§ (1) For the purposes of this part of this Act the increment value of any land shall be deemed to be the amount (if any) by which the site value of the land, on the occasion on which Increment Value Duty becomes due, exceeds the original site value of the land.
§ (2) The site value of the land on the occasion on which Increment Value Duty becomes due shall be taken to be:—
- (a) Where the occasion is a transfer on sale of the fee simple of the land, the value of the consideration for the transfer; and
- (b) where the occasion is the grant of any lease of the land, or the transfer on sale of any interest in the land, the value of the fee simple of the land calculated on the basis of the value of the consideration for the grant of the lease or the transfer of the interest; and
- (c) where the occasion is the death of any person and the fee simple of the land is property passing on that death, the principal value of the land as ascertained for the purposes of Part I. of the Finance Act, 1894, and where any interest in the land is property passing on that death the value of the fee simple of the land calculated on the basis of the principal value of the interest as so ascertained; and
- (d) where the occasion is a periodical occasion on which the duty is due in respect of land held by a body corporate or unincorporate, the value of the fee simple of the land is ascertained for the purposes of the assessment of duty under this Act;
§ (3) Where, on any occasion on which Increment Value Duty is due in respect of any land, it becomes necessary, for the purpose of ascertaining the original site value of the land on which the duty is to be assessed, to apportion any original site value as first adopted for the purposes of this part of this Act, that value shall be apportioned between that part of the land on which duty is to be assessed and the remaining part of the land in such proportions as the Commissioners think just, and the value attributed on any such apportionment to each part of the land shall, for the purposes of this part of this Act, be treated as the original site value of that part of the land.
§ (4) Where the owner of any land proves to the satisfaction of the Commissioners that he, or any of his predecessors in title, has purchased the land within twenty years before the thirtieth day of April, nineteen hundred and nine, and that the amount then paid by him for the purchase of the land exceeds the total value of the land as first adopted for the purposes of this part of this Act, such sum shall be substituted for the purposes of Increment Value Duty for the original site value of the land as the Commissioners consider, having regard to the amount so paid for the purchase of the land, was at the time of the purchase the site value of the land.
§ Mr. JAMES MASON moved to postpone Clause 2.
§ The Amendment, of which I have given notice in manuscript, is not, as it might appear to be, a dilatory Motion, but, on the contrary, it is one of substance. The Increment Duty is to be levied upon the difference between a valuation made under the conditions of Clause 2 and a valuation made under the conditions of Clause 14, and the reason that I think it is necessary to move this Amendment is that the valuation under Clause 14 chronologically must come before the valuation under Clause 2, and consequently the latter clause refers directly to the condition of things on page 3, line 6, set up under Clause 14, but of which no indication is given in Clause 2. Furthermore. Clause 14 contains expressions the exact meaning of which it is absolutely necessary to take into consideration in considering Clause 2, but they are expressions which are not themselves mentioned there, and consequently cannot be 471 raised on the discussion of this clause. Clause 14, for instance, makes imperative certain things which are to be divested or disregarded, whereas Clause 2 leaves this divesting or disregarding at the option of the Commissioners. For instance, in Clause 14 provision is made for divesting the land for the purpose of ascertaining the site value of all buildings, structures, timber, and so forth, but it is quite evident that when you come to Clause 14 these things of which the land is to be divested will probably be very materially altered and added to, and that other things will be included in them. But my point is that the action which we take on Clause 2 is absolutely dependent upon what is or is not done on Clause 14. Then we have another difficulty, and that is, that in Clause 14 certain things are disregarded. That is to say, the land is considered without regard to encumbrances. In Clause 2 there is no mention of encumbrances, and therefore the clause, as it stands, means that the land will be subject to those encumbrances. Of course, I know that this arrangement, so far as Increment Duty is concerned, is in favour of the landowner, but I venture to say that the question of these encumbrances is one which must necessarily be cleared up now,. because it may have the most curious effect unless we thoroughly understand what encumbrances are included. For instance, such things as Land Tax and tithe, where there has been commutation of tithes, or a redemption of the Land Tax, will be very serious matters to consider. I have had very great difficulty in getting an expression of legal opinion, and I have consulted many people as to whether or not they are encumbrances on land. I am aware of the definition of encumbrance in section 7 of the Act referred to in the definition clause, but there seems to be a difference of opinion, and it seems to me that the definition of this question of encumbrance is one which is essential to the discussion of Clause 2. Of course, if the Land Tax is an encumbrance, the redemption of the Land Tax is a thing which can never be done in the future without increasing the Increment Duty, because the redemption of the duty and the removal of the tax will increase the in-crement by the amount of the capital value of the tax which is redeemed.
§ Then there is another difficulty, and that is the difficulty of deductions. Under Clause 14 provision is made to deduct im- 472 provements of a permanent character—of course, most reasonable and proper—but it also goes on to provide for deducting the cost, by reducing the site to an imaginary condition. I venture to think that this provision will necessarily give rise to very considerable differences of opinion in debate. It is extremely difficult to find what is the cost of the removal of various things to reduce the site to a natural condition, and unless we have some clear idea of what is likely to be done by Clause 14 in that respect, it will be extremely difficult to discuss Clause 2 in an intelligent manner. Then, again, I know, as far as deduction goes, Clause 2 and Clause 14 make both of these deductions, but in one case they are optional, whereas in the other they are obligatory. In the former case they are levied at the discretion of the Commissioners. For these reasons, it seems to me, that it is necessary to discuss this clause with those which are connected with it—that is to say, with the valuation clauses—or else on the discussion of Clause 2 it will be necessary to ask you, Sir, to allow very considerable latitude in debating this clause and Clause 14 very considerably together. Otherwise if we are confined to the discussion of Clause 2 alone, it seems to me impossible to carry on the Debate in an intelligent or useful manner.
§ Mr. LLOYD-GEORGEThis is a very familiar Motion which is made by every Opposition upon every Bill and upon every clause of that Bill, and I do not think it really very much matters what the arguments may be for or against it, because its only use is delay, and the argument is only a secondary consideration. The Motion is a Motion for delay. The hon. Member has moved this Amendment on grounds which are identical with those which were used in order to support the postponement of Clause 1—namely, that valuation ought to come first. That is substantially what it means. The Motion to postpone Clause 1 was supported by that argument, and the Motion to support Clause 2 is also supported by it.
§ Mr. PRETYMANI think it is quite evident that this is not really intended to be a dilatory Motion. In regard to Clause 1 the argument was, the right hon. Gentleman has said, that valuation should precede the tax, but in this case the argument is very different, and it is founded upon an argument used by the right hon. Gentleman himself three or four hours ago, when he said that Clauses 2 and 14 must be 473 considered very much together. That is the foundation of the whole argument of my hon. Friend.
§ Mr. LLOYD-GEORGEThe hon. Gentleman is really very much excited over a very little difference. I said the reason we were invited to postpone Clause 2 was because valuation ought, it was said, to come before the tax, but that is the same thing as saying that Clause 14 ought to come before Clause 2, because valuation ought to come first. Let us see what this means. There may have been something to be said in favour of valuation before you impose any tax, but I think the balance of argument is in favour of putting on the tax first and the valuation afterwards. But there is nothing to be said for interpolating a valuation which is common to all the taxes between Clauses 1 and 2. Clause 14 deals with valuation, which is the basis of all the taxes, and it ought to come either before all the taxes or after them. I do not think any draftsman would ever accept the responsibility of advising the Government to put Clause 14 at this particular stage.
Mr. G. D. FABER (York)I do not think the right hon. Gentleman has quite appreciated the point of the Amendment. The question is not whether valuation should come first. The question is this: Under the Bill there must be a valuation. The original valuation will be made immediately after the passing of the Act, and then upon any transfer of property, whether by sale, lease, or by death, the second valuation. We contend that in the Bill the Government have put the cart before the horse, and have put the second valuation first, which will be a very great practical inconvenience, because while the discussion is proceeding upon Clause 2, which is the second valuation, we must refer to the first valuation, otherwise our arguments will be unintelligible, and we shall come under the ban of the Chair. We shall therefore be unable to have free discussion at all. We should get rid of all these difficulties if we proceeded first of all to discuss the original valuation. There are in the Bill vital differences between the method of arriving at the original value and the method of arriving at the secondary value. Take the case of the original valuation of agricultural land. There in the eye of imagination you are to see the land stripped of buildings and growing timber, whereas when you come to Clause 2 not a word is said about growing timber at all, and there 474 are other differences and inconsistencies. Surely, dealing with the matter as a practical Assembly, we ought to take the valuations in the order of time in which they will occur. It will conduce to the celerity of our business instead of getting ourselves into a morass of doubt, difficulty, and inconsistency.
§ Mr. J. A. CLYDEThe reasons for postponing consideration of the clause are such as, from my point of view, go deep into the consideration of Clause 2 itself. It has already been pointed out that the whole point about Clause 2 is that it institutes a comparison of something which is supposed to be already known, otherwise you could not make the comparison, namely, that which is called by the Bill original site value, with something else which is referred to in section (2), namely, the actual price when sold, less certain deductions, to be made in order, by the comparison of the one with the other, to arrive at what the Bill calls increment value. It has already been pointed out, and, at first sight, it seems unanswerable, that you cannot possibly discuss a proposal to compare two things together unless you have the two things before you. It is perfectly obvious that to consider the result of comparing the original site value with the price less certain deductions, which are described in section 2, is all futility and waste of time unless you may examine the thing with which comparisons is to be made. It is necessary to under-stand what are the points of difference between these two things which the Bill asks us to compare. It is only, if we realise effectively how different these two things are, that the expediency or propriety of postponing Clause 2 until we have Clause 14 before us can be judged of at all. It is not at all improbable that a good many of us have read the Bill without realising that the two clauses in question both deal with site value, and deal with it from entirely opposite points of view, and propose that it should be arrived at by totally different methods of valuation, which have not only nothing to do with each other, but are contradictory of each other, and yet it is on a comparison of these two things that we are asked to arrive at increment value, which obviously could only be arrived at fairly if you compare like with like. These two clauses must be compared together, because the moment you look at them you will see that they propose to compare unlike with unlike. If that is so, it is absolutely necessary that 475 we should have them both before us for comparison if we are to discuss Clause 2 at all. The conception which underlies these two clauses is in each case entirely different. Chronologically we begin with the original site value, which in its conception is imaginary altogether. You begin by imagining that all the buildings and structures, all the timber, all the gooseberry bushes, and everything that grows on the land have been removed from it, that you are left with the bare site, and that you ask yourselves the question: What would that bare site fetch in the market? That is not an impossible, but it is a difficult form of valuation. It is not impossible, because you are dealing with something which might physically exist, namely, a perfectly bare site instead of a site covered with buildings. What you are asking to be compared with that is not a revaluation of the same thing on the same imaginary basis, but something totally different. Here is the conception of Clause 2. It starts with a hard fact. I take for simplicity the case of a transfer on sale. Under Clause 2 you begin with the actual price fixed by the transaction, and then the conception of the clause then is that you deduct from the actual price the value attributable to the value of the buildings, trees, bushes, and anything growing on the site. Just observe how completely different these two things are. If I were valuing original site value the existence of the buildings on the site would be of no importance, because I have to suppose that they are non-existent. The buildings may be valued at anything. The value may be £500 only or £50,000; it would make no difference to the original valuation of the site value. The condition of the buildings, their cost, and their state of repair, would be as immaterial as their existence itself. See how the scene shifts when you come to the second valuation. You begin with the site, and you deduct from it the value of the buildings. That is the only bit of valuation there is under Clause 2, and that is precisely the valuation which you totally ignore in the valuation of original site value under Clause 14. It is perfectly plain that the two things are totally different in method. Moreover, another thing is perfectly plain about it. Whereas, if you take the imaginative method of stripping the site of buildings, you may value that. You may value that ten years later, and you compare like with like, but if you begin with the original site value on the basis of the imaginary 476 bare site, 10 years afterwards the price, less the value of the buildings, will depend on what may be the value of the buildings. There may be a valuable building on the site at the beginning, and no building 10 years afterwards. Nay, more, two sites, lying next door to each other, may be identical in every respect except one. On one there is a building worth £5,000, and on the other a building worth £10,000. When you make the valuation these sites will have two different values. It is as plain as can be that these two methods of valuation are not the same. I challenge anyone to say they are the same. One begins by valuing the site in regard to which buildings are of no importance, and the other takes the value of the complex subject and deducts the value of the buildings. You cannot get a comparison between these two things, and if you cannot get a comparison of like and like, I venture to think it is absolutely idle to suppose that you can arrive at any reliable measure of increment value.
I want to point out the difference in another way. While I admit quite frankly that it is feasible to have an original site valuation on the basis of land being clear of buildings, I defy any man to do it in any way that will produce a reliable result. The second valuation requires that you should have regard to the valuation of the buildings whose value is to be deducted, and here, again, it is necessary to have these two clauses together. Then the subject of deduction from the price, namely, the value of the buildings, must be valued on the footing that there is no site. Well, what is the answer to that? You are going for the purpose of the second valuation to arrive at site value, and you are going to take the price of the complex subject and deduct from that the value of the buildings. Are you going to include part of the value of the site in the value of the buildings? If you do, you will not arrive at site value, and if you arrive at site value you are going to do what nobody ever did in this world except in very exceptional circumstances—you are going to ask people to value buildings without site at all. I would like to know what value there would be without a site. If you consider the difficulty which this problem presents in comparison with the comparative simplicity of Clause 14, you cannot fail to see the necessity of having the two clauses before you at the same time. All the instances of valuing buildings, apart from site, which I know of, 477 were cases in which it was legitimate to treat the value of the buildings as a mere matter of construction cost less depreciation. I wish to know whether this Committee is to be asked to accept the view that, under this clause, the valuation is to be on the basis of construction cost less depreciation.
I have said enough to make it perfectly clear that these two valuations are completely different. They are of no service except for comparison, and the result of comparison is vain unless it gives you increment value. I think I have said enough to show that these two clauses, as they stand, are not comparable, and that it would be idle for us to commit ourselves to the method of valuation proposed in Clause 2 unless we had before us the method of valuation proposed in Clause 14. The right hon. Gentleman, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said that his only reason for objecting to this Motion was merely that there was nothing in Clause 2 that could be changed on consideration of Clause 14. My proposition is that Clause 2 from beginning to end would require alteration if it is to be made comparable with Clause 14, and, therefore, if it is to be valuable for a discussion of the method of valuation disclosed in Clause 14 this result can only be attained by bringing in at the same time for criticism and comparison the method proposed in section 14.
§ The LORD ADVOCATE (Mr. Ure)We have listened to a very interesting speech on the methods of valuation, whereas the question which the Committee is invited to consider is whether we should postpone Clause 2 until we have considered and discussed Clause 14 as to definition and machinery. My hon. and learned Friend (Mr. Clyde) thinks that it is very desirable to have the two clauses before us at the same time. I am afraid that that is a Parliamentary impossibility. One must come before the other, and the question which the Committee has to decide is which of the two clauses is to come first. The argument which he has offered to the Committee would be conclusive in favour of taking the definition clause in every Bill the first clause of the Bill. That might in some cases be very convenient, and I think I know one or two Acts of Parliament which commence with the definition clause, but they were certainly not Finance Bills, and certainly did not relate to the raising of taxation. What I ask you to consider really seriously is whether it is an inconvenience to us or something graver than an inconvenience to consider 478 Clause 2 here before we consider Clause 14. Clause 2 defines the increment value, and it says the increment value is the difference between two things—first, the original site value; and, secondly, the site value at the date of the transfer on sale. What does it signify what your definition of original site value is, or what does it signify what your definition of site value at the time the duty is to be assessed is until you have determined that it is the difference between these two from which the Increment Tax is to come off. My hon. and learned Friend apparently has not read the clause. You assess the difference between the two things. Original site value is just the value of the land alone, divested of buildings and structures, and other things which my hon. Friend has described. Having ascertained the original site value you must find out in order to assess the Increment Duty what is the site value at the time the duty is to be paid. So my hon. and learned Friend is quite correct in saying that the methods by which you arrive at the two are different. They are not in the least degree inconsistent, but they are different; but even though they were inconsistent it would not in the least degree affect the argument, the argument being that Clause 14 should come before Clause 2, because that is the only question at issue.
Necessarily the method by which you reach site valuation is different in the two cases. In the case of the original site value you have no standard to go by. You must rely undoubtedly on the question of opinion, the question of opinion being the price that the willing buyer would pay for the land alone divested of buildings, and the rest of it. Is there any other method? I am assuming at the present moment that we are going to ascertain what is the original site value. Is there any other method conceivable by which you could arrive at original site value than by according to the valuation it may be of a skilled expert, ascertaining what the willing seller would take for that piece of land if it were put on the market at once. If for example a railway company or a bank, or a corporation came on with compulsory powers, and said "we want to take that bit of land." That is original site value. "Now," said my hon. and learned Friend, "when you come to your site value at the date of the transaction you proceed upon a different principle." Certainly we proceed upon a different principle because there you have, ex hypothesi, an actual transaction before you, a sale and transfer.
§ Mr. PRETYMANOf a complex site, not a site.
§ Mr. UREI was just going to say so, certainly; but you do not, in point of fact, sell, as the hon. and gallant Gentleman says, the land apart from the buildings and improvements; and the object of this tax is to sever the land from the buildings and improvements and not to impose the tax upon the buildings and improvements. We have an actual transaction before us of which the complex subject, as the hon. and gallant Member has said, is the subject matter of sale, and you do not want any comparison of the original site value with the price which the owner receives. What you want to compare is the original site value with the site value which he is receiving for the composite subject, a price which is not severed. You have a price which is a stock price for the composite site. You must do your best to sever that. My hon. and gallant Friend thinks this is a bad method. Can he suggest a better? The method proposed in the Bill is that you should take the price which is got for the composite site and then endeavour to obtain what is the price of the buildings actually upon the ground and the improvements that have actually been made. That is a matter of estimate. The hon. and learned Gentleman said he had never known of a case in which it had been attempted to sever the valuation of buildings from the valuation of the land, but he added "with some exceptions," and we shall make those exceptional cases normal. I have known instances in which building value has been taken separately from the site value, and, curiously enough, I have seen very considerable differences between the valuers with regard to the value of land, but I have never seen any serious difference between them with regard to the buildings on the land. In regard to the latter there are certain very familiar methods.
§ Mr. CLYDEDoes the right hon. Gentleman refer to a case in which the valuation of the buildings was independent?
§ Mr. UREIt was absolutely independent. The valuer was told to sever absolutely the site value, and he valued the buildings.
§ Mr. UREHe took the buildings, found what they cost, and then allowed for depreciation. The fact is that the same operation has been frequently followed, 480 though hon. Gentlemen opposite say that it is an impossibility. The net result is this, that in this Clause 2 the duty is taken on the difference between the value of the two things. You have got the value of one of these things fixed and ascertained by the method laid down in Clause 2; you have got the value of the other thing defined by Clause 14, and the duty is upon the difference between the two. Hon. Gentlemen opposite tell us that we cannot fix the difference between the two until we have laid down absolutely the definition of both.
§ Mr. UREI differ entirely from the hon. Gentlemen opposite. I say the clause as it stands tells you that you are to take the duty as the difference between the two valuations. Clause 14 elaborately defines what is the value which, ex hypothesi, is greater than the value which is set out in Clause 2, and it seems to me that we can with propriety proceed to the discussion of Clause 2, disregarding altogether for the moment the definition in Clause 14.
§ Mr. PRETYMANI will call the right hon. Gentleman's attention to the consequence of the proposition which he has just laid down, that the original site value is to be obtained first, and is to be compared afterwards with the site value in Clause 2. It is impossible for us to discuss adequately what is to be done under Clause 2 until we know exactly what form Clause 14 is going finally to take. The right hon. Gentleman admits that under Clause 2 you have to take the composite subject of the land and the buildings upon it, and that you have to take the actual value of that at the sale price. Then you have to take from that the value of the buildings, and we now ascertain from him for the first time what the value of buildings means. He quite clearly stated that it means the value totally apart from the site, and he further admitted that the only method in which the buildings could be valued apart from the site was by taking their cost less depreciation. I think we are greatly indebted to the right hon. Gentleman for that statement, because we are really now on a clear and definite basis. I cannot emphasise that too much. Under this clause we are simply to arrive at the site value by deducting the cost less depreciation of buildings from the total sale price.
§ Mr. PRETYMANWe could not have a higher authority, and we are prepared to accept that. The right hon. Gentleman has made a great study of this subject, and he has looked at it from the point of view of a very ardent advocate trying to discover the best way of doing it. Take the instance where you have two sites adjoining one another. Both, first of all, would be valued under Clause 14 as bare site at the same value. You have then upon these two sites buildings of a similar character costing the same sum of money, but one building 10 or 20 years older than the other. Under the method suggested by the right hon. Gentleman as the best method the site value in these two cases would be absslutely different. My point is that if this be the result you get no comparison, and therefore we cannot rely on this at all until we have a point of departure. When under Clause 14 the original valuation is definitely established then we have a point of departure. I suggest that the Government should consider their position. Clause 2, as at present drafted, is so utterly hopeless, impossible, and inconsistent with the principles on which the Government advocated the introduction of the Bill, that they would do well to postpone it, and give it a little more consideration, and in the meantime we may consider Clause 14, which is comparatively simple.
§ Mr. J. F. P. RAWLINSONThis discussion has brought out a most valuable point from the Lord Advocate as to site value. Take a site value of £1,000, the question we have to determine is what will be the value 10 years hence when a sale is effected, and when you have erected upon it buildings worth £2,000, less some small sum for depreciation, you have a property which produces the sum of £3,000. He deducts £2,000, less depreciation, and the residue is the site value. Can you imagine any business assembly ever arriving at such a valuation? Has he ever in his life known a person who built a private house at considerable expense who could ever realise the full value of the building even four months afterwards. I will not discuss the merits of the two separate clauses. I am only thanking the Lord Advocate for having brought out into clear prominence the disadvantages we are under in discussing clause 2. The value will have to be taken, as he says, by taking the land for building on it, and taking the cost price of the building from the selling price, whatever it is, which is an absolutely delusive way of arriving at such a value. We have to 482 discuss that question without having discussed a totally different valuation which comes under Clause 14, which is taking a piece of land at what it will fetch in the market, which is a comparatively simple operation. Surely this Motion has been justified, and it will be advisable to take Clause 14 to know where we are before we pass this extraordinary proposal.
§ Mr. W. W. ASHLEYI think the discussion has amply justified the hon. Member for Windsor in bringing forward this Motion, which cannot possibly be called a dilatory Motion after the argument used by the other side. It seems to me absolutely plain that we cannot discuss Clause 2 until we discuss Clause 14, for the reason that section (1), Clause 2, says:—"For the purposes of this part of this Act the increment value of any land shall be deemed to be the amount (if any) by which the sits value of the land, on the occasion on which Increment Value Duty becomes due, exceeds the original site value of the land." Therefore, we have two site values, the original site value and the increment site value. The latter part of Clause 2 goes on to say what shall be done and the amount of the increment value, with certain deductions. How can we discuss the increment site value until we have discovered what really is the original site value, which is dealt with in Clause 14? It is perfectly absurd to attempt to discuss Clause 2 without having discussed Clause 14 on which it is dependent.
