendment was directed to carrying out the view of the Chancellor of the Exchequer that the tax was a penal tax, intended to stop the withholding of land wanted in the interests of the community. What we really want
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    to know is this: Is this tax a penal tax; is it a penalty for withholding land; or is it a means by which a benevolent Government desire to guide land-owners into the proper use and development of their land; or is it a means of raising money? If it is the first, it is a very indirect way, and a very unsatisfactory method of carrying out that purpose. If you really believe that land which is wanted for housing or for trade or business purposes is kept back, why do you not give the local authority compulsory powers to take the land wanted by the community—to take it en proper terms, but to take it? Then if, as the Attorney-General says, this enormous accretion of value is due to the efforts of the community, the community might get some benefit out of it. If that is the idea, give the local authorities compulsory power, but do not trust to the indirect operation of a halfpenny tax on undeveloped land. If the tax is intended to guide the land-owner to the proper development of his land, surely yon are endeavouring to divert land from the use to which, with the general consent of the community, it is now being put, and compelling people to put on the land buildings which are not wanted, in order that the land may cease to be undeveloped and liable to the tax. You are, in fact, doing what you are always charging Tariff reformers with doing, namely, diverting the ordinary course of trade; because you are diverting land from the ordinary and natural employment in order to carry out some scheme of your own. Lastly, is it a tax for raising money? No answer has been given to the speech of the Leader of the Opposition, who showed that in all probability the proceeds of this tax would barely, if at all, cover the cost of collection. The effect of the tax in unsettling the market for land and disturbing everybody's calculations as to what the land is worth will far outweigh the trumpery £30,000 or £40,000, or whatever it may be, that the Government expect to realise from the tax.
    Now I come to the method in which the tax is raised. How is the value to be ascertained? You, first of all, deduct the agricultural value; then you make another set of deductions, and, looking at what is left, you put upon it any valuation that a valuer may be disposed to choose. The Secretary of State for War said that you take the actual value; but how is that actual value arrived at? The Chancellor of the Exchequer cheerfully assured us that we had very much overestimated the

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    amounts which the valuers would put upon the land, and that really the tax would not lay so heavily as we supposed. I do not think that the owners of undeveloped land will derive much comfort from the cheery assurances of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Then came someone who really does understand the subject—the hon. Member for Aberdeen (Mr. J. M. Henderson)—who said that there would be no difficulty about valuation, because any valuer can value anything he is asked to value; and he quoted a dictum of Lord Farrer to the effect that the real difficulty was to find a basis of valuation. I am quite ready to admit that any valuer will value any article of property, but I should like to hear from the hon. Member whether he knows two valuers who will value the same article of property at the same amount. Anyone who has had any experience of valuation for the purpose of rating appeals must be aware that any two valuers can put the most extraordinary and discrepant values upon the same article of property. With such small experience as I have had in these matters, I think the estimate which any given valuer will put upon any given piece of land is a mere lottery. The uncertainty arising from the extremely complicated character of the valuation which will have to be made will, I think, disturb the land market and the whole position of land-ownership for a considerable time. Take the case of an owner of land let at 30s. an acre for pasture, not in the immediate neighbourhood of but near a large town. He might sell the land for villas if he wished to do so, but he could not sell it for workmen's houses, because it would be too far from their employment. He can, however, let it for pasture, and does do so to the general advantage of the community, as the community does not want the land. Why should that man, because he is getting an income from his land which satisfies him, land which nobody wants to be employed for any other purpose, and which he wishes to hold, be placed at the mercy of the valuer, who may come along and say: "This land is really worth £200 to £300 per acre," when he is only getting 30s. for it, and out of that 30s. has to pay a tax of 12s.—no doubt for fiscal purposes, but certainly not in the interests of the community for either housing, trading or business? That is the real heart of the injustice to this tax—that you are left at the mercy of the valuer who contemplates
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    a hypothetical buyer, and with all the prospects of litigation which will arise in the case of dissatisfaction with the discrepancy between the valuation of the Government valuer and with that of the valuer you may think it necessary to employ yourself.
    The purpose of this tax is obscure. The amount which is to be obtained is practically valueless. The method by which the tax is to be raised is absolutely uncertain. The injustice of the tax, I think, is really manifest to everyone who is not prepared to swear by the illustrations of hypothetical buyers, prospective capital values, and averages of Income Tax. The arbitrary nature of this tax upon the owners of undeveloped land will be shown by the uncertainties which it will introduce in all questions relating to the purchase and sale, or even of the holding, of land, and the contemplation in the case of bodies who have to look ahead as to the disposal of their income; in the calculations of corporations, who certainly do not employ their income for other purposes except the advancement of education, and so on. All these things put together make me hope that not only Members on this side of the House, but some Members on the other side of the House—in spite of the instruction which the Attorney-General thought it necessary to give them as to how they should vote—may be with us in feeling that this tax is not a tax which any Government or any community should impose or accept.
    Sir J. P. DICKSON-POYNDER: I have more than once expressed my disapproval of this tax, and I now propose to support the omission of this clause. I propose, in a very brief speech, to give one or two main reasons which have prompted me to do so. My chief objection to this proposal is—I think It is shared by many hon. Members on this side—that I think for the first time in our history that an annual tax is proposed upon a capital basis upon a particular class of properly. That, I think, is the inherent injustice, the inherent unsoundness, of this proposal. Amendments have been moved which to a certain extent would appear to mitigate the hardships attaching to this tax on undeveloped land. The Amendment moved by the Chancellor of the Exchequer to omit from the purview of the tax all undeveloped property where it can be shown that £100 per acre has been spent—that proposal has been largely stultified in its future utility by the modification which was inserted at a late hour

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    last night—or an early hour this morning—is to limit the scope of that modification to 10 years. Anybody who knows anything about the development of building property will know that 10 years is not really worth the paper it is written upon in a development of that character. Slices of property, where heavy sums have been spent, will have to bear the full brunt of this lax when 10 years have elapsed. What are the two main reasons why the Government have insisted upon inserting this particular tax in the Budget of this year? I take it the two main reasons are: First, in order if possible to diminish the practice, as has often been said in speeches—especially in this Debate—of the holding up of land. I am one of those who think that the charge of the holding up of land has undergone a good deal of exaggeration at the hands of those who advance this argument. At the same time, I am perfectly prepared to admit that there are instances of the holding up of land. I am also quite prepared to admit the arguments advanced just now by the learned Attorney-General wherein he said that it was not merely the owner who refused to sell, but the man who asked something above the ordinary market value—put on, in fact, a prohibitive value—which would not get any real buyer into the market to purchase the land. There is a certain amount of argument, therefore, to support the thesis of the holding up of the land. The other argument—and it is undoubtedly a very popular argument, and one which also has weight—is that the real value of property under our annual value system does not pay its fair proportion when taken in comparison with a value of that land when it is sold. That argument has been advanced by the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Simon), and replied to by the Noble Lord opposite. That, again, has a good deal of weight. It is with the view of, if possible, diminishing these two evils that exist that I believe this halfpenny tax has been introduced by the Government. These evils are not of recent history. They have been stated and demonstrated for many years past in Royal Commissions and Select Committees. Anything that Parliament can do to diminish these evils it ought to do. The question is whether the proposal of the Government is one that is qualified to undertake that task. Those who advocate this particular form of taxation, I would venture to believe, fail to realise that the reason why vacant land, no matter how valuable that land may be as regards
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    its capital value, escapes taxation is because it has little or no annual value as compared to its value when sold in the market. I have heard this: "If you accept the principle of annual value you must be consistent in your policy with regard to annual value. If the system in this country is to base your taxation for local or Imperial purposes upon an annual basis it is quite inconsistent whilst believing in that system, and whilst retaining that system, to introduce in an isolated form taxation based upon capital value." I have more than once myself contended that the time has arrived in this country when the whole basis of local taxation should undergo a drastic reform. The need has been demonstrated beyond doubt in various Commissions and the Reports of Committees, as I have already said. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, at the commencement of these Debates, charged me with inconsistency because I was opposing this proposal for a halfpenny tax whilst some years ago I presided over a gathering at Drury-lane, at which gathering a resolution was proposed and carried in favour of land taxation. I want to say, without delaying the Committee with any personal references, that if anybody is inconsistent with regard to the actual resolution passed on that occasion it is not myself, but it is His Majesty's Government. The resolution passed then was a perfectly proper one, and was drawn up in a broad form, to which I adhere, though I will not attempt to say that I adhere to everything that was expressed upon that platform on that occasion by my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade. But I adhere to the general principle, and that principle was this: That there should be a substitution in the future for all Imperial and local purposes of the capital value basis for the present annual value basis. If the Government were proposing that such reform as that should be carried out we should immediately have removed half the inequalities and most of the anomalies which are attached to this halfpenny tax raised upon a capital basis, and applied to the present annual system. It would not be in order for me to develop this argument. All I would say is this: that I am quite certain the real solution and the only practical solution of this evil of the holding up of land, and of the inequality between annual value and capital value is, as is now demonstrated in our rating system, by complete reform of the rating system of the country and the substitution of the

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    capital basis for the present annual basis. If you adopt a capital basis for rating throughout the whole of the country for all purposes everybody would be on an equal basis, and there would be no anomalies. Everybody would be rated on precisely the same basis, and with that equality all round you would find there would be a corresponding diminution of the rating that would have to be applied under the new system on a capital basis.
    6.0 P.M.
    There is another reason why I object to this tax. As I have already indicated, a tax of this character, if it is to be applied, should be applied for purely local purposes. It should not become any part of the Imperial taxes. If there is any tax in the country which should be applied to the relief of the local rates it should be a tax of this character. It is one quite different in form to the Increment Tax or the Reversion Tax. In these instances it is perfectly just that the State should say that it will take a portion of the revenue derived from them. It can be done upon different operations, on sale and death, by a stamp upon documents. In this case, where you are dealing with actual land in the locality where the enhancement of the land in the locality is the sole business of the people of that locality, if there is to be a tax imposed upon it surely it ought to go to the relief of the rates in that particular locality, and exclusively for that purpose? Then again, I object to this tax because it is singling out one particular form of so-called undeveloped land. We talk about undeveloped land, but there are all kinds and conditions of undeveloped land. There is insufficient development attaching to other conditions of property just as much as that attaching to conditions of land. If you are going to have a tax on undeveloped land I cannot see why, with quite equal logic, you should not have a tax upon an undeveloped house. If undeveloped land is to undergo a tax, why should not undeveloped houses have a halfpenny tax imposed upon them. If you take a street with a row of houses, the majority of which are six stories and the rest three stories, there is no reason at all, upon this argument of undevelopment, why the houses that have only three stories should not be erected up to the level of the rest, and all made to bear the same amount of rating. From the point of view of the ratepayer, that argument is just as sound as the argument for taxing unde-
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    veloped land. Let me give one or two important anomalies that will arise from this tax. Most of them have been stated in this House already, but really in discussing this proposal I do not think they can be stated too often. You have, first of all, agricultural land exempt which is valued at £50 an acre. Of course, that will not exempt half the agricultural land in the country. There is an increasing amount of land worth more than £50 an acre, and that class of land which is purely agricultural is going to bear very heavy penalty under this tax. We are told it is an insignificant tax, and is going to bring in very little revenue. That may be the case when the cost of valuation has been deducted, but what little revenue it does bring in will be brought in with very great hardship to those who are occupiers of agricultural land, and who happen to possess land adjacent to the towns in the country, not only the great towns, like London and the great cities, but every small town throughout the country. The owners of all that land that surrounds these towns, which, if sold in the market, has something considerable in money value over and above its agricultural value, land which in many instances is let at 30s. an acre, but which, if sold, would bring in anything between £200 and £300 an acre, are going to bear, in addition to the present Land Taxes and the expenses attaching to the management of their land, a very considerable taxation, running in money to anything between 5s. and 10s. deducted from the 30s. an acre which they are deriving from their land at the present time. This particular class of land which is being penalised is by no means exclusively owned by the rich. I know from my own experience that it is a very favourable form of investment amongst small people in small towns in the country. They have not the same knowledge as some Members of this House have of the most favourable form of stocks and shares on the Stock Exchange. They do not look outside their own towns for security, and what they usually invest in is the land on the confines of their towns, and they are often prepared to undergo sacrifices for many years in order that they and their successors may enjoy the increment which they hope will in the future be derived from the land which they have bought, when the town stretches out towards it. That land is going to be taxed very heavily for many years to come. It still remains agricultural land, and its owner will only derive

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    30s. or £2 an acre for many years, and under the present clause of the Finance Bill there will be from 5s. to 10s. additional taxation imposed annually. If it is hard on those to whom I have been referring, what about the people who live in some of the progressive centres of industry in the country, and who own land upon the confines of these centres. Hon. Members upon both sides of the House know large tracts of land adjacent to many of the great industrial centres of England where, owing to the conditions of the town it is almost impossible to get any kind of cultivation out of the land. You can hardly grow cabbages on acres of land in the neighbourhood of some of the chemical, industrial, and mining towns in the centre of England. Undoubtedly there is a very considerable prospective value attaching to this land when the town develops, but at present what is the return to the owner of that land owing to the conditions of the town? It is practically nothing, and yet for many years to come the owner of that class of property will have to pay a heavy penalty upon capital value which will come to several shillings per acre.
    Then there is that other class of property which is known as nursery garden property. In the early days of the Liberal party one of the avowed policies of that party—certainly it had been mine and will continue to be mine—was to advance and to promote in every possible way the higher cultivation of this class of property round our towns. These nurseries are in many instances what may be termed the manufactories for the towns of England. They are growing the very produce we want to grow in increasing numbers and quantities in this country for the communities in the towns. The land of this particular class of property is very valuable. Large sums of money have been spent upon its cultivation and manuration, and in many instances it has amounted to a capital value of a very considerable sum. I am not at all satisfied at the present time that under the provisions of the Bill this class of land is to be exempt. Any way, if it is to be exempt, I may point out this: That it will be almost impossible for the most skilled valuer in the world to discriminate and distinguish between the value of cultivation of that kind of land and the value of the site owing to the proximity of the land to the town. I do not believe any class of valuation can be established in this country which in equity or justice can discriminate accurately between these particular forms of value, that
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    is the valuation for cultivation and the additional value of the site owing to proximity to a town, yet that will have to be done, if this scheme is established, in many districts where there are many nursery gardens around our towns. I venture to say that this proposal will have the most depressing effect upon the nursery garden system in this country, and therefore to these three different classes of property you will do a distinct injury if this tax is imposed. This tax will bring in its train a great deal of hardship and injustice because it is impossible to impose it upon political urban areas. As every one knows, there is rural land in urban areas, and there is urban land in rural areas. It will have to be imposed indiscriminately upon all that land which can be shown vaguely by a valuer to have some hypothetical prospective value, and in that case great injustice will be brought about, or else it will have to be fenced round by every kind of reservation just in the same way as the Increment Tax has been, and then you will have to employ not merely a staff of valuers, but a staff of scrutineers in addition to the valuers, not with the view of collecting the taxes and revenue for the country, but with the view of proving that every class here and there of property and people connected with that property are exempt from the tax. I venture to say that this tax is one quite unsound in principle, and I believe, as time proceeds, it will be found to be unworkable in practice. I greatly regret the Government have not seen their way to withdraw this clause and as they have not seen their way to withdraw it, I shall certainly vote for the Amendment.
    Mr. CECIL HARMSWORTH: Having sat in this House day after day and night after night listening with keen interest to the Debates that have taken place, I should like to say, if I may, that there is on this side of the House a much larger number of moderate Liberals who support the Government than is usually supposed. It has often been my privilege to sit on the very threshold of what I believe is known as "The Cave," but in regard to this particular tax—it is not a matter of any consideration to the Government, but it is of some consideration to me —I find myself in the most cordial agreement with them. If I may say so I should like to point to some little confusion of mind which seems to exist among those who resolutely oppose this tax. I listened last night to a delightful

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    speech by the Leader of the Opposition, and I gathered from a careful arithmetical statement of his that this tax is not calculated to produce any revenue whatever. That, may I say, is all the better for the landowners. On the contrary, if it is calculated, as I think it is calculated, to produce a much larger revenue than even the Chancellor of the Exchequer has assumed, then I say so much the better for the Chancellor of the Exchequer. In any case, I am a little surprised to hear, coming from the opposite side of the House, an objection to taxes that produce no revenue, because, if I am rightly informed, there are many distinguished right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite who propose to inflict upon this country a system of taxation which will be all the more successful from their point of view the less revenue it produces. Well, perhaps I may be pardoned, and I hope I shall not be out of order, if I recall the attention of the Committee to one or two simple facts in regard to this proposal of the Government. One would suppose from the Debates that have taken place in this Committee that this question of taxing or rating undeveloped land has never been thought of before. It is well known to every hon. Member of this House that this subject has been actively canvassed, not only in this House, but by Royal Commissions with the most imposing personnel. I should like to remind the Committee that on the Royal Commission on the Housing of the Working Classes, 1884, the, principle which is now introduced in the form of legislation was sanctioned by a very eminent body of public men. Then there was the Local Taxation Commission of 1901, where we had a minority Report signed by some of the most eminent statesmen and publicists of this country approving of this principle. The principle has been approved by every great municipal authority in the United Kingdom, and I think I am right in saying that it has been advocated at elections by Conservative candidates on innumerable occasions. If the Government were proposing to impose a rate on undeveloped land there would not be many Members of this Committee who would object to it. I want to know what is the difference in principle between a tax and a rate, especially when under one of the concessions made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer one-half of the proceeds are to be devoted to local purposes? Surely the plain fact is that there is a great amount of urban and semi-urban land which is
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    avoiding the rates. I am very familiar with two ancient boroughs in this country, and it is an undoubted fact that in both those instances there is a considerable area of land running into and in proximity to those boroughs which is essentially urban or semi-urban land, and some of that land pays no rates at all, and the rest of it is paying an agricultural rate, reduced under the Agricultural Rating Act. The fact is that this land is avoiding its rates, and that, I think, was a fact very much present to the mind of the Royal Commissions. It is also recognised by the great municipal authorities, and I think it is one of the reasons why this tax is more or less popular in the country. This land is able to hold its extraordinary value very largely by reason of the expenditure of the rates by other people, together with the general industry and energy of the community. The hon. Baronet the Member for Chippenham (Sir J. Dickson-Poynder) often adduces in this House certain awful examples of such a tax. He speaks of land worth £200 and £300 capital value producing a revenue of only about 30s. a year. In a former discussion the hon. Baronet mentioned cases where £1,000 and £1,200 capital value produced a rent of only about £5 a year. What is the reason of this extraordinary disparity between the capital value and the rental? Is it not obvious that the owner of such land is willing to stand out—and it is a perfectly legitimate speculation—of a possibly higher rent in order that he may realise a big lump sum later on? He is only able to do that, in my estimation, because of the rate expenditure in the populous centre near him, and because of the energy of the population occupying that centre. I think it is a perfectly fair thing to say to a man occupying that position, "If you keep in suspension these large sums of capital value in the hope that in the end you may realise at a higher price, the community is entitled to take some share at all events of that increment for the purposes of the community." I think it is a very modest share as proposed by this Bill. If it is true, as has been stated, that this tax will sometimes absorb the whole of the actual rent which is now being enjoyed by the landlord, the remedy is perfectly simple, and it is to throw the land into more profitable use. We have had some awful examples of the ill-effects of this tax. May I give one example of the ill-effects

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    of the present system? I am familiar with two ancient boroughs which are very much under the sort of unreasonable landlordism that holds up the land. We have heard a good deal about health resorts. One of these boroughs to which I refer is a health resort. I do not wish to advertise it here, but it would be one of the most popular health resorts if it were allowed to develop; but in point of fact the land of this ancient borough is in only one or two hands, and the owners put a price upon the land which I do not say is extortionate, because they can charge anything they please, but I think it is most unreasonable. This borough is surrounded by a ringed fence of undeveloped land, the value of which has been created by the ratepayers in the borough, which would expand wider and wider if allowed to do so. I do not think it will be any hardship on landlordism of that kind if it were made to contribute something to the expenses of that borough, and I should enjoy it very much if one byproduct of this tax is to force this particular land into the market. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer has made many concessions, and I think he has been wise to do so where they come within the spirit of this Bill. I think it would be in the highest degree unwise to tax as undeveloped land that land which at the present time is fulfilling the highest purposes of development. The Noble Lord the Member for Marylebone (Lord R. Cecil) referred to Temple Gardens. If they are not exempted under this Bill, unquestionably they ought to be, because those gardens, and others more in the centre of London, are in the highest possible form of development. I am glad my right hon. Friend has made concessions in regard to these taxes, because they are, to a large extent, experimental, and unquestionably every tax of this sort is bound to create hardship in cases here and there. I hope the Government will not concede so far that these taxes yield no revenue, because, if they do, they are depriving their tax of its chief raison d'être. If they do so, they will be exposing themselves to the sharp wit of the Leader of the Opposition, and possibly to some sort of obstruction in another place. I hope the Government will meet with every possible success in regard to this particular Land Tax, and if their right to impose this tax is challenged in another place it will be the very best thing that could possibly happen to this Liberal Government.
    Mr. S. H. BUTCHER: Of all the forms of taxation dealt with in this Bill the Undeveloped Land Tax seems to be at once the least defensible in principle and also the most novel. In the course of these Debates we have heard several theories of land taxation put forward authoritatively. With regard to the rise in the value of land, and particularly in regard to urban and suburban land, we have heard one theory put forward, which is that that rise is normal, regular, continuous, and progressive. We have heard another theory, that any added value to land comes in the nature of a windfall. We have been told by the Prime Minister that the Increment Tax is in the nature of a windfall. The Undeveloped Land Tax is, I suppose, rather in the nature of a tax upon land whose value is normal and progressive. I may observe that those two theories are really quite inconsistent with one another. If the rise in land is regular and progressive it cannot at the same time be occasional, capricious, and occurring only at uncertain intervals. For the purposes of the Undeveloped Land Tax I rather imagine that the second of those theories is the one which will be chosen, because it depends upon the assumption that all land over the value of £50 in excess of its agricultural value has an assured prospective interest, and that it only depends on the owner's will and his skill to make that potential increase a natural increase. I would like to call the attention of the Committee not to the speeches made in defence of this tax, but to the tax as it is in the Bill itself. Nothing has been more inconsistent than the utterly different grounds on which various speakers have based their defence of this tax, and the grounds which are contained in the Bill, which are the only grounds upon which we can go. Under the Bill itself it is assumed that anyone who holds land of the kind described can, if he will, develop it, and develop it at the word of command. If you want to find out whether your land is liable to this tax or not the test question is whether it is developed or whether it is in process of development. The question is not what orators outside have led the country to believe is a wicked withholding of land from building purposes; the real question is whether it is developed or in process of development, and if it is not then it ought to be developed, and anybody who does not develop it is liable to the strong compulsion of this penal tax. I should have thought that there was another question