Mr. DUNDAS WHITEThis Motion seems to me to be in the common form which is applied to every clause. We are always told that we should postpone a clause until a later clause is reached, but we all know that if the later clause were in the position of this clause the same Motion would have been made. The only way in which we could discuss the two would he by discussing them both together, and that the Rules of the House would not allow, and it would be very difficult to do so even if the Rules did allow. It seems to me that there is really little or no fundamental distinction between the two. In the original valuation it is proposed to ask how much a man puts down for the market value of the clear site, and in the subsequent operation the object is to arrive at precisely the same thing, but only to take as a basis the actual price. I feel certain if we did not take the actual price as a basis those who are criticising this clause would condemn us for neglecting the actual price and for making our valuation 483 entirely in the air. I understood that the criticism of the hon. and gallant Gentleman (Mr. Pretyman) was along these lines, that you have two properties of similar size, situation, and position, and on each of them a building of the same cost, but with one 40 years older than the other, and which has, therefore, suffered greater depreciation. Then he went on to say that that gave us two different site values for similar sites. I do not think that that conclusion follows unless you assume that the two purchase prices were the same to start with. It seemed to me that the hon. and gallant Gentleman overlooked the fact in these two cases that there would be an important difference in the original purchase prices, namely, the difference for the depreciation of the second building, and that if that had been properly allowed for his argument would have failed, and the two site values would work out. I was interested to hear the argument of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Cambridge University (Mr. Rawlinson). He said you have a site, and on the site you had a building.
§ The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN (Mr. Caldwell)Those are arguments into the merits of the Question. We are dealing with the Question to postpone, and although I quite admit great latitude has been taken, we had better keep to the Question of postponement.
Mr. DUNDAS WHITEI thought one might be allowed to answer a case put. The argument of the hon. Member that a house is worth less four months after it is built tells in favour of the Government Bill, and not against it, and the proposal instead of being ungenerous is really more than generous under the circumstances.
Mr. PIKE PEASEI should like to add another argument in favour of postponing this clause, that is in reference to the reply which came from the Secretary of the Treasury to-day as to the taxes on royalties. It appears to me, so far as this valuation is concerned, that the reply, which stated that there was a possibility that royalties would be taxed instead of ungotten minerals, really alters the case altogether in reference to the valuation of land. It was definitely stated by the Chancellor this afternoon, and I believe it has been stated previously, that as far as the valuation of land is concerned that the question of the value of minerals must be 484 taken into account in land for the increment value.
§ The DEPUTY-CHAIRMANThat is really going outside the question whether this clause should be postponed.
Mr PIKE PEASEWhat I want to point out is that when we are discussing the question of value it is necessary to know what our definition of land is. It is impossible to define the value of land if we do not know whether ungotten minerals or royalties are to be taxed. It is really necessary for us to have from the Chancellor of the Exchequer a definite reply on this point before we discuss Clause 2.
§ Mr. JAMES HOPEThe Lord Advocate said that the value of a building was quite distinct and divorced from the site. May I ask whether the building he had in mind was somewhere in the lowlands of Scotland?
§ Mr. UREThe building I had in mind was in the City of Glasgow, and it was valued by a firm of Scotch valuers. I admit there is a difference of opinion among the experts.
§ Mr. JAMES HOPEWould that building have the same value in St. Kilda, or in the Shetlands?
§ Mr. JAMES HOPETherefore part of the value of the building was attributable to its site in Glasgow.
§ Mr. JAMES HOPEThe cost of erection in St. Kilda would be greater because of the cost of transporting the materials. On the other hand, the value of the building would be greater in Glasgow because of its site. Therefore the value of the building in either case must depend upon the site. The Chancellor of the Exchequer said that the grounds alleged against this Clause were the same as under Clause 1. That is not so. In this case the argument arises out of the extraordinarily difficult position the Committee is in owing to the fact that in the Bill there is what purports to be a double definition of the same thing one in this clause and one under Clause 14. In this clause the definition is in a sense subordinate. The clause does not profess to be a definition clause, but in working out the clause a definition is introduced. In Clause 14 you have a definition not only 485 of the original site value, but of site value generally for all purposes of this part of the Act—a definition which is entirely different from that in Clause 2. When you have two definitions of the same thing in the same Bill, which of the two is to prevail in a construction before the Courts? I submit you would have to take the superior definition in the definition clause, and if it came in conflict with the subordinate definition the superior definition would prevail. If that is so, we ought obviously to take the definition clause first, otherwise when we come to deal with that we should override what we had already done. I submit that we ought to deal first with the main governing definition, and afterwards bring the subordinate definition into harmony with it.
§ Mr. W. W. RUTHERFORDWhilst I am generally out of sympathy with anything in the nature of mere dilatory Motions, I think on this occasion we are bound to make a protest against the position in which the Committee finds itself entirely owing to the astonishing order in which these clauses are placed. We have apparently decided that there is to be an Increment Duty imposed upon land, but we are still without a definition of land. We are told that we must wait for Clause 27 for that definition. The Lord Advocate says, "What is the difficulty of arriving at a difference between two numbers when you do not know what the numbers are? I can substract one from the other without knowing either of the two numbers."I have always given Gentlemen from the other side of the Tweed credit for an enormous ability and sagacity, but I think that that task even they would find exceedingly difficult to carry out. We have no right to be embarrassed in this way by the manner in which the Bill is framed. It would have been very simple and only reasonable to have put these clauses in their chronological order. The first thing we want to know is how you are going to fix the valuation of to-day, which is to be at the basis of the whole thing. But what does the Bill do? In Clause 1 it tells us that some day or other, about 15 or 20 years hence, there is to be an Increment Duty. It goes on to say that when various events happen such as a sale and so on, there is to be a valuation. When you come to ask what the Increment Duties are to be you have to wait till you get to Clause 14 to see how the valuation is to be arrived at. Not only has this extraordinary difficulty arisen through an entire reversal of the chronological order of 486 events, but when you come to compare the wording of the clause with that of Clause 14 you find, much to your astonishment, that each of these two sets of valuations which are supposed to be compared together and deducted one from the other have to be taken in an absolutely different and contradictory manner. I think by a serious Amendment we shall have to try to put the methods of valuation of Clause 14 bodily into Clause 2, so as to arrive at the same basis of valuation both for comparative reasons and for justice; or else we shall have to decide when we come to Clause 14 to take the words of Clause 2, and put them into Clause 14. Really, on an occasion like this we are entitled seriously to complain of the very great embarrassment which has been caused to us by the order and method of arranging these valuation clauses, and for that reason I support this Motion.
§ Viscount HELMSLEYIt is obvious that Clause 2 should be read subsequent to Clause 14, otherwise it is absolutely unintelligible, for Clause 14 was obviously drafted before Clause 2. I submit it is perfectly impossible to understand Clause 2 unless you understand Clause 14, and it is ridiculous if we enter upon a discussion of a clause that sets out in the margin to define increment value, when it becomes apparent in the clause that what purports to be the definition cannot be decided until you have a subsequent definition which appears in Clause 14?
§ The DEPUTY-CHAIRMANThat argument has been repeated by nearly every speaker.
§ Viscount HELMSLEYI have not had the opportunity of hearing them, and I only wish to move this Amendment on behalf of my hon. Friend who has put it down. I am not aware if the arguments have been repeated that an answer has been given by the Front Bench. Certainly the arguments seem to me to lose nothing of their force by repetition.
§ The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN rose to put the Question——
§ Sir F. BANBURYI rise to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will kindly reply to the arguments which have been advanced from this side of the House——
§ Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE3 have done so.
§ Sir F. BANBURYSo far as I understand the only hon. Member on the other 487 side who has spoken to these points' is the right hon. Gentleman the Lord Advocate, whom I am informed has given the whole case away. It is in the interests of hon. Gentlemen opposite that I ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer to reply. I also wish to know how I am to vote upon this question, for I desire to give an intelligible vote. It seems to me that there are three clauses, all of which are definition clauses, and from the point of view of the efficiency of the House these three definition Clauses, 2, 14, and 27 ought to be discussed together.
§ Mr. W. C. BRIDGEMANThere is one question certainly which has not been answered by any hon. Gentlemen responsible for the conduct of the Bill, and that is the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, whose point is this: There are two definitions, if not three— one is in Clause 2 and one in Clause 14. Supposing we pass Clause 2 before passing Clause 14, and these two definitions are inconsistent, will an Amendment to Clause 14 be ruled out of order, because we have passed Clause2?
§ Mr. LLOYD-GEORGEThat question was raised by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Winchester (Mr. Baring), and it was one of the points to which I endeavoured to give an answer.
§ Mr. BRIDGEMANI am afraid I did not hear the answer, but the question has been pressed since, and has attempted to be answered by the Lord Advocate; certainly no satisfactory answer has been given. Those who have listened to the speech of the Chancellor of the Exchequer say that he really gave no answer. The point seems to be a very simple one, the definition of Clause 2 is a definition of "increment value." The definition of Clause 14 is of "total value and site value of land excluding minerals." If you are going to take a jump——
§ The DEPUTY-CHAIRMANThe hon. Member is repeating arguments which have been used by several speakers in the Debate.
§ Mr. BRIDGEMANI did not think that when a point is raised, and has not been answered, that it cannot be raised again. If that is so of course I am bound to give way, but in previous Debates when a point was raised and not answered hon. Members pressed for an answer. This 488 question has not been answered, and I say if you are going to take a jump from Clause 2 to 14——
§ The DEPUTY-CHAIRMANThe hon. Member is persisting in repetition of arguments used by previous speakers.
§ Mr. BRIDGEMANI want to try and make it quite clear. I have listened to a great deal of the Debate, and I have not heard this point raised.
§ Mr. JOHN O'CONNORI rise to a point of order. I desire to know whether it is not a fact that when arguments have been urged in Committee and have been answered fully by the representative of the Government, and when these arguments are reiterated over and over again, is it not perfectly competent for the Chairman to put the Question without further delay?
§ Mr. BRIDGEMANOn that point of order if the Question has not been fully answered, as we contend it has not, are we not entitled to continue the Debate, and to press for an answer. It is open to hon. Members opposite to do now as they have done over and over again, to move the closure. I only wish finally to beg for an answer. Is it not better to start from high ground to make your rise rather than to start from a quagmire to take a jump?
§ Lord ROBERT CECILI understand from the answer given by the Chancellor of the Exchequer earlier in the day that minerals are to be part of the site value upon which Increment Value Duty will be charged. I venture to press upon the right hon. Gentleman, in view of that, whether this clause should not be postponed until at any rate we know what is to be included in the word "minerals." Of course, we know that" minerals" does come into the word "land"; we do-not know what conies into the word "minerals." I appeal to the Chancellor of the Exchequer to give the House some assistance in that matter. We asked him to have re-printed for the use of the House the words out of the decision on which he relies for the meaning of the word "minerals." That has been refused —I do not know why. It appears to me to be a very reasonable request, and I do think, in these circumstances, the Committee will find themselves in some difficulty in discussing Clause 2, and I think the clause should be postponed until the Government tell us what they include in. the word "minerals."
§ Viscount HELMSLEYThe Chancellor of the Exchequer, in reply to a question by my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor (Mr. Mason) said it might be necessary in Clause 2 to insert words which might safeguard Clause 14. What are the words the Chancellor of the Exchequer proposes to insert in Clause 2. Are we to take it that they are included in the Bill? I cannot find in Clause 2 any words of the kind referred to by the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
§ Mr. JAMES HOPEIf there are two inconsistent definitions of the same thing in a Bill, I wish to know which will override the other. Will it be the first in order, or will it be the one which is to act expressly as a definition and not merely as an illusive explanation of something else. I ask the Attorney-General to say which is the right construction where you have two inconsistent definitions in the Bill.
§ Sir F. BANBURYI appeal to the Attorney-General to give me an answer.
§ Sir W. ROBSONI do not think it is open to any hon. Member to put a highly hypothetical question of that kind relating to a hypothetical Bill and to claim as a matter of right to have an answer from the Law Officer. If the hon. Member put some concrete case pertaining to the subject matter of the Debate, then it might become necessary that he should receive an answer, but where a question of this kind is put dealing with the contingency I never heard of, and that does not—as far as I know—arise upon this Bill, I do not think it is at all proper to take up the time of the Committee by answering
§ questions which cannot possibly be pertinent to the object of the Bill.
§ Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAINThe learned Attorney-General is in the same unfortunate position as most of us—that he has to find time to refresh wearied nature, and he has not heard the whole of the Debate. The question put by my hon. Friend is not a hypothetical question referring to a hypothetical Bill, but it is a question arising on this clause when read with Clause 14, which has been so clearly argued by my hon. Friend the Member for the West Derby Division of Liverpool. The occasion, therefore, for answering such a question has arisen here and now. This is not a hypothetical question we are discussing; it is a practical question, of which the Attorney-General would have been aware had he, like many of us, not been obliged to be absent for a while.
§ Mr. W. W. RUTHERFORDIt certainly does appear to me that when a very important question of this kind arises as to whether two clauses are inconsistent, and where the question before the Committee is which should be taken first, that the Attorney-General, who is in receipt of a salary, and is the paid servant of the House, shall answer. We are entitled to ask for a serious answer to a reasonable question, and not to be put off as the Attorney-General has sought to put us off.
§ Question put, "That the clause, as amended, be postponed."
§ The Committee divided: Ayes, 80; Noes, 249.
493| Division No. 217.] | AYES. | [9.50 p.m. |
| Acland-Hood, Rt. Hon. Sir Alex. F. | Craig, Charles Curtis (Antrim, S.) | Lane-Fox, G. R. |
| Ashley, W. W. | Craik, Sir Henry | Law, Andrew Bonar (Dulwich) |
| Balcarres, Lord | Dalrymple, Viscount | Lockwood, Rt. Hon. Lt.-Col. A. R. |
| Baldwin, Stanley | Davies, David (Montgomery Co.) | Lowe, Sir Francis William |
| Banbury, Sir Frederick George | Doughty, Sir George | Magnus, Sir Philip |
| Banner, John S. Harmood- | Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers- | Mason, James F. (Windsor) |
| Barrie, H. T. (Londonderry, N.) | Duncan, Robert (Lanark, Govan) | Mildmay, Francis Bingham |
| Beach, Hon. Michael Hugh Hicks | Fardell, Sir T. George | Moore, William |
| Beckett, Hon. Gervase | Fell, Arthur | Morpeth, Viscount |
| Bignold, Sir Arthur | Forster, Henry William | Morrison-Bell, Captain |
| Bowles, G. Stewart | Gardner, Ernest | Newdegate, F. A. |
| Bridgeman, W. Clive | Gooch, Henry Cubitt (Peckham) | Nicholson, Wm. G. (Petersfield) |
| Bull, Sir William James | Gretton, John | Pease, Herbert Pike (Darlington) |
| Campbell, Rt. Hon. J. H. M. | Guinness, Hon. R. (Haggerston) | Percy, Earl |
| Carlile, E. Hildred | Hamilton, Marquess of | Powell, Sir Francis Sharp |
| Cave, George | Hardy, Laurence (Kent, Ashford) | Pretyman, E. G. |
| Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manot) | Harris, Frederick Leverton | Randles, Sir John Scurrah |
| Cecil, Lord R. (Marylebone, E.) | Hermon-Hodge, Sir Robert | Rawlinson, John Frederick Peel |
| Chamberlain, Rt Hon. J. A. (Worc'r.) | Hope, James Fitzalan (Sheffield) | Renwick, George |
| Clyde, J. Avon | Houston, Robert Paterson | Renaldshay, Earl of |
| Coates, Major E. F. (Lewisham) | Kennaway, Rt. Hon. Sir John H. | Ropner, Colonel Sir Robert |
| Cochrane, Hon. Thomas H. A. E. | Keswick, William | Rutherford, W W. (Liverpool) |
| Courthope, G. Loyd | King, Sir Henry Seymour (Hull) | Salter, Arthur Clavell |
| Sandys, Col Thos. Myles | Walker, Col. W. H. (Lancashire) | Wortley, Rt. Hon. C. B. Stuart- |
| Stanier, Beville | Walrond, Hon. Lionel | |
| Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester) | Warde, Col. C. E. (Kent, Mid) | TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—Mr. G. D. Faber and Viscount Helmsley. |
| Thomson, W. Mitchell- (Lanark) | Wilson, A. Stanley (York, E.R.) | |
| Valentia, Viscount | Winterton, Earl | |
| NOES. | ||
| Abraham, W. (Cork, N.E.) | Greenwood, G. (Peterborough) | Morse, L. L. |
| Greenwood, Hamar (York) | Morton, Alpheus Cleophas | |
| Acland, Francis Dyke | Griffith, Ellis J. | Murphy, John (Kerry, E.) |
| Agnew, George William | Harcourt, Rt. Hon. L. (Rossendale) | Murray, Capt. Hon. A. C. (Kincard.) |
| Alden, Percy | Hardie, J. Keir (Merthyr Tydvil) | Murray, James (Aberdeen, E.) |
| Allen, A. Acland (Christchurch) | Hardy, George A. (Suffolk) | Myer, Horatio |
| Allen, Charles P. (Stroud) | Harmsworth, Cecil B. (Worc'r.) | Nannetti, Joseph P. |
| Armitage, R. | Hart-Davies, T. | Napier, T. B. |
| Astbury, John Meir | Harvey, A. G. C. (Rochdale) | Nicholls, George |
| Atherley-Jones, L. | Haslam, James (Derbyshire) | Nicholson, Charles N. (Doncaster) |
| Baker, Joseph A. (Finsbury, E.) | Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth) | Nolan, Joseph |
| Balfour, Robert (Lanark) | Haworth, Arthur A. | Norman, Sir Henry |
| Baring, Godfrey (Isle of Wight) | Helme, Norval Watson | Norton, Capt. Cecil William |
| Barlow, Percy (Bedford) | Hemmerde, Edward George | Nugent, Sir Walter Richard |
| Barnes, G. N. | Henry, Charles S. | Nuttall, Harry |
| Barran, Sir John Nicholson | Herbert, T. Arnold (Wycombe) | O'Brien, K. (Tipperary, Mid) |
| Barry, Redmond J. (Tyrone, N. ) | Higham, John Sharp | O'Connor, John (Kildare, N.) |
| Beauchamp, E. | Hobart, Sir Robert | O'Connor, T. p. (Liverpool) |
| Beck, A. Cecil | Hodge, John | O'Doherty, Philip |
| Bell, Richard | Hogan, Michael | O'Donnell, C. J. (Walworth) |
| Bellairs, Carlyon | Hope, W. H. B. (Somerset, N.) | O'Kelly, Conor (Mayo, N.) |
| Berridge, T. H. D. | Hudson, Walter | Parker, James (Halifax) |
| Bethell, Sir J. H. (Essex, Romford) | Hyde, Clarendon G. | Partington, Oswald |
| Boulton, A. C. F. | Idris, T. H. W. | Paulton, James Mellor |
| Bowerman, C. W. | Isaacs, Rufus Daniel | Pearce, Robert (Staffs, Leek) |
| Bramsdon, Sir T. A. | Jackson, R. S. | Pearce, William (Limehouse) |
| Branch, James | Jardine, Sir J. | Philipps, Col. Ivor (Southampton) |
| Brigg, John | Johnson, John (Gateshead) | Philipps, Owen C. (Pembroke) |
| Brodie, H. C. | Jones, Leif (Appleby) | Pickersgill, Edward Hare |
| Brooke Stopford | Jones, William (Carnarvonshire) | Pointer, J. |
| Brunner, Rt. Hon. Sir J. T. (Cheshire) | Jowett, F. W. | Power, Patrick Joseph |
| Buckmaster, Stanley O. | Joyce, Michael | Price, C. E. (Edinburgh, Central) |
| Burke, E. Haviland- | Kavanagh, Walter M. | Priestley, Arthur (Grantham) |
| Burns, Rt. Hon. John | Kekewich, Sir George | Priestley, Sir W. E. B. (Bradford, E.) |
| Burt, Rt. Hon. Thomas | Kelly, George D. | Radford, G. H. |
| Byles, William Pollard | Kilbride, Denis | Rea, Rt. Hon. Russell (Gloucester) |
| Cameron, Robert | Laidlaw, Robert | Richardson, A. |
| Charnning, Sir Francis Allston | Lamb, Edmund G. (Leominster) | Ridsdale, E. A. |
| Cheetham, John Frederick | Lambert, George | Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln) |
| Cherry, Rt. Hon. R. R. | Lamont, Norman | Roberts, G. H. (Norwich) |
| Cleland, J. W. | Law, Hugh A. (Donegal, W.) | Robertson, J. M. (Tyneside) |
| Clough, William | Layland-Barrett, Sir Francis | Robinson, S. |
| Compton-Rickett, Sir J. | Lehmann, R. C. | Robson, Sir William Snowdon |
| Cooper, G. J. | Levy, Sir Maurice | Roch, Walter F. (Pembroke) |
| Corbett, C. R. (Sussex, E. Grinstead) | Lloyd-George, Rt. Hon. David | Roe, Sir Thomas |
| Cornwall, Sir Edwin A. | Lundon, T. | Rogers, F. E. Newman |
| Cotton, Sir H. J. S. | Lupton, Arnold | Rowlands, J. |
| Craig, Herbert J. (Tynemouth) | Luttrell, Hugh Fownes | Runciman, Rt. Hon. Walter |
| Crooks, William | Lyell, Charles Henry | Rutherford. V. H. (Brentford) |
| Crosfield, A. H. | Lynch, H. B. | Samuel, S. M. (Whitechapel) |
| Crossley, William J. | Macdonald, J. H. (Leicester) | Schwann, C. Duncan (Hyde) |
| Dalziel, Sir James Henry | Macdonald, J. M. (Falkirk Burghs) | Schwann, Sir C. E. (Manchester) |
| Davies, M. Vaughan- (Cardigan) | Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J. | Sears, J. E. |
| Davies, Timothy (Fulham) | MacVeagh, Jeremiah (Down, S.) | Shaw, Sir Charles E. (Stafford) |
| Davies, Sir W. Howell (Bristol, S.) | MacVeigh, Charles (Donegal, E.) | Shipman, Dr. John G. |
| Dewar, Arthur (Edinburgh, S.) | M'Callum, John M. | Silcock, Thomas Ball |
| Dickinson, W. H. (St. Pancras, N.) | M'Laren, H. D. (Stafford, W.) | Smeaton, Donald Mackenzie |
| Dickson-Poynder, Sir John P. | M'Micking, Major G. | Smyth, Thomas F. (Leitrim, S.) |
| Dilke, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles | Maddison, Frederick | Snowden, P. |
| Dobson, Thomas W. | Mallet, Charles E. | Soames, Arthur Wellesley |
| Duncan, C. (Barrow-in-Furness) | Manfield, Harry (Northants) | Soares, Ernest J. |
| Duncan, J. Hastings (York, Otley) | Markham, Arthur Basil | Spicer, Sir Albert |
| Elibank, Master of | Marks, G. Croydon (Launceston) | Stanger, H. Y. |
| Esslemont, George Birnie | Marnham, F. J. | Stanley, Hon. A. Lyulh (Cheshire) |
| Evans, Sir S. T. | Mason, A. E. W. (Coventry) | Steadman, W. C. |
| Everett, R. Lacey | Massie, J. | Stewart, Halley (Greenock) |
| Fenwick, Charles | Masterman C. F. G. | Stewart-Smith, D. (Kendal) |
| Flavin, Michael Joseph | Meagher, Michael | Strachey, Sir Edward |
| Flynn, James Christopher | Menzies, Sir Walter | Summerbell, T. |
| Foster, Rt. Hon. Sir Walter | Micklem, Nathaniel | Sutherland, J. E. |
| Fullerton, Hugh | Middlebrook, William | Taylor, John W. (Durham) |
| Gibb, James (Harrow) | Molteno, Percy Alport | Taylor, Theodore C. (Radcliffe) |
| Gill, A. H. | Mond, A. | Thomasson, Franklin |
| Glover, Thomas | Montagu, Hon. E. S. | Thompson, J. W. H. (Somerset, E.) |
| Goddard, Sir Daniel Ford | Mooney, J. J. | Thorns, G. R. (Wolverhampton) |
| Gooch, George Peabody (Bath) |
| Toulmin, George | Watt, Henry A. | Wilson, P. W. (St. Pancras, S.) |
| Trevelyan, Charles Philips | Weir, James Galloway | Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton) |
| Ure, Rt. Hon. Alexander | White, Sir George (Norfolk) | Winfrey, R. |
| Verney, F. W. | White, J. Dundas (Dumbartonshire) | Yoxall, Sir James Henry |
| Vivian, Henry | White, Sir Luke (York, E.R.) | |
| Walters, John Tudor | Whitehead, Rowland | |
| Ward, W Dudley (Southampton) | Whitley, John Henry (Halifax) | TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Mr. Joseph Pease and Mr. Herbert Lewis. |
| Wardle, George J | Wills, Arthur Walters | |
| Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney) | Wilson, Hon. G. G. (Hull, W.) | |
| Waterlow, D. S. | Wilson, John (Durham, Mid) |
§ Mr. JAMES HOPEMy hon. and gallant Friend (Captain Craig) has asked me to move to leave out sub-section (1).
The CHAIRMANIt seems to me that to leave out the sub-section would make the rest of the clause rather unintelligible. The discussion should come on the Motion that the clause stand part of the Bill.
§ Mr. JAMES HOPEWhat I wanted to raise was the distinction between the original value and the site value. There is nothing hypothetical about the tax. It is a grim reality. The question is between the site value and the original value.
The CHAIRMANThat raises the question of the whole clause, and the Motion must be taken at the end of the clause. If taken at the end of the clause it cannot be taken now.
§ Viscount HELMSLEYIf this sub-section were left out now, would it not be possible to move a consequential Amendment?
The CHAIRMANThe point that has been raised is one of some importance, and I have dealt with it according to our Rules of Procedure. I do not think that the question should be raised now, but, as I have said, at the end of the clause.
§ Viscount HELMSLEYThe point which we wish to raise is, What is the increment value?
The CHAIRMANAs I have said, the point is one of some importance, and it should be raised at the end of the clause. It will not do to discuss all these principles on the first sub-ssction.
§ Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAINIt is very difficult for us to forego any opportunity of discussion when there is so much uncertainty as to what we shall be allowed to discuss.
§ Sir F. BANBURYMay I ask whether we cannot raise a discussion on any part of the clause? It is very important that there should be a ruling on the subject.
The CHAIRMANI take it that this Amendment is hostile to the clause as a whole. That is how I understand it. The 494 right hon. Gentleman for East Worcestershire has asked me a question which I cannot answer. Until I know how the clause is discussed I cannot bind my hands.
§ Mr. PRETYMANWe wish to raise the question that a comparison should bo made. We do not desire to go into details.
The CHAIRMANIf the hon. Member desires to move the sub-section it will be equivalent to defeating the whole clause, because that is the very essence of it.
§ Mr. JAMES HOPEThen do I understand from you that it will not be possible for me either to dilate on the sub-section, or even to move its omission, without prejudicing the general discussion at the end of the clause?
The CHAIRMANCertainly: to discuss the clause in the way I have stated will be to anticipate a discussion which ought to be taken at the end of the clause.
§ Mr. HOPEI take it I shall not prejudice that discussion if, by way of protest, I move simply to leave out the first subsection?
Mr. BALFOURI think your ruling is quite clear. There ought only to be one general discussion on the substance of this clause, and that general discussion can be taken on two occasions without transgressing the Rule. It can take place on the motion to omit the sub-section, or it can more legitimately take place on the motion that this clause stand part of the Bill. That being so, I hope the Committee generally will decide on the second alternative, and will take the discussion on the Motion that the clause stand part of the Bill. I trust that any general arguments we may wish to put forward will not be prejudiced by any prolonged discussion on this sub-section, and that we shall have a full opportunity of discussing the matter on the Motion that the clause stand part of the Bill. But I take it that a Division would not militate against any future discussion. All you desire to lay down is that the general discussion can only take place once on this subject.
§ Mr. LLOYD-GEORGEIf the sub-section is omitted, as proposed, it is perfectly clear it will be equivalent to the omission of the whole clause, because the rest of the clause is purely dependent upon it. Subsection 1 declares what the increment value is, and proceeds to define it, and if that sub-section goes it is equivalent to knocking out the next sub-section. I submit that there should be neither discussion now nor a Division taken on this point.
§ Sir F. BANBURYMay I press for an answer to my question whether or not it is not in order to discuss any part of a clause, or any sub-section of a clause, and then when the Question is put, "that the clause stand part of the Bill," to discuss whether or not the clause should stand part of the Bill, whether the Amendment of the clause is good or bad, or whether the clause should be omitted altogether? Is it not a fact that the discussion on the point that the clause stand part has nothing whatever to do with any discussion which may take place upon any individual word, or line, or sub-section?
§ Mr. LAURENCE HARDYIs it not the fact, Sir, that it is always within the power of any Member to move the omission of a sub-section? Of course, I quite admit your ruling as to the Debate taking place at once, but it is rather a serious precedent if this is to be established, and if an old custom of the House which has enabled us to move the omission of subsections should be broken. Applied to a great many other cases., it would be a serious breaking down of the privileges of this House, and therefore I would suggest that it is still in order for the Motion to be made.
§ Mr. BONAR LAWIs it not the case that precisely the same objection could have been made to omitting sub-section (1) of Clause 1, which has already been passed, but I understand it was allowed.
§ Mr. LLOYD-GEORGENo; that was ruled out of order.
§ Mr. BONAR LAWBut was not the ground on which it was ruled out of order purely owing to the printing?
§ Mr. JOHN O'CONNOROn the point of order, I desire to know whether, you, Sir, having given your ruling on this point, and having called upon an hon. Member in whose name the next Amendment stands, this whole discussion is not out of order?
The CHAIRMANI have been very patient, as the matter is of some importance, and I have come to the conclusion— and this answers the question of the hon. Baronet—that to move the omission of sub-section (1) is equivalent to moving the omission of the whole clause, and is out of order.
§ Mr. MOONEYYour ruling, Sir, as I understand it, is that if sub-section (1) is omitted from the clause the rest of the section is nonsensical, and, therefore, you take it that the omission of the sub-section means the omission of the whole clause. May I submit that it is within the power of any Member of this Committee to move an Amendment at a future stage which, while omitting the whole of sub-section (1), may make the clause perfectly in order? Is it not within the power of any hon. Member to move an Amendment to any part of the clause at any time, and I ask therefore whether you can decide before you have seen the whole Amendment whether the omission of the sub-section would make the clause nonsensical?
§ Mr. MOONEYThere is no consequential Amendment at the present moment on the Paper, but if the Amendment is carried that does not prevent any hon. Member from moving an Amendment; whereas, if you rule sub-section (1) cannot be omitted, then an Amendment cannot be moved.
Mr. BALFOURI apologise for intervening again, but this is very important. You, Sir, said just now there was a precedent for the decision which you ruled. You did not state what the precedent was, nor should I think myself justified in pressing you to give it, unless you thought that was a proper course; but, unless my memory greatly deceives me, in the many Bills which it has been my business to promote or oppose in this House, it has constantly occurred that the first sub-section has been moved to be omitted, although it made nonsense, and I am quite sure that no man has moved more omissions of that kind than the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I do not at all say or suggest for a moment that the ruling you are disposed to give is not perfectly correct, but I would ask whether it is not a restric- 497 tion upon the general practice of the House so far, and, therefore, whether it ought not to be taken with all solemnity as guiding the deliberations of this House, whichever party is in power.
The CHAIRMANThe right hon. Gentleman has put a question to me. I feel I must answer him frankly. Similar cases have been allowed, but they have been allowed in the case of Bills which are under the closure. In regard to Bills such as this, where there is no such Order of the House, this precedent holds good. It is a precedent of 1896, on the Education Bill of that year, and, indeed, I have myself once or twice ruled it also in similar cases. I am in somewhat of a difficulty about the matter, because, having stated that, I must frankly say we do discuss Bills here under different conditions, and, therefore, I do not want to carry my ruling further than the clauses of this Bill to-night under the conditions under which we are dealing with this Bill.
§ Mr. FELLmoved to leave out the words "of this part." There are a number of additional clauses already down to the Bill which do not come under the first part, which relates to land, while the subsequent parts do not touch on that question. The additional clauses, if carried, would form part of the Act, but I do not see how they can come in the first part of the Act, because we shall not be able to discuss them till the Bill is practically passed.
§ Sir W. ROBSONAll the clauses relating to the Land Tax are in the first part of the Bill, and any clause subsequently added will be added to the first part.
§ Sir W. ROBSONThe omission of these words will not make any difference.
§ Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
§ Mr. W. W. RUTHERFORD rose to move after the word "Act" to insert the words "Increment Duty shall only become payable in respect of any land which on 30th April, 1909, shall, in the opinion of the Commissioners, be neglected, uncultivated, unbuilt upon or inadequately built upon, and not utilised to a reasonable extent having regard to its capabilities, and——"
The CHAIRMANThe hon. Member's Amendment is not in order at this stage. We already have words in Clause 1 "the 498 increment value of any land. "Clause 2 must deal with "any land in the sense of Clause 1. We cannot now restrict Clause 1 by inserting the words which the hon. Member desires to insert in Clause 2.
§ Mr. W. W. RUTHERFORDWhen Clause 1 was under discussion we on this side felt very considerable difficulty with regard to the definition of the word "land." It was urged by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and I think you rather entertained the suggestion, that the proper place to define the word "land" would be in Clause 27 (Definitions). Acting on that suggestion, which was not exactly a ruling, some of us have bean studying the question as to where we could in the most convenient way have a definition of the "land" to which the Increment Duty is to apply. I may be allowed to point out that in Clause 27 there is a definition, but it is not exactly a definition of land. It says that "land" shall not include something, but it does not say what shall be included. The word "land" there applies to the three taxes on land, and it is quite clear that land for the purpose of each of these three duties is an entirely different thing. It is not the same for the purpose of undeveloped land, and it is not the same for the purpose of increment.
The CHAIRMANThe hon. Member is really making a long speech. I perfectly understand his point, but I must say that, in my opinion, his Amendment is not in order at this stage. We cannot now change the words in Clause 1.
The CHAIRMANruled that an Amendment by the hon. Member for York (Mr. G. D. Faber) was not in order.
Mr. G. D. FABEROn a point of order, I desire to address myself to the Amendment standing in my own name. My Amendment is to insert after the word "any"("any land shall be deemed") the word "urban." When you ruled that Amendment out of order it was, I understand, on the ground that the matter had already been decided. I would point out that what was decided by the first clause was that there shall be charged increment value in respect of any land. Now the question is, the method of arriving at it, and the point raised by the Amendment is that, although in respect of urban land, the method prescribed by Clause 2 may be a fit and proper one, in respect of agricultural land it is not.
The CHAIRMANThe specific point of the hon. Member was, as a matter of fact, settled upon Clause 1 on the Amendment moved by the hon. Member for Chelmsford (Mr. Pretyman).
§ Mr. JOYNSON-HICKSI moved an Amendment this afternoon, the first of a series of consequential Amendments on this clause. Does that Amendment come in here? If it is out of order I should be glad of your ruling, so long as it is not passed over by mistake I shall be satisfied.
The CHAIRMANThat does not arise at this point. We can deal with it at a point later on. The Amendment of the hon. Member for Blackpool (Mr. Ashley) is out of order——
§ Mr. ASHLEYOn a point of order——
The CHAIRMANThere is no question about this being settled by the previous clause. I am really very much surprised that hon. Members should argue about this. Let me finish my ruling on a point of order, and if there is any point afterwards I am willing to consider it. The, Amendment of the hon. Member for Fins-bury (Mr. Remnant) will come in under deductions in a later part of the paragraph.
§ Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAINMay I submit, with due respect, that Clause 1 decides that Increment Value Duty shall be charged on all, while Clause 2 proposes to define in a particular way the increment value on which that duty is to be charged. May I ask whether it is not in order for a Member, conforming himself to the decision of the House on Clause 1, to propose that the provisions, as laid down in Clause 2, shall apply to a particular class of land, and, if he has succeeded in confining it to that, then to submit to the House complementary proposals for the other class of land comprised in Clause 2.
§ Mr. LLOYD-GEORGEThe first section decided, first of all, that there should be an Increment Duty, and then decided the subject, the subject being land. Several exceptions were moved. For instance, agricultural land was moved as one exception, so that in that clause we decided the subject-matter of the Increment Duty, and we also decided the exceptions. Now we come to the definition not of the subject-matter, but the amount of the increment. These are totally different points.
§ Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAINWe decided that there should be an Increment 500 Duty in the first clause. We have now to decide what is the value on which the Increment Duty is to be charged. I submit that though the Increment Duty applies to the land, the value need not be the same in respect to different classes of land.
§ Sir F. BANBURYThe right hon. Gentleman distinctly said that he intends to safeguard the interests of agricultural land. How is he going to do that after we have already decided that there should be an Increment Duty on all land, and that cannot be altered?
§ Mr. PRETYMANOne fact will not be disputed, that land which is the property of rating authorities is specifically included in a later part of the Bill.
The CHAIRMANWe have decided that the increment value of land must be charged. We cannot alter that now. Clause 2 defines what the increment value is to be. I am ruling entirely in accordance with all precedents. There is no question at all about it that my ruling is perfectly proper.
§ Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAINWill the right hon. Gentleman answer my question?
The CHAIRMANI am very sorry if I have not answered it. I say that we have already decided that a charge shall be levied and paid on the increment value of land. Now we have to decide what the increment value is to be. It must be the increment value of any land, as in Clause 1, otherwise this clause would not be intelligible.
§ Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAINClause 1 does not say what the increment value is. We have decided that the Increment Duty is to be charged on the increment value of any land. We have decided that Increment Value Duty is to be charged on all land, and we have now to define what that increment value is to be. My hon. Friends have been pressing to move Amendments which would differentiate between the method of calculating the increment value in the case of one kind of land and another. My argument is that that is a wholly distinct question from that which is embodied in Clause 1, and if Clause 1 had settled it there would be no necessity for Clause 2 in the Bill at all.
§ Mr. J. H. CAMPBELLSupposing Clause 2 ran as follows: "For the purposes of this part of this Act the increment value of any urban land shall be 501 deemed to be," and so on, "and the increment value of any rural land or agricultural land shall be deemed to be," and so on, would not that be perfectly consistent with Clause 1; and what is to prevent a Member of the Committee moving the insertion of the word "urban"?
§ Mr. A STANLEY WILSONAre we to understand from your ruling that it would be impossible for us in the future, in spite of the pledges of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, to get any further protection for agricultural land?
§ Mr. MITCHELL-THOMSONmoved in section (1), after the words "shall be deemed to be the amount," to insert the words "not being less than one-tenth of the original site value." The right hon. Gentleman will be aware it has been on the Paper before the discussion took place last night. The object of the Amendment is, of course, to secure that there should not be valuations for trivial increases over the original site value, and that those valuations should only take place when the increase was 10 per cent. on the original site value. If I understood correctly, last night we came to a sort of agreement that there should be a dispensing discretion given to the Commissioners ranging up to the amount of 15 per cent. on the original valuation. If I am correct in that assumption I think there may be no necessity to move this Amendment, and at this stage, if he thinks it will be more convenient, I would move it in the form of 15 per cent. now. I am anxious that we should get a statement from the right hon. Gentleman on the point. While I quite agree with his desire that there should be some means for effecting this protection, I do not agree altogether that there should be a dispensing discretion given to the Commissioners. I should like to see provisions made by which the expense—and it will be very large and frequent—of small valuations would be avoided, because, let it be remembered, these valuations will have to be made on every occasion. The right hon. Gentleman says if there is no increase there will not be any tax, but there will be a valuation, and the unfortunate owner has to make the valuation, which 502 cannot be done for nothing. I think in the interests of the right hon. Gentleman's. Bill, if for nothing else but the practical working of it, valuations of small increases are not worth the trouble, and that they are a mistake. The same money will be obtained, and it is only a question of the intervals. It is only reasonable that the intervals should be fairly substantial. Therefore, if I may, I will move the Amendment in this form: "not being less than one-fifteenth of the original site value."
§ Question proposed, "That the words 'not being less than one-fifteenth of the original site value' be there inserted."
§ Mr. LEVERTON HARRISI think my hon. Friend has made a slight mistake as to the understanding with the Chancellor of the Exchequer. As I understood, it was not that there should be any discretion so far as the Commissioners were concerned in regard to the 15 per cent.; the discretion only came in in the case of a second valuation being necessary.
§ Mr. LLOYD-GEORGEI have already stated twice that I think cases of small increment ought to be excepted. I do not pledge myself as to the percentage, because there are a good many things to be considered. But the present Amendment would not effect the purpose the hon. Member has in view, inasmuch as it exempts only the first transaction. I am prepared to go even farther than the hon. Member suggests, and that is my reason of objecting to his Amendment. The concession which I think I shall be in a position to make will be more substantial than the one he is pleading for now, but this is not the point at which to introduce it. I think you ought to safeguard all small transactions, not merely the first. You do not want the worry, expense, and trouble of obtaining the Increment Duty in every small case, and later on I will place on the Paper words substantially raising the point. The words are at present being considered by the Government, but it is a question whether they should be in Clause 2 or Clause 4. There was a valuable suggestion last night by the hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mr. Salter), that the object would be better effected by means of a discretion vested in the Commissioner under Clause 4, so that where there appears to be a very small increment the vendor should not be put to the expense of inquiring into the matter. Whether it will come on Clause 2 or Clause 4 depends on the nature 503 of the Amendment. I hope the Committee will not press the Government at the present moment to state the form in which they propose to make the concession; all I can say is that we are prepared to meet the case, and are only considering what is the best way of dealing with these small transactions.
§ Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAINI desire to make two observations: first to express the hope to, or to urge upon the Chancellor of the Exchequer the importance of placing this Amendment, or any similar one, upon the Paper at the earliest possible moment. If the Government are going to introduce an important modification it is only fair that we should have the longest time possible to consider it.
§ Mr. LLOYD-GEORGEindicated assent.
§ Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAINThe other observation is that the right hon. Gentleman must not think that it will be satisfactory to Members of these Benches if his concession takes the form of the extension of the already enormous discretion of the Commissioners. Many of us feel that the powers conferred upon the Commissioners are already too wide; that, in fact, while this House is nominally imposing a tax upon certain individuals, what that tax will be is not and cannot be decided by us, but will vary enormously according to the judgment or the mood in which the matter strikes the Commissioners.
§ Mr. LLOYD-GEORGEI take note of the warning that the right hon. Gentleman has been good enough to give of the form in which the Amendment will be acceptable to his friends and himself. With regard to the other part of his remarks, I think it is reasonable that the Amendment should be put down in time so as to give hon. Members full opportunity to examine it before it comes up for discussion.
§ Lord ROBERT CECILI only wanted to be clear as to the concession promised by the Chancellor of the Exchequer last night that there shall be an absolute right not to have the duty charged if it is less than 15 per cent.——
§ Mr. LLOYD-GEORGENo, no; I distinctly safeguarded myself as to the percentage.
§ Lord ROBERT CECILWell, upon an increment value lower than a certain 504 amount; also the power of the Commissioners not even to have a valuation in that case. The two points are quite distinct. A great deal of the cost, inconvenience, and objection to the tax will be the valuation, and the great thing is, therefore, if possible, to avoid the valuation in small cases. In addition to that there is the burden of the small man paying the tax. I am not certain whether that point has been considered or dealt with by the Chancellor.
§ Mr. CLAVELL SALTERI ventured to suggest last night that whatever course was taken care should be taken not merely to exempt the taxpayer, but to frank the land up to that point.
§ Mr. LLOYD-GEORGEI understood the point.
§ Mr. CLAVELL SALTERThe Chancellor will agree that the object is to exempt the taxpayer in cases of small increment not merely from payment, but from accounting. The responsibility is thrown upon the payer of this duty to account if increment value is due. The, difference is this, whether you do not think in cases of a small fractional increment it would be better to exempt a man from accounting altogether, or whether you say in that case the Commissioners shall have a discretion in this, that, and the other case. It is most important to say that a man shall be exempt not merely from payment, but from accounting.
§ Mr. PHILIP MORRELLI wish to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether it is his intention in the case of a small increment to exempt the payment of duty altogether until the increment is sufficiently large? The distinction is an important one. As I understand the Amendment, the object of it was that no duty should be charged for a time in the case of a very small increment.
§ Mr. MITCHELL-THOMSONThe point I made was not only as regards the duty, but also as regards the valuation, because in small cases it is not the payment of the duty so much that matters as the cost of making the valuation.
§ Mr. MORRELLAs I understand, the hon. Member's point is that the Exchequer, will get the money in the long run. It is only a question of time as to when the duty shall be collected.
§ Mr. LLOYD-GEORGEI am very much obliged for the suggestions that have come from all parts of the House to help the 505 Government to understand the Amendment. At the same time, I rather deprecate the discussion in advance, and I think it better not to enter into this question now.
§ Mr. MITCHELL-THOMSONThe right hon. Gentleman has given me a very reasonable promise, and under these circumstances I ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.
§ Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
§ Mr. CHAPLIN moved, after "any, "["amount (if any)"] to insert the words "as ascertained by the Commissioners specially appointed for this purpose." And further to add the words "and subject to appeal as hereafter provided."
§ I move this Amendment at this stage, because it seems to me to be most desirable that the question of the position of the Commissioners under this Bill and the immense work with which they are entrusted should be raised at the earliest moment in these discussions. This is the first clause in which the Commissioners are referred to. The question must occur to any one who has read this Bill and considered the enormous interests which are to be dealt with by the Commissioners and the uncontrolled powers with which they are vested. Is the authority to whom all these powers are to be entrusted to be an independent authority and not merely officials of the Government? In regard to the questions with which they will have to deal, and especially with regard to agricultural land, they should certainly have some practical knowledge and experience of their own. We know from what the right hon. Gentleman has said that not one of the Commissioners to be nominated have had any experience of that kind, and it is obvious that neither of the conditions which I have laid down are fulfilled. The new duties are enormous, the powers of the Commissioners are practically uncontrolled, and I think it is safe to say that no such authority, having regard to the character, kind, and amount of the property with which they are to deal, has ever been submitted to Parliament before by any English Government as a proper authority for the purpose. Those gentlemen have very onerous duties at the present time, and how they are going to perform the additional duties which are to be cast upon them under this Bill I cannot understand, if they are to be carried out in the way which we all desire.
I have endeavoured to ascertain what are the duties which they have to perform 506 now, and I find they have to deal with the Income Tax, Property Tax, Land Tax, stamps on documents, the Death Duties, including the Estate Duty, and the Settled Estate Duty, Succession Duty, and the Legacy Duty. I have often heard that even with their present duties great difficulties arise in getting replies from the Inland Revenue Commissioners, and it is no uncommon thing to hear complaints made; and altogether their duties are not fulfilled with as much punctuality as might be desired. What is going to be the case when in addition to all these duties you cast upon them such an enormous burden as will inevitably be entailed by this Bill? The Chancellor of the Exchequer undoubtedly entertains a different view to that which I hold as to the position of the Inland Revenue Commissioners at the present time. It must be borne in mind that all the houses in the country and all the land on which they stand must be separated from each other, because all the land, agricultural and otherwise, is to be placed under this Bill, and will be practically at the mercy of these four Commissioners. I wonder whether the Committee has considered at all the amount and the extent of this property which these four gentlemen will have-to deal with in the future. It cannot be less than four thousand millions at the very least, and that is probably a considerable under estimate. I have a table here showing the rateable value of England and Wales on a 20 years' purchase;. The value of the property which will have to be dealt with by the Inland Revenue Commissioners amounts to 4,224 millions. One of the first duties of these gentlemen will be to call for returns dealing with the valuations. That is no simple task to begin with, but it is a task to be given to these Commissioners.