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    which was simple and business-like, and far more fundamental. Not has it been developed or is it being developed, but is it fit for developing? Can it now be developed profitably? not merely is it in general fit and suitable, but is it ripe for development? Is there a reasonable demand? Is there a market value? According to the Bill, if buyers are not forthcoming the landlord is penalised. He is to suffer for any want of desire on the part of the investing public. It is assumed that the owner is a wicked withholder of land which is wanted by somebody, but if it is not wanted it ought, according to theory, to be wanted. Yesterday evening the Secretary of State for War (Mr. Haldane) tried to explain the nature of this tax. I do not think anybody who reads the Bill can question the plain fact that it is a tax on hypothetical value. The Secretary for War said it is a tax on actual capital value, realisable in the market. He says the Government takes the solid fact of what the property would fetch in the market. Let us face the reality. What is the solid fact? It is a valuer's guess, and nothing more—a guess, I admit, that is based upon certain rational considerations, but still it can under no conditions be anything more than a fairly good guess. It is out of the question that any valuer could possibly say what at a given moment in a given year—for that is the problem—is the value of each particular plot of land if all the plots were thrown into the market at the same time. No valuer could give anything like a true estimate of that. Yet the tax is levied on land which may not be capable of coming into the market at all—land which has a value that may not be realised for years, and may perhaps never be realised at all. What is the object of the tax? According to its best exponents, it is to force land into the market, with the further intention of bringing down rents.
    I would ask the Committee to consider how a tax of this kind can cheapen land. It is not, as has been suggested this afternoon, like a tax on tea, but it is a tax on the raw material of the building industry. It is the contention of hon. Gentlemen opposite that such a tax can stimulate production, can reduce the price of an article, and can increase the supply of that article. That is an idea in political economy, which I should have thought nobody held on either side of the House, whatever may be their differences in mat-
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    ters of detail. According to this theory, all you need to do is to clap on additional cost to the builder, and multiply his risks. Remember the process of building is already slow, costly, and speculative. It is liable to many fluctuations. Advance is suddenly arrested, and the movement goes on in an unforeseen direction. It is checked in the direction in which it has already been going. What is the remedy for all this? All you have to do is to burden the industry with new liabilities, and to hamper it with fresh obstacles. Not only so, but after the land has been developed, if by any misfortune it should again, owing to various causes, cease to be developed land, if the public taste or fashion veers in another direction, and if the land becomes vacant and unoccupied, or used for some other purpose, then you have your sovereign remedy at hand. What is it? All you have to do is to water the soil again with this fructifying tax in order to make it bloom forth once more into building land. Was there ever such a preposterous notion of political economy?
    May I in the course of two or three minutes call the attention of the Committee to the nature of this tax as compared with other taxes under the Bill? Take the Income Tax, the Increment Tax, and the Undeveloped Land Tax. Under the Income Tax a man is taxed on the annual value of property he possesses. Under the Increment Tax he is taxed according to the origin of his property. Under the Undeveloped Land Tax he is taxed according to the use he makes of his property, that is according to the moral deserts of the owner. I think it needs a far more delicate moral calculus than either an Act of Parliament or a valuer to decide what are the moral deserts of any person who holds property. Under the Income Tax he is taxed on something he has, and which he is assumed to have a right to. Under the Increment Tax, according to the prevalent doctrine seen in this House, a man is taxed on something he has, but which he is presumed to have no right to. Under the Undeveloped Land Tax he is taxed on something that he has not, but which he ought to have, if only he had made proper use of his property. Under the Increment Tax you are putting a tax on ill-gotten gains, and a man who pays the tax pays it in partial restitution for stolen goods. Of course, you cannot get at the original robber, so you take as the nearest man, starting from this year, the person who is

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    his direct heir and successor. The Undeveloped Land Tax is not a tax on ill-gotten gains, but on ill-used possessions. It is a penal tax on the bad husbandry of your property.
    I would ask just two questions. Is it a sound method of taxation to tax a man, not on what he has, but on what he has not? The Undeveloped Land Tax is far worse than the Increment Tax. Under the Increment Tax you at least have got a certain actual increment, although the way it is calculated may be very much guesswork. Under the Undeveloped Land Tax you have avowedly not got anything of a realisable value or anything perhaps which will ever be realised. It is at best a prospective increment, and may never become actual. Is it a sound method of taxation to levy taxes on castles in the air? Are such taxes, eating as they must into capital, likely to encourage the building of houses of solid structure that are on the earth and not in the air? The other question is this: Can the State profitably lay down one right use, and one right use only, for all land that is over £50 an acre in capital value? Can the State undertake to say if that land is used for agricultural purposes it is wrongfully used? Can the State say that, if that land is used or a part of it of more than one acre for a garden it is a luxury for which we must apply penal taxation? And, more generally, is it not absurd for any Legislature to describe one single specifying way in which land, infinitely varied in the conditions which affect it, shall be employed. I do not believe any House of Commons or any Act of Parliament can have the economic insight and foresight to lay down any such rule, or that any Government officials could possibly carry it out fairly. The truth is, it is outside the province of the State, and my belief is that any system of taxation that is based on that kind of intervention is unsound and perverted. It is sure to induce economic confusion; it is sure, also, to inflict great injury in individual cases, and I believe it is almost sure to bring about effects directly contrary to those you intend.
    Mr. H. D. M'LAREN (Stafford, W.): The hon. and learned Member for the Cambridge University (Mr. Butcher) criticised this tax on undeveloped land, because, he said, it fell on any land which was not used in one prescribed way. I venture to think that is not the effect of the Bill, because all the Bill says is, not that land in order to escape taxation
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    shall be used in any one prescribed way, but that it shall be used for the best economic purpose. If land is fully developed, if it is used for the purpose for which the community want it, then that land, under the provisions of the Bill, escapes taxation. The hon. and learned Member, further, brought forward the argument that we were taxing under this Bill the raw material of the important industry of building. If this Bill had provided that there should be a tax upon all land, whether not built upon or built upon, then I think it would indeed be open for hon. Members to argue that this was, in effect, a tax upon the raw material of the building industry. But we must remember that the tax under this Bill ceases absolutely not only when land is built upon but when land so nearly approaches the built - on stage that a certain amount of money has been spent upon it in the development of roads and in other respects. So we have no more tax upon the raw material of the building industry than we should have on raw material of export should there be a tax on raw material and then a rebate. I think one of the chief points which has been taken in this Debate against the tax on undeveloped land has been the point that, in many cases, this tax will amount to a very large proportion of the annual value of the land. The hon. Baronet the Member for the Chippenham Division (Sir J. Dickson-Poynder) gave the Committee some very striking cases where land which, he said, was worth barely anything for agricultural purposes, because of its contiguity to a smoky manufacturing town, would have to pay in taxation under this provision several shillings per acre per year. The hon. Baronet gave another case of agricultural land worth £1 or 30s. per acre for agricultural purposes, which, he said, would have to pay some 5s, or 10s. per acre as Undeveloped Land Duty. But when one considers that land has to be of the capital value of £500 before it bears an amount of Undeveloped Land Duty equal to £1 a year, one must see that, in the cases given by the hon. Baronet, this land, of which he gave the agricultural value as £1 or 30s., must have a capital value of some £250. Surely hon. Members who know anything of the price of agricultural land fit for building when sold for that purpose must realise that that kind of land is not land which would be ripe for building fifteen years hence. It would not be considered as ripe for building

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    now. It is land, in fact, which is over-ripe for building, and I think that in instances of that kind this land would in the normal course of events have been developed for building years since. It is not very pertinent, I think, to compare the amount of this tax with the value of land for agricultural purposes, and for this reason. Under the provisions of this Bill the capital value of the land is divided into two parts. There is one portion which is due only to its value for agricultural purposes, and that portion of the capital value is exempted from this tax on undeveloped land. But there is another portion of the capital value which is due to the fact that there is a demand for it for other than agricultural purposes, and for it consequently higher prices would be given. Why should a man who holds land of this character allow a large portion of his capital to remain vested in the land when, according to hon. Members opposite, it brings in no annual return? If some portion of the capital gives a return for agricultural use, the other portion, according to the hon. Member, gives no return whatever, and therefore should not be taxed under this provision. But owners are not so simple as to keep their money invested in this kind of land unless it brings them in some return. What is that return? Take the case of the Trafford Park Estate. I gather, from what has been said in the course of this Debate, that the shareholders have received no dividend on the money they have invested. Surely the shares are by no means valueless? The shareholders may not get an annual dividend, but they rest content in the knowledge that year by year the value of their property increases. When a man invests in land of this kind he does so for one of two reasons. Either he believes it will return him his interest in full at the end of a certain period of years, or else he keeps the money there because he gets, not an annual return in pounds, shillings, and pence, but an annual return in the shape of the enjoyment he gets out of the land. Take the case of a man who has a park near a large town—the kind of park which hon. Members opposite suggest will be broken up under the provisions of this Bill. That man is keeping invested in that land money which might be more profitably employed in business, but his return for the investment is the enjoyment he gets out of the park. I venture to suggest that the case of the Trafford Park Estate is
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    somewhat similar, and the reason why a man keeps his money invested there is that he is convinced that land is rising yearly in value. It is the same in the case where a man has a large quantity of land around his house. He keeps his money invested in it because he is getting an annual return, not in pounds, shillings, and pence, but in the shape of enjoyment. That return pays no Income Tax and no contribution to the local rates, and I therefore submit that, on the ground of justice, it cannot be asserted that this Undeveloped Land Duty is not fairly payable by it.
    7.0 P.M.
    Mr. A. J. BALFOUR: I think it will be admitted, even by those who regard this tax as an eminently just one, that it requires some defence, for this reason if for no other. Plainly and obviously, by the admission of friends and foes alike, the tax is upon particular owners of a particular kind of property. Certain individuals in the community have been selected, not because they are specially able to bear the tax, but because they happen to own a particular kind of property, and having been thus selected by the action of the Government from the general mass of their fellow citizens, on them, and on them alone, is put a tax which has no justification at all except that which may be deduced from the property which they happen to possess. Everybody must admit that a tax of that kind requires special justification. I wish to know what the justification is. I listened to this Debate with a view to extending my knowledge and improving my mind on that subject. One hon. Gentleman, and one only, in the course of this evening has rested his case upon authority: that was the Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. C. B. Harmsworth). He referred, as other Gentlemen have done on other days, to the findings of certain Commissions which have dealt with this subject, and which, he declared, have admitted the principle and accepted the theory on which the Government are now basing this tax. But the hon. Member is entirely mistaken. What those who defend this tax have got to show is why this particular class of the community are selected for exceptional treatment. What the Commission he refers to dealt with was whether certain people who owned a particular kind of real property within the area of certain boroughs should be exempted from the rating system which applied to their neighbours. These are things wholly different.

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    I am not one of those who are convinced that this kind of property should be treated as this Government proposes, even from the rating point of view. The two things are not pari materia at all. The whole contention, and the contention of the hon. Gentleman himself, was that th3 people who owned this kind of property did not bear their full share of the rates of the town in which the property is situated, although their possessions were augmented in value by the rates paid by other people. The minority of the Commission on which he relied wished to tax this kind of property, as they regarded it as exceptional. But we cannot stretch the argument which impressed the minority of the Royal Commission in the matter of rating so as to include the proposals of the Government. The general nature of the argument is exactly opposite in the one case to what it is in the other. The minority of the Royal Commission thought the land which was exceptionally treated ought not to be so treated. I think it should not be. The Government think it should be, and I think the hon. Gentleman will see that that argument really disposes of any attempt to base this tax upon the findings of any Royal Commission. Then I turn to an argument which is a platform argument, and one which figures whenever a Minister wishes not to explain his Budget or to defend it, but to obtain cheers for the moment, and, if he can, votes in the future. That is the argument known as "holding up." I myself have a profound distrust of any legislation deliberately directed towards inducing any man to sell that which belongs to him for a smaller price than he thinks he can obtain if he is treated like his fellow citizens. I do not think it is a good plan. I think it is extremely difficult to justify on general principles, and I boldly assert that, whether it be just or unjust, it will not deal with this evil, if evil there be, of holding up. The Government themselves think it an evil. I have listened to the Attorney-General this evening replying to the arguments urged by an hon. Friend behind me, to the effect that this tax would bring into the market those suburban villas, with their trees, grass, and gardens, which are such an ornament to the suburbs of some of our big towns. What was the reply of the learned Attorney-General? The learned Attorney-General says, "Do you mean that a tax of this trifling magnitude can have the smallest effect in inducing any man to sell his land,
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    or diminish the size of his garden, or cut down his paddock, and curtail his amenities?" The learned Attorney-General derided the idea, and I do not say he is wrong; but, then, what becomes of the platform argument that the amount of this tax is going to increase the amount of land which is thrown into the market for building purposes? It is clear that the very people whom you would wish to sell are the very people who will not be induced to sell by this tax. You may induce a man to sell whose property is mortgaged up to its limits, and who has no great hope that if he can hang on he will get an enhanced price. That is not, in the first place, the man you wish to penalise, and in the second place, by hypothesis, there is no great prospective value, and by holding up he will not make any prospective demand which is going to produce that great prospective value of that property. The man who will hold on to his land is the man who thinks that there is going to be a great prospective demand in the future, and, whether right or wrong, he will not sell; he will not put a single rood of land into the market, because you put this halfpenny in the £ tax on his capital value. Therefore, it seems to me, that by the argument of the Government themselves, when they are dealing with another part of the Bill, and also by the very nature of the transaction which we are considering there is no prospect—at least, I can see no prospect—of the tax having any such effect.
    Then I turn to another argument, advanced by the hon. Member for Waltham-stow (Mr. Simon), who took quite a different line. He said this kind of property, which does not bring in any great income from year to year, but has a great prospective value reflected in its present market value. This land escapes Income Tax, which it really ought to pay; at the end of a certain number of years the owner of that land will find himself possessed of a capital sum, which has been accumulated without in the process, of accumulation the owner having to pay a single penny for it. That is an argument which the Government have forborne to use, probably for this reason, that they have not attempted to assimilate this to the Income Tax at all, and have not attempted or tried to say, here are owners of a class of property you may in imagination at least conceive that property in terms of income, that income escapes Income Tax; let us arrange our system of taxation so that it no longer

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    escapes Income Tax. They have not done that; they have not attempted to put forward a single argument in favour of doing it, nor would it be fair to treat one particular kind of property as a special subject for this kind of Income Tax on an income which does not exist, but is capitalised in the imagination of the valuer. However ingenious that argument may be in the case of another Budget brought in by other Ministers, imposing other taxes, it really has no application to a Budget in which a tax on capital value is applied to one kind of property and has no relation to that accumulated Income Tax, the hypothetical belief in which is, according to the hon. and learned Member, the true basis of any taxation of capital. I do not dwell upon it, though I think it is one of the most ingenious arguments which has been used in the whole course of our Debate, but it is one which has not commended itself to the Government at any stage of our discussion, and is not applicable in regard to this particular kind of tax.
    Then there was the argument, on which the hon. and learned Attorney-General chiefly based his contention, the argument of the unearned increment. The hon. and learned Gentleman said that we had never met, and we had never tried to meet, that argument; it was one which we had put severely aside and never touched in these Debates. I have never felt the force of the unearned increment argument at all. The idea is, in the mind of the Attorney-General, that in the case of every kind of property which is not due to actual present exertions of any individuals, and which increases in value, that increase must be taxed. Is that his view seriously? Property, I do not care what it is, depends for its value upon the community in its vicinity. That no one can deny. If you think that property is an institution which should be preserved, the mere fact that it depends upon the community and not upon the owner ought not to afford an argument for any species of taxation at all. We all desire—at least, it used to be the desire on all sides of the House—except on the part of those who think there should be no property at all, those who take the view of extreme Socialism—all parties have thought it an excellent thing to say to the working class and individuals, buy property, invest in property, and directly they do the thing which you desire, and which you have encouraged them to do, and which you have mourned that they did
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    not do sufficiently, then when they have become owners of property it depends no longer upon their exertion but upon the community, and whether it rises or falls in value it is no longer the effect of the action of the possessor of the property or any particular member of the community, but of the action of the community as a whole, of the laws of supply and demand, of the changes of fashion and habits, and of all the complex social forces on which society is based. When you talk therefore of unearned increment on property, I would say that all increment on all property is unearned. I am not talking of the actual mills which a man may have organised; I am talking of the actual invested property. If I put my money into London and North-Western stock, and it rises, that is unearned increment of precisely the same kind, and is due entirely to the same class of social forces. It is certainly not due to me or anything I may do. The Attorney-General may differ from us on that point, but do not let him say that we do not meet the argument. We quite admit that property is liable in any society, and most of all in a complex society, to unearned increment and unearned diminution—increase and diminution for which the owner of that property is in no sense responsible. When it increases in value you are going to tax it, and when it falls you are not going to repair the loss; then, I say, that you are treating that property exceptionally, and you ought to find what you have not succeeded in finding yet, some justification for your particular proposal.
    The next argument is that land, especially undeveloped land, is a particularly appropriate subject for taxation on capital value. I venture to say that it is an extraordinarily inappropriate subject, for that particular kind of taxation, and I will show why. Undeveloped land is in the nature of a speculative stock. I quite agree with the learned Attorney-General and others who have spoken that the Government do not mean to tax its future value. I quite agree with that. What they want to do is to tax its present value, but its present value depends upon speculation and anticipation which may or may not be realised, and which from the necessities of the case is peculiarly speculative in its character. Therefore, you are taxing property which has an appropriate market value. Therefore, you may tax property which has a real market value, but you ought to try and tax, if you tax capital value at all, capital values which

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    have not got this immense speculative element coming in, to determine what that capital value is. You know much less in the one case what you are dealing with than you do in the other. There is another question which grows out of that, and is more important. It turns on that very difficult question, market value. What the Government say is, granting you may put a tax on land and a special tax upon undeveloped land, on that assumption we are only taxing what a man has got, and no doubt what he has got he has got, because there is an anticipatory value merged into its present value. Its present value depends upon the anticipation. In a large market like Consols, nothing in the ordinary way greatly varies the present value, but in the case of a very speculative stock that is not so. The mere fact that you are putting on this tax, if it carries out your anticipation of putting land into the market, will have an effect upon that value which it could not have if you were dealing with a great market like Consols.
    The market for land is a small market—that is often what is forgotten. It is perfectly true that the amount of land is prodigious. The number of acres is very great around London and other towns, but the actual amount of land required, let us say in the North East corner of the great City, is a very small part of it, and if you force one property into the market you must force all, and thus gorge the market, and the value of neighbouring property goes to nothing. You cannot sell. The value of my Consols does not depend, in ordinary times, upon what my neighbours buy or sell to any great extent. Nothing short of panic will make any violent or great change in the value of that particular stock, but supposing one estate is sold in the neighbourhood of Fulham, no more land may be required for 20 or 30 years. It depends upon small local accidents of fashion and small controversies between this speculative builder and that landowner which of the possible sites is the site which will be chosen, and if you force into the market one acre more than is required to meet the needs, not of the Kingdom, not of London, but of that particular portion of the circumference of London, the whole of the rest of your land goes down in value, and this idea of the market value really becomes so loose and so uncertain that I do not think you can count upon it, and your own tax destroys your own valuation. That is the point. It is
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    one thing to bring in a Valuation Bill in which the value will be taken without the tax, and another thing to associate that with a tax which will destroy the results of the valuation, and your tax, if it carries out your own intentions, must act in this arbitrary way. If it brings land into the market, it is inevitable that unless it is brought in in very small pieces—if it forces an estate into the market—the whole market in that region will be upset in a way in which no ordinary property is upset by the ordinary day-to-day transactions of the market. Therefore there is no analogy between the market for stocks and the market for building property. They do not resemble one another; there is no comparison between the two; and if you are to choose one kind of capital value to be taxed rather than another, you are choosing a kind of capital value which, from its very uncertainty, is the least susceptible of that special kind of taxation.
    Another argument was advanced by the Attorney-General with great confidence. He said, after all, even the opponents of this tax must admit that it does not interfere with any trade or any industry. That was really a most astounding statement. He himself admitted that it interfered with the market-gardening trade, because, whereas the Government and their supporters have been congratulating themselves for the last two or three clays that they did not touch agricultural land, it now appears quite clear that in the view of the Government itself it does touch agricultural land, and is intended to touch agricultural land. The object of the Government is to force land into what they call the best economic use, and the best economic use, as defined by the Attorney-General, would lead to this conclusion: that if a shilling more per acre could be got for building purposes than could be got for market-gardening purposes the market garden is taxed. It really is absurd to tell us that it is not interfering with an industry. It may be substituting a better industry for a worse. It may be better to have tenement houses than market gardens. I do not argue that now, but you are interfering with industry. You are deliberately altering the course which industry would follow if you did not put on this tax. That is as much as to say that you are differentiating against agriculture by the imposition of this tax. I do not see how that can be denied. I am sure that it cannot be denied by any Member of the Government. There is another point of

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    view in which I must press this particular branch of the subject home. The Government have, from their own point of view, quite rightly yielded to the stress of many unanswerable arguments so long as the number of voters affected was considerable. They have only shown a stern and iron front when they thought they were dealing with very small minorities. In obedience to this particular form of the law of self-preservation they last night laid it down that if £100 is spent on an acre within 10 years—they ventured on 10 years at five o'clock in the morning, when the Prime Minister and I were enjoying well-earned repose—that acre was to escape the tax. That was quite a good plan for conciliating a certain number of building companies and speculative builders; but I want to ask whether that Amendment was really sufficient to make it clear to those who own land, and who have in their possession resources enabling them to develop it on a large scale, that it is going to help them? I do not mean individuals; I am talking of the public. There are plenty of cases in which owners, who happen to be wealthy owners and are able to borrow, or who originally owned resources Which enabled them to carry out work for development, not by spending £100 on successive acres, but by roads, railways, large works and large arrangements costing money and of infinite value to the community, are going to remain unperturbed and unmoved by this halfpenny tax. In the view of the Government it is a small tax. I will not argue whether it is small or great, because by universal admission it is put on in order to be increased. From my present point of view that is a most important consideration, because it is the anticipation of an increase of the tax. I am not going to spend money in adding that value to land which will bring me not merely under the actual halfpenny tax proposed by this Government, but under an indefinite succession of future taxes, which like-minded Governments may desire to impose upon them. The resources which, under different circumstances, I would gladly have expended on improving my property for the benefit of the public I will use elsewhere, possibly at home, more probably abroad. I do not think it will be denied that these cases will occur. I do not think it will be denied that if they occur this tax will interfere in the most serious way with trade and industry, and that,
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    which was the last argument used by the Attorney-General, seems to me to break down completely when you examine it.
    There was one more observation of the hon. and learned Gentleman which I cannot leave on one side. He said taxes are very disagreeable things, and they must injure somebody, and the point is to make them as little injurious to the community and to that somebody as you can. That really brings one to a matter on which we cross-examined the Government for two days in vain. I have spoken in vain, if I have not made even those Members of the Committee who differ from me feel that this is a very exceptional treatment of a particular kind of property. I do not think anyone would desire exceptional treatment of a particular kind of property in a Budget Bill unless it was to bring in money to meet a great necessity. We all admit the great necessity. Where is the money? The hon. Member (Mr. C. B. Harmsworth) referred to some calculations on my part made last night with regard to the yield of the tax, and he said those calculations did not commend themselves to him. That is perfectly right, because those calculations were only based upon the utterances of the Government. The calculations of the Government, though few, are so untrustworthy that it is almost impossible even to form any estimate. May I repeat the difficulties that we feel on the financial aspect of the question. In your original Budget estimate you massed together two taxes, the undeveloped minerals and the undeveloped land. You said these two taxes together may be estimated in the first year to bring m £350,000. Of that £350,000 half was to go to the undeveloped land and of that half it is proposed to give half to the municipal authorities. That leaves a quarter of £350,000 as the whole result for the first year of the tax you are now putting on. That total result of £85,000 has to be diminished by the concessions which the Government made later in the evening with regard to certain undeveloped land which they proposed to exempt. Now, you are really raising a sum which, when you are dealing with £16,000,000 deficit and £160,000,000 of taxation, is absolutely ludicrous. What is the good of the Attorney-General telling us that of course taxation is a very painful thing to impose, and that it injures the taxpayer, but that there is a great public necessity. Your public necessity is going to be helped to the extent of £70,000 or £80,000. I do not see that this tax is going to increase. Why