§ The CHAIRMAN (Mr. Emmott)The right hon. Gentleman is now arguing with regard to powers to be given to the Com-missioners which are dealt with in another part of the Bill.
§ Mr. CHAPLINI am endeavouring to show, first of all, what are the duties given to the Commissioners at present; and, secondly what will be the new duties which will be placed upon them.
§ The CHAIRMANWithin the scope of the Amendment. The right hon. Gentleman must confine his remarks to his Amendment, and he cannot wander over the whole of the Bill.
§ Mr. CHAPLINI move the Amendment for the purpose of raising the whole question of the Commissioners. I do not see otherwise how the matter can be dealt with.
§ The CHAIRMANThe object of the right hon. Gentleman is something other than is shown in the Amendment. I can only deal with the Amendment. The right hon. Gentleman may incidentally mention that the Commissioners appointed will have heavy duties which they will be unable to perform. One purpose in asking that they shall be a special body is that those duties should be referred to a special body. But the Amendment is that special Commissioners shall be appointed for a special purpose, and that is the only question that can be argued.
§ Mr. CHAPLINThe Increment Duty affects all the different kinds of property to which I have referred, and undoubtedly it is one of the subjects which the Commissioners in the Bill as it stands will have to deal with over and over again. I am endeavouring to show that for that purpose of Increment Duty—one of the main purposes of the Bill—the present Commissioners will not be adequate and that there ought to be a body specially appointed for the purpose.
§ The CHAIRMANI do not want the right hon. Gentleman to misunderstand me. He is perfectly entitled to argue that for the purpose of ascertaining the increment the proposed Commissioners will not be adequate, but the argument cannot extend all over the Bill and to the other duties proposed to be put on the Commissioners.
§ Mr. CHAPLINI will adhere as closely as possible to the ruling you have laid down, but limited as you make it I suppose I may refer to the duties cast upon the Commissioners. So far as the Increment Duty is concerned, I was pointing out that under Clause 16 their first duty will be to call for a return, because the Increment Duty cannot be ascertained without these returns. I was then proceeding to make certain criticisms upon the manner in which these returns were called for and on the powers given to the Commissioners for this purpose. I think that would be in order. With regard to these valuations, certainly the powers placed at the disposal of the Commissioners are of a most extreme and extraordinary character. They are powers 508 involving duties which are cast on the Commissioners as well as upon the owners of land from whom the returns will be required.
§ Mr. LLOYD-GEORGEI think the right hon. Gentleman desires to raise the whole question whether the Commissioners shall be special. Commissioners or Commissioners of Inland Revenue. I submit the right hon. Gentleman really wants to discuss a proposal that special Commissioners shall be substituted throughout, not merely for the purpose of Clause 2, but for all the other important functions cast upon the Commissioners by this Bill. May I just point out to you and the right hon. Gentleman that we have raised that point specifically in the Bill—who the Commission is to be—in Clause 74, and the right hon. Gentleman can address the survivors when we come to that clause. I will call your attention to Clause 74:—
Any reference to 'the Commissioners' In Part II. Part VI., or Part VII. of this Act shall be construed as a reference to the Commissioners of Customs and Excise, and any reference to the Commissioners' in any other part of this Act shall be construed as a reference to the Commissioners of Inland Revenue.That raises specifically the question of who the Commissioners shall be, and then it will be competent for the right hon. Gentleman to say that a special Commission ought to be appointed for the purpose, but I do not see how he can possibly argue it at this stage.
§ The CHAIRMANThe whole Amendment would be out of order, if we had to wait till Clause 74 was reached. I consider it in order at this stage as applying to increment value. He must confine himself, however, to those points which are in order.
§ Mr. CHAPLINI pointed out that I would confine the Debate strictly to Increment Duty, and I was pointing out the extraordinary difficulty of the task, with regard to increment alone, which would be thrown upon the Commissioners under the Bill, and I will endeavour to adhere as closely as possible to that particular subject. I am quite aware of the fact that the constitution of the Commission and the question who ought and who ought not to be Commissioners is perhaps the most important thing in the Bill, for it must be remembered that all through the Bill all control and guidance at every point which is raised by the measure of the right hon. Gentleman is referred to the Commissioners. Not only that, but there is no appeal from the Commission, except 509 one which is nothing but an appeal from the Treasury to the Treasury. One of my chief objections to the present Commission, even with regard to this single duty—this most important Increment Duty—is this, that they represent a Department which is really a branch of the Treasury and nothing else, and consequently we are in this position, that however arbitrary, however unjust, however unfair the decisions of the Inland Revenue Commissioners may be, or may appear to be to those who feel that they are suffering from them, their only redress is an appeal to certain referees appointed by the Commissioners themselves.
For the purpose of settling what that Increment Duty is or is not to be, it should be done by Commissioners specially appointed for this purpose. Their other duties must interfere with the practical performance of their duties under the Bill. They will be placed in great difficulty by the collection of the returns. The extraordinary and exceptional powers you have given them for this purpose alone make it clear that in the mind of the Government they have a most onerous task to perform. They are to call on every landowner for a return of every estate, big or small,' separating one from the other, and the value of the houses apart from the land has to be returned, and they may be called upon to make it within a period of 30 days, and if they are unable or neglect to do so most terrible penalties are to be inflicted on them.
§ Mr. LLOYD-GEORGEOn a point of order, the right hon. Gentleman is now discussing the functions of the Commissioners under Clauses 15 and 16 in regard to returns on an Amendment which deals with the functions of the Commissioners in ascertaining the difference between the site value and the original site value. I submit that it is quite impossible to discuss that at this stage.
§ The CHAIRMANThe right hon. Gentleman's Amendment is that these special Commissioners have to settle increment value. His argument is that part of the settlement of the increment value involves these returns, and that there are other duties under a good many other clauses. I must say I think that is so, and I cannot see that he is out of order in raising that. What he would not be in order in doing would be raising any duties they might have to perform on Reversion Duty, Undeveloped Land Duty, Ungotten Minerals, and things of that kind. But 510 what really applies to increment value I cannot help because it is involved in the Amendment.
§ Mr. CHAPLINI am grateful for your ruling, but it is certainly what I expected. I am not in the least surprised that the right hon. Gentleman should be extremely desirous of postponing the discussion. He suggested that the question could be discussed on the seventy-fourth clause, but it seems to me that if the clause is ever reached it must necessarily be twelve months hence. A good many of the difficulties in connection with the Bill have already been submitted to the right hon. Gentleman, and in regard to the majority of them he has hardly favoured us with any answer at all. I hope he will in some way meet the difficulties which I have suggested, and that he will explain why the Commissioners should not be a separate body created for this purpose. What are the objections? The appointment of an independent body would be only in accordance with the precedents to be found in connection with other great measures dealing with vast quantities of property. The proposal of the Chancellor of the Exchequer is that the tribunal is to consist of his own officials; they are not independent of him and of the Government. So far as I can remember the position taken up by the right hon. Gentleman is opposed to all the precedents in regard to such appointments.
§ Question proposed, "That those words be there inserted."
§ Mr. LLOYD-GEORGEAs I understand your ruling the question which the Committee is now called upon to deal with is whether the functions which are assigned to the Commissioners in the fixing of the Increment Duty and in the valuation which is the basis of the Increment Duty should be discharged by the Commissioners of Inland Revenue or by a Special Commission set up in some manner which the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Chaplin) no doubt will explain later on if this Amendment is carried. I think that is a very important matter, but I am surprised at the right hon. Gentleman moving such an Amendment. It is a very revolutionary proposal. It is that you should set up a special land board, nominees of the Government, to decide questions of this sort. The Government are leaving these functions to gentlemen of very wide experience—gentlemen to whose experience the right hon. Gentle- 511 man has testified. He gave us a list of the gigantic operations these gentlemen are conducting. They are superintending revenue amounting to scores of millions a year, and they are superintending the Income Tax, a work which involves the review of £800,000,000 or £900,000,000 of income.
Captain CRAIGI wish to ask whether the right hon. Gentleman is in order in referring to Clause 74? That refers entirely to Part II. of the Bill.
§ Mr. LLOYD-GEORGEIf the right hon. Gentleman had taken the trouble to read the whole clause, which is very short, it would have saved the necessity of interruption. The Commissioners are commissioners of very wide experience, who have got enormous duties of very great importance to discharge. They have got to review an income of £900,000,000 every year. They have got to collect something like 30 or 40 millions Income Tax. They have got to deal with the Death Duties of about 18 or 19 millions a year. That is a much more considerable revenue than anything that we propose to consider under this clause, and it is a much more important and a much heavier charge on land in many respects. Yet those duties are discharged by the Commissioners of Inland Revenue in a very responsible manner. Then there are the taxes on stamps and many other questions of a similar character with which they have to deal. They are men of experience whose impartiality has never been challenged in this House. The right hon. Gentleman is the first Gentleman who ever criticised them as a body, and his criticism was of a very perfunctory character. The only charge he brought against them was that they were not very punctual. That is not a subject of complaint against the Commissioners. It may be a question of increasing their staff. But I never heard the charge brought against the Commissioners that they were not a very able, judicious, hard working, body of men. If you will consult those at the Treasury you will be told that no finer body of men could possibly advise any Government on questions of revenue.
§ Mr. ALFRED LYTTELTONWill the Commissioners make the valuations?
§ Mr. LLOYD-GEORGEThe right hon. Gentleman might confine himself to the question under debate. The whole question here is who is to determine the Increment Duty? The other question is 512 who are the people who are to superintend the increment valuation? The right hon. Gentleman wants to draw me on the question who is to perform the valuation in each case. That surely is beyond a debate of this kind.
§ Mr. LYTTELTONThe right hon. Gentleman very properly eulogises the Commissioners of Inland Revenue. The only relevancy of that observation is that they are competent to perform the particular task of valuing for that particular duty. What I have to ask is on another matter, in order to ascertain are they to perform that duty or is somebody else to perform it?
§ Mr. LLOYD-GEORGEDoes the right hon. Gentleman mean this, that he so interprets the remarks of his colleague that he thinks he is going to set up a special Commission to go valuing land all over the country?
§ Mr. LYTTELTONI am asking what you know?
§ Mr. LLOYD-GEORGEI am examining an Amendment, an alternative proposal by the right hon. Member for Wimbledon (Mr. Chaplin), and the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Lyttelton) interrupts me by asking will the Commissioners of Inland Revenue value land? My answer is that these Commissioners are only set up to superintend and direct operations. The right hon. Gentleman does not mean to suggest that he is going to have a body of six Commissioners going over the country and valuing every plot of land. I say if you are going to have a body of Commissioners to superintend this valuation you cannot have a more experienced, impartial, and responsible body to discharge the function to the satisfaction of every party in this House than we have at the present moment. The Death Duties, for example, involve valuations of a very important character, and they involve the imposing of not a small but a heavy duty. The valuation, it is true, is not conducted by the Commissioners, but it is directed by them. And the same thing would happen in the present case. The valuation would, of course, be by expert valuers, but the operation would be directed by the Commissioners, and I submit that no better body could possibly be set up than those Commissioners, who are men of experience, and who have discharged the duties up to the present without the slightest suggestion of partiality from any quarter of the House.
§ Earl WINTERTONThe Amendment of my right hon. Friend has been left entirely unanswered by the right hon. Gentleman, who has absolutely ignored the principal difficulties put forward by the right hon. Member for Wimbledon (Mr. Chaplin) in regard to the duties to be performed. He stated with a considerable amount of reason that the Commissioners have already an enormous burden on their shoulders of exceedingly technical and complicated work. The considerations put forward by my right hon. Friend in support of his Amendment should really be more fully discussed by the Committee. The work to be done under this Bill requires to be done by persons of real technical training in valuation, and I submit that it is a physical impossibility for it to be done in the way proposed by the Bill, however great the staff they may have. The greatest Transatlantic hustlers, let alone the gentlemen trained in the leisurely ways of Whitehall, even working 18 or 20 hours a day, could not possibly deal with the work which it is asked should be done under this Bill. One point mentioned by my right hon. Friend has been quite ignored by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and that is the question of the time at which the valuation is to be made. It is impossible for any person who has not been trained and versed thoroughly in land valuation to know what is a reasonable time to ask for a separate valuation. This is a matter which affects all of us who have an interest in land. We are going to be at the absolute mercy of these gentlemen. If we are going to have our throats cut by Government servants we should have them cut by men who know how to perform the execution. I am rather surprised at the objection of the right hon. Gentleman to nominees of the Government, because I understand quite recently he nominated an outsider to advise him with reference to the land clauses of the Bill. If he went outside for that purpose I do not see why he should have any objection to asking gentlemen to work the Bill. It is obvious the right hon. Gentleman has not the slightest idea how these gentlemen are to carry out the duties. That is obvious from the answer he gave to the interruption of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for St. George's, Hanover Square (Mr. Lyttelton), and that he has not the faintest idea of how the whole thing is going to be carried out. The Chancellor of the Exchequer told 514 us that he had spent on the Bill as many weeks as my right hon. Friend had spent minutes; but those weeks did not enable him to tell us how these gentlemen are to carry out their duties or how the valuation is to be made.
Mr. BALFOURSo far little has been said on what I think is the most important part of the Amendment. The Amendment consists of two parts. In the first part my right hon. Friend suggests that an ad hoc body should be appointed to carry out the valuation; the second part suggests that the decision of that ad hon. body should be subject to an appeal. Personally, I should certainly desire that the appeal should be to a judicial tribunal. I am by no means sure that I do not agree with the Chancellor of the Exchequer that the Inland Revenue must be in the first instance the primarily responsible body for the collection of the tax. You would have to add greatly to their strength; but as at present advised my inclination is to believe that you cannot have two separate bodies dealing with separate fragments of revenue—and with separate fragments of revenue from land. I would rather this initial work was done by permanent civil servants than by an ad hon body. I am not particularly in love with the machinery we have set up in Ireland, and in the first instance I should like to continue the ordinary traditional method of the country and employ the Inland Revenue. But how are the Inland Revenue to do the work? Does the right hon. Gentleman propose that they shall work simply through the local land valuers in different parts of the country; that there shall be a body of expert valuers; or that the number of Inland Revenue Commissioners should be augmented? What is the right hon. Gentleman's idea of the additional machinery which will unquestionably have to be set up?
Further, what view do the Government take of the second part of the Amendment, which I think is of far greater importance than the first? What is their view as to an appeal on the question of valuation in connection with Increment Duty? The right hon. Gentleman reminded us, quite truly, that the Inland Revenue are responsible for work in connection with Death Duties which is remotely analogous to the work they are asked to do under this clause. But their operations in that matter were clearly laid down in the Bill, with the methods they were to pursue, and the appeal to be granted against their 515 decision. Without arguing the matter further, does not the right hon. Gentleman think that this is a convenient opportunity for giving some general view of the constitution of the body which is to decide these questions, and of the expediency of granting an appeal from the all-important decisions which from time to time will be given?
§ Mr. LLOYD-GEORGEThe right hon. Gentleman invited me to enter into an explanation on two or three questions, the provisions of which are especially set out in subsequent clauses of the Bill. For instance, he asked for a full exposition of the position in Clause 22 with regard to appeals. But a Minister cannot make a statement with regard to that which cannot be made a subject of discussion. On the other hand, the right hon. Gentleman asks me to make a special statement as to the whole of the machinery that is going to be set up by the Commissioners of Inland Revenue in Clauses 14 to 21. The right hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well that I cannot comply with that request. I think he will see that it would be rather unreasonable to call upon me to make a statement upon a thing that I shall have to state fully and minutely afterwards. I shall have to tell the House of Commons all the arrangements—provisional, of course—made by the Inland Revenue with regard to valuation. When that time comes I shall be glad to give the house full information as to the provisional arrangements and the intentions of the Government.
§ The CHAIRMANI was not able to hear all that the right hon. Gentleman said, but from what I gather from the Chancellor of the Exchequer's remarks, I do not think an exposition of what should be done under Clause 22 would be at all in order. If you were going to settle the whole question of appeal on this point it might be in order, but we are only concerned with the appeal suggested in the Amendment.
§ Mr. LLOYD-GEORGEIt would be quite impossible for me, without trenching upon Clause 22, to say that which the right hon. Gentleman invites me to say. Sub-section (3) of Clause 22, under which appeals can be made, raises an important point. It raises the question of appeal from the referee to a judicial tribunal. But if I made a statement on the point I would be anticipating Clause 22. For that reason I would rather the right hon. Gentleman did 516 not press me, because I hesitate to refuse to answer. The right hon. Gentleman quite forgot that he had given verbal notice of the latter part of his Amendment; he never explained it, and he never told us what it meant, and, therefore, I attached no importance to it. That is the reason I never said a word about it.
§ Mr. WALTER LONGThe answer which the Chancellor of the Exchequer has made, although it meets some of the points, leaves us still in some considerable doubt. He made no reference to the question of appeal because he said my right hon. Friend did not address himself to that part of the subject. Quite true; but I should like to remind the right hon. Gentleman that in his reply he dwelt upon the present powers of the Inland Revenue Commissioners under the Estate Duties Act, and he entirely omitted to tell us that all their power under that Act, which differ entirely from the powers you are now conferring upon them, are subject to appeal. Under the Act of 1894, if the person against whom a decision is given by these Commissioners feels aggrieved, he has a right of appeal to a court of law. I quite agree, those of us who have had experience of conducting Bills know, there is nothing more inconvenient for a Minister than to commit himself in regard to clauses that are to come up subsequently for consideration, but I think the Chancellor has exaggerated the effect of my right hon. Friend's argument. I do not think all the clauses the Chancellor has referred to would be involved by the Amendment. Clause 22, which is the clause dealing with appeal, would be involved. The duties the Commissioners of Inland Revenue have to perform now are perfectly simple duties compared with those which this Bill would throw upon them. Let me remind the Committee what are the duties they have to perform. They have to value for the purposes of Probate and Estate Duty, and so on, at a figure which a willing seller would obtain from a willing buyer. They have in reality no discretion. There is a certain piece of property like a certain piece of furniture, and it is governed by a price. What are the duties they will have to perform under this clause of this Bill? The clause as it stands is rather difficult to understand. Many Gentlemen opposite would, I think, be very reluctant to get up and explain it if suddenly called upon to do so. I venture to say a good many lawyers would find it very difficult 517 to explain it. This clause has got to be interpreted by the Commissioners. They have to decide as to the incidence of the Increment Duty upon accommodation land.
I have not the smallest doubt there are lawyers in the House who would not hesitate to get up and tell us what accommodation land is, but to ask those who own that land to pay an Increment Duty upon a decision of that kind is to make a demand upon owners of that kind of property which is very unfair. You are throwing upon the Commissioners of Inland Revenue duties which they will find it almost impossible to perform. The Government claim to be a democratic and popular Government who trust the people, and yet in every single Bill they bring in— [An HON. MEMBER: "Order, order."] I am perfectly in order. The Government are granting under this Bill powers to the Commissioners in a way in which they have never been granted before. Nobody will suggest that there is any charge to be brought against these officers. The public officials of this country are beyond reproach, and nobody suggests that they are liable to pressure, or anything of that kind. What we do say is that you are proposing to throw upon them duties which they cannot perform, and you are not giving them what they ought to have, namely, the plainest possible instructions. The Chancellor of the Exchequer talked about accommodation land. When you come to building land that is a most important matter. What definition are you going to adopt which will accurately describe building land in such a way as will guide the Commissioners in the execution of their duty. If you do constitute a body of this kind and give them these wide powers you certainly ought to make their duties perfectly clear. The Chancellor of the Exchequer objects to the Amendment and the criticisms we have advanced, but he does not realise that he does not give the only safeguard which can be given, namely, an appeal to a court of law, by which an ill-considered or unfair action may be subject to revision. The only way in which this can be satisfactorily done is through a court of justice. In these circumstances, between the two courses, although I object to both, I shall decline to vote for either the one or the other, and I shall reserve myself to oppose the whole proposition that you should leave this discretion to any body of Commissioners, and if you do appoint Commissioners you must define clearly what their duties are.
§ Mr. JOYNSON-HICKSHaving had some experience in these matters, I may say that I am in favour of a special body of Commissioners, for the Inland Revenue officers are totally unable to cope with the work that will be placed upon them by this Bill. Under this Bill there is a legalised system of robbery, and we want to know by whom the Commissioners are to be appointed. I understand that the Commissioners are not to be controlled by legal decisions. I should like to move that you do report Progress, owing to the conduct of hon. Members below the Gangway who do not understand the details of the Bill.
§ The CHAIRMANThe remarks of the hon. Member are now quite irrelevant.
§ Mr. JOYNSON-HICKSPerhaps I have misunderstood the interruptions of the hon. Members below the Gangway, and I do not now propose that you move to report Progress and ask leave to sit again. The right hon. Gentleman proposes by this Bill to take away the right of appeal, and in order to maintain that right I shall support the Amendment.
Captain CRAIGWhat I want to know from the right hon. Gentleman is this: In Clause 23 of the Bill it is distinctly laid down that whoever the Commissioners may be, any appeal against their decisions will be to persons who have experience in the valuation of land. Surely, then, if the appeal is to be to such persons it is only right that those who appraise the increment value in the first place should also have expert knowledge on the subject. The right hon. Gentleman says that Inland Revenue officials will perform that duty. What duties are they at present performing? Are they so slack that they are able to undertake this burden, the enormous extent of which the Government do not appear to have appreciated in the slightest degree. I cannot speak for England, Scotland, or Wales, but as far as Ireland is concerned, I can assert confidently that the duties imposed by this Bill must prove to be of a very arduous nature. What is the object of the Amendment? It is to secure that special Commissioners shall be appointed for this purpose? Could anything be more reasonable. They will have to deal with a highly intricate problem, very different indeed from that imposed on them by the Death Duties, when they simply had to call for a return from a stockbroker as to the value of certain stocks and shares.
519 Here we have an entirely novel principle established, and you are beginning a system which has been hitherto unknown in this country. All of a sudden you? press upon that department work which is probably more arduous than all these other duties put together. How is the Inland Revenue to keep track of an estate for the purpose of this increment value? In some instances societies are started for purchasing estates that come into the market in order to divide them up into small holdings and for every lease of an acre or half an acre a certain increment value may possibly accrue, but until the last half acre, or perch, or rood of that property is sold, the owner cannot tell whether in the long run he will have an increment or a decrement in the profit. During all that time the Commissioners of Inland Revenue, according to the Bill, will have to keep track of every small transaction which takes place on the property. It is absolutely absurd to suppose that they have it within their capacity to deal with such a matter. Take an estate of 2,000 acres, where half an acre is sold to-morrow, and a few acres next year, a careful record will have to be kept. They cannot possibly do it. Hon. Members below the Gangway have some experience of land in Ireland, and the blocks there are already in regard to Irish land with special Commissioners appointed for the purpose of dealing with small fractions of lands in parts of the United Kingdom. But here you have to deal with the whole of the land in the United Kingdom, and not merely agricultural land. The idea that the Inland Revenue will be able to deal with a subject of that sort is absolutely absurd. Not very long ago there was an estate sold, and hon. Members opposite are all for facilitating the sale of land to small holders, so that they may become proprietors of their own particular holding——
§ The CHAIRMANThe hon. Member must confine himself to the Amendment.
Captain CRAIGI apologise for trespassing; at the same time I was only pointing out to hon. Members what the absurdity of this Bill was. You cannot expect a clerk in a great Department to know anything about the intricacies of land in Ireland.