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    should it? Undeveloped land is going to diminish. The number of acres on which the precious £100 will be spent is an augmenting number, and I see no reason to believe that the number of acres which will come under your tax is going to be seriously increased in the future. If not so, perhaps the Government will explain how or why? They have not explained it so far. This we have a right to know.
    The question to be put by you, Sir, presently, is, "Shall the clause imposing this tax be added to the Bill?" and will it be believed that we have been discussing this now for more than 24 hours? We have asked question after question and we have never yet got from the Government in charge of the national finances the smallest estimate of what the tax is going to bring in, or the smallest justification for producing so great a disturbance of public confidence, introducing principles so absolutely novel. For a paltry and contemptible sum, the price of a single picture which was preserved from going to America by the generosity, partly of the Government and partly of the public, you are going to upset your whole fiscal system, introduce these novel principles and introduce all this disturbance. When all these facts are enumerated, is it not perfectly plain that the Government are not introducing this tax for the purpose of getting money? Their desire is not to meet a great national emergency, to build "Dreadnoughts," to find money for old age pensions, to found Labour Exchanges, or to meet the deficit of £16,000,000. No great Government would ever have so perfectly preposterous a plan for dealing with so great a necessity. They have very different objects in view, and what those objects are are perfectly plain, not only from the Debates in this House, but far more from the speeches with which Members of the Government have favoured us in the country outside this House. This tax is not a tax to get money. It is a tax to get votes. It is a tax, and it is cynically put forward as a tax, which is going to catch votes, because it affects the few and leaves the many untouched. A more contemptible calculation, a more preposterous method of dealing with great interests under the guise of meeting the national necessities never was presented by any Statesman of whom this country has any record whatever. And though I understand that Gentlemen on the Ministerial Benches say that this tax is highly popular. [An HON. MEMBER: "Hear, hear."] One Gentleman thinks it
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    is clear that it is—but I say that if it is popular it cannot bear even to the party that has introduced the tax any useful fruits whatever, and as regards our great national traditions of finance, it is one of the greatest shocks that any Government has ever inflicted.
    The PRIME MINISTER (Mr. Asquith): I am sure every Member of the Committee, in whatever quarter of the House he may sit, shares my regret at the cause of the absence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who by the acknowledgment of all has in the Committee proceedings on this Bill exhibited, not only conspicuous ability, but unfailing temper. The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition, both at the beginning and at the end of his speech, with almost unusual vehemence announced his conviction that this was a tax which needed what he called special justification. Well, all new taxes need special justification. I have known the right hon. Gentleman propose taxes which needed a great deal of justification, and I am bound to say that arguments were put forward in support of them with an austere disregard for their electoral, as well as their fiscal value, which he has been preaching so eloquently to us to-night. But I agree that this tax, like all new taxes, does require special justification. Why, says the right hon. Gentleman, are you selecting a particular class of owners for exceptional treatment? I am rather glad he has put the question in that form, because it admits of a precise and concise answer. They are selected for the purpose of this tax because of the exceptional position in which they have hitherto stood, which has enabled them and the property they own to escape their fair share of contribution to the resources of the nation. That is what the arbitrary selection, when it is analysed, really comes to mean. What are the real and undisputed facts in regard to this matter t It is not denied that what this Bill calls undeveloped land—that is to say, land which is lying vacant or being applied to agricultural purposes when, from the point of view of the community, it might be more advantageously and economically applied to other purposes—at is not denied that such land exists in large quantities in this country. There may be some dispute as to the precise amount of it. There always will be; but that it does exist, and in large quantities, there is no serious controversy. It is not denied—it follows from the proposition I have just stated—that much of this land which, ex hypothesi, could be more economically

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    applied to other than its present purposes, is being withheld from building, and therefore checks the development of our great communities. Thirdly, it is not denied that the owner of such land only makes his contribution, whether it be to local or Imperial taxation, upon what, if the two previous propositions are true, is a wholly artificial and inadequate basis.
    That is the case for the Undeveloped Land Duty, and unless these facts can be traversed and got rid of, the foundation in principle and justice for what the right hon. Gentleman calls this exceptional treatment of a particular class is well and truly laid. But I agree even if you admit that, questions of great practical difficulty and complexity do arise in the application of your principle. You have got to find some means of determining what, for the purpose of the tax, it is fair and politic to regard as undeveloped land. That is the crux of the problem. Now, I believe we all agree that agricultural land, in the true sense of the word, by which I mean land which is economically applied at the present moment and under existing conditions to agricultural purposes, ought to be exempted from the operation of a tax, of this kind. I do not think that there is any difference of opinion about that. But when you come to try to draw the boundary line between land which falls within that category, and clearly ought to lie outside the scope of your tax, and land which is undeveloped land in the proper sense of the term, there are only, it seems to me, two criteria which you can possibly adopt. They are on the one hand the criterion of local situation, and, on the other hand, the criterion of value. I do not know any other method by which you can find a solution of the problem. The criterion of local situation is obviously most misleading and most unsatisfactory. To take land which is within urban districts and say that any such land should be treated as undeveloped land, and to take land which is in rural districts and to say that any such land should be treated as agricultural land is a proposition which any one acquainted with the geographical and economic conditions of the country would say is a proposition absolutely impossible to sustain. Indeed, it often happens that it is in the rural districts which lie outside of the urban areas that the evils of the holding up of building land under the existing state of things are felt. Therefore, I am quite sure that anyone who, accepting our principle, practically
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    sought to apply it in a reasonable way would abandon the criterion of locality.
    Now we come to the question of value. I confess I listened with a great deal of surprise to the speech made by the Noble Lord the Member for Marylebone (Lord R. Cecil). The Noble Lord seemed to assume that you cannot tax except upon that which a man actually receives; any other form of taxation violates the eternal and immutable principles of justice. Consider what that means in such a case as this. It would mean that the owner of land on the fringe of a growing community could not only fix the purpose for which his land should be used, but dictate that, although it is needed for building, it shall continue to be used for farming, and that there is no right or power in the community under such circumstances to tax him on the footing that he might have received that which he could have received, and which by his own act and his own act alone, he refuses to receive. I know of no canon of taxation or principle in natural justice which would warrant any such proposition. It is admitted, and clearly it must be admitted in a case like this, that ex hypothesi the annual receipts from the land through the action of the landowner himself is less than the annual value. Take the case with which we are dealing. If, in dealing with land in the category that we can tax, you tax the annual capital value, is there anything unfair or unjust in the method by which we are proceeding? The difficulties of valuation—what I call the direct difficulties of valuation which have been paraded throughout this Debate—are, to a large extent, figments of the Parliamentary imagination. It is really a very simple problem. All this introduction of the hypothetical seller and buyer, and so forth, is part of the jargon of the law and the jargon of the profession of surveyors, and all it means is this When you come to value a man's land, you look not only at the rent he is actually receiving for it—for that may be much less1 than he might receive—you do not look at the particular buyer who happens to want to buy it at the time, but you take into consideration all reasonable probable buyers, and you come to hypothetical buyers, and you consider, having regard to all the conditions of the case, what is the price a buyer actuated by business considerations would give for the land. [An HON. MEMBER: "All at once?"] No, not all at once. I do not know what the hon. Gentleman means by "All at once." You do not make a valuation on

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    the footing that the land is all going to be brought into the market at the same time. That would be an absurd supposition. I must repeat what was said with so much force by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Simon). There is no practical difficulty whatsoever in the solving of this problem of valuing undeveloped land when a railway company comes to buy or when a great corporation wants a site. I am not saying this—I know that one has to be very cautious of one's words in these days—I am not saying this in vindictiveness or by way of taunt. A landlord is entitled to exercise all his legal rights and to obtain all the money he can for his land. I am not complaining of that for a moment. I am pointing out that by perfectly simple and familiar processes well understood and practised every day of the week, when he is desirous of selling his undeveloped land there is no difficulty whatsoever in ascertaining its value, nor will there be much difficulty when we come to value it for the purposes of the Undeveloped Land Tax.
    The right hon. Gentleman has spoken in a very interesting manner on the subject of what he calls the market value of land in this country. He admits, and I am very glad to note it, that this is a case not upon the prospective but upon the present value of undeveloped land. It is perfectly true that in the present value of land, as in everything else—the same thing is true of every commodity which is kept at any rate for any length of time—you anticipate so far as you can what the prospective demand and supply in future are likely to be. That is an ingredient which always enters into the valuation. What is sought to be taxed is not an indefinite and uncertain value, which may never accrue. It is the sum for which the land would sell in the market to-morrow if it had to be valued in the ordinary way for the purpose of acquisition by some corporation which wanted it. The right hon. Gentleman said that this was a peculiarly inappropriate commodity or subject to which to apply the principle of taxing capital, because of the speculative element which entered into, and must necessarily enter into, any estimate you make of the buying or selling value of undeveloped land. I was rather interested to observe that he illustrated that argument by the assumption which he had vigorously combated; that the effect of this tax would be to force land into the market. It was only on the assumption
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    that the effect of the imposition of this tax would be to force land into the market, and, therefore, as the right hon. Gentleman said, to glut and even to gorge the demand, that he was able to make good his proposition that you would add an additional element of uncertainty to the value of land in this country. I will say a word about that before I sit down. I think that the right hon. Gentleman has a very imperfect appreciation of the growing demand in a community like this for what is called undeveloped land.
    I shall hope to-morrow, on the Committee Resolution for expenses, to explain in such detail as is possible and proper at that stage of our proceedings, the modifications with regard to the method of machinery of valuation which the Government propose to introduce into the Bill, modifications which are mainly due to the fact, that we have come to the conclusion that the cost of the valuation should not be cast upon the shoulders of the owner but be transferred to the State. That concession, I observe, was received with very little gratitude, or if there was any it was marked by a total absence of articular acknowledgment, although, if my recollection of the earlier stages of the Debates on the Budget is accurate, it was this grievance which bulked most largely in the adverse comments of right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite. I am not anticipating anything which I will say on this subject to-morrow by saying that, given a competent set of valuers, proper machinery of valuation and adequate safeguards for appeal, the whole of this problem will be found in practice, as it has been found, in our Colonies and in other communities, instead of being the inscrutable, insoluble difficulty presented to the House in the course of these Debates, a thing that solves itself every day of the week.
    I now come to the final charge against this tax. The right hon. Gentleman, having made it before, repeated it this evening. He said that this was not a fiscal proposal in any real sense at all, on the ground that the yield of the tax would be less, or certainly would not exceed, probably this year, the actual cost of valuation. I do not assent to the right hon. Gentleman's proposition. I defend this tax and all the taxes contained in this Finance Bill as fiscal instruments, and if anyone can demonstrate to me that they are not, I shall agree they ought to be excised from the Bill. I shall agree that they should

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    be excised if anyone can show that they will not be useful, profitable, and fruit-bearing for fiscal purposes. But when the right hon. Gentleman comes to his calculation of the proceeds of this particular tax, and compares it to the value of a picture by Velasquez or Holbein, one of those pictures that the Death Duties have driven out of the country, and when the right hon. Gentleman tells us that the proceeds of this particular tax will be worthless, or will be an insignificant sum, I must remind him and the Committee of one or two facts which he has completely and, I think, for the purposes of his own argument, conveniently ignored. In the first place, I cannot regard the Undeveloped Land Tax as simply by itself and independent of the two other taxes with which it is a composite and coherent fiscal scheme, because I submit they all hang together. They are all put forward as integral parts of the fiscal scheme. And, in the same way, what can be more ridiculous and what can be argumentatively more unjust than to take the whole cost of valuation and debit it to this particular tax for the purpose of showing that this particular tax is not going to yield a larger amount? [An HON. MEMBER: "What is the amount?"] You will know to-morrow the best estimate and the most careful estimate which the Government can give, and what is admittedly, both as regards the actual proceeds of these taxes and the expenses of machinery and valuation, necessarily a very difficult and more or less speculative estimate. But the best material we have we will place at your disposal. I shall carry with me the good sense and sense of justice of the large majority of the Committee when I say that when you are estimating the fiscal yield of these particular taxes and debit against it the cost of valuation, you must take the taxes as a whole and the valuation as a whole, and you will then be able to judge as to what the real balance will be. And, regarded from this aspect, I shall be able to show conclusively that these taxes have a very sound justification. But I go further. I adhere entirely to the view that it is wrong to judge of the fiscal propriety of a fiscal imposition, certainly of a new imposition, by its yield, possible or probable yield, during 12 months, or even two years after. It has never been the principle on which the great financiers of this country proceeded. Let anyone read Mr. Gladstone's greatest financial statement, that in
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    which he introduced the Budget of 1853, and they will see that in inventing then for the first time what has proved in the course of years to be one of the most fruit-yielding instruments ever devised, namely, the Succession Duty, he pointed out, and pointed out carefully, how its yield must be gradual and progressive. And in the earlier years in which it was to be in operation he estimated from it a comparatively modest sum, and a sum which was actually not reached for some time after the tax came into operation. It has been the same with the Income Tax, and the same with the amazing developments of the Death Duties.
    When we come to this particular tax with which we are dealing this evening, let me point out to the Committee what the right hon. Gentleman has said. He seems to think that a year or a couple of years will absorb all the undeveloped land in the country, or, rather, that it will have led to its conversion from undeveloped into developed land, and that, therefore, there will no longer be a subject matter of any appreciable amount on which this tax will operate. I venture entirely to differ from hint. Anyone who has regard to the actual social and industrial conditions in this country, who sees not only the steady growth in population in so many of what were only 20 or 10 years ago purely rural communities, which have now developed into urban communities, and who observes still more the tendency that strikes everyone who passes along any of our great trunk lines of railway, the tendency of industries which used to be located and congested in great centres now to spread themselves out in the country with constantly increasing requirements for land, for building factories, for cottages for workmen, experimental works, and for a thousand other incidental purposes, anyone who watches that process going on and sees from year to year that not only does it not slacken, but that it accelerates in pace and extends in radius, will agree with me in differing profoundly from the right hon. Gentleman as to the likelihood of the source of supply of this tax being on any easily predictable day dried up. Speaking of return, I believe that this tax will be a growing one, not in magnitude, but growing in produce, just as I believe that the Increment Duty and the Reversion Duty will grow, and I believe that we are laying the foundation of what will be one of the most important and most useful and fruitful additions to our financial stock; and on financial grounds, if it were neces-

    321
    sary—though it is not—I should be prepared to recommend this and the other taxes to the consideration of the House of Commons.
    Mr. A. C. BECK: After the eagles of Debate have soared in our skies, it is, I know, presumptuous of me to flutter my feeble and almost untried wings. Yet the length of time which I have listened to other people speaking and the very great objections which I personally, in common with others of my friends, take to this tax must be my excuse for detaining this Committee for a very few minutes. Although it is a rash thing to differ from the Prime Minister, may I point out that he himself has just differed very widely from one of the leaflets issued by the Budget League—an authority which can hardly be denied by those who, we are told, are so largely benefited by its operations. The leaflet which I hold in my hand, called "The Land of the People," ends up by saying that the halfpenny tax could hardly be better defended than in the conclusions of Lord Balfour of Burleigh. The end of the seventh paragraph of Lord Balfour of Burleigh's recommendations and remarks is this:—
    "And any attempts to remedy those defects (that is defects of rating) would show that there is no large undeveloped source of taxation available for local purposes, and still less for national purposes."
    When hon. Members, such as spoke this afternoon, like my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow, and great masters of debate like the Prime Minister, have to advance fallacy after fallacy, I think it justifies us in the very strenuous opposition which we take to the principle of the incidences of this tax.
    8.0 P.M.
    The Government have to-day hesitated between the two courses as to whether they were taxing undeveloped land for revenue, or whether they were penalising a class for unjustly holding up land when the requirements of the population called for the use of that land. As regards the latter, I could never see any justification whatever for this form of taxation. If you want to use land for building, or for other needs of the people, you have hundreds of precedents for giving local authorities powers to deal with the land. This very Government passed the Small Holdings Act, which is a measure of which we are all proud. They gave to local authorities the power to acquire compulsorily land for the purpose of settling small holders
    322
    upon it. The Housing and Town Planning Bill pursues exactly the same policy. As regards the fact mentioned by the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Simon) and the Prime Minister that it is immoral for the landowner to refuse to take the price which somebody offers to him whether he thinks it adequate or not, I want to know how they would have regarded tradesmen if, last winter, they had refused to sell clothing at less than the proper price on the ground of bad trade and because a number of people were ill-clad. Has the Government ever proposed to penalise shopkeepers, the baker, butcher, or anybody else for refusing to sell goods for less than they considered a proper price because of the needy condition of the population around them? [An HON. MEMBER: "Are they to perish?"] The hon. Member agrees that he would introduce legislation to that effect. But I am sitting here in support of a Liberal not a Socialist Government. In our opposition to this tax, we are adopting probably a fatal policy from our own selfish point of view. I believe that the knife is to be held to our throats, and we are told in reference to the cries and shouts about Keir Hardie as leader, and Lloyd-George as his prophet, that if we will not do what they wish we shall meet with political death. Hon. Members opposite have cheered me with a certain amount of warmth, but I am about to use a parallel which will probably toe less palatable to them. I want to point out that the Front Bench below me, with all its authority, and with all its brilliance, is doing the work of one small and extreme section of the Liberal Party. The same powers of disruption which rent hon. Members opposite in 1906 will rend this Party if they are not careful.
    In regard to this Undeveloped Land Tax we are told that it is the very crux of the Budget. We are told that it is the spear point of the Budget, that we who will not accept it but fight against it, are not worthy to stay in the Liberal party, and that we have deserted the Liberal faith. We entirely dispute that. As to the taxation of agricultural land, I would point out that if you take, as ex hypothesi, that land used for agricultural purposes is undeveloped, you may put upon it a laundry, perhaps a mineral water manufactory, or, more horrible still, you may erect a brewery upon it, and then it is a fully developed property. Again, you may have a nursery garden, or you may

    323
    have a piece of land devoted to strawberry cultivation, and employing hundreds of hands, yet we are told that is undeveloped land, and a man may be turned out of his occupation of that land, with all its goodwill, and all its associations, if it acquire a greater value for building than for agricultural purposes. We are told that revenue must be raised to carry on the Government, but in the country a very different argument is used. I would point out to the Committee what, I think, has not been pointed out often enough, that the country has been raked through in order to find examples of injustice by the landlords, yet, despite all the efforts which have been made, not one of these examples has been found to be perfectly water-tight.
    It is always possible, among a large class, and by minute investigation, to find some cases, but I would ask whether in this or any other country any class criticised and examined by acute intellects would have shown fewer cases of gross injustice than the land-owning class of this country? It has not been a pleasant task for me to take this course, but I have done so because my conviction is firm and unalterable, and I shall most resolutely oppose this tax to the limit of my abilities.
    The PRIME MINISTER: I beg to move, "That the Question be now put."
    Question put, "That the Question be now put."
    The Committee divided: Ayes, 233; Noes, 107.

    Division No. 412.]

    AYES.

    [8.9 p.m.

    Abraham, William (Rhondda)

    Duckworth, Sir James

    Jones, Leif (Appleby)

    Acland, Francis Dyke

    Duncan, C. (Barrow-in-Furness)

    Jones, William (Carnarvonshire)

    Ainsworth, John Stirling

    Dunn, A. Edward (Camborne)

    Jowett, F. W.

    Alden, Percy

    Dunne, Major E. Martin (Walsall)

    Kekewich, Sir George

    Asquith, Rt. Hon. Herbert Henry

    Elibank, Master of

    King, Alfred John (Knutsford)

    Atherley-Jones, L.

    Erskine, David C.

    Laidlaw, Robert

    Barker, Sir John (Portsmouth)

    Evans, Sir S. T.

    Lamb, Ernest H. (Rochester)

    Balfour, Robert (Lanark)

    Everett, R. Lacey

    Lambert, George

    Baring, Godfrey (Isle of Wight)

    Faber, G. H. (Boston)

    Lamont, Norman

    Barker, Sir John

    Falconer, J.

    Lever, A. Levy (Essex, Harwich)

    Barnard, E. B.

    Fenwick, Charles

    Lever, W. H. (Cheshire, Wirral)

    Barnes, G. N.

    Ferens, T. R.

    Levy, Sir Maurice

    Barry, Redmond J. (Tyrone, N.)

    Ferguson, R. C. Munro

    Lewis, John Herbert

    Beale, W. P.

    Fiennes, Hon. Eustace

    Lough, Rt. Hon. Thomas

    Beauchamp, E.

    Findlay, Alexander

    Lupton, Arnold

    Beck, A. Cecil

    Fuller, John Michael F.

    Luttrell, Hugh Fownes

    Benn, W. (Tower Hamlets, St. Geo.)

    Gibb, James (Harrow)

    Lynch, H. B.

    Berridge, T. H. D.

    Gill, A. H.

    Macdonald, J. R. (Leicester)

    Bethell, Sir J. H. (Essex, Romford)

    Gladstone, Rt. Hon. Herbert John

    Macdonald, J. M. (Falkirk Burghs)

    Bethell, T. R. (Essex, Maldon)

    Glover, Thomas

    Maclean, Donald

    Bowerman, C. W.

    Goddard, Sir Daniel Ford

    Macpherson, J. T.

    Brace, William

    Greenwood, G. (Peterborough)

    M'Callum, John M.

    Bramsdon, Sir T. A.

    Griffith, Ellis J.

    McKenna, Rt. Hon. Reginald

    Branch, James

    Gulland, John W.

    M'Laren, H. D. (Stafford, W.)

    Bright, J. A.

    Hall, Frederick

    M'Micking, Major G.

    Brocklehurst, W. B.

    Hancock, J. G.

    Maddison, Frederick

    Brooke, Stopford

    Harcourt, Rt. Hon. L. (Rossendale)

    Markham, Arthur Basil

    Bryce, J. Annan

    Hardie, J. Keir (Merthyr Tydvil)

    Marks, G. Croydon (Launceston)

    Burns, Rt. Hon. John

    Hardy, George A. (Suffolk)

    Massie, J.

    Burnyeat, W. J. D.

    Harvey, W. E. (Derbyshire, N. E.)

    Masterman, C. F. G.

    Burt, Rt. Hon. Thomas

    Harwood, George

    Menzies, Sir Walter

    Buxton, Rt. Hon. Sydney Charles

    Haslam, James (Derbyshire)

    Micklem, Nathaniel

    Byles, William Pollard

    Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth)

    Molteno, Percy Alport

    Carr-Gomm, H. W.

    Haworth, Arthur A.

    Mond, A.

    Causton, Rt. Hon. Richard Knight

    Hazel, Dr. A. E. W.

    Money, L. G. Chiozza

    Cawley, Sir Frederick

    Hedges, A. Paget

    Montagu, Hon. E. S.

    Chance, Frederick William

    Helme, Norval Watson

    Morgan, G. Hay (Cornwall)

    Channing, Sir Francis Allston

    Henderson, Arthur (Durham)

    Morgan, J. Lloyd (Carmarthen)

    Cherry, Rt. Hon. R. R.

    Herbert, Col. Sir Ivor (Mon. S.)

    Morrell, Philip

    Clough, William

    Herbert, T. Arnold (Wycombe)

    Morse, L. L.

    Cobbold, Felix Thornley

    Higham, John Sharp

    Morton, Alpheus Cleophas

    Collins, Sir Wm. J. (St. Pancras, W.)

    Hobart, Sir Robert

    Murray, Capt. Hon. A. C. (Kincard.)

    Corbett, A. Cameron (Glasgow)

    Hobhouse, Rt. Hon. Charles E. H.

    Myer, Horatio

    Corbett, C. H. (Sussex, E. Grinstead)

    Hodge, John

    Napier, T. B.

    Cornwall, Sir Edwin A.

    Holland, Sir William Henry

    Newnes, F. (Notts, Bassetlaw)

    Cowan, W. H.

    Holt, Richard Durning

    Norman, Sir Henry

    Cox, Harold

    Hope, John Deans (Fife, West)

    O'Donnell, C. J. (Walworth)

    Crooks, William

    Hope, W. H. B. (Somerset, N.)

    Parker, James (Halifax)

    Cross, Alexander

    Hudson, Walter

    Partington, Oswald

    Davies, Ellis William (Eifion)

    Hyde, Clarendon G.

    Pearce, William (Limehouse)

    Davies, Sir W. Howell (Bristol, S.)

    Illingworth, Percy H.

    Pearson, W. H. M. (Suffolk, Eye)

    Dewar, Arthur (Edinburgh, S.)

    Jardine, Sir J.

    Perks, Sir Robert William

    Dickson-Poynder, Sir John P.

    Jenkins, J.

    Pickersgill, Edward Hare

    Dilke, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles

    Johnson, W. (Nuneaton)

    Pirie, Duncan V.

    Pointer, J.

    Shackleton, David James

    Walsh, Stephen

    Price, Sir Robert J. (Norfolk, E.)

    Shipman, Dr. John G.

    Walters, John Tudor

    Rainy, A. Rolland

    Simon, John Allsebrook

    Walton, Joseph

    Raphael, Herbert H.

    Sloan, Thomas Henry

    Ward, W. Dudley (Southampton)

    Rea, Rt. Hon. Russell (Gloucester)

    Snowden, P.

    Wardle, George J.

    Richards, Thomas (W. Monmomh)

    Soames, Arthur Wellesley

    Warner, Thomas Courtenay T.

    Richards, T. F. (Wolverhampton, W.)

    Soares, Ernest J.

    Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney)

    Richardson, A.

    Stranger, H. Y.

    Waterlow, D. S.

    Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln)

    Stanley, Albert (Staffs, N. W.)

    Wedgwood, Josiah C.

    Roberts, G. H. (Norwich)

    Stanley, Hon. A. Lyulph (Cheshire)

    White, J. Dundas (Dumbartonshire)

    Roberts, Sir J. H. (Denbighs)

    Steadman, W. C.

    White, Sir Luke (York, E. R.)

    Robertson, Sir G. Scott (Bradford)

    Stewart, Halley (Greenock)

    Wilkie, Alexander

    Robinson, S.

    Strachey, Sir Edward

    Williams, J. (Glamorgan)

    Robson, Sir William Snowdon

    Strauss, E. A. (Abingdon)

    Williams, W. Llewelyn (Carmarthen)

    Rogers, F. E. Newman

    Summerbell, T.

    Wills, Arthur Walters

    Rose, Sir Charles Day

    Taylor, John W. (Durham)

    Wilson, Hon. G. G. (Hull, W.)

    Rowlands, J

    Taylor, Theodore C. (Radcliffe)

    Wilson, J. W. (Worcestershire, N.)

    Runciman, Rt. Hon. Walter

    Tennant, Sir Edward (Salisbury)

    Wilson, P. W. (St. Pancras, S.)

    Russell, Rt. Hon. T. W.

    Tennant, H. J. (Berwickshire)

    Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)

    Rutherford, V. H. (Brentford)

    Thomas, Abel (Carmarthen, E.)

    Wood, T. M'Kinnon

    Samuel, Rt. Hon. H. L. (Cleveland)

    Thomas, Sir A. (Glamorgan, E.)

    Yoxall, Sir James Henry

    Samuel, S. M. (Whitechapel)

    Thompson, J. W. H. (Somerset, E.)

    Schwann, C. Duncan (Hyde)

    Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton)

    TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—Mr. Joseph pease and Captain Norton.

    Sears, J. E.

    Thorne, William (West Ham)

    Seely, Colonel

    Verney, F. W.

    NOES.

    Acland-Hood, Rt. Hon. Sir Alex. F.

    Foster, P. S.

    Parker, Sir Gilbert (Gravesend)

    Anson, Sir William Reynell

    Gardner, Ernest

    Parkes, Ebenezer

    Anstruther-Gray, Major

    Gooch, Henry Cubitt (Peckham)

    Pease, Herbert Pike (Darlington)

    Ashley, W. W.

    Gordon, J.

    Peel, Hon. W. R. W

    Baldwin, Stanley

    Goulding, Edward Alfred

    Percy, Earl

    Balfour, Rt. Hon. A. J. (City, Lond.)

    Guinness, Hon. W. E. (B. S. Edmunds)

    Powell, Sir Francis Sharp

    Banbury, Sir Frederick George

    Haddock, George B.

    Pretyman, E G.

    Banner, John S. Harmood-

    Hamilton, Marquess of

    Rawlinson, John Frederick Peel

    Barrie, H. T. (Londonderry, N.)

    Harris, Frederick Leverton

    Remnant, James Farquharson

    Beach, Hon. Michael Hugh Hicks

    Harrison-Broadley, H. B.

    Renwick, George

    Beckett, Hon. Gervase

    Hay, Hon. Claude George

    Roberts, S. (Sheffield, Ecclesall)

    Bowles, G. Stewart

    Helmsley, Viscount

    Ronaldshay, Earl of

    Bridgeman, W. Clive

    Hermon-Hodge, Sir Robert

    Ropner, Colonel Sir Robert

    Bull, Sir William James

    Hill, Sir Clement

    Rutherford, John (Lancashire)

    Burdett-Coutts, W.

    Hills, J. W.

    Rutherford, Watson (Liverpool)

    Butcher, Samuel Henry

    Hope, James Fitzalan (Sheffield)

    Salter, Arthur Clavell

    Carlile, E. Hildred

    Hunt, Rowland

    Sheffield, Sir Berkeley George D.

    Castlereagh, Viscount

    Kennaway, Rt. Hon. Sir John H.

    Smith, Hon. W. F. D. (Strand)

    Cave, George

    Kerry, Earl of

    Stanier, Beville

    Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor)

    Keswick, William

    Starkey, John

    Cecil, Lord R. (Marylebone, E.)

    King, Sir Henry Seymour (Hull)

    Staveley-Hill, Henry (Staffordshire)

    Chamberlain, Rt. Hon. J. A. (Worc'r.)

    Lambton, Hon. Frederick William

    Talbot, Rt. Hon. J. G. (Oxford Univ.)

    Clive, Percy Archer

    Lane-Fox, G. R.

    Thomson, W. Mitchell- (Lanark)

    Clyde, J. Avon

    Law, Andrew Bonar (Dulwich)

    Tuke, Sir John Batty

    Coates, Major E. F. (Lewisham)

    Lockwood, Rt. Hon. Lt.-Col. A. R.

    Walker, Col. W. H. (Lancashire)

    Corbett, T. L. (Down, North)

    Long, Col. Charles W. (Evesham)

    Walrond, Hon. Lionel

    Courthope, G. Loyd

    Lowe, Sir Francis William

    Warde, Col. C. E. (Kent, Mid)

    Dairymple, Viscount

    Magnus, Sir Philip

    Williams, Col. R. (Dorset, W.)

    Dickson, Rt. Hon. C. Scott-

    Middlemore, John Throgmorton

    Willounhby de Eresby, Lord

    Doughty, Sir George

    Mildmay, Francis Bingham

    Wilson, A. Stanley (York, E. R.)

    Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-

    Moore, William

    Winterton, Earl

    Du Cros, Arthur

    Morpeth, Viscount

    Wyndham, Rt. Hon. George

    Faber, George Denison (York)

    Morrison-Bell, Captain

    Younger, George

    Faber, Capt. W. V. (Hants, W.)

    Newdegate, F. A.

    Fell, Arthur

    Nicholson, Wm. G. (Petersfield)

    TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Viscount Valentia and Lord Edmund Talbot.

    Fletcher, J. S.

    Oddy, John James

    Forster, Henry William

    Question put accordingly, "That the Clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill."
    The Committee divided: Ayes, 223; Noes, 119.

    Division No. 413.]

    AYES.

    [8.18 p.m.

    Abraham, William (Rhondda)

    Barker, Sir John

    Bowerman, C. W.

    Acland, Francis Dyke

    Barnard, E. B.

    Brace, William

    Ainsworth, John Stirling

    Barnes, G. N.

    Bramsdon, Sir T. A.

    Alden, Percy

    Barry, Redmond J. (Tyrone, N.)

    Branch, James

    Asquith, Rt. Hon. Herbert Henry

    Beale, W. P.

    Bright, J. A.

    Atherley-Jones, L.

    Benn, W. (Tower Hamlets, St. George)

    Brooke, Stopford

    Baker, Sir John (Portsmouth)

    Berridge, T. H. D.

    Bryce, J. Annan

    Balfour, Robert (Lanark)

    Bethell, Sir J. H. (Essex, Romford)

    Burns, Rt. Hon. John

    Baring, Godfrey (Isle of Wight)

    Bethell, T. R. (Essex, Maiden)

    Burnyeat, W. J. D.

    Burt, Rt. Hon. Thomas

    Hope, W. H. B. (Somerset, N.)

    Ridsdale, E. A.

    Buxton, Rt. Hon. Sydney Charles

    Hudson, Walter

    Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln)

    Byles, William Pollard

    Hyde, Clarendon G.

    Roberts, G. H. (Norwich)

    Carr-Gomm, H. W.

    Illingworth, Percy H.

    Roberts, Sip J. H. (Denbighs)

    Causton, Rt. Hon. Richard Knight

    Jardine, Sir J.

    Robertson, Sir G. Scott (Bradford)

    Cawley, Sir Frederick

    Jenkins, J.

    Robinson, S.

    Cherry, Rt. Hon. R. R.

    Johnson, W. (Nuneaton)

    Robson, Sir William Snowdon

    Clough, William

    Jones, Leif (Appleby)

    Roch, Walter F. (Pembroke)

    Cobbold, Felix Thornley

    Jones, William (Carnarvonshire)

    Rogers, F. E. Newman

    Collins, Sir Wm. J. (St. Pancras, W.)

    Jowett, F. W.

    Rose, Sir Charles Day

    Corbett, A. Cameron (Glasgow)

    Kekewich, Sir George

    Rowlands, J.

    Corbett, C. H. (Sussex, E. Grinstead)

    King, Alfred John (Knutsford)

    Runciman, Rt. Hon. Walter

    Cornwall, Sir Edwin A.

    Laidlaw, Robert

    Russell, Rt. Hon. T. W.

    Cowan, W. H.

    Lamb, Ernest H. (Rochester)

    Rutherford, V. H. (Brentford)

    Crooks, William

    Lambert, George

    Samuel, Rt. Hon. H. L. (Cleveland)

    Cross, Alexander

    Lamont, Norman

    Samuel, S. M. (Whitechapel)

    Cullinan, J.

    Lever, A. Levy (Essex, Harwich)

    Schwann, C. Duncan (Hyde)

    Davies, Ellis William (Eifion)

    Lever, W. H. (Cheshire, Wirral)

    Sears, J. E.

    Davies, Sir W. Howell (Bristol, S.)

    Levy, Sir Maurice

    Seely, Colonel

    Dewar, Arthur (Edinburgh, S.)

    Lewis, John Herbert

    Shackleton, David James

    Dilke, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles

    Lough, Rt. Hon. Thomas

    Shipman, Dr. John G.

    Duckworth, Sir James

    Lupton, Arnold

    Simon, John Allsebrook

    Duncan, C. (Barrow-in-Furness)

    Luttrell, Hugh Fownes

    Sloan, Thomas Henry

    Dunn, A. Edward (Camborne)

    Lynch, H. B.

    Snowden, P.

    Dunne, Major E. Martin (Walsall)

    Macdonald, J. R. (Leicester)

    Soames, Arthur Wellesley

    Elibank, Master of

    Macdonald, J. M. (Falkirk Burghs)

    Soares, Ernest J.

    Evans, Sir S. T.

    Maclean, Donald

    Stanger, H. Y.

    Faber, G. H. (Boston)

    Macpherson, J. T.

    Stanley, Albert (Staffs, N. W.)

    Falconer, J.

    M'Callum, John M.

    Stead man, W. C.

    Fenwick, Charles

    McKenna, Rt. Hon. Reginald

    Strachey, Sir Edward

    Ferens, T. R.

    M'Laren, H. D. (Stafford, W.)

    Strauss, E. A. (Abingdon)

    Ferguson, R. C. Munro

    M'Micking, Major G.

    Summerbell, T.

    Flennes, Hon. Eustace

    Maddison, Frederick

    Taylor, John W. (Durham)

    Findlay, Alexander

    Markham, Arthur Basil

    Taylor, Theodore C. (Radcliffe)

    Fuller, John Michael F.

    Marks, G. Croydon (Launceston)

    Tennant, H. J. (Berwickshire)

    Gibb, James (Harrow)

    Massie, J.

    Thomas, Abel (Carmarthen, E.)

    Gill, A. H.

    Master man, C. F. G.

    Thomas, Sir A. (Glamorgan, E.)

    Gladstone, Rt. Hon. Herbert John

    Menzies, Sir Walter

    Thompson, J. W. H. (Somerset, E.)

    Glover, Thomas

    Micklem, Nathaniel

    Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton)

    Goddard, Sir Daniel Ford

    Molteno, Percy Alport

    Thorne, William (West Ham)

    Greenwood, G. (Peterborough)

    Mond, A.

    Verney, F. W.

    Griffith, Ellis J.

    Money, L. G. Chiozza

    Walsh, Stephen

    Gulland, John W.

    Montagu, Hon. E. S.

    Walters, John Tudor

    Hall, Frederick

    Morgan, G. Hay (Cornwall)

    Walton, Joseph

    Hancock, J. G.

    Morgan, J. Lloyd (Carmarthen)

    Ward, W. Dudley (Southampton)

    Harcourt, Rt. Hon. L. (Rossendale)

    Morrell, Philip

    Wardle, George J.

    Hardie, J. Keir (Merthyr Tydvil)

    Morse, L. L.

    Warner, Thomas Courtenay T.

    Hardy, George A. (Suffolk)

    Morton, Alpheus Cleophas

    Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney)

    Harmsworth, Cecil B. (Worcester)

    Murray, Capt. Hon. A. C. (Kincard.)

    Waterlow, D. S.

    Harvey, W. E. (Derbyshire, N. E.)

    Myer, Horatio

    Wedgwood, Josiah C.

    Harwood, George

    Napier, T. B.

    White, J. Dundas (Dumbartonshire)

    Haslam, James (Derbyshire)

    Newnes, F. (Notts, Bassetlaw)

    White, Sir Luke (York, E. R.)

    Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth)

    Norman, Sir Henry

    Wilkie, Alexander

    Haworth, Arthur A.

    O'Kelly, Conor (Mayo, N.)

    Williams, J. (Glamorgan)

    Hazel, Dr. A. E. W.

    Parker, James (Halifax)

    Williams, W. Llewelyn (Carmarthen)

    Hazleton, Richard

    Partington, Oswald

    Wills, Arthur Walters

    Hedges, A. Paget

    Pearce, William (Limehouse)

    Wilson, Hon. G. G. (Hull, W.)

    Helme, Norval Watson

    Pearson, W. H. M. (Suffolk, Eye)

    Wilson, J. W. (Worcestershire, N.)

    Henderson, Arthur (Durham)

    Pickersgill, Edward Hare

    Wilson, P. W. (St. Pancras, S.)

    Herbert, Col. Sir Ivor (Mon. S.)

    Pirie, Duncan V.

    Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)

    Higham, John Sharp

    Pointer, J.

    Wood, T. M'Kinnon

    Hobart, Sir Robert

    Price, Sir Robert J. (Norfolk, E.)

    Yoxall, Sir James Henry

    Hobhouse, Rt. Hon. Charles E. H.

    Rainy, A. Rolland

    Hodge, John

    Rea, Rt. Hon. Russell (Gloucester)

    Holland, Sir William Henry

    Richards, Thomas (W. Monmouth)

    TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—Mr. Joseph Pease and Captain Norton.

    Holt, Richard Durning

    Richards, T. F. (Wolverhampton, W.)

    Hope, John Deans (Fife, West)

    Richardson, A.

    NOES.

    Acland-Hood, Rt. Hon. Sir Alex. F.

    Beckett, Hon. Gervase

    Chaplin, Rt. Hon. Henry

    Agar-Robartes, Hon. T. C. R.

    Bowles, G. Stewart

    Clive, Percy Archer

    Anson, Sir William Reynell

    Bridgeman, W. Clive

    Clyde, J. Avon

    Anstruther-Gray, Major

    Bull, Sir William James

    Coates, Major E. F. (Lewisham)

    Ashley, W. W.

    Burdett-Coutts, W.

    Corbett, T. L. (Down, North)

    Baldwin, Stanley

    Butcher, Samuel Henry

    Courthope, G. Loyd

    Balfour, Rt. Hon. A. J. (City, Lond.)

    Carlile, E. Hildred

    Cox, Harold

    Banbury, Sir Frederick George

    Castlereagh, Viscount

    Dairymple, Viscount

    Banner, John S. Harmood-

    Cave, George

    Davies, David (Montgomery Co.)

    Barrie, H. T. (Londonderry, N.)

    Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor)

    Dickson-Poynder, Sir John P.

    Beach, Hon. Michael Hugh Hicks

    Cecil, Lord R. (Marylebone, E.)

    Dickson, Rt. Hon. C. Scott-

    Beauchamp, E.

    Chamberlain, Rt. Hon. J. A. (Worc'r)

    Doughty, Sir George

    Beck, A. Cecil

    Chance, Frederick William

    Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-

    328

    329

    Du Cros, Arthur

    Lambton, Hon. Frederick William

    Ronaldshay, Earl of

    Faber, George Denison (York)

    Lane-Fox, G. R.

    Ropner, Colonel Sir Robert

    Faber, Capt. W. V. (Hants, W.)

    Law, Andrew Bonar (Dulwich)

    Rutherford, John (Lancashire)

    Fell, Arthur

    Lockwood, Rt. Hon. Lt.-Col. A. R.

    Rutherford, Watson (Liverpool)

    Fletcher, J. S.

    Long, Col. Charles W. (Evesham)

    Salter, Arthur Clavell

    Forster, Henry William

    Lowe, Sir Francis William

    Sheffield, Sir Berekley George D.

    Foster, P. S.

    Magnus, Sir Philip

    Smith, Hon. W. F. D. (Strand)

    Gardner, Ernest

    Middlemore, John Throgmorton

    Stanier, Beville

    Gooch, Henry Cubitt (Peckham)

    Mildmay, Francis Bingham

    Stanley, Hon. A. Lyulph (Cheshire)

    Gordon, J.

    Moore, William

    Starkey, John R.

    Goulding, Edward Alfred

    Morpeth, Viscount

    Staveley-Hill, Henry (Staffordshire)

    Guinness, Hon. W. E. (B. S. Edmunds)

    Morrison-Bell, Captain

    Talbot, Rt. Hon. J. G. (Oxford Univ.)

    Haddock, George B.

    Newdegate, F. A.

    Tennant, Sir Edward (Salisbury)

    Hamilton, Marquess of

    Nicholson, William G. (Petersfield)

    Thomson. W. Mitchell- (Lanark)

    Harris, Frederick Leverton

    Oddy, John James

    Tuke, Sir John Batty

    Harrison-Broadley, H. B.

    O'Donnell, C J. (Walworth)

    Walker, Col. W. H. (Lancashire)

    Hay, Hon. Claude George

    Parker, Sir Gilbert (Gravesend)

    Walrond, Hon. Lionel

    Helmsley, Viscount

    Parkes, Ebenezer

    Warde, Col. C E. (Kent, Mid)

    Henderson, J. McD. (Aberdeen, W.)

    Pease, Herbert Pike (Darlington)

    Williams, Col. R. (Dorset, W.)

    Hermon-Hodge, Sir Robert

    Peel, Hon. W. R. W.

    Willoughby de Eresby, Lord

    Hill, Sir Clement

    Percy, Earl

    Wilson, A. Stanley (York, E. R.)

    Hills, J. W.

    Perks, Sir Robert William

    Winterton, Earl

    Hope, James Fitzalan (Sheffield)

    Powell, Sir Francis Sharp

    Wyndham, Rt. Hon. George

    Hunt, Rowland

    Pretyman, E. G.

    Younger, George

    Kennaway, Rt. Hon, Sir John H.

    Rawlinson, John Frederick Peel

    Kerry, Earl of

    Remnant, James Farquharson

    TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Viscount Valentia and Lord Edmund Talbot.

    Keswick, William

    Renwick George

    King, Sir Henry Seymour (Hull)

    Roberts, S. (Sheffield, Ecclesall)

    Clause 11.—(Exemptions from Undeveloped Land Duty, and Allowances.)
    (1) Undeveloped Land Duty shall not be charged in respect of any land where the site value of the land does not exceed fifty pounds per acre.
    (2) In the case of agricultural land exceeding that value, Undeveloped Land Duty shall not be charged so far as the site value of the land is due to the value of the land for agricultural purposes.
    (3) Undeveloped Land Duty shall not be charged on the site value of any parks, gardens, or open spaces which in the opinion of the Commissioners are open to the public as of right, or on the site value of any parks, gardens, or open spaces reasonable access to which is granted to the public, where in the opinion of the Commissioners that access is of benefit to the public as contributing to the amenity of the locality, or on the site value of any land which is used for the purpose of games or other recreation where the Commissioners are satisfied that the use of the land is for the benefit of the public or of the inhabitants of the locality, and that the land is so used under some agreement with the owner which, as originally made, could not be determined for a period of at least five years.
    The opinion of the Commissioners as to matters arising under this sub-section shall be final and not subject to any appeal.
    (4) Undeveloped Land Duty shall not be charged on any land not exceeding an acre in extent valued together with a dwelling-house for the purpose of Inhabited House Duty, and where land con-
    330
    sists of or comprises gardens or pleasure grounds exceeding one acre but not exceeding two acres in extent, an allowance shall be given in respect of any Undeveloped Land Duty payable on the land of an amount of duty bearing the same proportion to the whole amount of duty payable as one acre bears to the whole extent of the gardens or pleasure grounds.
    (5) Where agricultural land is at the time of the passing of this Act held under a tenancy originally created by a lease or agreement made or entered into before the thirtieth day of April, nineteen hundred and nine, the term of which exceeded one year but did not exceed twenty-one years, Undeveloped Land Duty shall not be charged on the land during the continuance of the tenancy under that lease or agreement.
    Mr. HENRY CHAPLIN Mr. HENRY CHAPLIN moved, in Section (1), after "Undeveloped Land Duty shall not be charged in respect of" to insert the words "agricultural land or."
    In moving to exempt agricultural land from the duty imposed under this clause, in order to explain the position I must point out that under the clause agricultural land is placed in two categories, namely, land which is worth less than £50 an acre, and land which is worth more than £50 per acre; and in these two categories the land is dealt with in different ways. Where land is held to be worth less than £50 an acre it is exempted altogether. There is a great deal of land in the country, or, at all events, a considerable proportion of agricultural land, which is worth more than £50 an acre—

    331
    sometimes a great deal more. The hon. Member for Louth (Sir R. Perks) told us last night that in his constituency, which is very well known to me, and in which indeed I still possess some land of my own, there is grazing land worth a great deal of money—absolutely and purely agricultural land—and yet under this Bill as it stands land of that character would he liable to taxation. But then it is pointed out in the clause that where land is worth more than £50 an acre it is to be treated in a somewhat different way. This is what the Bill provides: "In the case of agricultural land exceeding that value, Undeveloped Land Duty shall not be charged so far as the site value of the land is due to the value of the land for agricultural purposes." I do not think that that is at all a sufficient safeguard even for the kind of land that I have described, and for these reasons. The site value of the land is the site denuded of everything upon it which is of any value at all. Therefore, even under the terms of the Bill, the proposal might have most injurious effect upon agricultural land which is worth more than £50 an acre.
    I come to what to my mind is a still more important objection to the position of agricultural land as it stands at present. The Attorney-General himself has this afternoon afforded us a reason why this Amendment is more than ever necessary. He criticised the speech of my hon. Friend, the Member for Blackpool (Mr. Ashley), with regard to his statements about market gardens. The hon. and learned Gentleman said that my hon. Friend had clearly and ably summed up all the most popular delusions with regard to the effect of this tax upon agricultural land. I thought that my hon. Friend put the case with regard to market gardens most effectively. At any rate, he elicited from the Attorney-General a most striking and entirely novel statement with regard to the exemption of agricultural land. He said, in effect, "Oh, with regard to market gardens, they are a totally different thing. They are not to be excluded under the provisions of the Bill or of any of the Amendments which we have suggested, because that is land which is not being put to its best economic use." That is an entirely new limitation upon the exemption of agricultural land from the effect of these new taxes. I have always understood that the great policy of the Liberal party for the last four or five
    332
    years has been to replace upon the land people who have left it, and wherever it is possible to bring in new occupants. It that is still the object of the Liberal party, is it not rather a curious way of trying to bring people back to the land, to impose additional taxation upon those who are there at the present time? Take the case of a market gardener who is the owner of his land, in a district close to a large town, where much of the land, no doubt, possesses a building value. Do you mean to tell me that you are not doing everything in your power, not only to hinder the return of people to the land, but to drive away those who are there, by imposing upon them new, unexpected, and exceedingly heavy burdens? What is the excuse for this extraordinary proceeding on the part of a Party who for the last three or four years have been making "Back to the Land," their popular cry at every election, and pointing to what they have done, and to what they are going to do, with a view to replacing people on the land? A more extraordinary volte face I do not remember in the whole course of my political career. But what is the reason for it? I suppose that right hon. Gentlemen opposite are sincerely anxious that land for the purpose of housing the people in our great towns should be provided with greater facility than at present. It seems to me that the matter may be regarded in two different aspects. On the one hand it ought to be your object to do everything in your power to increase the number of occupants of agricultural land. Up till now that has been your policy. Or you may take it from the other point of view —that of the general health of the dwellers in towns. Why is it necessary to dispossess the people in occupation of all the numerous small holdings, allotments, market gardens, and nursery gardens which are in existence at the present time? I am informed that a great many of these people are owners of the land they occupy. If that be the case, according to what we have heard to-night, because this land is not being put to its best economic use, every one of these people will, under this Bill, be heavily fined. Would it not be better to try this expedient, which would answer as well, or a great deal better, than your old plan—even from your own point of viewf—or you want to house the people better—of allowing the market gardens to follow their natural course, and to continue just so long as the I people find it desirable that they should