§ Mr. A. B. MARKHAMMay I call your attention to the fact that the present 520 speaker has repeated that argument three times.
§ The CHAIRMANI was carefully listening to the hon. Member. That is a matter which is within my discretion.
Captain CRAIGI take an instance where tenants have purchased under the last Act, and I defy the right hon. Gentleman to produce anyone in the Inland Revenue Department to cope with that subject, where there are annuitants who hold their property under the Government for 68½ years, and to differentiate in their appreciation of the increment value between what is due to the expired term of the 68½ years and what to the increment value. I think the right hon. Gentleman may have in view certain classes of property nearer home, but his advisers have escaped altogether the rather intricate subject of Irish land in proposing that the Inland Revenue should take it up as a branch of their duties.
§ Amendment negatived.
§ Sir JOHN DICKSON-POYNDERIn view of the very laborious day we have had, and of the importance of the subject raised by my Amendment to leave out the word "site" ("the site value of the land"), and insert the word "capital," I would move: "That the Chairman do report Progress, and ask leave to sit again."
§ Mr. LLOYD-GEORGEI do trust that my hon. Friend will not press that Motion. While I do not say that this is an attempt to delay the progress of the Bill, I would point out that the progress on Clause 2 has been slow enough. We have only got two lines of the clause, and I trust that my hon. Friend will see his way to go on with his Amendment now. It is no more important than the Amendment which we have just been discussing.
§ Mr. WALTER LONGThe right hon. Gentleman says that the Amendment of the hon. Member for the Chippenham Division (Sir J. Dickson-Poynder) is no more important than the last one. We discussed the last Amendment for two-hours, and we are now asked to begin the discussion of a question of very great importance. Do the Government seriously propose that at half-past twelve we are to go on and deal with an Amendment raising perfectly fresh issues which have an important bearing on the future of their own Bill commencing these questions at 521 half-past eleven o'clock? For my part I offer no objection. I have sat in the House for a long time, and I do not mind sitting up at night. But a great many Members of this House object strongly to sitting up. In their interests let me remind the House that the present Government altered the hour from 12 to 11 and took great credit to themselves. But what becomes of this additional hour's saving if in regard to the most important measure of the Session which is making greater charges in our system than any other measure we have had before us, certainly during the time that I have been in Parliament, we are asked to deal with it at an hour at which the Government themselves declared we ought not to be asked to dispose of business? If the Government really expect the House to deal with these grave questions as they ought to be dealt with they should, now approaching one o'clock in the morning, adjourn and resume consideration of the matter at a proper hour.
§ Sir JOHN DICKSON-POYNDERIf the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Lloyd-George) will not accede to my request, I beg formally to ask leave to withdraw my Motion to report Progress.
§ Leave to withdraw Motion withheld.
§ Mr. STANLEY WILSONI cannot accede to the request of the hon. Member (Sir J. Dickson-Poynder) because I wish to protest against the question of site value, which is one of the most important points in the Bill, being raised in the House at almost a quarter to one o'clock. The country takes an interest in this question. Everybody knows that it is impossible at this hour for Debates to be reported in the papers. The Prime Minister, who is now here, has not been present during the night. He went away and enjoyed a pleasant evening, after having imposed the closure on the Leader of the Opposition, and spoken before dinner, so that he could go away himself, I suppose, to get a comfortable dinner; and now, after a few hours rest, he comes down to the House of Commons and insists on us continuing. The right hon. Gentleman insists on our sitting still longer. [Interruption.]
§ The CHAIRMANThese cries are most disorderly, and we cannot get on with the business at all if they continue.
§ Mr. STANLEY WILSONIt is a remarkable fact that the Prime Minister should come down at the moment when 522 Progress is moved, and that he should insist on our continuing until the small hours of the morning. I think that every Member on this side of the House and a good many on the other side will agree with me that it is a monstrous proposal that the Prime Minister should ask us to enter on a Debate of this character at this hour, and if he had been here half an hour ago he would have seen many of his own supporters asleep. I trust those hon. Members who were asleep just now will enter their protest. ["Name"] The hon. Member for Sleaford (Mr. Lupton)——
§ Mr. LUPTONHad I been twice as fast asleep I could have understood much better reasons than those which have come from the benches opposite.
§ Mr. STANLEY WILSONThe hon. Member for Sleaford may continue his slumbers. I protest strongly against such an important Debate being entered upon at this hour of the night.
Captain CRAIGI think it would facilitate matters if the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Lloyd-George) would give us some indication of how far in the Bill he intends to proceed to-night, so that we may arrange as far as we can with our small numbers that some may go home, take a rest, and come back again. We are desirous of debating all the subjects in the fairest manner possible. If some indication is not given it is only fair to press the Motion to a Division.
§ Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAINRight hon. Gentlemen take credit to themselves for making a good many precedents as we go along in the course of these Debates, but I am not quite certain that they know what great new precedents they are making in the matter of our procedure. It is no doubt true, and always has been, that the Finance Bill is not subject to the Eleven o'clock Rule, or in former days to the Twelve o'clock Rule. On a special occasion, after prolonged debate for many days in order to finish a stage of a discussion, from time to time there has been a single very prolonged sitting. I do not think any parallel can be found for the course which the Government are now asking us to adopt of habitually sitting, not half an hour after the time, for rising, but one, two, three, and four hours after the time for rising. I am quite certain if the Chancellor of the Exchequer would turn back to the conduct of his great predecessor, Sir William Harcourt, when he was conducting a most contentious Budget 523 through this House, he would find that Sir William Harcourt did not put the Committee to the strain to which the right hon. Gentleman is putting them. I do not say that they never sat very late, but they did not habitually sit two, three, and four hours after the usual hour for the rising of the House.
§ Mr. JOSEPH PEASEmade an observation which was inaudible to the Official Reporter.
§ Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAINThe Patronage Secretary can make his speech afterwards. I would be very glad if he did. The particular observation he interjected was that they did set to one o'clock. That is to say that they sat one hour after the usual time for rising. We sat one hour after the usual time yesterday and four hours after the usual time on Monday. That is a method of getting the Bill through. It is perhaps more derogatory to the House, renders less possible the proper discussion of the points raised, than any system of gag, guillotine, or closure which
§ has hitherto been attempted. For my part I do hope even now the Government will have some regard to the importance of the questions which are raised, to the necessity for having fair discussion at reasonable hours, and that they will not insist night after night in proceeding in this way. I am surprised the hon. Baronet (Sir J. Dickson-Poynder) should have been ready so hastily to withdraw the Motion. I read the other day in the "Westminster Gazette" that great satisfaction was expressed amongst the Liberal party at the haste with which the Gentleman who had momentarily formed a cave had again, come to heel. I thought the observation offensive, and I did not know to what it referred. I begin now to understand.
§ Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE rose in his place, and claimed to move, "That the Question be now put."
§ Question put, "That the Question be now put."
§ The Committee divided: Ayes, 209; Noes, 95.
525| Division No. 218.] | AYES. | [2.50 a.m. |
| Acland, Francis Dyke | Craig, Herbert J. (Tynemouth) | Higham, John Sharp |
| Agar-Robartes, Hon. T. C. R. | Crosfield, A. H. | Hobart, Sir Robert |
| Agnew, George William | Crossley, William J. | Hobhouse, Rt. Hon. Charles E. H. |
| Ainsworth, John Stirling | Dalziel, Sir James Henry | Horniman, Emslie John |
| Allen, A. Acland (Christchurch) | Davies, Sir W. Howell (Bristol, S.) | Howard, Hon. Geoffrey |
| Allen, Charles P. (Stroud) | Dewar, Arthur (Edinburgh, S.) | Hudson, Walter |
| Armitage, R. | Dickinson, W. H. (St. Pancras, N.) | Hutton, Alfred Eddison |
| Asquith, Rt. Hon. Herbert Henry | Duncan, C. (Barrow-in-Furness) | Idris, T. H. W. |
| Astbury, John Meir | Duncan, J. H. (York, Otley) | Illingworth, Percy H. |
| Balfour, Robert (Lanark) | Dunn, A. Edward (Camborne) | Isaacs, Rufus Daniel |
| Baring, Godfrey (Isle of Wight) | Dunne, Major E. Martin (Walsall) | Jardine, Sir J |
| Barlow, Percy (Bedford) | Edwards, Sir Francis (Radnor) | Jenkins, J. |
| Barry, Redmond J. (Tyrone, N.) | Elibank, Master of | Johnson, John (Gateshead) |
| Beauchamp, E | Essex, R. W, | Jones, Leif (Appleby) |
| Bellairs, Carlyon | Esslemont, George Birnie | Jones, William (Carnarvonshires) |
| Bennett, E. N. | Evans, Sir Samuel T. | Jowett, F. W. |
| Berridge, T. H. D. | Everett, R. Lacey | Kelly, George D. |
| Birrell, Rt. Hon. Augustine | Falconer, James | Lamont, Norman |
| Boulton, A. C. F. | Fenwick, Charles | Layland-Barratt, Sir Francis |
| Bowerman, C. W. | Fiennes, Hon. Eustace | Lehmann, R. C. |
| Bramsdon, Sir T. A. | Fuller, John Michael F. | Levy, Sir Maurice |
| Branch, James | Fullerton, Hugh | Lloyd-George, Rt. Hon. David |
| Brocklehurst, W. B. | Gibb, James (Harrow) | Lough, Rt. Hon. Thomas |
| Brooke, Stopford | Gill, A. H. | Lupton, Arnold |
| Brunner, J. F. L. (Lancs., Leigh) | Gladstone, Rt. Hon. Herbert John | Lyell, Charles Henry |
| Bryce, J. Annan | Goddard, Sir Daniel Ford | Macdonald, J. R. (Leicester) |
| Burns, Rt. Hon. John | Gooch, George Peabody (Bath) | Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J. |
| Buxton, Rt. Hon. Sydney Charles | Grey, Rt. Hon. Sir Edward | M'Callum, John M. |
| Byles, William Pollard | Griffith, Ellis J. | M'Kenna, Rt. Hon. Reginald |
| Carr-Gomm, H. W. | Gulland, John W. | M'Laren, Sir C. B. (Leicester) |
| Causton, Rt. Hon. Richard Knight | Haldane, Rt. Hon. Richard B. | M'Laren, H. D. (Stafford, W. |
| Channing, Sir Francis Allston | Harcourt, Rt. Hon. L. (Rossendale) | M'Micking, Major G. |
| Cherry, Rt. Hon. R. R. | Harcourt, Robert V. (Montrose) | Maddison, Frederick |
| Churchill, Rt. Hon. Winston S. | Hardy, George A. (Suffolk) | Markham, Arthur Basil |
| Cleland, J. W. | Harmsworth, Cecil B. (Worc'r.) | Mason, A. E. W. (Coventry) |
| Clough, William | Harmsworth, R. L. (Caithness-shire) | Massie J. |
| Cobbold, Felix Thornley | Harvey, A. G. C. (Rochdale) | Micklem, Nathaniel |
| Collins, Sir Wm. J. (St. Pancras, W.) | Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth) | Middlebrook, William |
| Compton-Rickett, Sir J. | Haworth, Arthur A. | Mond, A. |
| Cooper, G. J. | Hazel, Dr. A. E. | Montague, Hon. E. S. |
| Corbett, C. H. (Sussex, E. Grinstead | Hedges, A. Paget | Morrell, Philip |
| Cornwall, Sir Edwin A. | Helme, Norval Watson | Murray, Capt. Hon. A. C. (Kincard.) |
| Cotton, Sir H. J. S. | Henry, Charles S. | Newnes, F. (Notts, Bassetlaw) |
| Cowan, W. H. | Herbert, Col. Sir Ivor (Mon. S.) | Nicholls, George |
| Norman, Sir Henry | Roch, Walter F. (Pembroke) | Ure, Rt. Hon. Alexander |
| Norton, Capt. Cecil William | Roe, Sir Thomas | Verney, F. W. |
| Nuttall, Harry | Rogers, F. E, Newman | Villiers, Ernest Amherst |
| O'Donnell, C. J. (Walworth) | Rose, Sir Charles Day | Ward, W. Dudley (Southampton) |
| Parker, James (Halifax) | Rowlands, J. | Wardle, George J. |
| Paulton, James Mellor | Rutherford, V. H. (Brentford) | Warner, Thomas Courtenay T. |
| Pearce, Robert (Staffs, Leek) | Samuel, S. M. (Whitechapel) | Wason, Rt. Hon. E. (Clackmannan) |
| Pearson, W. H. M. (Suffolk, Eye) | Schwann, C. Duncan (Hyde) | Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney) |
| Philipps, Col. Ivor (Southampton) | Seely, Colonel | Waterlow, D. S. |
| Pickersgill, Edward Hare | Shaw, Sir Charles Edward | Watt, Henry A. |
| Pointer, Joseph | Silcock, Thomas Ball | Wedgwood, Josiah C. |
| Ponsonby, Arthur A. W. H. | Simon, John Allsebrook | Whitbread, Howard |
| Price, C. E. (Edinburgh, Central) | Soares, Ernest J. | White, Sir George (Norfolk) |
| Price, Sir Robert J. (Norfolk, E.) | Spicer, Sir Albert | White, J. Dundas (Dumbartonshire) |
| Priestley, Arthur (Grantham) | Stanley, Hon. A. Lyulph (Cheshire) | White, Sir Luke (York, E.R.) |
| Radford, G. H. | Stewart-Smith, D. (Kendal) | Whitley, John Henry (Halifax) |
| Rainy, A. Holland | Strachey, Sir Edward | Wiles, Thomas |
| Raphael, Herbert H. | Summerbell, T. | Williamson, Sir Achibald |
| Rendall, Athelstan | Sutherland, J. E. | Wilson, Hon. G. G. (Hull, W.) |
| Richardson, A. | Taylor, John W. (Durham) | Wilson, P. W. (St. Pancras, S.) |
| Ridsdale, E. A. | Tennant, H. J. (Berwickshire) | Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton) |
| Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln) | Thomas, Abel (Carmarthen, E.) | Winfrey, R. |
| Roberts, G. H. (Norwich) | Thompson, J. W. H. (Somerset, E.) | Wood, T. M'Kinnon |
| Robertson, Sir G. Scott (Bradford) | Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton) | |
| Robertson, J. M. (Tyneside) | Tomkinson, James | TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—Mr. Joseph Pease and Mr. Herbert Lewis. |
| Robinson, S. | Toulmin, George | |
| Robson, Sir William Snowdon | Trevelyan, Charles Philips | |
| NOES. | ||
| Anson, Sir William Reynell | Gooch, Henry Cubitt (Peckham) | Oddy, John James |
| Arkwright, John Stanhope | Gretton, John | Peel, Hon. Wm. Robert Wellesley |
| Ashley, W. W. | Guinness, Hon. R. (Haggerston) | Pretyman, Ernest George |
| Balcarres, Lord | Guinness, Hon. W. E. (Bury St. Edm.) | Randles, Sir John Scurrah |
| Baldwin, Stanley | Hamilton, Marquess of | Ratcliff, Major R. F. |
| Banbury, Sir Frederick George | Hardy, Laurence (Kent, Ashford) | Renwick, George |
| Banner, John S. Harmood- | Harris, Frederick Leverton | Ronaldshay, Earl of |
| Baring, Capt. Hon. G. (Winchester) | Harrison-Broadley, H. B. | Ropner, Colonel Sir Robert |
| Barrie, H. T. (Londonderry, N.) | Hay, Hon. Claude George | Rutherford, John (Lancashire) |
| Beach, Hon. Michael Hugh Hicks | Helmsley, Viscount | Rutherford, W. W. (Liverpool) |
| Beckett, Hon. Gervase | Hill, Sir Clement | Salter, Arthur Clavell |
| Bignold, Sir Arthur | Hope, James Fitzalan (Sheffield) | Scott, Sir S. (Marylebone, W.) |
| Bridgeman, W. Clive | Hunt, Rowland | Smith, Abel H. (Hertford, East) |
| Bull, Sir William James | Joynson-Hicks, William | Smith, F. E. (Liverpool, Walton) |
| Campbell, Rt. Hon. J. H. M. | Kerry, Earl of | Smith, Hon. W. F. D. (Strand) |
| Carlile, E. Hildred | Keswick, William | Stanier, Beville |
| Cave, George | Lambton, Hon. Frederick William | Starkey, John R. |
| Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor) | Lane-Fox, G. R. | Staveley-Hill, Henry (Staffordshire) |
| Chamberlain, Rt. Hon. J. A. (Worc'r.) | Law, Andrew Bonar (Dulwich) | Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester) |
| Clive, Percy Archer | Lockwood, Rt. Hon. Lt.-Col. A. R. | Thornton, Percy M. |
| Clyde, James Avon | Long, Rt. Hon. Walter (Dublin, S.) | Walker, Col. W. H. (Lancashire) |
| Coates, Major E. F. (Lewisham) | Lonsdale, John Brownlee | Walrond, Hon. Lionel |
| Cochrane, Hon. Thos. H. A. E. | Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. Alfred | Warde, Col. C. E. (Kent, Mid.) |
| Craig, Charles Curtis (Antrim, S.) | MacCaw, William J. MacGeagh | Williams, Col. R. (Dorset, W.) |
| Craig, Captain James (Down, E.) | M'Calmont, Colonel James | Wilson, A. Stanley (York, E.R.) |
| Craik, Sir Henry | Magnus, Sir Philip | Winterton, Earl |
| Dalrymple, Viscount | Mason, James F. (Windsor) | Wortley, Rt. Hon. C. B. Stuart- |
| Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers- | Meysey-Thompson, E. C. | Wyndham, Rt. Hon. George |
| Du Cros, Arthur Philip | Moore, William | Younger, George |
| Faber, George Denison (York) | Morpeth, Viscount | |
| Fell, Arthur | Morrison-Bell, Captain | TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Sir |
| Forster, Henry William | Newdegate, F. A. N. | Alexander Acland-Hood and Viscount Valentia. |
| Foster, Philip S. (Warwick, S.W.) | Nicholson, Wm. G. (Petersfield) |
§ Question put accordingly, "That the Chairman do report Progress; and ask leave to sit again."
526§ The Committee divided: Ayes, 96; Noes, 214.