    333
    continue, and build your houses beyond them? I thought you had a great Bill in hand now—I think you have—for the creation of garden cities. After all, this would only be on the principle of garden cities, which are held now to be so exceedingly desirable. I have always thought, reading as I do, and hearing as I do, from day to day of the enormous congestion of people in the towns, the want of air and the want of space, that you should rather aim, even from a sanitary point of view, at keeping as many open spaces in the immediate neighbourhood of towns as you can, and even within the circle of the town itself. I do not believe that this ideal could not be carried out; that whilst leaving market gardens entirely to their own natural course, you abstain from any interference with them by your new legislation, treating them as you profess to treat agricultural land, and thereby carrying out and giving some effect to the policy which you have so loudly proclaimed for years now all over the country. I should have thought, both in the interests of the dwellers in the towns and in the interest of the policy which you have always held up to the country, that you might, while leaving this cultivation on the borders of towns alone, do something to give great facilities—if those facilities be needed—and so far as I recollect there are ample powers already—to deal with the question of housing beyond the borders of these market gardens. That, at least, is a subject which I think is well deserving of the attention and consideration of this House. I myself attach so much real importance to maintaining the people on the land, and increasing and giving them encouragement to go as well as to remain there, that I am determinedly opposed to any legislation whatever that is not directly going to secure that the prospects, welfare, and future of all these small owners and occupiers who at present in great numbers cultivate their land in the neighbourhood of nearly all great towns of the country is safeguarded. You must remember this, that if you are in earnest in desiring to promote what is called small cultivation, and really to find a large additional amount of employment for the people on the land, you cannot deal a more deadly blow at that policy than you are doing with this particular provision in this Bill, which is going to tax, not only market gardens, small holdings, allotments and nursery grounds, but also market gardens which are now in the immediate neighbourhood of the towns. It is quite a condition of success of small cultivation in
    334
    this country that those concerned should be as close as may be to a great market. That is where they flourish. The whole principle of these allotments and small holdings is that they may be cultivated in the way I have been describing. All this you are going to endanger by the provisions of your Bill. What is the reason? Why cannot you leave it to them? It is perfectly certain that if the land attains anything like the value you speak of, in the natural course of things the people who own that land would not go on for ever cultivating it if they are losing a large annual revenue. In the course of a very few years that should happen the landlord himself will naturally put it on the market. Be that as it may. Whether I am right or wrong, for the reasons I have mentioned I move this Amendment. I should have hoped that the Government would have made agricultural exemption a reality instead of what it is at present, absolutely nothing but a sham.
    Sir W. ROBSON: The Amendment of the right hon. Gentleman is to exempt all land which is now agricultural from the operation of the tax, no matter how valuable that land may become for building purposes hereafter. The scheme of the Bill is to exempt all agricultural value. It does that in very explicit and, I think, in very sufficient terms. It exempts all agricultural values. What agricultural values are is clear from the definition of agriculture, which makes that term include not only all ordinary rural land with which we are familiar, devoted to purposes of farming, but also market gardens, nursery grounds, or allotments. So that the market garden case of the right hon. Gentleman is within the exemption. So far as they depend for their value upon market gardens it would be a very strange thing if on this side of the House there was any desire or tendency to interfere with agricultural pursuits As the right hon. Gentleman himself well knows, we have done all that in us lay as a Government to try and bring people, as the phrase goes, back to the land. In the Agricultural Holdings Act, in the Small Holdings Act, we have given good evidence of our intention and desire in that direction—in fact, I think we may claim to have shown a scrupulous and sensitive regard for the landed interest so far as that interest is agricultural. I am sure the right hon. Gentleman would admit, and indeed has admitted, that there are uses to which agricultural land may be

    335
    put which are of greater importance than agriculture. The right hon. Gentleman has spoken in perfectly just terms of the needs of the community when he suggested the existence of enormous congestion and want of air and want of apace, and that means that there must be more land available for housing. When we were discussing the Small Holdings Act, I remember one of the proposals which met with approval, especially from hon. Gentlemen opposite, was a very useful clause which gave to the landlords the power of resumption of land given over to small holdings in case where a building value attached where the needs of the community to have that property were greater than the agricultural needs of the land. That was an admission that rural communities really are judged by the standard of urban communities. They change their character, and, although they become rural in form, they have become urban in value, and some of the interests of urban communities must be considered in regard to purely rural land. That really is our justification for resisting this Amendment, because if the Amendment were to have effect you might have agricultural land worth thousands of pounds—of course, I am taking an extreme case in order to show how far the Amendment goes—held back wilfully and wrongfully, though I believe it is not common, and yet, according to the right hon. Gentleman, that would not be a fit subject for this tax simply because the land happens at the time to be devoted to agriculture. What we have done is to exempt agricultural values and only to take in agricultural land with a building value, so that the needs of the community should receive every attention.
    Mr. PRETYMAN: I think the arguments which the Attorney-General has used might have had some weight if this was the only tax which is being imposed upon land which acquired a building value. The Attorney-General appears to forget that the Committee has already passed an Increment Value Duty which imposes a very heavy burden upon land of this description. It would be perfectly easy if the Government were perfectly sincere in their desire to help small cultivators in the immediate neighbourhood of towns to do so. They could do it in this way at little or no sacrifice by accepting the Amendment of my hon. Friend, and at the same time putting the whole of the increment value into the pocket of the State. Why
    336
    that course is not taken passes my comprehension. Here you have a market gardener or a small cultivator in the immediate vicinity of the town. What is going to be the effect of this particular tax upon him, first when he is the owner, and secondly when he is the tenant? If he is the owner he must either sell the land, and that involves, as the Attorney-General very well knows, where there has been a high-class cultivation of the market garden and high farming a very considerable capital expenditure upon the land which is valuable for that purpose. If that land is transferred from that use to building, the whole of that capital expenditure such as glass houses very heavy expenditure upon manuring, and extensive cultivation has to be sacrificed.
    9.0. P.M.
    Surely it is obvious that it is not in the interest of the community that that transfer should be forced at an earlier date than is necessary. What is going to be the effect on the small cultivator who is the owner of his garden? He must either pay taxes out of his profit, which is an unfair thing to ask him to do, or he must sell the land, and sacrifice the whole of the capital embarked upon it for the purposes of his trade. I quite understand the case where land is really necessary to the community, and we will accept the Attorney-General's test which he said is value only. He says when the community really require a piece of land for the purposes of the community that that necessity is reflected in the valuation of the land, and that when the value of the land becomes high that is the measure of the necessity of the community getting the land for building purposes—I say you may have an Increment Value Duty, and you will get it when the owner dies or sells his property. That will tempt the owner, and he will not go on cultivating land for the purposes of a market garden, and for the purpose of making a few pounds an acre when he can sell it for thousands of pounds. It is obvious that the Increment Value Duty in any case will be payable when the land comes into the market. Supposing the market gardener is a tenant, what is going to be his position? If Increment Value Duty only is payable, it is possible the owner may allow him to remain there at the same rent, and may allow him to go on cultivating the land; but if the State comes down upon the owner and says you must either sell this land or pay this sum upon it, what then will the owner do? He will say to the tenant, you must either pay me this Undeveloped Land Duty or I shall

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    be obliged, greatly as I regret it, to give you notice to quit, and I must sell the land. Exactly the same thing has happened upon the Reversion Duty. It is obvious that the Reversion Duty will be paid by the lessee, and not by the lessor. You put this Undeveloped Land Duty upon land of this character, which is being used in the immediate neighbourhood of towns, and the effect is that it will fall upon the tenant, who will either be turned out of his land, or else it will be added to his rent. That is the natural economic result which must follow. Therefore, I say that this Amendment would obviate all that difficulty, because a land-owner could not put any part of the Increment Duty upon his tenants; it would fall upon the owner, and would be paid when the owner dies or parts with the land. This is a tax which will amount to a reduction of more than half of the net receipts of the land-owner. Is he likely to go on with that? If the Government desire to free agriculture in the true sense from the burden of this Undeveloped Land Duty, they are bound to accept this Amendment, because it is the only way in which agriculture can really be made free. To say that because you free the agricultural value only you are thereby freeing agriculture altogether, is clearly juggling with words. At the very moment any occupier or owner of agricultural land finds that his land is acquiring some small additional value above its agricultural value, you immediately put a halter round his neck. There is a large proportion of the land of this country in that position, which, as agricultural land, will be subject to this tax. We come to words later on in the Bill, in which it is definitely laid down that the Government do not consider agriculture as a trade or industry which has developed land at all. I am told that we have passed that already in the small hours of this morning. The Government are practically telling the agricultural industry that their land is the only land they consider is not developed, whatever industry or brains may be devoted to developing it to its highest use by intensive cultivation in the neighbourhood of towns. Agriculture is to be singled out and treated as undeveloped, for what purpose? Simply to levy a special tax upon the land. I do not think the agricultural industry will thank the Government for having treated their industry in this way by singling it out for the purposes of a special tax. To say that because you are simply exempting what you are pleased to call the agricul-
    338
    tural value and ultimately going by some process which nobody has yet imagined co deduct agricultural value from site value is absurd. What relation is there between the two? It is all very well to defend these taxes by generalities and by references such as are made about the holding up of land. You are going to tax the men who have risen from agricultural labourers, who have raised themselves by their industry into the position of cultivators, at a small profit, of small pieces of land close to towns, who are some of the most deserving and hard-working men in the country. The practical effect of this Bill is that you are going to seriously prejudice these cultivators and interfere with their industry, and the only way you can avoid doing that and keep your Increment Value Duty and the principles as well as on which you advocate, is by accepting this Amendment. There will be plenty of experiments and plenty of opportunities of judging those principles when applied. You are making by this Bill an insensate attack on agriculture at one of its tenderest points, and I hope that all hon. Members who have any care at all for the pioneers of agricultural development in the immediate neighbourhood of towns will support this Amendment quite irrespective of party.
    Mr. W. C. BRIDGEMAN: We hear a good deal from hon. Gentlemen opposite and the Government about their anxiety to bring the people back to the land, but directly a farmer gets land near a town, where he has a reasonable chance of making a good thing out of it, he is not to be allowed to do so, and agriculture is to be kept in the distant parts of the country, away from the towns, where there is less chance of making a profit. The only piece of land which is smiled upon by the Government is that which a man builds a wall around or builds something upon it. We were told in our early researches that Balbus made it his object to build a wall, and this Government seem to be trying to inculcate the same lesson, and anyone else who tries to do anything else beside build a wall is to be penalised. Take the case of a market gardener, and the case of a person who puts up a creamery near a town. A man who puts up a creamery is doing what he can to provide the town with milk and cream, and if he surrounds his land with a wall he is all right; but the man trying to supply vegetables who does not build a wall or a house or any other structure on his land

    339
    is to be penalised or driven away. Both these people render greater service to a town than a great many other people who build walls, and I should like to know why one is to be penalised and the other is to be encouraged. It seems to me that this involves a very great injustice, and requires an explanation. I hope the Attorney-General will be able to devise some plan for giving both these cultivators an equal chance. The Government select one kind of development of land for their approval and the other for their condemnation. They treat one person as Cain, who makes an unsuitable sacrifice and has to be punished, and the other as Abel, who has to be encouraged. I cannot see how the distinction can fairly be drawn, and I do hope the Government will see some way to mitigate the injustice, even if it is only that particular case I have brought before the notice of the Committee.
    Mr. A. LUPTON: As representing a purely agricultural constituency, if I thought this measure were going to produce any such difficulty as has been described, I should oppose it, but the small holders and market gardeners in my constituency are strongly in favour of these land clauses of the Bill, particularly this clause we are now discussing. It is the principal thing they advocate. Having given such a consideration as I am capable to the question whether the distinction drawn by the Government is based on a wise understanding of the matter or whether the right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite are right, I have come to the conclusion that my friends down in the country, the farmers and market gardeners who cultivate the land, are in the right. Section (2) of this clause entirely exempts all agricultural value from taxation, so that it is utterly contrary to the Bill to suggest that this clause is going to tax the market gardener or agriculturist who develops his land or goes in for intensive cultivation, even although that cultivation in some cases makes his land worth £500 per acre. The right hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Pretyman) spoke as if they belonged to a race of pure philanthropists, who do not charge their tenants as much as they can get. My experience is rather the other way. As far as I can make out, they charge tenants as much as they can get, and any extra charge which comes upon the landlord he will have to pay himself, because the
    340
    tenants now are charged all they can pay. The benefit under the Agricultural Rates Act is being transferred—in some cases it has been transferred—to the landlord.
    Mr. G. YOUNGER: Certainly not.
    Mr. LUPTON: I say certainly so. They say put this Undeveloped Land Tax on and the landlord will immediately increase the rent. I think not. I think he will find his tenant will not pay; he is already paying as much as the land is worth. I wish to put another point, which greatly interests the agricultural districts. Sometimes there is great difficulty in getting house accommodation. I know a purely agricultural district where land happen3 to be worth £70 or £80 per acre for purely agricultural purposes, and men working upon that land, contract work, make as much as 5s. per day. They can afford to pay a rent which would give a moderate interest on the cost of building suitable houses. The local authority is anxious to build houses in order that the population may increase and that accommodation may be provided. They cannot get land, however, because the landowner wants to charge four times its value. If the land is really worth all that, surely the landlord can pay a little halfpenny tax upon its capital value. Perhaps it might be found when that halfpenny tax came to be levied that the land was not worth £300 an acre, but only £70, and when that came to be fully understood, as shown by the tax, the local authority might be able to buy the land at its true value, instead of having to give the fancy price put on it just because they want it for a few cottages for the labouring classes. We want to bring people back to the land, but how can we do that if there are not houses for them to live in? That is the difficulty. The effect of this little tax will be to make the land-owner say what is really the value of his land. The landowner has a great many privileges, but he has quite long enough the privilege of saying one day his land is worth £50 per acre and of saying the next it is worth £500 per acre. He ought to be made to say, "That is its price," and to stick to it. If land is worth £300 per acre let him pay the Undeveloped Land Duty on it; but, if it is only worth £30 per acre, then he will not have the Undeveloped Land Tax to pay, and if the local authority wants a little land in order that people can go upon the soil which is fruitful and only waiting for labour to go there, it will give them a chance to build houses in which

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    the population of the future may be better housed than the population is at present.
    Mr. YOUNGER: The speech to which we have just listened shows very clearly that the Attorney-General did not make himself perfectly clear to everybody in the speech he made on the subject of market gardening. I take it what he wanted the House to understand was that, whatever amount of capital, brains, and work and manure was put into the cultivation of land so far as its value was agricultural, it was entirely exempt from the tax. Whatever the agricultural value imparted to that particular land by the operation of the market gardener might be, it is to be exempt by the Bill from this Undeveloped Land Duty; but, wherever the commercial value of the land for building purposes exceeds the agricultural market value, then it does not escape. If the hon. Member for Sleaford (Mr. Lupton) imagines that market gardens which have something more than an agricultural value attached to the land are to escape, he will wake one morning and find he has made a very great mistake, and that these small holdings and allotments are subject to the tax.
    Sir W. ROBSON: Of course, the market garden value is an agricultural value. The hon. Gentleman spoke as if to convey that the agricultural value was something less than the market garden value.
    Mr. YOUNGER: I quite understand the market garden value is purely agricultural. I say that where that agricultural value amounts to anything like £100 per acre, it entirely escapes the Undeveloped Land Duty; but, if that particular land has a building value of £200 per acre, then it is roped in and comes under this Undeveloped Land Tax. Let the hon. Member for Sleaford and his market-gardening friends make perfectly certain that their holdings do not possess a building value over and above the market-garden value.
    Mr. LUPTON: The land in my Division possesses no building value except what the landowner chooses to put on it, because he can forbid all building unless he gets his blackmail.
    Mr. YOUNGER: That is not the point. It does not matter what the landlord says. There may very easily be a building value in those cases. I quite agree the right hon. Gentleman was right in saying this is a very wide Amendment. It would exempt all land used for agricultural pur-
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    poses from this tax, and perhaps, to that extent, it is a little wider than my right hon. Friend quite intended. At the same time, it is extremely difficult to discriminate between certain lands used for agricultural purposes which might perhaps come under this tax and other land which clearly ought to be exempt. This is one thing certain which the Government is not entitled to say: they are not entitled to say that agricultural land is wholly exempt from this tax. They go about saying that on platforms where they also make other statements which cannot be contradicted at the time, but which are effectively contradicted afterwards. I am bound to say that this tax appears to be a very serious, heavy and unforunate burden to be placed on land of this kind. I have spoken of the peculiar position of urban areas in Scotland with regard to land used for agricultural purposes within their areas. There are 150,000 acres of land within the limits of the boundaries of various boroughs, of which only 50,000 acres are built upon. The remaining 100,000 acres, therefore, are used for agricultural purposes. That enormous proportion of land within the borough areas is rated at the ordinary rate which applies to all land, and on the top of that heavy rate you are now going to place this Land Tax, and you are thereby going to penalise the land very seriously. A very large amount of this land, which has no value for anything but agricultural purposes, although there are prospective chances of building value accruing, for many years to come cannot be used for other than agricultural purposes. In Glasgow alone there are 3,000 such acres. A year or two ago an attempt was made to bring in 15,000 more acres. It failed, but it may be repeated, and it may succeed in some future year. But let us take the case of the 3,000 acres. The development of Glasgow goes on at the rate of 50 or 60 acres per year, so that it will take at least 50 years before, at the present rate of progress, these 3,000 acres can possibly be developed. Therefore the great bulk of the land must for many years continue to be used for agricultural purposes. The people who cultivate it will be seriously handicapped by this heavy tax. I shall vote for the Amendment of my right hon. Friend, because I believe in doing all we possibly can to help the agricultural interest, which has suffered so severely in the past, and which is only just beginning to emerge from a long period of depression. The value of grain and roots has been steadily advancing of late.

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    I hope they will maintain their present prices, and if that be so no doubt the agricultural interest will then be in a better position to bear additional burdens. But they have only just come through very hard times. The landlords of Scotland have been called upon to make great sacrifices in the interests of agriculture, and I must say I consider it extremely hard to penalise them in this way just at the moment they are beginning to see daylight after so long a period of depression.
    Mr. J. C. WEDGWOOD: I do not think there is any hon. Member on the opposite side of the House to whom we listen with more respect than the hon. Member who has just addressed the Committee. His voice on these questions always carries great weight, and, therefore, I was truly sorry to hear him state that this halfpenny tax on undeveloped land, so far as it falls on land used for agricultural purposes, will have to be borne by those who cultivate the land. In my opinion it must fall on those who own the land.
    Mr. YOUNGER: In the first instance, no doubt—but not afterwards.
    Mr. WEDGWOOD: Yes, I think it will fall on them afterwards as well. In so far as agriculture is concerned, it is impossible for a man who is at present farming the land to pay more taxation, and, therefore, this additional tax must fall on the landowner. I think we have already had a quotation from John Stuart Mill, in which he says that taxation on the land cannot rest upon anyone except the landlord. Remember this is a tax on economical rent, and all economists, from John Stuart Mill down to the hon. Member for Preston (Mr. Cox) agree that it cannot rest upon anyone except the landlord; consequently the market gardener, about whom hon. Members opposite are so much exercised in their minds, will never suffer; the burden will fall on the landlord of the property. The latter has two alternatives before him—he can either sell the land at the enlarged price which it would fetch for building purposes, or he can continue where he is and pay the tax. I do not think it is desirable that land badly required for housing purposes should be used purely for market garden purposes; and, therefore, even where the market gardener owns land of considerable building value. I think it would be better to induce him to part with that land for a big price, and to
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    invest the money in other productive business. It certainly would be no disadvantage to the community as a whole. Of course, if this Amendment were carried as it appears on the Paper it would nullify the whole clause, because all land is used for agricultural purposes—["No! No!"]—with very few exceptions. Even valuable land in Westminster and Kensington is used for agricultural purposes; and if this Amendment is carried that land, which is the sort of land we want to develop as rapidly as possible, will escape taxation. I do not think it can be the intention of any Member of this House to nullify, as this Amendment would do, the whole effect of this clause.
    Mr. RAWLINSON: I differ from the hon. Member who has just sat down in saying that this Amendment, if carried, would absolutely nullify the effect of this tax. I disagree also with his broad assertion that all undeveloped land is used for agricultural purposes. I would invite him to walk with me down the Strand, where I could point out to him valuable plots of land belonging to the London County Council at present lying idle. I might point out to him the Temple Gardens, which certainly are not used for agricultural purposes, and I might take him to the suburbs of London, where we could also find ample land undeveloped, which is not used for agricultural purposes. I want to deal with a technical point, which the hon. Member for Sleaford (Mr. Lupton) has brought forward, and it is this: Assuming that there is land, which for agricultural purposes is worth £100 an acre, and which is now being used as a market garden, but which has a building value of £70, under those circumstances I would submit to the Committee that that is land which is being used for its proper purpose. What is the effect of this Bill? It is, that when land is worth more than £50 an acre, and in this case its building value is £70 an acre, all the allowance that is to be made to the unfortunate owner is that he shall not be charged so far as the site value of the land is due to its value for agricultural purposes. Assuming it is grazing land, what is the site value of the land for agricultural purposes when you have taken all the turf off, and what is the use of it to a market gardener when you have taken up all the drains and taken down all the structures upon it?

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    Everybody knows that its site value for agricultural purposes is practically nothing at all under those circumstances, and all that this man would get in the way of allowance in this hypothetical case, where the land is worth £100 per acre for agricultural purposes and £70 for building, all he would get is an allowance, which the fairest-minded valuer could not put very high for land which has been denuded of all which has been put upon it for agricultural purposes, and that will be merely a nominal amount. If I am right in that point I ask for the hon. Member's vote in favour of this Amendment, because of that device, to use no other word, of drafting a Bill in this form. There is no answer to that, and it is not intended that there should be any answer, and I ask on that ground for the support of hon. Members. The hon. Member who has just sat down has quoted John Stuart Mill and has argued on the theoretical side,that if you put this halfpenny tax upon the market garden you will not put it on the market gardener but on the landlord. I will not cross swords with the hon. Member on a question of political economy, but I do know what the business effect would be. If you have a landlord, who has a market gardener in possession of a piece of his land, he does not mean to build upon it; but if you put an extra tax upon him for not building upon that land the effect of that will be that he will turn the market gardener out and sell it for building purposes. The market gardener will not thank those who put on the tax when he is turned out in the streets.
    Sir ROBERT PERKS: I mean to support this Amendment. If I thought that the view just expounded was the correct one I should say that it was simply a shuffle, but I do not take that view at all. I cannot believe that the Attorney-General or anybody else has put upon this clause the very extraordinary construction which my hon. and learned Friend has just suggested, because, presuming that there be in the vicinity of one of our country towns a piece of land which is used as a market garden, or for a purpose which may have an agricultural value—for pasture or for any other purpose—quite different from what it may possess as a market garden, or used in some special form of agricultural pursuit, the object is governed by the term "agricultural purpose." Presuming that land, as ordinary pasture land, may be valued at some £50 or £60 per acre, or used for the special purpose of a market garden, or for
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    small fruit culture, it may be worth £100 an acre, as I understand this clause there will be no charge upon that land as purely agricultural land used for this purpose up to the point of £100 an acre. The whole of that, as I understand this Bill, would be exempted up to this point. Supposing that land has a value for building purposes owing to its vicinity to the market town, or for some other reason, supposing it has a value of a couple of hundred pounds. I understand the scheme of this Bill to be as I have stated.
    I am not in favour of the principle of this clause at all. I voted in the last Division against the last clause, because I thought the principle adopted for getting the value of the unearned increment was a wrong principle, and therefore I voted against the clause, but I am going to vote with my right hon. Friend on this Amendment, and I differ entirely from my hon. Friend, who represents a neighbouring Division of my own county of Lincolnshire, and who tells us the small farmers are strongly in favour of this and the preceding clause. In the constituency of Lin colnshire, which I represent, there is a totally different sentiment, and I have seen not the smallest trace of any of the small holders being in favour of it. The only gentleman who holds strong views in favour of this clause, is a country clergy man who belongs, I believe, to the Fabian Society, and is a Socialist of a somewhat advanced character. At all events he is a follower of Henry George, and avowedly adopts this clause. [An HON. MEMBER: "Name."] His name is Hill, and he is a very excellent Gentleman, but he supports this clause, expressly because he says that some day or another this halfpenny will get into a sixpence or a shilling, and we shall resume possession of the land, by taxing the possession of land out of existence. That seems to me to be predatory, and I will have nothing whatever to do with it; but he is the only man whom I know of in my Division who is in favour of this clause, who may be said to be connected with land and he is indirectly connected with it, because he holds a glebe and receives tithes, which I see, under the schedule of this Bill, are exempted from the provisions of this beneficent Act. May I say, in passing, that my hon. Friend quotes John Stuart Mill, but I think, if he will read the contemporaneous works of a French political economist, Victor Bastien, he will find that he does not hold the views of John Stuart Mill with reference to the question of the charges

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    upon property contained in the views expressed by my hon. Friend a few moments ago. I rather am disposed to think that any charge levied upon the land must ultimately fall, or, at all events, be largely borne by the consumer. The cost of manufacture must ultimately fall upon the consumer, and if that be true in the general industry of the country, I certainly hold the theory that it must ultimately fall upon the consumer, or be largely shared by the consumer in the great trade of agriculture.
    But the reason why I shall support the Amendment is that I think it is desirable to make it absolutely clear that we do not intend to charge this tax upon agricultural land, and it will then remain for the Government or the Inland Revenue officers, or whoever undertakes the duty of enforcing the Act, to show that these lands are not agricultural lands, but building land, and come within the purview of the Act. In fact, you will put the onus of proof on the Government instead of leaving it on the backs of the small farmer, who at present is face to face with the most unpleasant dilemma on this particular point, because it will be almost impossible for the small farmer, who may own a few acres outside a town, to discover whether a particular piece of land has a value other than agricultural value. His land may be worth, say, £100 an acre, and he is face to face with the difficulty of determining whether any portion of that is of value other than agricultural, and therefore liable to this Undeveloped Land Duty. I think, therefore, that it is far better to say what we mean, and my right hon. Friend (Mr. Chaplin) endeavours to do so in this very clear Amendment, and, consequently, I shall vote for it.
    Mr. ROWLAND HUNT: The right hon. Baronet said the first thing we want in this Bill is a definition of site value. I quite agree with him, and think site value is the value of the land stripped of everything. The Prime Minister told us that agricultural land is not to be taxed under this Bill, so that I should almost think the Government would accept the Amendment; but the Solicitor-General told us that agricultural land was going to be taxed. It appears that the Government have not made up their minds upon this very important question. The Prime Minister also told us there was no difficulty at all in ascertaining the value of the land, and he brought forward the case of a railway company, as if a railway company had
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    anything whatever to do with it. We know the land that the railway company wants, and we know that the railway company wants it. That is a plain definition. But the other land does not run in a straight line right through to another town. It may be anywhere, or all over the place, and it is impossible to tell whether people want it or not, except by putting it up for sale. Is that what the Government mean? Will they consider what expense that would be to landowners, great and small? It is one of the greatest absurdities of the Bill. The hon. Member (Mr. Simon) told us that the undeveloped value in land is just as good as having money in your pocket. You cannot put your land in your pocket, and you cannot tell how much money for it you would put in your pocket unless you put it up for sale. He told us another thing that made me think he did not know very much about agricultural land. He said you could sell your land at any time. You may possibly have a field which will do to be built upon, but if you sell it you upset the farm altogether, and that makes an enormous difference. For that reason alone you could not tell the value until you put the whole farm up for sale. To say that you can always sell your land at any time is perfectly absurd. The Secretary for War yesterday asked, "Is this a just tax?" and tried to overwhelm us by a considerable amount of semaphore action. Instead of telling us that he considered the tax just, he ended his speech by asking a question.
    The right hon. Baronet (Sir R. Perks) told us that under this tax large numbers of rich people would be ruled out, and would not pay anything at all, and another hon. Member said the tax would be a large tax—1s. in the £ on the hypothetical income of small owners. Both these hon. Gentlemen are very strong supporters of the Government. This is a very unjust tax, even according to great supporters of the Government. It appears to be the ordinary Radical finance to tax the poor heavily and let the very rich off altogether. I think this tax will undoubtedly hit people very heavily in country towns and big villages all over the country, and in that way, in spite of what the Prime Minister said, it will injure agriculture very seriously. I know a case of land between a village and a railway station which 30 years ago was let as agricultural land for 45s. per acre.

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    It is now let at about 28s. It probably will be available for letting as building land in 10 or 20 years, but until that time—and it certainly could not be all let at once—you are going to add a tax on the raw material of the food, drink, and clothing of the people of this country. The tax also is going to hit market gardeners and small holders, because as a rule they must live near the towns or big villages, where they sell their stuff at first hand without the intervention of the middleman. They will have to pay an extra tax on the land which they continue to cultivate, and these are the very people we on all sides want to encourage and get more of. You are going to handicap them more than they are handicapped already in their competition with the French, Dutch, and other foreigners, who even now have the great advantage of cheap sea carriage. You are really super-taxing these British food produce and inviting foreigners to use our market without paying a halfpenny.
    We were told not long ago in a letter written by the Prime Minister that the great object of legislation in this country was to reduce the taxation on land. The right hon. Gentleman admitted that the British producer had to pay the tax on food grown in this country, but held that if an equal import duty was put on the foreigner that then the British consumer and not the foreign producer would have to pay. But we live in a queer world, and politicians are curious people. It seems to me that the Government are doing their best to discourage and ruin both small owners and small holders, whilst all over the country they are pretending to encourage them. We hear on platforms the cry, "Back to the land," but the Government are now proposing to put further taxation on the land. That is their idea, and I am afraid it will not do. I think there ought to be millions more of small holders and small owners. No nation has ever succeeded in preserving its position without an agricultural class, and what we are doing now is driving people into the slums of great cities. The Government are going to reduce the small holders by thousands. We on this side want to increase them by millions. Probably the market gardeners and the small people who keep pigs, cows, and chickens are going to have a shocking bad time of it, because the owners of their holdings will recoup themselves somehow or other for this extra tax. If the landowner is able to persuade somebody to
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    build houses on his land the market gardeners will have to go further out, leaving his highly cultivated land in order to begin afresh on land which is not highly cultivated, and he will be farther from the market. These are the very people who cultivate their land best and get most out of it in the way of big crops. We all particularly want to encourage them, but under the Government plan they are going to do their best to wipe out a very large number of them. Therefore I have very great pleasure in voting for this Amendment.
    Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: A very important point has been raised a few moments ago by my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge University. I do not complain that the Government have given us no answer to that question at present, but it is obviously essential that we should have a clear and authoritative statement from them, both as to the effect of the Bill and their intentions upon this point before we part with the present Amendment. We are discussing an Amendment to exempt by name agricultural land from the operation of this tax. The Government refuse to accept that Amendment, but at the same time have claimed that to a. very large extent agricultural land is exempted, and they have said that to that large extent it was their intention to exempt it. They did indeed go further and say that they meant to exempt agricultural land altogether. [An HON. MEMBER: "Agricultural value."] But that pretence has been abandoned, and it is now clearly admitted that a great deal of agricultural land, all the best agricultural land put to the highest purposes, land yielding the greatest return in produce and in wealth, will be subject to the tax. But the particular point to which I wish to draw the attention of the Government and on which I wish to obtain an answer from them is the effect of the introduction of site value at this place into the two sub-sections. It is germane to the Amendment moved by my right hon. Friend because if you accept his Amendment and exempt agricultural land altogether this question falls to the ground. We do not have to argue it further or pursue it further in relation to the section. But if you refuse to exempt agricultural land by name, then it becomes of the greatest importance, both in regard to Section (1) and in regard to Section (2). Section (1) says that this new tax shall not be charged in respect of any land where the site value

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    of the land does not exceed £50 an acre. Hon. Members are very apt in their speeches to confuse site value with value, and not to realise the wide gulf which separates the two. For instance a little earlier they were talking of the ease with which valuations were made for the purpose of puchasing by railway companies from owners of land over which railways are going to pass.
    10 P.M.
    But that is not the valuation you have got to make under this Bill. That is the valuation of the land as it stands. Site value is quite a different thing. Site value is the land only. It does not exist. We have never seen it, and as it is very difficult in most cases to imagine it, in regard to agricultural land at any rate. Of course you get a site value existing in urban areas; but I am talking of agricultural land now, and I say that the site value is entirely different from the ordinary valuation to which we are accustomed, and to which the Government refer when they tell us that valuations under this Bill would be very easily disposed of. Here again I think the Government and many Members of this House have alluded to these proposals as if any land which was worth less than £50 an acre would be exempted. This is not so at all. It is only land the site value of which is less than £50 an acre. Accordingly there would be a great deal of land of which the site value is less than £50 an acre, but of which the value for agricultural purposes is more than ££50 an acre. That is the first instance. I may just allude, for the purpose of making the case clear, to Section (2), without arguing the merits of that section It says that in the case of agricultural land exceeding that value, Undeveloped Land Duty is not to be charged so far as the site value of the land is due to the value of the land for agricultural purposes. What is the site value of the land? Turn over to the clause which defines site value and you will find that site value is the value of the land divested of any buildings, such as are required for almost any agricultural purpose, or any other structures, including fixed or attached machinery on, in, or under the surface, and divested of all growing timber, fruit trees, fruit bushes, and other things growing thereon. What is the value of pasturage with the pasture swept away? What is the value of a cherry orchard with every tree torn up?
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    What is the value of a market garden when every fruit bush and every single thing growing on it is stripped off and destroyed? We have all the drains torn up.
    Mr. MASTERMAN: Not the drains.
    Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: Do not the drains come in amongst the things which are under the surface?
    Mr. MASTERMAN: I thought you were referring to the drainage of the ground and the improvement of the ground.
    Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: I should have thought that agricultural drains, travelling under the surface of the ground, as they admittedly are, were structures under the ground. If the hon. Member says they are not included in the definition of structures, I shall be very glad to notice.
    Mr. MASTERMAN: The right hon. Gentleman will see that the improvement, including the drains of normal agricultural land, as apart from the drainage of houses or buildings on it, is not included in Section (2) of Clause 14: the land divested of any buildings or any other structure, including fixed or attached machinery, on, in, or under the surface, which are appertaining to, or used in connection with any such building. I thought the point was clear, because we had it so fully on Clause 2, when talking of agricultural improvements.
    Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: If you take the case of my pasture, and you have a cowshed, with drains connected therewith, those drains must be imagined to be dug up, and the structure pulled down and stripped off the land before you get the site value. If, on the other hand, you have a market garden or a field, with only agricultural drains not connected with a structure, like a cowhouse or a pigsty, then those drams may be supposed to be left in the ground when calculating the site value. There may be a reason for that, there may be logic in it, but it adds to the complications of what the valuers will have to consider. But that is quite sufficient for my purpose. You take the case of a little bit of pasturage, with a shed for cows in the winter, and some drains to take away the manure, and there you have to divest the land of the shed, the pasture, and the drains. In the case of a market garden you have to divest the land of any tool-house or any structure of any

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    kind which is upon it; you have to divest it of everything which is growing upon it, and then you get to the site value in that case. Then, as to the value of the supposed concession to agriculture under Section (1) and Section (2), unless the Government can answer that question, I think it is perfectly evident that either the language which they have used has entirely failed to convey their intentions or their view in this, as in so many instances, is wholly out of accord with the provisions which they have made in those sections. The hon. Gentleman who is representing the Government will not think me, I hope, rude or offensive if I say that I wish the Attorney-General had been here to answer the question, which is very largely one of legal interpretation. It was raised in the presence of the hon. and learned Gentleman, and we are quite content to wait for an answer until he comes back if the hon. Gentleman prefers to leave the matter in his hands. At any rate, you will see the great importance of this question, and, if our interpretation of the Bill is correct, how necessary it is that we should have a definite reply before we part with this Amendment.
    Mr. J. F. REMNANT: I am anxious to support the Amendment of my right hon. Friend, mainly as one of the Members representing London, one of the greatest cities in the world. We have had for many years a growing movement in favour of keeping and increasing open spaces in London. I have opposed and shall oppose this special tax being thrown upon land, especially land in and around London, because I do not believe for one moment that you are going to accomplish what you affect to do, namely, the better housing or the cheaper housing of the people of London. It may not be known to the Committee that there are to-day vacant in London sufficient houses—
    The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN: Order, order. There is not much agricultural land in that.
    Mr. REMNANT: My point is that we do not want to tax land around London which, I maintain ought to be kept as agricultural land for the benefit of the people of London. The main object of the Government is undoubtedly one that will not be effected, namely, that they are going to get a supply and demand which they cannot now obtain because the landlords hold up the land. I want to keep the land
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    around London as agricultural land, and if we introduce here the words of the Amendment they will have the effect of putting an extra inducement into the hands of those who happen to own land in the suburbs of London to keep that land as agricultural land. You are not going to get any serious addition to the revenue of the country by imposing this tax. You profess to be anxious to free agricultural land from this tax, therefore why should you not, as long as the land is used for agricultural purposes, allow that land to be free from the tax? You may say that you cannot get land for building. You can get all the land you want around London at a very reasonable price indeed. If you cannot get it you have the power to take it by arbitration. If land is wanted for local improvements or for housing schemes, or for anything else, the local authorities have power to acquire it. But to-day there are really more houses in London than are required. You could house another half-million of people without adding another house to London, and to maintain that you are going to put this tax on for the purpose of throwing more and cheaper land into the market is to fly straight in the face of the experience of other countries. I could quote the experience of New York. Hon. Members opposite seem to be shy about referring to New York. They go to Germany. Anything in Germany is good enough to support their contentions. But go to New York, where they have tried this system for some years. The hon. Member shakes his head, but he takes good care, at all events, not to invest his money in real property. The experience of New York is given by a past president of the Henry George League. He says that the effect of the system there has been to increase the overcrowding, so that the overcrowding in New York is worse than in any of the slums of London by 100 per cent.; that land and house rent is also much higher, infinitely higher, than in this country.
    The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN: This tax has already been imposed by Clause 10, and all this about whether houses and land are dearer or not is a question which has been discussed already. The Amendment is that agricultural land is to be exempt.
    Mr. REMNANT: It is as to the agricultural land around London which I am speaking, and which I wish to see kept as agricultural land.
    The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN: To apply the argument to places like New York is going entirely beyond the point under discussion, and there is a limit to questions which may be raised by the hon. Member.
    Mr. REMNANT: Surely the object of the tax, if we are to pay any attention at all to the Prime Minister, is to force land into the market.
    The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN: That was on the question of imposing the tax, but we are now dealing with whether agricultural land should be exempted. We are not re-opening the question of the imposition of the tax.
    Mr. REMNANT: My contention is that if the definition is altered, and we alter so many things from day to day, and if it is to be freed from this tax, as I hope it will be, and as the Amendment seeks to make it, then London and other great cities will benefit by allowing land, so long as it is used for agricultural purposes right up against the city. The county council and other big bodies are utilising a great many of their open spaces for agricultural purposes. I have no doubt hon. Members opposite treat the whole subject with great levity, but it is a very serious matter. It is not required for the purposes of the country, and the only reason it is required is to vent your spite on your political opponents.
    The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for the HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. C. F. G. Masterman): The right hon. Gentleman put one or two specific questions to me, although he was kind enough to remark that, not being a lawyer, it might be difficult for me to give him full satisfaction. I think I know the Bill with some little knowledge, and I think I can give him an answer to a certain extent. As to the general question whether any land comes in under the definition, I do not think I need deal with that. If I may say so, there are rather more important questions than that. It is quite true we are trying to exempt, and we hope we have exempted, all purely Gentleman says that Sub-section (1), to and if it can be shown that we have not done so, and I speak with some authority, we are quite prepared to meet any such demonstration. The right hon. Gentlemen says that Sub-section (1), to which the Amendment is being moved, does not say that all land whose total value does not exceed £50 shall be exempted, but all land whose site value exceeds £50.
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    He refers for a definition to Clause 14, which is very similar, with some exceptions made of growing things, to the definition of agricultural land which is laid down for the guidance of the Local Government Board under the Agricultural Bates Act. I should like to ask him a question when he professes to be speaking for agriculture, Would he prefer that we should put the total agricultural value instead of the site value? [HON. MEMBERS: "No, no."] Surely that would mean that agriculturists who are now getting an enormous exemption would not get that exemption. Whatever deductions you make under Clause 14 from the total value, means that you get something less as the site value, and, therefore, land with £100 or £150 as a total value would, under our definition, be exempted if the site value were less than £50. That was done deliberately, in order that the market gardener should not be penalised for his industry in developing his piece of land. All the trees that he plants, all the money he puts into the ground, all the development of his patch of ground, in the strict sense of the word, are exempted. However much he puts into the ground, he is exempted as long as the site value, when all that is taken away, does not exceed £50 an acre. We thought we were giving a very substantial boon to the agricultural interest under that sub-section. The second sub-section, I agree, is more complicated, and when we come; to it, there are Amendments on the Paper which we are prepared carefully to consider. Speaking entirely without prejudice, I can say that the intention of the Bill is that from the total value of the land in the neighbourhood of towns there shall be deducted the total agricultural value, before you get an entity upon which the tax is to be paid. We think that that is met in Sub-section (2), but if the terms are ambiguous, the Government are prepared to consider Amendments which will make the terms more clear.
    Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: I do not think the terms of the sub-section are in the least ambiguous; they are perfectly clear, but in the opposite sense to that in which the hon. Member has declared the intention of the Government. It is on the site value, as introduced in Sub-section (2), that this particular difficulty arises. If the hon. Gentleman cut out "site" from Sub-section (2), it might meet the case. Is he prepared to do that?
    Mr. MASTERMAN: Would it not be more convenient that we should get to Sub-section (2), to which there are definite Amendments on the Paper?
    Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: By far the most convenient way would be to accept the Amendment of my right hon. Friend (Mr. Chaplin), and, once for all, protect agriculture against all it has to fear. That is the process we should prefer; but it would be some alleviation if the Government were prepared to say that they would abandon their proposal to take site value as the test in Sub-section (2). It would, however, still leave the Bill a measure penalising under certain conditions some of the best parts of the agricultural industry, parts which it is most desirable in everybody's interest to promote, and some of the people who by their energy, skill, and enterprise are most deserving of protection, rather than punishment, at the hands of the State.
    Mr. A. B. MARKHAM: The object of this Amendment has been made perfectly clear by the speech of the hon. Member for Holborn (Mr. Remnant). He has distinctly stated that if agricultural land is excepted, land worth half-a-million an acre might escape the tax. Land worth half-a-million sterling per acre as site value, if it were used solely for agricultural purposes, would escape the tax altogether. The hon. Member went on to say that there was a large amount of agricultural land near London which the landlords wished to remain as agricultural, in order that they might keep open spaces and provide pleasure grounds for the inhabitants. There may be such landlords. I think there are very few of them. The real object of these landlords can be, and only is, one—that by keeping this land in the form of agricultural land they escape the rates which they otherwise would have to pay. [Cries of "No, no."] Surely that is so? People do not keep agricultural land if they can sell it at a better price. This land will become more and more valuable. Then the hon. Member went on to say, "It is perfectly easy to acquire land held up in that manner, and that local authorities have the power to acquire it." He might be very well aware that a local authority often finds when it requires a small piece of land for housing purposes that the cost of arbitration involved is probably more than the land was worth. That is what happens in practice. This kind of land is always treated as agricultural land for the purposes of rating, but
    358
    when it is a matter of buying a piece for housing purposes it is an entirely different matter. I do not want to detain the Committee further than to point out this one fact: that if the Government had used any other words than "£50"—any other words except "capital sum per acre"—it would be impossible under any conditions that I can see, or any words that I can see, to obviate the very difficulties which have been pointed out.
    Mr. CHAPLIN: I understood the Under-Secretary for the Home Office to tell us just now that he was prepared to favourably consider some Amendments standing on the Paper to Section (2). I begun my observations in moving this Amendment by stating, when he was not in the House, that I intended to take a division, at all events on the first Amendment, and that I hoped to move the second Amendment afterwards. The Amendment to which I am referring is that relating to the exemption of market gardens, allotments, etc. Now if the hon. Gentleman can say that that is one Amendment which he is prepared to favourably consider, I could then take a division as early as I could get it, and I should be satisfied if he accepted the second Amendment afterwards.
    Viscount HELMSLEY: I think the discussion on this Amendment has served a very useful purpose, because it will have pointed out very clearly that agricultural land is not exempt from this tax in the way in which right hon. Gentlemen belonging to the Government have gone about saying that it is. There is no doubt the impression has got abroad that anybody employing his land for agricultural purposes would be exempt from this tax. Such is obviously by no means the case. As a matter of fact, I should think nine-tenths of the land which is used for agriculture in the neighbourhood of towns will be subjected to this Undeveloped Land Tax. In the first place, I do not think that the distinction which is made in this part of the Bill is of the value to the land for agricultural and other purposes is one that can be upheld in practice. I do not see how the agricultural ingredient and the building value ingredient can be distinguished, especially in the neighbourhood of villages, and, therefore, I am afraid the allowance made as regards agricultural value will not in practice be much used. There is one industry which, in addition to the market gardens, will suffer very severely under this proposal, and that is the dairying industry. I received a letter from one

    359
    of my Constituents to-day upon that subject. He says:—
    "I venture to make a suggestion by which I think it might be possible to obtain exemption from the site value taxes of the land used for farming purposes, whether it has or not greater value for agricultural purposes. I submit a great deal of land round large towns is used for dairy farming purposes and that those dairy farmers which comply with the law are of great use to the urban community. I believe fresh milk cannot be imported into Great Britain and this fact puts dairy farming on a different footing to other sorts of farming, and possibly may induce the Government to be loath to do anything to damage this industry."
    That shows that people who have knowledge of this industry are afraid that this tax is going to do them a considerable amount of damage, and in that way to do damage, to the whole urban community in whose interest it is supposed to be imposed. It was said by some speaker on the Government Bench that the fact that there was a value in this land over and above the agricultural value proved the interest the community had in having this land developed. I entirely dispute that proposition; I do not think it proves anything of the kind. In fact, the disproof is obvious to anyone who looks at the outskirts of any of our large towns. The emptiness of rows and rows of newly-built houses proves that there was no necessity in such cases for the development by building of the land upon which these houses have been built, and that the land would have been of far more value to the community if it had been continued to be used for agricultural purposes instead of being handed over to the speculative builder. I think the Government should exempt agricultural land more fully than they have done hitherto. At all events, if they do not accept the Amendment moved tending in that direction they should cease to proclaim to the country that they have made such concessions to agricultural land.
    Mr. ELLIS GRIFFITH: I feel that the meaning of these two Sub-sections has been misunderstood by hon. Members who have spoken from the other side of the House. The first question that will be asked in regard to any piece of land in the country is this: Is the site value £50 or under? If the answer is in the affirmative that land, agricultural or otherwise, would be exempt from the tax. In the second place, if it be above £50, even then it will be exempt from this tax if the excess over £50 in the site value is due to the value of the land for agricultural purposes. I think that is an accurate way of putting it, and I submit very respectfully that that is the mean-
    360
    ing of the Bill as it stands. Put in another way it means this: It is quite true that agricultural land is not exempt from this tax. I quite admit that, but agricultural value is exempt. In the case of a piece of land used for agricultural purposes it is true to say that it is not exempt, but it is equally true to say that as far as its agricultural value is concerned it is exempt. To pass this Amendment in its present form would be to absolutely destroy the tax for all practical purposes. I daresay that that is the object of the Amendment, but I will not discuss that now. The effect of accepting this Amendment would be to exclude all agricultural land and the building land of the future in this country, and under those circumstances I hope the Committee will negative this Amendment and proceed to discuss the still more important, matters which are dealt with in the clause.
    Sir W. ROBSON: I hope the Committee will now elect to come to a decision upon this Amendment. It is really a second-reading proposal, and, if carried, as has already been pointed out, it would negative this tax altogether. We could not agree to exempt agricultural land and agricultural value as well, because it is to agricultural land we look for the building of the future, and to exempt it altogether, no matter what building value were attached to it, would practically destroy this proposal. As we have given a very large slice of the time of this sitting to the discussion of this Amendment, I hope hon. Members will now be content, and allow us to proceed to a Division.
    Mr. CHAPLIN: I understood the Under-Secretary for the Home Office to say that the Government were prepared to favourably consider some Amendment in connection with this question, including the Amendment standing in my name. I asked a question on this point, but I have not yet received an answer. I entirely and totally dispute the contention that if this Amendment were accepted it would exclude all agricultural land from the operation of this Bill. To suppose that agricultural land, which might be worth many thousand pounds an acre, would always continue to be treated as agricultural land, is absurd. As a matter of fact, if land assumed that extraordinary value, it would soon lose its agricultural character, and no owner would be so stupid as to continue to devote such land to agricultural purposes.
    Mr. WATSON RUTHERFORD: I have not spoken on the subject of agricultural land from the beginning, and I may tell the Committee that no less than 46½ hours of the time of the Committee have now been consumed in discussing this question of agricultural land, 44½ of which might have been saved if the Government had made their intention clear at the first. It is entirely because of the fog which surrounds this question of agricultural land that we have been wasting the whole of to-day. That fog arises from the difficulty of comprehension of the difference between total value, site value, capital value, and value for agricultural purposes. All those have to be compared together, and you have to understand how they are to be taken under these various sections before you can arrive at a conclusion at really what the Government mean. What I contend is that by this Amendment we have got a clear statement, and that is the exemption of agricultural land, whilst it is agricultural land, from this tax. Do the Government mean to do that or do they not? It is quite clear they do not. They are fencing with the subject, as they have been fencing with most of the other sub-
    jects under the Bill. We have, at all events, got a clear issue now, and I hope we may go to a Division in order that we may test the bona fides of the Government.
    Sir W. ROBSON Sir W. ROBSON rose in his place and claimed to move, "That the Question be now put."
    The CHAIRMAN: I think the Committee is prepared to come to a Division.
    Mr. JAMES HOPE: What is the Government going to do where the agricultural value is greater than the building value? In the neighbourhood of Worthing, where there are market gardens demanding a big price, I have no doubt in a great many cases the value of the land for agricultural purposes, for market gardening purposes, will be greater than its value for building purposes.
    The CHAIRMAN: I think that question must arise on the second section. It does not seem to me greatly relevant to this.
    Question put, "That those words be there inserted."
    The Committee divided: Ayes, 110; Noes, 210.