529| Division No. 219.] | AYES. | [1.0 a.m. |
| Acland-Hood, Rt. Hon. Sir Alex. F. | Beckett, Hon. Gervase | Coates, Major E. F. (Lewisham) |
| Anson, Sir William Reynell | Bignold, Sir Arthur | Cechrane, Hon. Thomas H. A. E. |
| Arkwright, John Stanhope | Bridgeman, W. Clive | Craig, Charles Curtis (Antrim, S.) |
| Ashley, W. W. | Bull, Sir William James | Craig, Captain James (Down, E.) |
| Balcarres, Lord | Campbell, Rt. Hon. J. H. M. | Craik, Sir Henry |
| Baldwin, Stanley. | Carlile, E. Hildred | Dalrymple, Viscount |
| Banbury, Sir Frederick George | Cave, George | Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers- |
| Banner, John S. Harmood- | Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor) | Du Cros, Arthur |
| Baring, Capt. Hon. G. (Winchester) | Chamberlain, Rt. Hon. J. A. (Worc'r.) | Faber, George Denison (York) |
| Barrie, H. T. (Londonderry, N.) | Clive, Percy Archer | Fell, Arthur |
| Beach, Hon. Michael Hugh Hicks | Clyde, J. Avon | Foster, P. S. |
| Gooch, Henry Cubitt (Peckham) | MacCaw, Wm. J. MacGeagh | Smith, Abel H. (Hertford, East) |
| Gretton, John | M'Calmont, Colonel James | Smith, F. E (Liverpool, Walton) |
| Guinness, Hon. R. (Haggerston) | Magnus, Sir Philip | Smith, Hon. W. F. D. (Strand) |
| Guinness, Hon. W. E. (B'y St. Edm'ds) | Mason, A. E. W. (Coventry) | Stonier, Beville |
| Hamilton, Marquess of | Mason, James F. (Windsor) | Starkey, John R. |
| Hardy, Laurence (Kent, Ashford) | Meysey-Thompson, E. C. | Staveley-Hill, Henry (Staffordshire) |
| Harris, Frederick Leverton | Moore, William | Thornton, Percy M. |
| Harrison-Broadley, H. B. | Morpeth, Viscount | Valentia, Viscount |
| Hay, Hon. Claude George | Morrison-Bell, Captain | Walker, Col. W. H. (Lancashire) |
| Helmsley, Viscount | Newdegate, F. A. N. | Walrond, Hon. Lionel |
| Hill, Sir Clement | Nicholson, Wm. G. (Petersfield) | Wardle, Colonel C. E. (Kent, Mid) |
| Hope, James Fitzalan (Sheffield) | Oddy, John James | Whitbread, S. Howard |
| Hunt, Rowland | Peel, Hon. W. R. W. | Williams, Col. R. (Dorset, W.) |
| Joynson-Hicks, William | Pretyman, E. G. | Wilson, A. Stanley (York, E.R.) |
| Kerry, Earl of | Randles, Sir John Scurrah | Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton) |
| Lambton, Hon. Frederick William | Ratcliff, Major R. F. | Winterton, Earl |
| Lane-Fox, G. R. | Renwick, George | Wortley, Rt. Hon. C. B. Stuart- |
| Law, Andrew Bonar (Dulwich) | Ronaldshay, Earl of | Wyndham, Rt. Hon. George |
| Lock wood, Rt. Hon. Lt.-Col. A. R. | Rutherford, John (Lancashire) | Younger, George |
| Long, Rt. Hon. Walter (Dublin, S.) | Rutherford, W. W. (Liverpool) | |
| Lonsdale, John Brownice | Salter, Arthur Clavell | TELLERS FOR THE AYES—Lord |
| Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. Alfred | Scott, Sir S. (Marylebone, W.) | Edmund Talbot and Mr. Forster. |
| NOES. | ||
| Acland, Francis Dyke | Evans, Sir S. T. | Lyell, Charles Henry |
| Agar-Robartes, Hon. T. C. R. | Everett, R. Lacey | Macdonald, J. R. (Leicester) |
| Agnew, George William | Falconer, J. | Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J. |
| Ainsworth, John Stirling | Fenwick, Charles | MacVeagh, Jeremiah (Down, S.) |
| Allen, A. Acland (Christchurch) | Fiennes, Hon. Eustace | McKenna, Rt. Hon. Reginald |
| Allen, Charles P. (Stroud) | Flavin, Michael Joseph | M'Laren, Sir C. B. (Leicester) |
| Armitage, R. | Fuller, John Michael F. | M'Laren, H. D. (Stafford, W.) |
| Asquith, Rt. Hon. Herbert Henry | Fullerton, Hugh | M'Micking, Major G. |
| Astbury, John Meir | Gibb, James (Harrow) | Maddison, Frederick |
| Balfour, Robert (Lanark) | Gill, A. H. | Markham, Arthur Basil |
| Baring, Godfrey (Isle of Wight) | Gladstone, Rt Hon. Herbert John | Massie, J. |
| Barlow, Percy (Bedford) | Glover, Thomas | Micklem, Nathaniel |
| Barry, Redmond J. (Tyrone, N.) | Goddard, Sir Daniel Ford | Middlebrook, William |
| Beauchamp, E. | Gooch, George Peabody (Bath) | Word, A. |
| Bellairs, Carlyon | Grey, Rt. Hon. Sir Edward | Montagu, Hon. E. S. |
| Bennett, E. N. | Griffith, Ellis J. | Morrell, Philip |
| Berridge, T. H. D. | Gulland, John W. | Murray, Capt. Hon. A. C. (Kincard.) |
| Birrell, Rt. Hon. Augustine | Haldane, Rt. Hon. Richard B. | Nannetti, Joseph P. |
| Boulton, A. C. F. | Harcourt, Rt. Hon. L. (Rossendale) | Newnes, F. (Notts, Bassetlaw) |
| Bowerman, C. W. | Harcourt, Robert V. (Montrose) | Nicholls, George |
| Bramsdon, Sir T. A. | Hardy, George A. (Suffolk) | Nolan, Joseph |
| Branch, James | Harmsworth, Cecil B. (Worcester) | Norman, Sir Henry |
| Brocklehurst, W. B. | Harmsworth, R. L. (Caithness-sh.) | Norton, Captain Cecil William |
| Brooke, Stopford | Harvey, A. G. C- (Rochdale) | Nuttall, Harry |
| Brunner, J. F. L. (Lancs., Leigh) | Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth) | O'Brien, K. (Tipperary, Mid) |
| Bryce, J. Annan | Haworth, Arthur A. | O'Donnell, C. J. (Walworth) |
| Burns, Rt. Hon. John | Hazel, Dr. A. E. | Parker, James (Halifax) |
| Buxton, Rt Hon. Sydney Charles | Hedges, A. Paget | Pearce, Robert (Staffs, Leek) |
| Byles, William Pollard | Helme, Norval Watson | Pearson, W. H. M. (Suffolk, Eye) |
| Carr-Gomm, H. W. | Henry, Charles S. | Philipps, Col Ivor (Southampton) |
| Causton, Rt. Hon. Richard Knight | Herbert, Col. Sir Ivor (Hon., S.) | Phillips, John (Longford, S.) |
| Channing, Sir Francis Allston | Higham, John Sharp | Pickersgill, Edward Hare |
| Cherry, Rt. Hon. R. R. | Hobart, Sir Robert | Pointer, J. |
| Churchill, Rt. Hon. Winston S. | Hobhouse, Rt. Hon. Charles E. H. | Ponsonby, Arthur A. W. H. |
| Cleland, J. W. | Hogan, Michael | Price, C. E. (Edinburgh, Central) |
| Clough, William | Horniman, Emslie John | Price, Sir Robert J. (Norfolk, E.) |
| Cobbold, Felix Thornley | Howard, Hon. Geoffrey | Priestley, Arthur (Grantham) |
| Collins, Sir Wm. J. (St. Pancras, W.) | Hudson. Walter | Radford, G. H. |
| Compton-Rickett, Sir J. | Hutton, Alfred Eddison | Rainy, A. Rolland |
| Cooper, G. J. | Idris, T. H. W. | Raphael, Herbert H. |
| Corbett, C. H. (Sussex, E. Grinstead) | Illingworth, Percy H. | Rendall, Athelstan |
| Cornwall, Sir Edwin A. | Isaacs, Rufus Daniel | Richardson, A. |
| Cotton, Sir H. J. S. | Jardine, Sir J. | Ridsdale, E. A. |
| Craig, Herbert J. (Tynemouth) | Jenkins, J. | Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln) |
| Crosfield, A. H. | Johnson, John (Gateshead) | Roberts, G. H. (Norwich) |
| Crossley, William J. | Jones, Leif (Appleby) | Robertson, Sir G. Scott (Bradford) |
| Dalziel, Sir James Henry | Jones, William (Carnarvonshire) | Robertson, J. M. (Tyneside) |
| Davies, Sir W. Howell (Bristol, S.) | Jowett, F. W. | Robinson, S, |
| Dewar, Arthur (Edinburgh, S) | Kelley, George D. | Robson, Sir William Snowdon |
| Dickinson, W. H. (St. Pancras, N.) | Kilbride, Denis | Roch, Walter F. (Pembroke) |
| Duncan, C. (Barrow-in-Furness) | Lamont, Norman | Roe, Sir Thomas |
| Duncan. J. Hastings (York, Otley) | Layland-Barrett, Sir Francis | Rogers, F. E. Newman |
| Dunn, A. Edward (Camborne) | Lehmann, R. C. | Rose, Sir Charles Day |
| Dunne, Major E. Martin (Walsall) | Levy, Sir Maurice | Rowlands, J. |
| Edwards, Sir Francis (Radnor) | Lloyd-George, Rt. Hon. David | Rutherford, V. H. (Brentford) |
| Elibank, Master of | Lough, Rt. Hon. Thomas | Samuel, S. M. (Whitechapel) |
| Essex, R. W | Lundon, T. | Schwann, C. Duncan (Hyde) |
| Esslemont, George Birnie | Lupton, Arnold | Seely, Colonel |
| Shaw, Sir Charles E. | Thompson, J. W. H. (Somerset, T.) | Watt, Henry A. |
| Silcock, Thomas Ball | Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton) | Wedgwood, Josiah C. |
| Simon, John Allsebrook | Tomkinson, James | White, Sir George (Norfolk) |
| Smyth, Thomas F. (Leitrim, S.) | Toulmin, George | White, J. Dundas (Dumbartonshire) |
| Soares, Ernest J. | Trevelyan, Charles Philips | White, Sir Luke (York, E.R.) |
| Spicer, Sir Albert | Ure, Rt. Hon. Alexander | Whitley, John Henry (Halifax) |
| Stanley, Hon. A. Lyulph (Cheshire) | Verney, F. W. | Wiles, Thomas |
| Stewart-Smith, D. (Kendal) | Villiers, Ernest Amherst | Williamson, Sir A. |
| Strachey, Sir Edward | Ward, W. Dudley (Southampton) | Wilson, Hon. G. G. (Hull, W.) |
| Summerbell, T. | Wardle, George J. | Wilson, P. W. (St. Pancras, S.) |
| Sutherland, J. E. | Warner, Thomas Courtenay T. | Winfrey, R. |
| Taylor, John W. (Durham) | Wason, Rt. Hon. E. (Clackmannan) | Wood, T. M'Kinnon |
| Tennant, H. J. (Berwickshire) | Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney) | |
| Thomas, Abel (Carmarthen, E.) | Waterlow, D. S. | TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Mr. Joseph Pease and Mr. Herbert Lewis. |
§ Sir J. DICKSON-POYNDERI rise to move the Amendment which stands in my name, namely, to leave out the word "site" and to insert the word "capital," and I do so because on looking through this Bill, with all its difficult, complicated clauses, it is borne in on my mind that that process for arriving at the site value will not only be complicated but almost impossible. I want to refresh the memory of the Committee as to the process' by which the Commissioners arrive at the basis upon which they are to impose the Increment Tax. It will be found in Clause 14, section (2). They will arrive at the site value by eliminating all that is appurtenant to it used in connection with any buildings, and all growing timber, fruit trees, fruit bushes, and other things growing thereon. We have, in arriving at this naked state, not merely to imagine a particular site, but the whole country in a somewhat pre-historic condition; and, having arrived at this imaginary condition, then, according to sub-section (b) at the bottom of the page, Commissioners will have to call in skilled engineers to give them an estimate as to what the cost of the operation of eliminating everything from the land will be. Let me take a concrete case. The Surrey Docks are a great centre of trade and industry. The Commissioners or those they appoint will have to go down and reduce those docks to a mud-flat condition. They will remove all the dry docks, the quays, the buildings, and everything that has gone to make the docks the industrial centre they are. Having reduced them to a mud-flat condition, they will then have to deduct from that value the cost of removing all the material to some distant place. It is not, however, the Surrey Docks only which will be in that condition. I could give a hundred other concrete cases which would reduce the thing to rather absurd proportions.
This proposal to reduce the value to a naked site value appears to 530 me to be a quite unnecessary and complicated operation, when a much simpler one might be resorted to. It is a novel suggestion which has never been made in any previous proposals for valuation. In Sir William Harcourt's Bill of 1894 you had what was called a "principal value," and in all subsequent measures of the same character you had valuations known as "capital value." Even in this Bill itself, in different clauses, you have what is called "total value" and that is practically the same as capital value. I would suggest to my right hon. Friend that it would be very much simpler in the future operations of this complicated clause if the basis of valuation were the simple, well-known basis of capital value. I would say that in order to arrive at this site value the Commissioners would first of all have to arrive at the capital value, because they will have to estimate both the capital value of the buildings and of the land before they can arrive at the full capital value. It will be said, and it is thought by some hon. Members, that if this form of valuation is substituted it will bring about a greater hardship for owners of property upon whom this Increment Tax is to be placed. I cannot see why that should be the case. A capital value will be taken after the passage of the Act, and, when the time comes for putting into operation any of these taxes, another valuation will be taken, and that value will be compared with the former, with all the necessary deductions made for any improvements that have taken place on the part of the owner between the time of the original valuation and the time when the tax is imposed, whether at the time of death or on the grant of a lease or on the sale of the land. You will have a complete valuation on the one side compared with a complete valuation on the other, and the only deductions which it-will be necessary to estimate will be those which can be shown to be improvements 531 due to the energy or the capital placed in the land or property on the part of the owner. If that operation is to be carried out it should be carried out by those who understand the conditions of the land. It is no earthly use asking Commissioners from London to go down to remote districts of the country, utterly ignorant of the conditions, and value the land. There must, of course, be a system of local valuation, and the whole of the success of this scheme must depend upon the knowledge of those who undertake the valuation. This scheme of a universal valuation by a State bureaucracy applied partially to land and property under certain conditions is, in my judgment, a great mistake to introduce in a Budget Bill. I wish the Government had introduced a measure, comprehensive in its character, giving a complete reform of the whole system of valuation throughout the country, so that you could have a complete system, both local and Imperial, going on at the same time. If that had taken place, then the present system of assessment, with certain forms attached to it, might have been introduced to carry out a valuation on a capital system, such as I have indicated in my Amendment.
A Bill was, I think, introduced in 1894 by the right hon. Member for Dublin (Mr. Long) which would have carried out in spirit a complete reform of the assessment committees throughout the country. It would have got rid of small assessment committees and would have enlarged them. I would have liked to have seen the substitute of capital value for annual value proposed by the right hon. Gentleman, you could then have applied it to the whole system of local as well as Imperial taxation, and that instead of having the old system continued with its imperfect conditions, and having alongside it created a new system on a capital basis for State purposes, conducted by State officials, the expense of which is bound to be very great, and the machinery of which, unless these local committees are brought into operation in the working of it, must be very imperfect. This subject is one of very great importance. If site value, as interpreted in Clause 14, is continued in the Bill, it is bound to lead to the greatest possible complication in the future. It will undoubtedly be a matter of very great expense and one which at the end must be very imperfect in its character. I would far prefer to see the well-recognised system of capital value in- 532 troduced into this Bill, and that the capital value should be estimated by those who fully understand the conditions of the locality. The assessment committees have proved themselves on the whole to be thoroughly satisfactory in character. There is undoubtedly room for improvement in them, and they might be enlarged, but on the whole they have done their work very well and there is no reason at all why this work should not be placed upon their shoulders and the capital system substituted for the present annual system. They know the conditions of the locality and the value of the land, because they can value it in relationship to the land around them. You might have upon these committees what was proposed in the right hon. Gentleman's Bill, namely, an official from the Inland Revenue, so that you would have a direct connection between the Treasury and the local authorities.
§ Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAINYou mean a Commissioner of Taxes.
§ Sir J. DICKSON-POYNDERYes. Then instead of the double and cumbersome system introduced by a side wind in this Finance Bill you would have one uniform system. I admit it would be difficult to carry out what I am proposing under the present provisions of the Bill. I should have liked to see this tax confined to those occasions when without a universal system of valuation a comparison could be made simply by the existing staff of officials at the Treasury. If the occasions had been confined to those of reversion, sale, the conversion of agricultural land into building land, and the granting of such leases, I believe it would have caused very little loss to the revenue, while the cost of collection would have been very light and the work of supervision reduced to the smallest dimensions. Unfortunately the Amendment on that subject was refused by the Government, and other occasions are now inserted in the Bill, such as death and the general granting of leases, which must necessitate a general system of valuation throughout the country. All I say is that if a general system is to be established under this Bill, let it be one which in days to come we can apply to the readjustments and the reform of our local system of taxation as well. It would be far simpler to have the well known system of capital valuing in place of the novel proposal now introduced in the Bill of site valuation. It is for these reasons that I 533 ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer to consider the proposal I make, and I hope that in the answer he gives he will be able to indicate to us not only that he will look favourably upon it, but also indicate the way in which the valuation is to be carried out under the direction of the Commissioners. If it is to be carried out with any sense of justice and in any satisfactory way it must be done with the aid and co-operation of those who alone know the conditions of the locality.
§ The ATTORNEY-GENERAL (Sir William Robson)My hon. Friend has raised what is undoubtedly an important point, which I am sure both sides of the House desire should be dealt with carefully but, so far as possible, briefly. The Committee is not unaware of what is likely to be put forward by way of reply. My hon. Friend has pointed out that if we substitute the total value with capital value—these expressions are interchangeable in this connection—for site value we should not need to have a valuation Of such a complicated character as that which now appears in the Bill. That is no doubt true., and so far as valuation and its cost is concerned, pro tanto, that argument is sound and has to be met by showing that there are compensating advantages. First of all my hon. Friend has not quite appreciated the nature of the valuation either of the original site value or of what we might call the second valua-tion. I do not like the word valuation. I should prefer to call it computation, when the tax comes to be imposed. He has drawn a somewhat alarming picture, such as we are accustomed now to see, of the denudation of this ancient and beloved land of ours of all its buildings, the very water that is drawn from its docks, and so forth. That is not to be done even hypothetically. He has forgotten one part of Clause 14 which deals with allowances to be made for the purpose of divesting the land of buildings. It says the Commissioners shall allow as deductions "any sums which, in the opinion of the Commissioners it would be necessary to extend in order to divest the land of buildings, timber, trees," and so on. That is only given in the somewhat rare and particular case where land has not already been put to its full site value. For the purpose of putting the tax on you must make an allowance for land if it has not been adequately used. The words I have given are a direct quotation from Clause 14, sub-section 4 (b.) What is laid down 534 there is necessary in order to divest the land of those various matters for the purpose of realising the full site value, and not for the purpose of destroying site value.
§ Mr. PRETYMANI should like to have this point clearly explained. I understand we were referred to the deduction which has to be made in the first instance in order to arrive at the site value. That is in Clause 14, sub-section 4 (b), but under Clause 14, sub-section 2, as applied to the Surrey Docks, the hon. Baronet (Sir J. Dickson-Poynder) says that in order to arrive at the site value you have to remove the whole structure—quays, wharves, and docks—and leave the site bare. That does not come under 4 (b,) but under section 14, sub-section 2.
§ Sir W. ROBSONThis rather illustrates the inconvenience of this kind of interruption. It is perfectly clear to me what the hon. Baronet said. He describes what happens under section 2 of Clause 14 as a mere hypothetical valuation of the land.
§ Mr. PRETYMANYou said it was not.
§ Sir W. ROBSONThe hon. Baronet went on to say that there was to be an allowance. What I was pointing out was that that is only an allowance in a special case where it is necessary to get the full site value to clear the land of buildings. Now my hon. Friend raises another point of interest and he introduced a novelty. He spoke of what would happen if the valuation were taken at probate value, and he suggested that valuation might well be committed to the hands of local authorities. I am not quite sure whether he implied that even under the Bill as it now stands there ought to be a valuation reform which would put the valuation of site values in the hands of the local authorities. Clearly that is not possible.
§ Mr. YOUNGERThat was the case in the Scotch Land Bill.
§ Sir W. ROBSONThere again the hon. Member is interrupting without full reflection. I think he will see that what he says does not apply. When you are dealing with rateable value which expresses itself in a given year, your assessment committees and local authorities could apportion the value without much difficulty. But they are not land agents, and therefore they cannot make a hypothetical valuation. They cannot say what is the value of a particular spot if it is divested of the buildings upon it. That is 535 a task which evidently requires an expert. I think we all agree upon that. Therefore for that purpose you cannot avail yourselves of the local authorities. The same thing may be said with regard to the capital values of land, such as would have to take place if we adopted the suggestion of the hon. Baronet. There, again, where you are dealing with the capital value of undeveloped land your local authority would have to deal with what requires expert knowledge. It will be seen that even under my hon. friend's suggestion you would still have to have experts. For that reason, I do not think he would find quite a satisfactory tribunal if he took the tribunal suggested in the Bill of the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Long) of 1904. The real difference between the hon. Baronet and us on this matter is something much more vital and important, and I think the Government are entitled to say that the difference between us is one which is really due to the desire on the part of those who framed this Bill not to make this tax as burdensome or as severe as my hon. Friend would make it.
The principle upon which we base our tax is very simple. The effort that we have made is to see that we keep away from the scope of this tax anything that can be ascribed to men's labour—that we should tax only that which has not come into existence by any special degree of personal labour. In dealing with the premises my hon. Friend would deal with the goodwill belonging to a particular business because of the great increase in the value of them. All that would come in under my hon. Friend's proposal. We are careful to put our tax only upon the site. Why? In order that we may not tax anything other than that which arises from what we call social co-operation, i.e., the labours of the community as a whole. We have been careful to exclude everything resulting from a man's own labour. That is the principle on which we stand and undoubtedly that principle does involve this elaborate, costly, and extensive valuation. Is it worth it? Now there are on the two sides of the House totally different opinions on the question. We think it is worth it. We think the principle so just and so fair to all classes. That shortly stated is the reason why we are determined to put the tax upon the site rather than upon the capital value. It is a much smaller tax and falls with much less hardship upon those who have to live by labour.
§ Mr. WALTER LONGI am sure we are indebted to the hon. and learned Gentleman for the endeavour he has made to enlighten us upon the very complicated proposals contained in the clause to which the hon. Baronet has moved an Amendment, but I think the Committee has hardly realised the effect of the explanation which the hon. and learned Gentleman has just given. He resists the Amendment on several grounds, one of which is that if adopted it would result in a system of valuation more costly to the owners of property concerned than would be the case under the Bill as it stands.
§ Sir W. ROBSONI only said that this system, like ours, would involve a valuation by experts.
§ Mr. WALTER LONGThe hon. and learned Gentleman also suggested that if the Amendment were adopted it might result in a more unsatisfactory valuation. But I pass that by. What he did undoubtedly say at the end was that the adoption of this system by placing a special valuation upon the land necessitated a system of valuation which he described as elaborate, extensive, and costly. As we go along we learn from the Government by slow degrees a little more as to what the real effect of this Bill would be. We have constantly asserted on this side of the House that under this Bill you are throwing not only a new and a very heavy taxation upon a particular class of property, but in addition a very heavy expense in connection with valuation. The hon. and learned Gentleman has taken up the challenge of the hon. Baronet, and has made a comparison between the system of valuation adopted under this Bill and some proposals I had the honour to submit to Parliament some years ago in connection with general valuation, and he finds, for some reason I cannot follow, that the Bill which the Government of that day produced would not be sufficient for the purpose, because experts are required. We now appreciate for the first time the effect of the system of valuation of the site as separate from the buildings and other appurtenances which we were told, during the earlier stages of this Bill, was so much easier and simpler. We are now told that this system is so difficult and costly that a local authority, although fortified by being drawn from a very wide area, and having on it the Government Commissioner of Taxes, and having full power to obtain expert advice, could not discharge this duty, which we are now told 537 the body of Commisioners are fully able to discharge. I really do not think the learned Attorney-General ought to blame us if we do not fully understand this Bill.
We do not wish to levy any charges against the Government, and certainly not against the Attorney-General, who has to do work even harder than that which ordinarily falls to the lot of an Attorney-General, because he has to explain many details of the Bill which Ministers are unable to explain. I am not, therefore, making any complaint, but I do submit that as we go along and find revelations in the Bill which throw an altogether new light on its provisions, it is a little difficult for us to live up to the high standard of intelligence required to appreciate the fact that the Bill means something which is not on the face of it. Moreover, the attitude of the Government upon Clause 2 is exactly the reverse of their attitude on Clause 1. We have had some rather sharp lessons during this Debate. The hon. Member for Leicester (Mr. Ramsay Macdonald) holds us as having approved the principle of the Increment Duty because we have urged that if you can justify it in regard to one class of property you can in regard to another. It therefore becomes necessary for anyone on this side who thinks the hon. Baronet's scheme better than that of the Government to be chary of expressing that opinion, otherwise he may be held to approve of the principle. I disapprove of the principle, and of the hon. Baronet's Amendment. I disapprove of site value and of capital value. I believe that the whole principle involved in this clause is wrong, and therefore, so far as I am con-concerned, I leave it to the Government and their supporters to fight it out between them.
§ Mr. CLAVELL SALTERI am not quite sure that I undertand in detail the exact nature of the proposal of the hon. Baronet who moved the Amendment. I find the expression "capital value" used in this Bill in relation to minerals, and from his speech I gather that by the expression "capital value" he means that which is described as "total value" in Clause 14, section (1). I would venture with great respect to suggest that he should use the technical expression which finds a place in this Bill, and not complicate the matter further by using a term which has a special meaning in this Bill with regard to minerals. I gather that it is not the intention of the hon. Baronet to tax 538 improvements, but it appears to me that without a great deal more elaboration than he has given us, the effect of his Amendment would be to tax those improvements which have come into existence between the periods when the capital value is taken. Assuming that to be guarded against, I am disposed to look with great sympathy upon this or any proposal which would eliminate from this Bill that basis of site value which at present underlies the whole of this scheme. I think I can understand prairie value. I can understand it, at any rate, in those new countries where prairie value is talked about and used as the basis of taxation. I can also understand a valuation such as takes place under our own Agricultural Rating Act, where the task of the valuer is quite simple, where there is no element of denudation, but where the valuer values separately those portions of the farm which are agricultural land and the other portions which constitute the buildings.
But that is obviously a very different task from that which is proposed to be put on the valuer in this case. Here, to take a simple instance, how is one to ascertain the site value of an old pasture field? The site value is conceived to be the value of the field denuded of the herbage which has grown on it for ages. How is any valuer to assume what will be the value of these three acres of land denuded of their pasture? Is the valuer to say that the value would be the value of the field if it were ploughed? Anything which would eliminate this basis of site value would be an advantage. I should' have thought that if there was any-country in the world where there had been a warning against basing taxation on legal fictions it was this country. What has been the cost to us in years past owing to the fact that our rating value system has been based to a large extent on legal fictions? No one who is familiar with rating law will challenge me when I say that the existence of the hypothetical tenant and the unreal basis of fiction on which our rating laws have been based has been nothing less than a national calamity and has cost millions to this country. Yet, in spite of that, we are now deliberately starting a new unreal system.