    Division No. 414.]

    AYES.

    [10.45 p.m.

    Acland-Hood, Rt. Hon. Sir Alex. F.

    Fell, Arthur

    Nicholson, Wm. G. (Petersfield)

    Agar-Robartes, Hon. T. C. R.

    Fletcher, J. S.

    Oddy, John James

    Anson, Sir William Reynell

    Foster, P. S.

    Parkes, Ebenezer

    Arkwright, John Stanhope

    Gardner, Ernest

    Pease, Herbert Pike (Darlington)

    Ashley, W. W.

    Gibbs, G. A. (Bristol, West)

    Peel, Hon. W. R. W.

    Baldwin, Stanley

    Gooch, Henry Cubitt (Peckham)

    Perks, Sir Robert William

    Banbury, Sir Frederick George

    Gordon, J.

    Pretyman, E. G.

    Banner, John S. Harmood-

    Goulding, Edward Alfred

    Rawlinson, John Frederick Peel

    Barrie, H. T. (Londonderry, N.)

    Guinness, Hon. R. (Haggerston)

    Remnant, James Farquharson

    Beach, Hon. Michael Hugh Hicks

    Guinness, Hon. W. E. (B. S. Edmunds)

    Renton, Leslie

    Beauchamp, E.

    Hamilton, Marquess of

    Renwick, George

    Beck, A. Cecil

    Harris, Frederick Leverton

    Roberts, S. (Sheffield, Ecclesall)

    Beckett, Hon. Gervase

    Hay, Hon. Claude George

    Ronaldshay, Earl of

    Bridgeman, W. Clive

    Helmsley, Viscount

    Ropner, Colonel Sir Robert

    Burdett-Coutts, W.

    Harmon-Hodge, Sir Robert

    Rutherford, John (Lancashire)

    Butcher, Samuel Henry

    Hill, Sir Clement

    Rutherford, Watson (Liverpool)

    Carlile, E. Hildred

    Hills, J. W.

    Salter, Arthur Clavell

    Castlereagh, Viscount

    Hope, James Fitzalan (Sheffield)

    Sheffield, Sir Berkeley George D.

    Cave, George

    Hunt, Rowland

    Stanler, Beville

    Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor)

    Joynson-Hicks, William

    Stanley, Hon. Arthur (Ormskirk)

    Cecil, Lord R. (Marylebone, E.)

    Kennaway, Rt. Hon. Sir John H.

    Starkey, John R.

    Chamberlain, Rt. Hon. J. A. (Worc'r.)

    Kerry, Earl of

    Staveley-Hill, Henry (Staffordshire)

    Channing, Sir Francis Allston

    Keswick, William

    Stone, Sir Benjamin

    Chaplin, Rt. Hon. Henry

    King, Sir Henry Seymour (Hull)

    Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester)

    Clive, Percy Archer

    Lambton, Hon. Frederick William

    Talbot, Rt. Hon. J. G. (Oxford Univ.)

    Clyde, J. Avon

    Lane-Fox, G. R.

    Tennant, Sir Sdward (Salisbury)

    Coates, Major E. F. (Lewisham)

    Law, Andrew Bonar (Dulwich)

    Thomson, W. Mitchell- (Lanark)

    Corbett, T. L. (Down, North)

    Lockwood, Rt. Hon. Lt.-Col. A. R.

    Walker, Col. W. H. (Lancashire)

    Courthope, G. Loyd

    Long, Col. Charles W. (Evesham)

    Walrond, Hon. Lionel

    Cox, Harold

    Long, Rt. Hon. Walter (Dublin, S.)

    Warde, Col. C. E. (Kent, Mid.)

    Dairymple, Viscount

    Lonsdale, John Brownlee

    White, Sir Luke (York, E.R.)

    Davies, David (Montgomery Co.)

    Lowe, Sir Francis William

    Williams, Col. R. (Dorset, W.)

    Dickson, Rt. Hon. C. Scott-

    Magnus, Sir Philip

    Wilson, A. Stanley (York, E.R.)

    Doughty, Sir George

    Mildmay, Francis Bingham

    Younger, George

    Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-

    Moore, William

    Du Cross, Arthur

    Morpeth, Viscount

    TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—Viscount Valentia and Mr. H. W. Forster.

    Faber, George Denison (York)

    Morrison-Bell, Captain

    Faber, Captain W. V. (Hants, W.)

    Newdegate, F. A.

    NOES.

    Abraham, William (Rhondda)

    Henderson, Arthur (Durham)

    Pointer, J.

    Acland, Francis Dyke

    Henderson, J. McD. (Aberdeen, W.)

    Price, Sir Robert J. (Norfolk, E.)

    Ainsworth, John Stirling

    Herbert, Col. Sir Ivor (Mon. S.)

    Priestley, Arthur (Grantham)

    Balfour, Robert (Lanark)

    Herbert, T. Arnold (Wycombe)

    Rainy, A. Rolland

    Baring, Godfrey (Isle of Wight)

    Higham, John Sharp

    Raphael, Herbert H.

    Barker, Sir John

    Hobhouse, Rt. Hon. Charles E. H.

    Rea, Rt. Hon. Russell (Gloucester)

    Barnard, E. B.

    Hodge, John

    Richards, Thomas (W. Monmouth)

    Barnes, G. N.

    Holland, Sir William Henry

    Richards, T. F. (Wolverhampton, W.)

    Barry, Redmond J. (Tyrone, N.)

    Holt, Richard Durning

    Richardson, A.

    Beale, W. P.

    Hope, John Deans (Fife, West)

    Ridsdale, E. A.

    Bellairs, Carlyon

    Hope, W. H. B. (Somerset, N.)

    Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln)

    Benn, W. (Tower Hamlets, St. George)

    Hudson, Walter

    Roberts, G. H. (Norwich)

    Berridge, T. H. D.

    Hyde, Clarendon G.

    Roberts, Sir J. H. (Denbighs)

    Bowerman, C. W.

    Illingworth, Percy H.

    Robinson, S.

    Brace, William

    Jardine, Sir J.

    Robson, Sir William Snowdon

    Bramsdon, Sir T. A.

    Jenkins, J.

    Roch, Walter F. (Pembroke)

    Branch, James

    Johnson, John (Gateshead)

    Rogers, F. E. Newman

    Brocklehurst, W. B.

    Johnson, W. (Nuneaton)

    Rose, Sir Charles Day

    Bryce, J. Annan

    Jones, Leif (Appleby)

    Rowlands, J.

    Burnyeat, W. J. D.

    Jones, William (Carnarvonshire)

    Runciman, Rt. Hon. Walter

    Burt, Rt. Hon. Thomas

    Jowett, F. W.

    Russell, Rt. Hon. T. W.

    Buxton, Rt. Hon. Sydney Charles

    Kekewich, Sir George

    Rutherford, V. H. (Brentford)

    Byles, William Pollard

    King, Alfred John (Knutsford)

    Samuel, S. M. (Whitechapel)

    Causton, Rt. Hon. Richard Knight

    Laidlaw, Robert

    Schwann, C. Duncan (Hyde)

    Cawley, Sir Frederick

    Lamb, Ernest H. (Rochester)

    Sears, J. E.

    Cherry, Rt. Hon. R. R.

    Lambert, George

    Seely, Colonel

    Clough, William

    Lamont, Norman

    Shackleton, David James

    Cobbold, Felix Thornley

    Lever, A. Levy (Essex, Harwich)

    Shipman, Dr. John G.

    Collins, Sir Wm. J. (St. Pancras, W.)

    Lever, W. H. (Cheshire, Wirral)

    Silcock, Thomas Ball

    Cooper, G. J.

    Levy, Sir Maurice

    Simon, John Allsebrook

    Corbett, C. H. (Sussex, Grinstead)

    Lewis, John Herbert

    Soames, Arthur Wellesley

    Cornwall, Sir Edwin A.

    Lough, Rt. Hon. Thomas

    Soares, Ernest J.

    Cowan, W. H.

    Lupton, Arnold

    Stanger, H. Y.

    Crooks, William

    Luttrell, Hugh Fownes

    Stanley, Albert (Staffs, N.W.)

    Cross, Alexander

    Lyell, Charles Henry

    Stanley, Hon. A. Lyulph (Cheshire)

    Davies, Ellis William (Eifion)

    Lynch, H. B

    Steadman, W. C.

    Davies, Sir W. Howell (Bristol, S.)

    Macdonald, J. R. (Leicester)

    Strachey, Sir Edward

    Dewar, Arthur (Edinburgh, S.)

    Maclean, Donald

    Strauss, E. A. (Abingdon)

    Duckworth, Sir James

    Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J.

    Summerbell, T.

    Duncan, C. (Barrow-in-Furness)

    Macpherson, J. T.

    Sutherland, J. E.

    Dunn, A. Edward (Camborne)

    M'Callum, John M.

    Taylor, John W. (Durham)

    Dunne, Major E. Martin (Walsall)

    M'Laren, H. D. (Stafford, W.)

    Taylor, Theodore C. (Radcliffe)

    Elibank, Master of

    M'Micking, Major G.

    Tennant, H. J (Berwickshire)

    Erskine, David C

    Maddison, Frederick

    Thomas, Abel (Carmarthen, E.)

    Evans, Sir S T.

    Markham, Arthur Basil

    Thomas, Sir A. (Glamorgan, E.)

    Falconer, J.

    Marks, G. Croydon (Launceston)

    Thompson, J. W. H. (Somerset, E.)

    Ferens, T. R.

    Massie, J.

    Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton)

    Ferguson, R. C. Munro

    Masterman, C. F. G.

    Verney, F. W.

    Flennes, Hon. Eustace

    Menzies, Sir Walter

    Walsh, Stephen

    Findlay, Alexander

    Micklem, Nathaniel

    Walters, John Tudor

    Fuller, John Michael F.

    Molteno, Percy Alport

    Ward, W. Dudley (Southampton)

    Furness, Sir Christopher

    Mond, A.

    Wardle, George J.

    Gibb, James (Harrow)

    Money, L. G. Chiozza

    Warner, Thomas Courtenay T.

    Gill, A. H.

    Montagu, Hon. E. S.

    Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney)

    Gladstone, Rt. Hon. Herbert John

    Morgan, G. Hay (Cornwall)

    Waterlow, D. S.

    Glover, Thomas

    Morgan, J. Lloyd (Carmarthen)

    Wedgwood, Josiah C.

    Goddard, Sir Daniel Ford

    Morrell, Philip

    White, J. Dundas (Dumbartonshire)

    Greenwood, G. (Peterborough)

    Morton, Alpheus Cleophas

    Wilkie, Alexander

    Griffith, Ellis J.

    Murray, Capt. Hon. A. C. (Kincard.)

    Williams, J. (Glamorgan)

    Gulland, John W.

    Myer, Horatio

    Williams, W. Llewelyn (Carmarthen)

    Hancock, J. G.

    Napier, T. B

    Wills, Arthur Walters

    Harcourt, Rt. Hon. L. (Rossendale)

    Newnes, F. (Notts, Bassetlaw)

    Wilson, Hon. G. G. (Hull, W.)

    Harmsworth, Cecil B. (Worcester)

    Norman, Sir Henry

    Wilson, John (Durham, Mid)

    Harvey, W. E. (Derbyshire, N. E.)

    O'Donnell, C. J. (Walworth)

    Wilson, J. W. (Worcestershire, N.)

    Harwood, George

    O'Grady, J.

    Wilson, P. W. (St. Pancras, S.)

    Haslam, James (Derbyshire)

    Parker, James (Halifax)

    Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)

    Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth)

    Partington, Oswald

    Wood, T. M'Kinnon

    Haworth, Arthur A.

    Pearce, William (Limehouse)

    Yoxall, Sir James Henry

    Hazel, Dr A. E. W.

    Pearson, W. H. M. (Suffolk, Eye)

    Hedges, A. Paget

    Pickersgill, Edward Hare

    TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Mr. Joseph Pease and Captain Norton.

    Helme, Norval Watson

    Pirie, Duncan V.

    Sir FRANCIS CHANNING Sir FRANCIS CHANNING moved, in Section (1), to leave out the word "fifty" ["where the site value of the land does not exceed fifty pounds per acre"], and to insert the words "one hundred."
    364
    There has been a long discussion on the exemption of agricultural land from the duty, in order to carry out the view of some Members of the Committee, that what we understood to be the absolute in-

    365
    tention of the Government to exempt agricultural land should be made a reality and given effect to. That has been rejected by the Committee, and the Amendment which I move to substitute £100 for £50 will obviously go some way, at any rate, to meet the views of those who are interested in the exemption of agricultural land from this duty. So far as I can judge, the machinery for determining site value and detaching site value from total value is so complicated, and involves so many abstruse calculations, that it is hard to fully grasp what is the proportion of site value in agricultural land, of which we may know the actual market value—what the actual proportion of site value would be. The sort of land which I should wish to see exempted very fully from this tax is very highly cultivated land, very highly fertilised land—land on which for many years past, perhaps, there has been deliberately very high cultivation, and which has been gradually fed up and worked up, and the soil of which has increased the value of that agricultural unit immensely for agricultural purposes. I am somewhat in a fog as to the mysterious machinery of the land clauses, but my own interpretation is that in the case of that very rich land most of the real value of it will be included in the site value, and will not be in the various deductions which are made from the total value. It is my impression that the richer the land, the more highly cultivated, the more valuable it is for agricultural purposes, just in that proportion will the site value of the land be higher than that of other land.
    The CHAIRMAN: The hon. Baronet appears to be advocating this Amendment on grounds which are already practically settled by the Committee. This is, of course, a different proposition from the last Amendment. It is to make £100 the minimum instead of £50. We cannot go over all this question of agricultural land again on this Amendment. It may be advocated on other lines, but I do not think it can be advocated on the lines which are being adopted by the hon. Baronet.
    Sir F. CHANNING: The point I wish to insist on is that in the case of the land we want to protect most that land will be probably of a higher site value than land which would be protected by the Bill as it is. That is just where we want the exemption most.
    Mr. MASTERMAN: The intention of the Government is to deal with the very rich land which my hon. Friend has described under Section (2) of this clause. I agree that if the section did not exist there might be a considerable case made out for the raising of the limit of £50 an acre, but the Government thought it was far more satisfactory to proceed with it under the system outlined in Section (2), which exempts all agricultural land, than to make an arbitrary limit of £100, £200, or £300 an acre, applicable only to a special class of land—rich agricultural land. The limit of £50 applies not only to agricultural land but to all land, and the carrying of the Amendment would mean that not only agricultural but all land would be exempted from the Undeveloped Land Tax if its site value did not exceed £100 an acre. There may be Members in favour of such a proceeding, but that was not the argument which I am specially trying to meet. A site value of £50 an acre may mean a considerably greater total value. This particular exemption may mean land up to the value of £100 or £150 an acre total value being exempted. I have had the honour of replying to one or two similar Amendments before by which attempts have been made to introduce larger exemptions than those laid down by the Government. The object of the Government in presenting this limit was this: it was considered that it was not worth while in the interest of the revenue for the Government to pursue very small increments of site value. Less than £50 per acre would in any case be purely agricultural site value, and, if not, the return obtainable by the revenue would be very small indeed. If you raise the limit to £100 per acre you are cutting out a very substantial portion of the tax. We have been warned by a moderate Liberal the Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. C. B. Harmsworth) that it is very important that we should not further reduce the amount the State and the local authorities will receive in revenue from this tax. I hope we are fully meeting the case put by my hon. Friend in the case of the land for which he claims exemption.
    Mr. PRETYMAN: I do not rise to put the case for agricultural land, but for the revenue. I would point out to the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Masterman) that all the Revenue can possibly get from any increment of the land is 2s. 1d. In order to get that, he proposes to leave the procedure

    367
    of Section (1), which will cost nothing, and undertake the expensive process which is demanded by Section (2). I would point out to the Government that, for the sake or getting 2s. 1d., they are adopting an operation which must cost a great deal more than that sum. On business grounds I would beg the Government to accept the Amendment, and thereby simplify the tax and reduce the cost of collection.
    Mr. G. R. LANE-FOX: The Government will lose nothing by accepting the Amendment. There is very little land which will not have a site value of £100 per acre, and, therefore, the Amendment must have small effect on the revenue. At the same time, it does safeguard absolutely the pledge given that agricultural land of this sort will be exempted. I know of no sufficient reason for not accepting this Amendment. I think it must be obvious to the Government that there is no building land which is likely to contribute to this tax which has a site value of less than £100 an acre.
    Mr. JOYNSON-HICKS: I rise to support the Amendment, not because I am an agriculturist, but because I want to exempt land up to a value of £100 an acre which is not agricultural land. I have made several short speeches in which I have referred repeatedly to the fact that there is a considerable amount of land in the country which is worth more than £50 an acre which is not building land and which is not developable land; and if the object of these clauses, as we have been told over and over again, is to place a tax upon building land in order to force it into the market, then I say that there is a large amount of the land to which I have referred which is worth a great deal more than £50 an acre. There is a large amount of what I may call amenity land, which contributes to the amenities of houses and so on, and which is worth more than £50 an acre, for which the owner would give more than £50 an acre. I would wish that the Under-Secretary for the Home Department (Mr. Masterman) had devoted some portion of his remarks to the point I am endeavouring to make now in reference to this considerable amount of land, which is not building land and not developable land, and which yet does not derive its value above £50 an acre exclusively from its agricultural use. I do not mean market gardens, of which we have heard so much, but purely amenity land, land which is not
    368
    near a town, an urban district, a railway station, or a tram line, and which is not required for building or for the needs of the community, yet which is worth for its amenities more than £50 and frequently up to £100 an acre. I would suggest that if the Government is really straightforward in its desire only to tax developable building land it might very well accept the Amendment. With a great deal of experience of building land, I say that I do not know any building land to-day, any land which is required for building, which is not worth more than £100 an acre. I do not think that any right hon. Gentleman or hon. Gentleman on the Front Bench opposite could go to the neighbourhood of any town where there is considerable building throughout the whole of England and buy ten acres of building land for less than £100 an acre. Building land is worth more. Therefore, if they really mean only to try to tax building and developable land in order to force it into the market there is no reason whatever to put a tax on land of this amenity nature. Therefore, I support this Amendment.
    Mr. MUNRO FERGUSON: This is a small point, but it is important in this sense that I think it is one of the Amendments which would carry the conviction that this tax was not to apply to agricultural value. I quite sympathise with the Under-Secretary to the Home Office (Mr. Masterman) in not allowing building values to be excluded from this tax; but the phraseology of the Bill is a little difficult to understand, and he himself has asked for suggestions which would make it clear that this tax does pot apply to agricultural value. So far as I can see, this Amendment of my hon. Friend does make it more clear that the tax would not apply to agricultural land. There is not much money in it. After all, £50 an acre, or £2 a year, is no great building value to lose, even at the worst, and I do not think it would weaken the effect of the tax very much if the Government made the, figure £100. I really do not know a more practical way of securing that agricultural value shall not be included than by adopting the Amendment which I support.
    Question put, "That the word 'fifty' stand part of the Clause."
    The Committee divided: Ayes, 190; Noes, 116.

    Division No. 415.]

    AYES.

    [11.14 p.m.

    Abraham, William (Rhondda)

    Hazel, Dr. A. E. W.

    Priestley, Arthur (Grantham)

    Acland, Francis Dyke

    Hedges, A. Paget

    Raphael, Herbert H.

    Ainsworth, John Stirling

    Helme, Nerval Watson

    Rea, Rt. Hon. Russell (Gloucester)

    Balfour, Robert (Lanark)

    Henderson, Arthur (Durham)

    Richards, T. F. (Wolverhampton, W.)

    Baring, Godfrey (Isle of Wight)

    Herbert T. Arnold (Wycombe)

    Richards, Thomas (W. Monmouth)

    Barker, Sir John

    Higham, John Sharp

    Richardson, A.

    Barnard, E. B.

    Hobhouse, Rt. Hon. Charles E. H.

    Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln)

    Barnes, G. N.

    Hodge, John

    Roberts, G. H. (Norwich)

    Barry, Redmond J. (Tyrone, N.)

    Holland, Sir William Henry

    Roberts, Sir J. H. (Denbighs)

    Beale, W. P.

    Holt, Richard Durning

    Robinson, S.

    Bellairs, Carlyon

    Hope, John Deans (Fife, West)

    Robson, Sir William Snowdon

    Benn, W. (Tower Hamlets, S. Geo.)

    Hope, W. H. B. (Somerset, N.)

    Rogers, F. E. Newman

    Berridge, T. H. D.

    Hudson, Walter

    Rose, Sir Charles Day

    Bowerman, C. W.

    Hyde, Clarendon G.

    Rowlands, J.

    Brace, William

    Illingworth, Percy H.

    Runciman, Rt. Hon. Walter

    Bramsdon, Sir T. A.

    Jardine, Sir J.

    Russell, Rt. Hon. T. W.