§ Mr. BONAR LAWI must confess that it is rather discouraging to have to deal with this Question at this late hour when hon. Gentlemen on the other side of the House are asleep and the Chancellor of 539 the Exchequer is absent. I should like to say a word or two about the remarks of the Attorney-General. We are learning something. We now know what this valuation means. The hon. and learned Gentleman tells us that his valuation is of such a nature that no one at present accustomed to valuation can make it. Yet it has to be performed by four gentlemen who have no experience. He says it requires experts. Where is he going to get experts on hypothetical cases of this kind? It will take him much longer than this Parliament will last to create his experts who are going to carry out the provisions of this Bill. I am in favour of the Amendment rather than of the Bill as it stands, for though in my opinion the two proposals mean the same thing in 99 cases out of 100, there is the difference that the hon. Baronet states openly what he means, while the Government, meaning the same thing, do not admit it. The objection of the Attorney-General to the Amendment was that the hon. Baronet proposed to tax something which would not be taxed in the Bill as it stands. What the Government propose to do is to tax not unearned increment, but the profit which anyone may make out of dealing in property. Let us take an ordinary case which will come under this Bill. A man sees a piece of land suitable for a building, and buys it for £200, spends £3,000 on it, and then receives an offer of £3,750 for the property. Before he can sell it he has to satisfy the Commissioners on the subject of increment value. The Commissioners will say the increment value is £550, and what the Bill will do will be to put a tax on the profit which a man sets out to make and succeeds in making. Take another case. I buy a piece of land with a house on it, and it has also a registered site value. I have it for a year, and I sell it for a higher price than I gave for it. What happens? The Commissioners step in. They have the original site value and the capital value. The site value is the total value less the buildings. They find I get £500 more than I paid for it. They take the value of the buildings and deduct it. The buildings are older than when I bought them, and, unless there has been an increase in the price of bricks and mortar, the Commissioners are bound to estimate them at not more than when I bought them. They therefore deduct the value of the buildings from the new price, and the new price, which is my profit, is what they tax. I have found "great difficulty, as everybody has, in 540 understanding this Bill; but, if I am wrong in the assumption as to the way in which the Commissioners are bound to act, the least the Government can do is to show how I am wrong. Instructions are clearly laid down as to how the Commissioners are to act, and, in my judgment, that is the effect they would have. I am able to give you an experience. I myself have had an exact illustration of the way this new tax would act. I had to get a new house to live in only a month ago. I found a house at the end of a long list of houses for sale, and the price seemed to me so low that I bought it. I thought it was a good investment, and I bought it for that and no other reason. The very next morning I received a letter from the agent of whom I had bought it offering me £500 profit if I would cancel the bargain I had made. Will anyone say that between night and morning there had been an unearned increment due to the growth of the community of £500? If this Bill had been law I should have been called upon by the Government to give up as taxation a fifth of the profit I had made. That would undoubtedly be the effect of the Bill. I say more than that: judging by the speeches of the Government, it is their intention to secure a share of the profit of these transactions. The Attorney-General the other night, talking about the ease of making this computation, as he calls it, this second valuation, said the man who had got to make it will not be troubled by the value of the buildings. The value of the buildings will not be the deduction which will trouble him. Having got his original site value and his price, he will have to consider whether there should be any claim for deduction in respect of anything personal to himself, and, having secured all this, he will know what the increment is. In other words, the hon. and learned Gentleman said that what he means by increment value is the difference between the price at which he obtains and at which he sells, less goodwill, or something personal to himself. I will put it more plain. The hon. Member for Preston (Mr. Cox), who, has rather an acute mind for cases of this kind, interrupted the hon. and learned Gentleman, and said: "Might there not be a value in a building apart from the site, as, for instance, in the case of licensed premises?" The Attorney-General said: "I do not think bricks and mortar will have risen in price."
I think the whole proposal of taxing the profit which I make in one way 541 while not taxing the profit somebody else makes in another way is about as vicious a proposal as was ever made in the House of Commons. The Prime Minister, who takes quite an active part in the Budget where he is not open to have his remarks criticised and where he does not hear what the objections to the Bill are, said, dealing with this very point, that it is unfair to tax one kind of property while not taxing another: "Where is the harm, the Chancellor of the Exchequer by-and-by may tax somebody else?" That is really overlooking what is the essential injustice of taxing one form of property and not another. The essential injustice obviously is that the country only requires a certain amount of revenue, and, if you get it by taxing one kind of property, you put a wholly unfair burden upon that kind of property. If you tax all kinds of property, and they are all liable to the same tax, then the amount which any one pays is much smaller, and the thing is not radically unjust as it is in this case. I shall conclude by quoting, curiously enough, words contained in the report as to the State of New York.
§ The CHAIRMANI am not sure how far that has to do with the Amendment.
§ Mr. BONAR LAWWith all respect, perhaps you will judge better after you have heard it. In this illustration which is given to us of the fairness and all the rest of it of this tax, this law is laid down:"It is an inalienable right that no one citizen is to be taxed for his property at a higher rate than others are taxed for theirs."
§ Mr. YOUNGERI rise to make good, if I can, the interruption which I addressed o the Attorney-General when he talked of the impossibility of leaving valuations of this character in the hands of local authorities. I reminded him that in the Land Values (Scotland) Bill the valuations were expressly left in the hands of existing authorities, and they were very much on the same basis as those which are required to be made for the purpose of this tax. I think the Lord Advocate will bear me out when I say that no change whatever was made in the tribunal which now deals with rental and the tribunal which under that Bill would have had to deal with local value.
§ Sir W. ROBSONIn Scotland the local authorities have expert valuers.
§ Mr. YOUNGERThat is exactly where the learned Attorney-General shows his ignorance. It is nothing of the sort. The assessors in Scotland who make the primary valuation are not valuators at all. They make no pretence to be valuators. They are not skilled in the art. They are dropped upon us from Somerset House after a few years' experience of Income Tax collecting and law, and then set to value property straight away. These are the experts to whom the Lord Advocate left the valuation of capital under a very abstruse definition in his Bill. Therefore I was quite right when I interrupted the learned Gentleman, and I do not think the Lord Advocate will contradict me. I have long ago given up the idea of expecting consistency from this Government, and it does not surprise me that the Attorney-General for England refuses something for England which the Lord Advocate thought good enough for Scotland. The speech of the hon. Baronet (Sir J. Dickson-Poynder) interested me very much. While I do not know that I should like to bind myself to an acceptance of the Amendment, I am inclined to think that, on the whole, it offers a much better solution of this difficulty than the proposal in the Bill. I believe that if proper deductions are made for permanent improvements on land which have been carried out by the owner between the two valuations, you would go very near doing right in cases of this kind, without having recourse to the valuation proposed in the Bill. I believe that is the system, or something very like the system, employed in Frankfort. But I rather think the intention of this Bill and the proposal to embody in it these extraordinary valuations have an ulterior motive. These valuations are not wanted so much for the purpose of collecting increment Taxes as that of pandering to the particular heresies of the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mr. J. C. Wedgwood). He does not care two pence about Increment Tax or anything else so long as lie gets a valuation made of the whole of the land in the country on the principles set down in this Bill. That is really the object of these valuations. If the learned Attorney-General would only be quite honest I think he would almost be inclined to admit the fact. It is probably not done for the purposes of this Parliament, but of some future Parliament, when the hon. 543 Member will perhaps occupy a higher position than he does at present and when he may see some of the old proposals put before us again.
§ Mr. FELLI have no doubt that the proposal of the hon. Baronet is an attempt to adopt the system in vogue in Germany at the present time to the proposals of the Government and to make a practical Bill out of what is now an absolutely impracticable measure. The last two days' Debates have shown that the making of these valuations of sites of houses, as opposed to the houses themselves, will be of such a costly nature and take so much time that it is dawning upon the Committee—what has already dawned upon the public—that the present proposals of the Government are absolutely impracticable. The hon. Baronet has seen that, and is attempting a very short and a very practical way out of the difficulty. He proposes to take the price it will fetch in the market as the basis of the tax. Say a house fetches £5,000 and a few years later it fetches £6,000, you will not have to go into the question of what the site value is on either of the dates, but simply say the house has increased in value by £1,000, and the Government will be entitled to one-fifth, or £200. That is a simple thing. It does not require any valuation at all. Under the Government's proposals on both occasions you would have to have a most elaborate valuation, because it does not follow that the site value would have gone up £1,000. It might happen that the site had fallen and that the buildings upon it had increased in value. On the other hand, the buildings might have gone down and the site increased. There are places in London where the site value is going up, but the buildings upon it are unsuitable for the neighbourhood, and therefore the building values are going down. Two or three years ago I received a circular from an insurance company suggesting that my house should be insured for a further sum because, owing to the increased cost of building, the house would not be replaced for the amount at which it was insured.
That is absolute proof that, quite apart from site value, the buildings upon the site may go up in value, and when a sale takes place it by no means follows, if it is sold at an increased price, that there is an increase in the value of the land. The Germans have realised that buildings go up and land goes down, and vice versâ. I 544 heard two Members discussing this question to-day, and one said to the other, "What would you say was the value of the site of the Bank of England and the buildings upon it?" It was pointed out that when the Bill becomes an Act that site would have to be valued, and it would be the best piece of valuing that could be obtained for the valuers who got it. It may be one million or it may be three or four millions. It will be millions. And what will be the valuation of the buildings upon that site? When this Bill comes into force the Bank of England will have to be valued and the site value will have to be fixed and the value of the buildings upon it ascertained. In fifteen years they will have to be valued again, and the increase in the value will have to be ascertained and a proportion of it will have to be paid to the Government. Now I am perfectly sure that the framers of the Bill never intended such a thing as that to take place. They must have been always thinking about the suburbs and of the land there unoccupied and held up by the landlords from the builders. That is the object of this Bill; but the real fact is that such buildings as the Bank of England will have to be valued and the Government will be claiming some of the increase in the value that takes place. Is it suggested that in any other country in the whole world people are so unwise as to suggest anything like this? Do they do it in cases similar to our Bank of England in Berlin or in Frankfort? The idea seems to be that you should pay upon an imaginary site value such as that at the Bank of England because some valuers may think it has gone up. I say are we quite reasonable people? Does the right hon. Gentleman the Minister for War, who takes an interest in these questions, think it reasonable that the Bank of England should have its site valued next autumn, and that fifteen years hence it should be valued again, and that the difference should pay its proportion to the Government?
§ The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN (Mr. Caldwell)Order, order. The hon. Member is now dealing with the merits of the tax.
§ Earl WINTERTONOn a point of order, Mr. Caldwell. This is a matter of great importance. I submit that as the Amendment is drafted by the hon. Baronet this question affects the whole matter of the valuation and of the tax, and I submit further that it is quite impossible to dis- 545 cuss the relative merits of the site and capital value without going into the merits of the tax also.
The DEPUTY CHAIRMANThe question of the site or capital value and the merits of the tax are two different questions. The hon. Member was raising another matter than that before the Committee.
§ Earl WINTERTONOn a point of order. It is obviously a matter of very great importance. I submit—
The DEPUTY CHAIRMANWe are now dealing with the definition of the increment value. We have already discussed the increment tax.
§ Mr. ARTHUR FELLThe hon. Baronet's suggestion is that with the whole buildings together it will be easy to value, and the transactions in regard thereto will be immensely simplified. The increased value of the whole can be easily obtained from the purchaser, and that is much simpler than a double valuation of the site. It is very hard not to be led astray by remarks that have fallen from others. The proposal of the hon. Baronet is an extremely simple one compared with the proposal before us in the Bill, and it has, of course, the advantage that it will enable any valuation of the site at the present time, and it may extend further to a valuation of the whole buildings at the present time; but it would not require separate valuations of the site and building, and then, when sales take place, it would entail — if you paid on the difference on the whole building — a difference in the percentage paid on the profit. There is no doubt that a certain amount of the profit is on the building as well as on the site, so instead of paying 20 per cent. it might be 10 or 15 per cent. If that were so, it would be much fairer and would not entail the difficulties I have sketched out. I am not supposed to be advocating any increment value; but I do think the proposals of the hon. Baronet are less confusing and are very much to be preferred to those of the Government.
§ Mr. PRETYMANI am afraid that at this late hour our wits are not quite so clear as during the earlier discussions. Even now I do not quite appreciate the exact point of this Amendment in its relation to the proposals of the Government. It is obvious that the hon. Baronet proposes to substitute the word "capital" for "site" in reference to land in this part of 546 the Bill; but I do not see any Amendment to substitute "capital" for "site" in line 20.
§ Sir J. DICKSON-POYNDERThat is an omission. That would be a necessary and consequential Amendment.
§ Mr. PRETYMANIn the proposal before us there are two valuations that have to be considered. And now I understand the hon. Baronet's proposal to be to substitute "capital" for "site" value in this Bill in both cases. As I now understand the Amendment, if you are to take the capital value on the original valuation under Clause 14, you are going to take the full capital value of the land and hereditament as it stands, including everything upon it. On a subsequent date—perhaps some years after—you are going to take capital valuation again. There may be a great many features, such as buildings, trees, etc., upon the hereditament when the first valuation is taken. Before the second valuation has been taken these may have been removed. How are you going to get your comparison? Can the hon. Baronet answer that question?
§ Sir J. DICKSON-POYNDERIt is perfectly simple to get capital value. After ten years, if the property is sold, another capital valuation is taken. Of course, the owner who is charged Increment Duty will show the Commissioner anything that he has spent out of his own purse during the ten years and which has made an increase in the capital value.
§ Mr. PRETYMANThe hon. Baronet does not appreciate my point. I quite understood that the hon. Baronet's proposal meets the additional expenditure between the two valuations, but it does not meet the point of the removal during that period of anything from the property?
§ Sir J. DICKSON-POYNDERSurely that is included in the valuation.
§ Mr. PRETYMANBut you would require a complete record, which everybody knows is a most difficult thing, and it would be detrimental to the individual, because the original valuation against which the comparison has to be made would be reduced. He would suffer, because what he had in the first instance and had subsequently removed would be charged against him for the purpose of raising his valuation. The suggestion, therefore, that you should take capital valuation at one period and then attempt 547 to use that valuation for the purpose of comparison many years afterwards, without having a complete record of everything there was upon the property at first, and a record of every tree or bush removed in the meantime, does not meet the case. During the dinner-hour this evening we raised a point as to how this valuation was to be obtained under the proposal of the Government called site value. It is proposed to be obtained by taking first the sale price of the whole hereditament and then—omitting other minor deductions— deducting the value of the buildings. We asked the Lord Advocate what was meant by the "value of the buildings," and whether it included any sort of value due to the site. He said that it must be only the value of the buildings themselves. We then asked the Lord Advocate how that value was to be ascertained except by the cost, less depreciation, and he told us that in his opinion that was the only way in which it could be arrived at.
§ Mr. PRETYMANHe did not suggest any other way was possible, and I have never heard any other suggested. The Lord Advocate says it is the best way, and therefore I presume the Government will adopt the best way of arriving at this valuation. They take the wholesale price and deduct from that the cost, less depreciation, of the buildings. What will be the effect of that in this one single instance which, I think, is enough to condemn the whole thing? A man buys a house which is valued at the time the seller paying the increment duty, if any. The purchaser lives in the house for 20 years and then dies. The valuation is arrived at on the occasion when he took the house and after his death on the principle which the Lord Advocate told us is in the Bill. In each case the value is the same. But the house is 20 years older, and, depreciation being a deduction from cost, the value of the house will be less, and the mere fact of the value being less will render the individual liable to an Increment Value Duty. There is no escape from it. That is the method on which site value is to be obtained. There are many other cases besides the one I have mentioned. Take the case of any house or square in London. Every hon. Member is aware that houses of identically the same value in the ordinary sense of the term, of similar size and standing on adjacent sites, are sometimes sold on 548 the principle that the purchaser is very anxious to obtain the house, but the owner is not anxious to sell, and then the house fetches a high price. On another occasion the owner is obliged to sell, but there is no purchaser, and he puts the house in the market, where a much lower price is realised. It is common knowledge that when houses adjacent to each other are sold at short intervals one will fetch perhaps 50 per cent. more than another, because in the one case there is a willing purchaser and an unwilling seller, and in the other case a willing seller but an unwilling purchaser. The Increment Duty, therefore, will depend upon whether the seller or purchaser is the more willing of the two. If the right hon. Gentleman will amend the Bill so as to avoid that effect we shall be glad to hear how we will do it. The right hon. Gentleman indicates that I am quite wrong in what I have said.
§ Mr. LLOYD-GEORGEThe hon. Gentleman's point is that merely by the operation of depreciation there will be an artificially created increment. Of course, that will not be so. I will take the case he has given in regard to a person who has had a house for twenty years and then dies. Let us assume that in the first instance the sale price was £2,000. When you come to value the property after twenty years for estate purposes the total value for the duty will be only £1,000 because of depreciation.
§ Mr. PRETYMANI said value when property in the neighbourhood remains, generally speaking, the same.
§ Mr. LLOYD-GEORGEI am assuming that
§ Viscount HELMSLEYI think a great deal of this Debate has justified the Motion we made earlier to postpone this Debate till Clause 14 was reached. That was the reason why, I hope not discourteously, I interrupted the Attorney-General when he was speaking on Clause 14 instead of Clause 2. Some of us on this side of the House are very much perplexed as to how we are to regard this Amendment. I do not think it is necessary for us to elaborate the ridiculous position which you are getting into in regard to these site values. The question of the City of London has been quoted, and it might well be asked what is the value of the site on which this House rests? It would cost a very considerable sum to reduce these premises to prairie value, and then I suppose you 549 would have to get a sort of prehistoric market. That is only a very difficult instance of how impossible it is to arrive at what the site value of particular clay is, and therefore any Amendment which gets away from what the Government themselves describe as a costly, elaborate and expensive valuation would appear to be an improvement. The Amendment has been received with a certain degree of welcome by some of my hon. Friends, but it seems to me that by substituting capital value for site value you are running a certain amount of risk.
I doubt very much whether adequate reductions could be made to ensure that the increment due to the energy of the owner or his predecessors should not be regarded as unearned increment. Take the capital valuation in the first instance. It is quite possible that an owner may have completed some improvement, the effect of which would not become apparent for a number of years. A man might build a bridge over the river connecting his property with growing property, and the only other access might be another bridge three or four miles away. No valuer could say immediately after the bridge was built what its ultimate value would be, and it would be difficult for the valuer to say whether the improvement in the value of the land was due to the bridge or the growth of the town on the other side of the river. The whole of the increased value might be due to the energy and foresight of the owner in building the bridge. It will be very difficult in the first valuation to calculate the potentialities of the improvements which have already been made. The Amendment, if carried, would simplify the working of the Act and lessen some of the ridiculous absurdities it might impose, injustices greater than those already in the Bill, and I do not think I
§ can vote for it. We have only just had the privilege of the attendance of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who has been absent for three hours.
§ Mr. LLOYD-GEORGEI have not been absent anything like that time. I heard the whole of the speech of my hon. Friend who moved the Amendment, and most of the reply of the Attorney-General.
§ Viscount HELMSLEYDuring the whole of this Debate we have been without the presence of the Prime Minister, who reserves his remarks for convivial gatherings at the Holborn Restaurant. We have not yet had a single speech from him on the Committee stage of this Bill.
§ The CHAIRMAN (Mr. Emmott)The noble Lord must really speak to the Amendment.
§ Viscount HELMSLEYI am connecting it with the Amendment by endeavouring to suggest that we should have the benefit and guidance of the Leader of the House.
§ Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE rose in his place, and claimed to move, "That the Question be now put."
§ Question put, "That the Question be now put."
§ Mr. STANLEY WILSON(seated, and wearing his hat): Slight I ask you whether this afternoon you did not say one of your duties was to look after the rights of a minority, and whether you consider we have no right to a reply?
§ The CHAIRMANThat is a very improper remark to make.
§ Question put, "That the Question be now put."
§ The Committee divided: Ayes, 162; Noes, 76.
551| Division No. 220] | AYES. | [2.53 a.m. |
| Acland, Francis Dyke | Bryce, J. Annan | Dickson-Poynder, Sir John P. |
| Agar-Robartes, Hon. T. C. R. | Buxton, Rt. Hon. Sydney Charles | Duncan, C. (Barrow-in-Furness) |
| Agnew, George William | Byles, William Pollard | Dunn, A, Edwards (Camborne) |
| Ainsworth, John Stirling | Carr-Gomm, H. W. | Dunne, Major E. Martin (Walsall) |
| Allen, A. Acland (Christchurch) | Cherry, Rt. Hon. R. R. | Edwards, Sir Francis (Radnor) |
| Allen, Charles P. (Stroud) | Clough, William | Elibank, Master of |
| Armitage, R. | Collins, Sir Wm. J. (St. Pancras, W.) | Essex, R. W, |
| Balfour, Robert (Lanark) | Compton-Rickett, Sir J. | Esslemont, George Birnie |
| Baring, Godfrey (Isle of Wight) | Cooper, G. J. | Evans, Sir S. T. |
| Barlow, Percy (Bedford) | Corbett, C. H. (Sussex, E. Grinstead) | Everett, R. Lacey |
| Barry, Redmond J. (Tyrone, N.) | Cornwall, Sir Edwin A. | Falconer, James |
| Boulton, A. C. F. | Cotton, Sir H. J. S. | Fenwick, Charles |
| Bowerman, C. W. | Crosfield, A. H. | Fiennes, Hon. Eustace |
| Bramsdon, Sir T. A. | Crossley, William J. | Fuller, John Michael F. |
| Branch, James | Dalziel, Sir James Henry | Gibb, James (Harrow) |
| Brocklehurst, W. B. | Davies, Sir W. Howell (Bristol, S.) | Gill, A. H. |
| Brooke, Stopford | Dewar, Arthur (Edinburgh, S.) | Gladstone, Rt. Hon. Herbert John |
| Brunner, J. F. L. (Lancs., Leigh) | Dickinson, W. H. (St. Pancras, N.) | Glover, Thomas |
| Goddard, Sir Daniel Ford | M'Micking, Major G. | Silcock, Thomas Ball |
| Gooch, George Peabody (Bath) | Maddison, Frederick | Simon, John Allsebrook |
| Gulland, John W. | Markham, Arthur Basil | Spicer, Sir Albert |
| Haldane, Rt. Hon. Richard B. | Micklem, Nathaniel | Stanley, Hon. A. Lyulph (Cheshire) |
| Harcourt, Rt. Hon. L. (Rossendale) | Middlebrook, William | Strachey, Sir Edward |
| Harcourt, Robert V. (Montrose) | Mond, A | Summerbell, T. |
| Hardy, George A. (Suffolk) | Morrell, Philip | Taylor, John W. (Durham) |
| Harvey, A. G. C. (Rochdale) | Newnes, F. (Notts, Bassetlaw) | Tennant, H. J. (Berwickshire) |
| Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth) | Nicholls, George | Thomas, Abel (Carmarthen, E.) |
| Haworth, Arthur A. | Norman, Sir Henry | Thompson, J. W. H. (Somerset, E.) |
| Hedges, A. Paget | Norton, Capt. Cecil William | Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton) |
| Helme, Norval Watson | Parker, James (Halifax) | Tomkinson, James |
| Henry, Charles S. | Paulton, James Mellor | Toulmin, George |
| Herbert, Col. Sir Ivor (Mon., S.) | Pearce, Robert (Staffs., Leek) | Trevelyan, Charles Philips |
| Higham, John Sharp | Pickersgill, Edward Hare | Ure, Rt. Hon. Alexander |
| Hobart, Sir Robert | Pointer, J. | Verney, F. W. |
| Hobhouse, Rt. Hon. Charles E. H. | Ponsonby, Arthur A. W. H. | Villiers, Ernest Amherst |
| Horniman, Emslie John | Price, Sir Robert J. (Norfolk, E.) | Ward, W. Dudley (Southampton) |
| Howard, Hon. Geoffrey | Priestley, Arthur (Grantham) | Wardle, George J. |
| Idris, T. H. W. | Radford, G. H. | Warner, Thomas Courtenay T. |
| Illingworth, Percy H. | Rainy, A. Rolland | Wason, Rt. Hon. E. (Clackmannan) |
| Jenkins, J. | Raphael, Herbert H. | Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney) |
| Johnson, John (Gateshead) | Richardson, A. | Wedgwood, Josiah C. |
| Jones, Leif (Appleby) | Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln) | White, Sir George (Norfolk) |
| Jones, William (Carnarvonshire) | Roberts, G. H. (Norwich) | White, J. Dundas (Dumbartonshire) |
| Kelley, George D. | Robertson, Sir G. Scott (Bradford) | White, Sir Luke (York, E.R.) |
| Lamont, Norman | Robertson, J. M. (Tyneside) | Whitley, John Henry (Halifax) |
| Layland-Barrett, Sir Francis | Robinson, S. | Wiles, Thomas |
| Lehmann, R. C. | Robson, Sir Wm. Snowdon | Williamson, Sir A. |
| Levy, Sir Maurice | Roch, Walter F. (Pembroke) | Wilson, Hon. G. G. (Hull, W.) |
| Lloyd-George, Rt. Hon. David | Rogers, F. E. Newman | Wilson, P. W. (St. Pancras, S.) |
| Lupton, Arnold | Rose, Sir Charles Day | Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton) |
| Lyell, Charles Henry | Rowlands, J. | Winfrey, R. |
| Macdonald, J. R. (Leicester) | Rutherford, V. H. (Brentford) | Wood, T. M'Kinnon |
| Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J. | Samuel, S. M. (Whitechapel) | |
| McKenna, Rt. Hon. Reginald | Seely, Colonel | TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—Mr. Joseph Pease and Mr. Herbert Lewis. |
| M'Laren, H. D. (Stafford, W.) | Shaw, Sir Charles E. (Stafford) | |
| NOES. | ||
| Arkwright, John Stanhope | Guinness, Hon. R. (Haggerston) | Peel, Hon. W. Robert Wellesley |
| Baldwin, Stanley | Guinness, Hon. W. E. (B'y St. Edm'ds) | Pretyman, E. G. |
| Banner, John S. Harmood- | Hamilton, Marquess of | Ratcliff, Major R. F. |
| Barrie, H. T. (Londonderry, N.) | Harris, Frederick Leverton | Renwick, George |
| Beach, Hon. Michael Hugh Hicks | Harrison-Broadley, H. B. | Rutherford, W. W. (Liverpool) |
| Beckett, Hon. Gervase | Hay, Hon. Claude George | Salter, Arthur Clavell |
| Bignold, Sir Arthur | Helmsley, Viscount | Scott, Sir S. (Marylebene, W.) |
| Bridgeman, W. Clive | Hill, Sir Clement | Smith, Abel H. (Hertford, East) |
| Bull, Sir William James | Hope, James Fitzalan (Sheffield) | Stanier, Beville |
| Campbell, Rt. Hon. J. H. M. | Hunt, Rowland | Starkey, John R. |
| Carlile, E. Hildred | Joynson-Hicks, William | Staveley-Hill, Henry (Staffordshire) |
| Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor) | Kerry, Earl of | Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester) |
| Chamberlain, Rt. Hon. J. A. (Worc'r.) | Lane-Fox, G. R. | Walker, Col. W. H. (Lancashire) |
| Clive, Percy Archer | Law, Andrew Bonar (Dulwich) | Walrond, Hon. Lionel |
| Clyde, J. Avon | Lockwood, Rt. Hon. Lt.-Col. A. R. | Warde, Col. C. E. (Kent, Mid.) |
| Coates, Major E. F. (Lewisham) | Long, Rt. Hon. Walter (Dublin, S.) | Whitbread, S. Howard |
| Cochrane, Hon. Thomas H. A. E | Lonsdale, John Brownlee | Williams, Col. R. (Dorset, W.) |
| Craig, Charles Curtis (Antrim, S.) | MacCaw, William J. MacGeagh | Wilson, A. Stanley (York, E.R.) |
| Craig, Captain James (Down, E.) | M'Calmont, Colonel James | Winterton, Earl |
| Craik, Sir Henry | Meysey-Thompson, E. C. | Wortley, Rt. Hon. C. B. Stuart- |
| Dalrymple, Viscount | Moore, William | Wyndham, Rt. Hon. George |
| Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers- | Morpeth, Viscount | Younger, George |
| Faber, George Denison (York) | Morrison-Bell, Captain | |
| Fell, Arthur | Newdegate, F. A. | TELLERS FDR THE NOES.—Sir |
| Forster, Henry William | Nicholson, Wm. G. (Petersfield) | Alexander Acland-Hood and Viscount |
| Foster, P. S. | Oddy, John James | Valentia. |
| Gretton, John |
§ Question put accordingly, "That the word 'site' stand part of the clause."