    Branch, James

    Jenkins, J.

    Rutherford, V. H. (Brantford)

    Bryce, J. Annan

    Johnson, John (Gateshead)

    Samuel, S. M. (Whitechapel)

    Burns, Rt. Hon. John

    Johnson, W. (Nuneaton)

    Schwann, C. Duncan (Hyde)

    Burnyeat, W. J. D,

    Jones, William (Carnarvonshire)

    Sears, J. E.

    Buxton, Rt. Hon. Sydney Charles

    Jowett, F. W.

    Seely, Colonel

    Byles, William Pollard

    Kekewich, Sir George

    Shackleton, David James

    Carr-Gomm, H. W.

    Laidlaw, Robert

    Shipman, Dr. John G.

    Causton, Rt. Hon. Richard Knight

    Lambert, George

    Silcock, Thomas Ball

    Cawley, Sir Frederick

    Lament, Norman

    Simon, John Allsebrook

    Cherry, Rt. Hon. R. R.

    Levy, Sir Maurice

    Soames, Arthur Wellesley

    Clough, William

    Lewis, John Herbert

    Soares, Ernest J.

    Cobbold, Felix Thornley

    Lough, Rt. Hon. Thomas

    Stanger, H. Y.

    Collins, Sir Wm. J. (St. Pancras, W.)

    Lupton, Arnold

    Stanley, Albert (Staffs, N.W.)

    Cooper, G. J.

    Luttrell, Hugh Fownes

    Stanley, Hon. A. Lyulph (Cheshire)

    Corbett, A. Cameron (Glasgow)

    Lyell, Charles Henry

    Steadman, W. C.

    Corbett, C. H. (Sussex, E. Grinstead)

    Macdonald, J. R. (Leicester)

    Strachey, Sir Edward

    Cornwall, Sir Edwin A.

    Maclean, Donald

    Summerbell, T.

    Cowan, W. H.

    Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J.

    Sutherland, J. E.

    Crooks, William

    Macpherson, J. T.

    Taylor, John W. (Durham)

    Cross, Alexander

    M'Callum, John M.

    Taylor, Theodore C. (Radcliffe)

    Davies, Ellis William (Eifion)

    McKenna, Rt. Hon, Reginald

    Tennant, H. J. (Berwickshire)

    Davies, Sir W. Howell (Bristol, S.)

    M'Laren, H. D. (Stafford, W.)

    Thomas, Abel (Carmarthen, E.)

    Dewar, Arthur (Edinburgh, S.)

    M'Micking, Major G.

    Thomas, Sir A. (Glamorgan, E.)

    Duckworth, Sir James

    Maddison, Frederick

    Thompson, J. W. H. (Somerset, E.)

    Duncan, C. (Barrow-in-Furness)

    Markham, Arthur Basil

    Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton)

    Dunn, A. Edward (Camborne)

    Massie, J.

    Verney, F. W.

    Dunne, Major E. Martin (Walsall)

    Masterman, C. F. G.

    Walsh, Stephen

    Elibank, Master of

    Menzies, Sir Walter

    Walters, John Tudor

    Evans, Sir S. T.

    Micklem, Nathaniel

    Ward, W. Dudley (Southampton)

    Ferens, T. R.

    Mond, A.

    Warner, Thomas Courtenay T.

    Fiennes, Hon. Eustace

    Money, L. G. Chiozza

    Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney)

    Findlay, Alexander

    Montagu, Hon. E. S.

    Waterlow,D. S.

    Fuller, John Michael F.

    Morgan, G. Hay (Cornwall)

    Wedgwood, Josiah C.

    Gibb, James (Harrow)

    Morrell, Philip

    White, J, Dundas (Dumbartonshire)

    Gill, A. M.

    Morton, Alpheus Cleophas

    Wilkle, Alexander

    Gladstone, Rt. Hon. Herbert John

    Murray, Capt. Hon. A. C. (Kincard.)

    Williams, J. (Glamorgan)

    Glover, Thomas

    Myer, Horatio

    Williams, W. Llewelyn (Carmarthen)

    Goddard, Sir Daniel Ford

    Napier, T. B.

    Wills, Arthur Walters

    Greenwood, G. (Peterborough)

    Newnes, F. (Notts, Bassetlaw)

    Wilson, Hon. G. G. (Hull, W.)

    Griffith, Ellis J.

    Norman, Sir Henry

    Wilson, J. W. (Worcestershire, N.)

    Gulland, John W.

    O'Grady, J.

    Wilson, P. W. (St. Pancras, S.)

    Haldane, Rt. Hon. Richard B.

    O'Kelly, Conor (Mayo, N.)

    Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)

    Hancock, J. G.

    Parker, James (Halifax)

    Wood, T. M'Kinnon

    Harcourt, Rt. Hon. L. (Rossendale)

    Partington, Oswald

    Yoxall, Sir James Henry

    Harmsworth, Cecil B. (Worcester)

    Pearson, W. H. M. (Suffolk, Eye)

    Harvey, W. E. (Derbyshire, N. E.)

    Pickersgill, Edward Hare

    Haslam, James (Derbyshire)

    Pirie, Duncan V.

    TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—Mr. Joseph Pease and Captain Norton.

    Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth)

    Pointer, J.

    Haworth, Arthur A.

    Price, Sir Robert J. (Norfolk, E.)

    NOES.

    Acland-Hood, Rt. Hon. Sir Alex. F.

    Brocklehurst, W. B.

    Dairymple, Viscount

    Anson, Sir William Reynell

    Burdett-Coutts, W.

    Davies, David (Montgomery Co.)

    Arkwright, John Stanhope

    Butcher, Samuel Henry

    Dickson-Poynder, Sir John P.

    Ashley, W. W.

    Carlile, E. Hildred

    Dickson, Rt. Hon. C. Scott-

    Baldwin, Stanley

    Castlereagh, Viscount

    Doughty, Sir George

    Balfour, Rt. Hon. A. J. (City, Lond.)

    Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor)

    Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-

    Banbuy, Sir Frederick George

    Cecil, Lord R. (Marylebone, E.)

    Du Cros, Arthur

    Banner, John S. Harmood-

    Chamberlain, Rt. Hon. J. A. (Worc'r.)

    Faber, George Denison (York)

    Barrie, H. T. (Londonderry, N.)

    Chaplin, Rt. Hon. Henry

    Faber, Capt. W. V. (Hants, W.)

    Beach, Hon. Michael Hugh Hicks

    Clive, Percy Archer

    Fell, Arthur

    Beauchamp, E.

    Clyde, J. Avon

    Ferguson, R. C. Munro

    Beck, A. Cecil

    Coates, Major E. F. (Lewisham)

    Fletcher, J. S.

    Bridgeman. W. Clive

    Courthope, G. Loyd

    Forster, Henry William

    370

    371

    Foster, P. S.

    Long, Col. Charles W. (Evesham)

    Roch, Walter F. (Pembroke)

    Gardner, Ernest

    Long, Rt. Hon. Walter (Dublin, S.)

    Ronaldshay, Earl of

    Gibbs, G. A. (Bristol, West)

    Lonsdale, John Brownlee

    Ropner, Colonel Sir Robert

    Gooch, Henry Cubitt (Peckham)

    Lowe, Sir Francis William

    Rutherford, John (Lancashire)

    Gordon, J.

    Lyttleton, Rt. Hon. Alfred

    Rutherford, Watson (Liverpool)

    Goulding, Edward Alfred

    Magnus, Sir Philip

    Salter, Arthur Clavell

    Guinness, Hon R. (Haggerston)

    Mark, G. Croydon (Launceston)

    Sheffield, Sir Berkeley George D.

    Guinness, Hon. W. E. (B'y St. Edm'ds.)

    Mildmay, Francis Bingham

    Stanier, Beville

    Hamilton, Marquess of

    Morgan, J. Lloyd (Carmarthen)

    Stanley, Hon. Arthur (Ormskirk)

    Harris, Frederick Leverton

    Morpeth, Viscount

    Starkey, John R.

    Hay, Hon. Claude George

    Morrison-Bell, Captain

    Staveley-Hill, Henry (Staffordshire)

    Helmsley, Viscount

    Newdegate, F. A.

    Strauss, E. A. (Abingdon)

    Henderson, J. McD. (Aberdeen, W.)

    Nicholson, Wm. G. (Petersfield)

    Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester)

    Hermon-Hodge, Sir Robert

    Oddy, John James

    Talbot, Rt. Hon. J. G. (Oxford Univ.)

    Hill, Sir Clement

    O'Donnell, C. J. (Walworth)

    Tennant, Sir Edward (Salisbury)

    Hills, J. W.

    Parker, Sir Gilbert (Gravesend)

    Valentia, Viscount

    Hope, James Fitzalan (Sheffield)

    Parkes, Ebenezer

    Walker, Col. W. H. (Lancashire)

    Hunt, Rowland

    Pease, Herbert Pike (Darlington)

    Walrond, Hon. Lionel

    Jones, Leif (Appleby)

    Peel, Hon. W. R. W.

    Warde, Col. C. E. (Kent, Mid.)

    Joynson-Hicks, William

    Perks, Sir Robert William

    White, Sir Luke (York, E.R.)

    Kennaway, Rt. Hon. Sir John H.

    Pretyman, E. G

    Williams, Col. R. (Dorset, W.)

    Kerry, Earl of

    Rawlinson, John Frederick Peel

    Wilson, A. Stanley (York, E.R.)

    Keswick, William

    Remnant, James Farquharson

    Younger, George

    King, Sir Henry Seymour (Hull)

    Renton, Leslie

    Lane-Fox, G. R.

    Renwick, George

    TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Sir F. Channing and Mr. Everett.

    Law, Andrew Bonar (Dulwich)

    Ridsdale, E. A.

    Lockwood, Rt. Hon. Lt.-Col. A. R.

    Roberts, S. (Sheffield, Ecclesall)

    Sir W. ROBSON Sir W. ROBSON claimed to move: "That in respect of the words of the Clause to the word 'agricultural,' the Chair be empowered to select the Amendments to be proposed."
    Question put, "That in respect of the words of the Clause to the word 'agricultural,' the Chair be empowered to select the Amendments to be proposed."
    The Committee divided: Ayes, 201; Noes, 96.

    Division No. 416.]

    AYES.

    [11.23 p.m.

    Abraham, William (Rhondda)

    Duckworth, Sir James

    Jardine, Sir J.

    Acland, Francis Dyke

    Duncan, C. (Barrow-in-Furness)

    Johnson, John (Gateshead)

    Ainsworth, John Stirling

    Dunn, A. Edward (Camborne)

    Johnson, W. (Nuneaton)

    Balfour, Robert (Lanark)

    Dunne, Major E. Martin (Walsall)

    Jones, Leif (Appleby)

    Baring, Godfrey (Isle of Wight)

    Elibank, Master of

    Jones, William (Carnarvonshire)

    Barker, Sir John

    Evans, Sir S. T.

    Jowett, F. W.

    Barnard, E. B.

    Everett, R. Lacey

    Kekewich, Sir George

    Barnes, G. N.

    Ferens, T. R.

    Laidlaw, Robert

    Barry, Redmond J. (Tyrone, N.)

    Ferguson, R. C. Munro

    Lambert, George

    Beale, W. P.

    Fiennes, Hon. Eustace

    Lamont, Norman

    Beauchamp, E.

    Findlay, Alexander

    Lever, A. Levy (Essex, Harwich)

    Beck, A. Cecil

    Fuller, John Michael F.

    Levy, Sir Maurice

    Bellairs, Carlyon

    Gibb, James (Harrow)

    Lewis, John Herbert

    Benn, W. (Tower Hamlets, St. Geo.)

    Gill, A. H.

    Lough, Rt. Hon. Thomas

    Berridge, T. H. D.

    Gladstone, Rt. Hon. Herbert John

    Lupton, Arnold

    Brace, William

    Glover, Thomas

    Lyell, Charles Henry

    Bramsdon, Sir T. A.

    Goddard, Sir Daniel Ford

    Macdonald, J. R. (Leicester)

    Brocklehurst, W. B.

    Greenwood, G. (Peterborough)

    Maclean, Donald

    Bryce, J. Annan

    Griffith, Ellis J.

    Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J.

    Burns, Rt. Hon. John

    Gulland, John W.

    Macpherson, J. T.

    Burnyeat, W. J. D.

    Haldane, Rt. Hon. Richard B.

    McKenna, Rt. Hon. Reginald

    Buxton, Rt. Hon. Sydney Charles

    Hancock, J. G.

    M'Laren, H. D. (Stafford, W.)

    Byles, William Pollard

    Harcourt, Rt. Hon. L. (Rossendale)

    M'Micking, Major G.

    Bowerman, C. W.

    Harmsworth, Cecil B. (Worcester)

    Maddison, Frederick

    Carr-Gomm, H. W.

    Harvey, W. E. (Derbyshire, N.E.)

    Markham, Arthur Basil

    Causton, Rt. Hon. Richard Knight

    Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth)

    Marks, G. Croydon (Launceston)

    Cawley, Sir Frederick

    Haworth, Arthur A.

    Massie, J.

    Channing, Sir Francis Allston

    Hazel, Dr. A. E.

    Masterman, C. F. G.

    Cherry, Rt. Hon. R. R.

    Hedges, A. Paget

    Menzies, Sir Walter

    Clough, William

    Helme, Norval Watson

    Micklem, Nathaniel

    Collins, Sir Wm. J. (St. Pancras, W.)

    Henderson, Arthur (Durham)

    Mond, A.

    Cooper, G. J.

    Henderson, J. M. (Aberdeen, W.)

    Money, L. G. Chiozza

    Corbett, A. Cameron (Glasgow)

    Herbert, T. Arnold (Wycombe)

    Montagu, Hon. E. S.

    Corbett, C. H. (Sussex, E. Grinstead)

    Higham, John Sharp

    Morgan, G. Hay (Cornwall)

    Cornwall, Sir Edwin A.

    Hobhouse, Rt. Hon. Charles E. H.

    Morgan, J. Lloyd (Carmarthen)

    Cowan, W. H.

    Hodge, John

    Morrell, Philip

    Crooks, William

    Holland, Sir William Henry

    Morton, Alpheus Cleophas

    Cross, Alexander

    Holt, Richard Darning

    Murray, Capt. Hon. A. C. (Kincard.)

    Davies, David (Montgomery Co.)

    Hope, John Deans (Fife, West)

    Myer, Horatio

    Davies, Ellis William (Eifion)

    Hope, W. Bateman (Somerset, N.)

    Napier, T. B.

    Davies, Sir W. Howell (Bristol, S.)

    Hudson, Walter

    Newnes, F. (Notts, Bassetlaw)

    Dewar, Arthur (Edinburgh, S.)

    Hyde, Clarendon

    Norman, Sir Henry

    Dickson-Poynder, Sir John P.

    Illingworth, Percy H.

    O'Donnell, C. J. (Walworth)

    O'Grady, J.

    Runciman, Rt. Hon. Walter

    Thomas, Sir A. (Glamorgan, E.)

    O'Kelly, Conor (Mayo, N.)

    Russell, Rt. Hon. T. W.

    Thompson, J. W. H. (Somerset, E.)

    Parker, James (Halifax)

    Rutherford, V. H. (Brentford)

    Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton)

    Partington, Oswald

    Samuel, S. M. (Whitechapel)

    Verney, F. W.

    Pearson, W. H. M. (Suffolk, Eye)

    Schwann, C. Duncan (Hyde)

    Walsh, Stephen

    Pickersgill, Edward Hare

    Sears, J. E.

    Walters, John Tudor

    Pirie, Duncan V.

    Seely, Colonel

    Ward, W. Dudley (Southampton)

    Pointer, J.

    Shackleton, David James

    Warner, Thomas Courtenay T.

    Price, Sir Robert J. (Norfolk, E.)

    Shipman, Dr. John G.

    Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney)

    Priestley, Arthur (Grantham)

    Silcock, Thomas Ball

    Waterlow, D S.

    Raphael, Herbert H.

    Simon, John Allsebrook

    Wedgwood, Josiah C.

    Rea, Rt. Hon. Russell (Gloucester)

    Soames, Arthur Wellesley

    White, J. Dundas (Dumbartonshire)

    Richards, Thomas (W. Monmouth)

    Soares, Ernest J.

    White, Sir Luke (York, E.R.)

    Richards, T. F. (Wolverhampton, W.)

    Stanger, H. Y.

    Wilkie, Alexander

    Richardson, A.

    Stanley, Albert (Staffs, N.W.)

    Williams, J. (Glamorgan)

    Ridsdale, E. A.

    Stanley, Hon. A. Lyulph (Cheshire)

    Williams, Llewelyn (Carmarthen)

    Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln)

    Steadman, W. C.

    Wills, Arthur Walters

    Roberts, G. H. (Norwich)

    Strachey, Sir Edward

    Wilson, Hon. G. G. (Hull, W.)

    Roberts, Sir J. H. (Denbighs)

    Strauss, E. A. (Abingdon)

    Wilson, J. W. (Worcestershire, N.)

    Robinson, S.

    Summerbell, T.

    Wilson, P. W. (St. Pancras, S.)

    Robson, Sir William Snowdon

    Sutherland, J. E.

    Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)

    Roch, Walter F. (Pembroke)

    Taylor, John W. (Durham)

    Wood, T. M'Kinnon

    Rogers, F. E. Newman

    Taylor, Theodore C. (Radcliffe)

    Rose, Sir Charles Day

    Tennant, Sir Edward (Salisbury)

    TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—Mr. Joseph Pease and Captain Norton.

    Rowlands, J.

    Tennant, H. J. (Berwickshire)

    NOES.

    Acland-Hood, Rt. Hon. Sir Alex. F.

    Gardner, Ernest

    Newdegate, F. A.

    Anson, Sir William Reynell

    Gibbs, G. A. (Bristol, West)

    Nicholson, Wm. G. (Petersfield)

    Arkwright, John Stanhope

    Gooch, Henry Cubitt (Peckham)

    Oddy, John James

    Ashley, W. W.

    Gordon, J.

    Parker, Sir Gilbert (Gravesend)

    Baldwin, Stanley

    Goulding, Edward Alfred

    Parkes, Ebenezer

    Balfour, Rt. Hon. A. J. (City, Lond.)

    Guinness, Hon. R. (Haggerston)

    Pease, Herbert Pike (Darlington)

    Banbury, Sir Frederick George

    Guinness, Hon W. E. (B'y St. Edm'ds)

    Pretyman, E. G.

    Banner, John S. Harmood-

    Hamilton, Marquess of

    Rawlinson, John Frederick Peel

    Barrie, H. T. (Londonderry, N.)

    Harris, Frederick Leverton

    Remnant, James Farquharson

    Beach, Hon. Michael Hugh Hicks

    Hay, Hon. Claude George

    Renton, Leslie

    Bridgeman, W. Clive

    Helmsley, Viscount

    Renwick, George

    Burdett-Coutts, W.

    Hermon-Hodge, Sir Robert T.

    Roberts, S. (Sheffield, Ecclesall)

    Butcher, Samuel Henry

    Hill, Sir Clement

    Ronaldshay, Earl of

    Carlile, E. Hildred

    Hills, J. W.

    Ropner, Colonel Sir Robert

    Castlereagh, Viscount

    Hope, James Fitzalan (Sheffield)

    Rutherford, John (Lancashire)

    Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor)

    Hunt, Rowland

    Rutherford, Watson (Liverpool)

    Cecil, Lord R. (Marylebone, E.)

    Joynson-Hicks, William

    Salter, Arthur Clavell

    Chamberlain, Rt. Hon. J. A. (Worc'r.)

    Kennaway, Rt. Hon. Sir John H.

    Sheffield, Sir Berkeley George D.

    Chaplin, Rt. Hon. Henry

    Kerry, Earl of

    Stanier, Bevilie

    Clive, Percy Archer

    Keswick, William

    Stanley, Hon. Arthur (Ormskirk)

    Clyde, J. Avon

    King, Sir Henry Seymour (Hull)

    Starkey, John R.

    Coates, Major E. F. (Lewisham)

    Lane-Fox, G. R.

    Staveley-Hill, Henry (Staffordshire)

    Courthope, G. Loyd

    Law, Andrew Bonar (Dulwich)

    Talbot, Rt. Hon. J. G. (Oxford Univ.)

    Dairymple, Viscount

    Lockwood, Rt. Hon. Lt.-Col. A. R.

    Walker, Col. W. H. (Lancashire)

    Dickson, Rt. Hon. Charles Scott-

    Long, Col. Charles W. (Evesham)

    Walrond, Hon. Lionel

    Doughty, Sir George

    Long, Rt. Hon. Walter (Dublin, S.)

    Warde, Col. C. E. (Kent, Mid)

    Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers-

    Lonsdale, John Browniee

    Williams, Col. R. (Dorset, W.)

    Du Cross, Arthur Philip

    Lowe, Sir Francis William

    Willoughby de Eresby, Lord

    Faber, George Denison (York)

    Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. Alfred

    Wilson, A. Stanley (York, E.R.)

    Faber, Capt. W. V. (Hants, W.)

    Magnus, Sir Philip

    Younger, George

    Fell, Arthur

    Mildmay, Francis Bingham

    Forster, Henry William

    Morpeth, Viscount

    TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Viscount Valentia and Lord Edmund Talbot.

    Foster, P. S. (Warwicks, S.W.)

    Morrison-Bell, Captain

    The CHAIRMAN: By virtue of the decision of the Committee, I select the Amendment standing in the name of the hon. Member for North Paddington.
    Mr. CHIOZZA MONEY: I beg to move to insert at the end of Sub-section 1 ["where the site value of the land does not exceed £50 per acre"] the following: "and in respect of land the site value of which exceeds £50 per acre, Undeveloped Land Duty shall be charged only upon such portion of the site value as exceeds £50 per acre."
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    The object of the Amendment, of course, is to graduate the tax over the £50 line. As the Bill stands its effect is that undeveloped land not worth more than £50 value per acre is not subject to the tax, and that land which exceeds £50 is subject to the tax in its entirety. By deducting £50 from all undeveloped land subject to the tax, one arrives at a slight gradation. If we take land valued at £60 per acre as the Bill stands it would pay 2s. 6d. If we take interest at 4 per cent, the hypothetical income of the £60 per acre is 48s., so that the 2s. 6d. is equal to an Income Tax

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    of 1s. in the £. If we take £70, the hypothetical income is £2 16s., and again 1s. in the £ Income Tax. If my Amendment is accepted we arrive at a graduation that comes to this: On £60 per acre the equivalent Income Tax would be 2d. in the £; on £70 the tax would be 7d. in the £, so that one gets a graduation ranging from zero to the highest figure. This proposal is upon the same principle as the Income Tax is worked at present. We start with £160 a year: We do not make a man with £165 pay 9d. on the whole amount, while a man who has £160 pays nothing. What we do is we allow the man with £165 to deduct £160 first, and the result is that people with small moderate incomes have a real effective graduation. The principle in this Amendment is the same, and I venture to hope that the Government will accept it, because, while it does not secure a very decided graduation, it does at any rate prevent hardships and anomalies which would otherwise arise on an arbitrary line. In all cases where an arbitrary line is drawn, something ought to be done to shade the line. I beg to move.
    Sir W. ROBSON: I do not see that my hon. Friend's Amendment provided for any scheme of graduation whatever. You simply begin to tax on the whole value as soon as you have exempted £50 an acre, but you should always exempt the first £50 from taxation. I find the greatest difficulty in connecting my hon. Friend's mathematical calculation with that very simple proposal. There seems to me to be no reason why we should exempt land which is not devoted to agriculture which may possibly be vacant or unused land. There is no reason why we should exempt £50 an acre and tax the rest. It is only in regard to the agricultural value that we propose to make the exemption.
    Question, "That those words be there inserted," put, and negatived.
    The CHAIRMAN: There are no other Amendments I shall select before the point to which the decision of the Committee carries us.
    Sir W. ROBSON Sir W. ROBSON moved, "That the Chairman do report Progress, and ask leave to again sit."
    Motion agreed to; Committee to sit again to-morrow (Wednesday).
    Adjournment, — Resolved, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Joseph Pease.]
    Adjourned accordingly at Eighteen Minutes before Twelve o'clock