552§ The Committee divided: Ayes, 164; Noes, 34.
553| Division No. 221.] | AYES. | [3 a.m. |
| Acland, Francis Dyke | Barlow, Percy (Bedford) | Brunner, J. F. L. (Lancs., Leigh) |
| Agnew, George William | Barry, Redmond J. (Tyrone, N.) | Bryce, J. Annan |
| Ainsworth, John Stirling | Boulton, A. C F | Buxton, Rt. Hon. Sydney Charles |
| Allen, A. Acland (Christchurch) | Bowerman, C. W. | Byles, William Pollard |
| Allen, Charles P. (Stroud) | Bramsdon, Sir T. A. | Carr-Gomm, H. W |
| Armitage, R. | Branch, James | Cherry, Rt. Hon R. R. |
| Balfour, Robert (Lanark) | Brocklehurst, W. B. | dough, William |
| Baring, Godfrey (Isle of Wight) | Brooke, Stopford | Collins, Sir Wm. J. (St. Pancras, W.) |
| Compton-Rickett, Sir J. | Howard, Hon. Geoffrey | Robinson, S. |
| Cooper, G. J. | Idris, T. H. W. | Robson, Sir William Snowdon |
| Corbett, C. H. (Sussex, E. Grinstead) | Illingworth, Percy H. | Roch, Walter F. (Pembroke) |
| Cornwall, Sir Edwin A. | Jenkins, J. | Rogers, F. E. Newman |
| Cotton, Sir H. J. S. | Johnson, John (Gateshead) | Rose, Sir Charles Day |
| Crosfield, A. H. | Jones, Leif (Appleby) | Rowlands, J. |
| Crossley, William J. | Jones, William (Carnarvonshire) | Rutherford, V. H. (Brentford) |
| Dalziel, Sir James Henry | Kelley, George D. | Samuel, S. M. (Whitechapel) |
| Davies, Sir W. Howell (Bristol, S.) | Lamont, Norman | Seely, Colonel |
| Dewar, Arthur (Edinburgh, S.) | Layland-Barrett, Sir Francis | Shaw, Sir Charles E. (Stafford) |
| Dickinson, W. H. (St. Pancras, N.) | Lehmann, R. C. | Silcock, Thomas Ball |
| Duncan, C. (Barrow-in-Furness) | Levy, Sir Maurice | Simon, John Allsebrook |
| Dunn, A. Edward (Camborne) | Lloyd-George, Rt. Hon. David | Spicer, Sir Albert |
| Durne, Major E. Martin (Walsall) | Lundon, T. | Stanley, Hon. A. Lyulph (Cheshire) |
| Edwards, Sir Francis (Radnor) | Lupton, Arnold | Strachey, Sir Edward |
| Elibank, Master of | Lyell, Charles Henry | Summerbell, T. |
| Essex, R. W. | Macdonald, J. R. (Leicester) | Taylor, John W. (Durham) |
| Esslemont, George Birnie | Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J. | Tennant, H. J. (Berwickshire) |
| Evans, Sir S. T. | MacVeagh, Jeremiah (Down, S.) | Thomas, Abel (Carmarthen, E.) |
| Everett, R. Lacey | McKenna, Rt. Hon. Reginald | Thompson, J. W. H. (Somerset, E.) |
| Falconer, J. | M'Laren, H. D. (Stafford, W.) | Thorne, G. R (Wolverhampton) |
| Fenwick, Charles | M'Micking, Major G. | Tomkinson, James |
| Fiennes, Hon. Eustace | Maddison, Frederick | Toulmin, George |
| Fuller, John Michael F. | Markham, Arthur Basil | Trevelyan, Charles Philips |
| Gibb, James Harrow | Micklem, Nathaniel | Ure, Rt. Hon. Alexander |
| Gill, A. H. | Middlebrook, William | Verney, F. W. |
| Gladstone, Rt. Hon. Herbert John | Mond, A. | Villiers, Ernest Amherst |
| Glover, Thomas | Morrell, Philip | Ward, W. Dudley (Southampton) |
| Goddard, Sir Daniel Ford | Newnes, F. (Notts, Bassetlaw) | Wardle, George J. |
| Gooch, George Peabody (Bath) | Nicholls, George | Warner, Thomas Courtenay T. |
| Gulland, John W. | Norman, Sir Henry | Wason, Rt. Hon. E. (Clackmannan) |
| Haldane, Rt. Hon. Richard B. | Norton, Captain Cecil William | Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney) |
| Harcourt, Rt. Hon. L. (Rossendale) | O'Brien, K. (Tipperary, Mid | Wedgwood, Josiah C. |
| Harcourt, Robert V. (Montrose) | Parker, James (Halifax) | White, Sir George (Norfolk) |
| Hardy, George A. (Suffolk) | Pearce, Robert (Staffs, Leek) | White, J. Dundas (Dumbartonshire) |
| Harmsworth, Cecil B. (Worcester) | Pickersgill, Edward Hare | White, Sir Luke (York, E.R.) |
| Harvey, A. G. C. (Rochdale) | Pointer, J, | Whitley, John Henry (Halifax) |
| Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth) | Ponsonby, Arthur A. W. H. | Wiles, Thomas |
| Haworth, Arthur A. | Price, Sir Robert J. (Norfolk, E.) | Williamson, Sir A. |
| Hedges, A. Paget | Priestley, Arthur (Grantham) | Wilson, Hon. G. G. (Hull, W.) |
| Helme, Norval Watson | Radford, G. H. | Wilson, P. W. (St. Pancras, S.) |
| Henry, Charles S. | Rainy, A. Rolland | Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton) |
| Herbert, Col. Sir Ivor (Mon. S.) | Raphael, Herbert H. | Winfrey, R. |
| Higham, John Sharp | Richardson, A. | Wood, T. M'Kinnon |
| Hobart, Sir Robert | Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln) | |
| Hobhouse, Rt. Hon. Charles E. H. | Roberts, G. H. (Norwich) | TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—Mr. Joseph Pease and Mr. Herbert Lewis. |
| Hogan, Michael | Robertson, Sir G. Scott (Bradford) | |
| Horniman, Emslie John | Robertson, J. M. (Tyneside) | |
| NOES. | ||
| Banner, John S. Harmood- | Guinness, Hon. W. E. (B'y St. Edm'ds) | Salter, Arthur Clavell |
| Barrie, H. T. (Londonderry, N.) | Harrison-Broadley, H. B. | Stanier, Beville |
| Bignold, Sir Arthur | Hay, Hon. Claude George | Staveley-Hill, Henry (Staffordshire) |
| Bridgeman, W. Clive | Hill, Sir Clement | Walker, Col. W. H. (Lancashire) |
| Bull, Sir William James | Kerry, Earl of | Whitbread, S. Howard |
| Carlile, E. Hildred | Lonsdale, John Brownlee | Williams, Col. R. (Dorset, W.) |
| Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor) | MacCaw, Wm. J. MacGeagh | Wilson, A. Stanley (York, E.R.) |
| Clive, Percy Archer | Meysey-Thompson, E C. | Wortley, Rt. Hon. C. B. Stuart- |
| Cochrane, Hon. Thomas H. A. E. | Moore, William | |
| Craig, Charles Curtis (Antrim, S.) | Morpeth, Viscount | TELLEKS FOR THE NOES—Sir |
| Craik, Sir Henry | Nicholson, Wm. G. (Petersfield) | John Dickson-Poynder and Mr. |
| Dalrymple, Viscount | Oddy, John James | Ridsdale. |
| Fell, Arthur | Rutherford, W. W. (Liverpool) |
§ Mr. LLOYD-GEORGE rose in his place and claimed to move, "That the Question 'That the words of the clause, to the word "land' ['original site value of the land'], be now put."[Interruption.]
§ The CHAIRMANIf hon. Members will allow me, I wish to explain that in accepting the Motion the only Amendments of any substance interfered with can be better raised as to form and place after the word "land."
§ Question put, "That the Question that the words of the clause down to the word 'land' be now put."
§ Mr. WALTER LONG(seated and wearing his hat): I understand you to rule, Sir, that there are certain Amendments which can be better and more conveniently put at a subsequent stage. Would it be in order to ask you what they are?
§ The CHAIRMANThe Amendment of the hon. Member for Sheffield (Mr. James Hope) is wrongly stated as to form in his 555 Amendment, but it does raise a point, which I think is of importance, which can be raised as a proviso at the end of this sub-section. It is not satisfactory in the form he proposes it. I think the only other point is the one raised by the hon. Member for Aston Manor (Mr. Evelyn Cecil), which is more satisfactorily raised by the hon. Member for Brighton (Mr. Ridsdale). He raises it in better form. That is also not excluded.
§ Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAINMay I ask what will be the effect of the Motion
§ on such Amendments as that standing in the name of the hon. Member for Brighton? His Amendment is to bring in words at the end of line 20. I presume that will be in order?
§ The CHAIRMANCertainly.
§ Question put, "That the Question' That the words of the clause, to the word 'land' [at the end of section (1)], stand part of the clause,' be now put."
§ The Committee divided: Ayes, 162; Noes, 73.
557| Division No. 222.] | AYES. | [3.10 a.m. |
| Acland, Francis Dyke | Gooch, George Peabody (Bath) | Rainy, A. Rolland |
| Agar-Robartes, Hon. T. C. R. | Gulland, John W. | Raphael, Herbert H. |
| Agnew, George William | Haldane, Rt. Hon. Richard B. | Richardson, A. |
| Ainsworth, John Stirling | Harcourt, Rt. Hon. L. (Rostendale) | Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln) |
| Allen, A. Acland (Christchurch) | Harcourt, Robert V. (Montrose) | Roberts, G. H. (Norwich) |
| Allen, Charles P. (Stroud) | Hardy, George A. (Suffolk) | Robertson, Sir G. Scott (Bradford) |
| Armitage, R. | Harmsworth, Cecil B. (Worcester) | Robertson, J. M. (Tyneside) |
| Balfour, Robert (Lanark) | Harvey, A. G. C. (Rochdale) | Robinson, S. |
| Baring, Godfrey (isle of Wight) | Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth) | Robson, Sir William Snowdon |
| Barlow, Percy (Benford) | Haworth, Arthur A. | Roch, Walter F. (Pembroke) |
| Barry, Redmond J. (Tyrone, N.) | Hedges, A. Paget | Rogers, F. E. Newman |
| Boulton, A. C. F. | Helme, Norval Watson | Rose, Sir Charles Day |
| Bowerman, C. W. | Henry, Charles S. | Rowlands, J. |
| Bramsdon, Sir T. A. | Herbert, Col. Sir Ivor (Mon. S.) | Rutherford, V. H. (Brentford) |
| Branch, James | Higham, John Sharp | Samuel, S. M. (Whitechapel) |
| Brocklehurst, W. B. | Hobart, Sir Robert | Seely, Colonel |
| Brooke, Stopford | Hobhouse, Rt. Hon. Charles E. H. | Shaw, Sir Charles E. (Stafford! |
| Brunner, J. F. L (Lancs., Leigh) | Horniman, Emslie John | Silcock, Thomas Ball |
| Bryce, J. Annan | Howard, Hon. Geoffrey | Simon, John Allsebrook |
| Buxton, Rt. Hon. Sydney Charles | Idris, T. H. W. | Spicer, Sir Albert |
| Byles, William Pollard | Illingworth, Percy H. | Stanley, Hon. A. Lyulph (Cheshire) |
| Carr-Gomm, H. W. | Jenkins, J. | Strachey, Sir Edward |
| Cherry, Rt. Hon. R. R. | Johnson, John (Gateshead) | Summerbell, T. |
| Clough, William | Jones, Leif (Appleby) | Taylor, John W. (Durham) |
| Collins, Sir Wm. J. (St. Pancras, W.) | Kelley, George D. | Tennant, H. J. (Berwickshire) |
| Compton-Rickett, Sir J. | Lamont, Norman | Thomas, Abel (Carmarthen, E.) |
| Cooper, G. J. | Layland-Barratt, Sir Francis | Thompson, J. W. H. (Somerset, E.) |
| Corbett, C. H. (Sussex, E. Grinstead) | Lehmann, R. C. | Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton) |
| Cornwall, Sir Edwin A. | Levy, Sir Maurice | Tomkinson, James |
| Cotton, Sir H J. S. | Lloyd-George, Rt. Hon. David | Toulmin, George |
| Crosfield, A. H. | Lupton, Arnold | Trevelyan, Charles Philips |
| Crossley, William J. | Lyell, Charles Henry | Ure, Rt. Hon. Alexander |
| Dalziel, Sir James Henry | Macdonald, J. R. (Leicester) | Verney, F. W. |
| Davies, Sir W. Howell (Bristol, S.) | Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J. | Villiers, Ernest Amherst |
| Dewar, Arthur (Edinburgh, S.) | M'Kenna, Rt. Hon. Reginald | Ward, W. Dudley (Southampton) |
| Dickinson, W. H. (St. Pancras, N.) | M'Laren, H. D. (Stafford, W.) | Wardle, George J. |
| Dickson-Poynder, Sir John P. | M'Micking,- Major G. | Warner, Thomas Courtenay T. |
| Duncan, C. (Barrow-in-Furness) | Maddison, Frederick | Wason, Rt. Hon. E. (Clackmannan) |
| Dunn, A. Edward (Camborne) | Markham, Arthur Basil | Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney) |
| Dunne, Major E. Martin (Walsall) | Micklem, Nathaniel | Wedgwood, Josiah C. |
| Edwards, Sir Francis (Radnor) | Middlebrook, William | White, J. Dundas (Dumbartonshire) |
| Elibank, Master of | Mond, A. | White, Sir Luke (York, E.R.) |
| Essex, R. W. | Worrell, Philip | Whitley, John Henry (Halifax) |
| Esslemont, George Birnie | Newnes, F. (Notts, Bassetlaw) | Wiles, Thomas |
| Evans, Sir S. T. | Nicholls, George | Williamson, Sir A. |
| Everett, R. Lacey | Norman, Sir Henry | Wilson, Hon. G. G. (Hull, W.) |
| Falconer, J. | Norton, Captain Cecil William | Wilson, P. W. (St. Pancras, S.) |
| Fenwick, Charles | Parker, James (Halifax) | Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton) |
| Fiennes, Hon. Eustace | Pearce, Robert (Staffs, Leek) | Winfrey, R. |
| Fuller, John Michael F. | Pickersgill, Edward Hare | Wood, T. M'Kinnon |
| Gibb, James (Harrow) | Pointer, J. | Yoxall, Sir James Henry |
| Gill, A. H. | Ponsonby, Arthur A. W. H. | |
| Giadstone, Rt. Hon. Herbert John | Price, Sir Robert J. (Norfolk, E.) | TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—Mr. Joseph Pease and Mr. Herbert Lewis. |
| Glover, Thomas | Priestley, Arthur (Grantham) | |
| Goddard, Sir Daniel Ford | Radford, G. H. | |
| NOES. | ||
| Arkwright, John Stanhope | Beach, Hon. Michael Hugh Hicks | Bull, Sir William James |
| Baldwin, Stanley | Berkett, Hon. Gervase | Campbell, Rt. Hon. J. H. M. |
| Banner, John S. Harmood- | Bignold, Sir Arthur | Carlile, E. Hildred |
| Barrie, H. T (Londonderry, N.) | Bridgeman, W. Clive | Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor) |
| Chamberlain, Rt. Hon. J. A. (Worc'r.) | Hunt, Rowland | Renwick, George |
| Clive, Percy Archer | Joynson-Hicks, William | Rutherford, W. W. (Liverpool) |
| Clyde, J. Avon | Kerry, Earl of | Salter, Arthur Clavell |
| Coates, Major E. F. (Lewisham) | Gretton, John | Scott, Sir S. (Marylebone, W.) |
| Cochrane, Hon. Thomas H. A. E. | Guinness, Hon. R. (Haggerston) | Stanier, Beville |
| Craig, Charles Curtis (Antrim, S.) | Lane-Fox, G. R. | Starkey, John R. |
| Craig, Captain James (Down, E.) | Law, Andrew Bonar (Dulwich) | Staveley-Hill, Henry (Staffordshire) |
| Craik, Sir Henry | Lockwood, Rt. Hon. Lt.-Col. A. R. | Talbot, Lord E. (Chichester) |
| Dalrymple, Viscount | Long, Rt. Hon. Walter (Dublin, S.) | Walker, Col. W. H. (Lancashire) |
| Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers- | Lonsdale, John Brownlee | Walrond, Hon. Lionel |
| Faber, George Denison (York) | MacCaw, William J. MacGeagh | Warde, Col. C. E. (Kent, Mid.) |
| Fell, Arthur | M'Calmont, Colonel James | Williams, Col. R. (Dorset, W.) |
| Forster, Henry William | Meysey-Thompson, E. C. | Wilson, A. Stanley (York, E.R.) |
| Fester, P. S. | Moore, William | Winterton, Earl |
| Guinness, Hon. W. E. (B'y St. Edm'ds) | Morpeth, Viscount | Wortley, Rt. Hon. C. B. Stuart- |
| Hamilton, Marquess of | Morrison-Bell, Captain | Wyndham, Rt. Hon. George |
| Harris, Frederick Leverton | Newdegate, F. A. | Younger, George |
| Harrison-Broadley, H. B. | Nicholson, Wm. G. (Petersfield) | |
| Hay, Hon. Claude George | Oddy, John James | TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Sir |
| Helmsley, Viscount | Peel, Hon. W. R. W. | Alexander Acland-Hood and Viscount |
| Hill, Sir Clement | Pretyman, E. G. | Valentia. |
| Hope, James Fitzalan (Sheffield) | Ratcliff, Major R. F. |
§ Question put accordingly, "That the words of the clause to the word 'land' [at the end of section (1)] stand part of the clause."
558§ The Committee divided: Ayes, 164; Noes, 73.
559| Division No. 223.] | AYES. | [3.15 a.m. |
| Acland, Francis Dyke | Gill, A. H. | Newnes, F. (Notts, Bassetlaw) |
| Agar-Robartes, Hon. T. C. R. | Gladstone, Rt. Hon. Herbert John | Nicholls, George |
| Agnew, George William | Glover, Thomas | Norman, Sir Henry |
| Ainsworth, John Stirling | Goddard, Sir Daniel Ford | Norton, Captain Cecil William |
| Allen, A. Acland (Christchurch) | Gooch, George Peabody (Bath) | O'Brien, K. (Tipperary, Mid) |
| Allen, Charles P. (Stroud) | Gulland, John W. | Parker, James (Halifax) |
| Armitage, R. | Haldane, Rt. Hon. Richard B. | Pearce, Robert (Staffs, Leek) |
| Balfour, Robert (Lanark) | Harcourt, Rt. Hon. L. (Rossendale) | Pickersgill, Edward Hare |
| Baring, Godfrey (Isle of Wight) | Harcourt, Robert V. (Montrose) | Pointer, J. |
| Barlow, Percy (Bedford) | Hardy, George A. (Suffolk) | Ponsonby, Arthur A. W. H. |
| Barry, Redmond J. (Tyrone, N.) | Harmsworth, Cecil B. (Worcester) | Price, Sir Robert J. (Norfolk, E.) |
| Boulton, A. C. F. | Harvey, A. G. C. (Rochdale) | Priestley, Arthur (Grantham) |
| Bowerman, C. W. | Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth) | Radford, G. H. |
| Bramsdon, Sir T. A. | Haworth, Arthur A. | Rainy, A. Rolland |
| Branch, James | Hedges, A. Paget | Raphael, Herbert H. |
| Brocklehurst, W. B. | Helme, Norval Watson | Richardson, A. |
| Brooke, Stopford | Henry, Charles S. | Ridsdale, E. A. |
| Brunner, J. F. L. (Lancs., Leigh) | Herbert, Col. Sir Ivor (Mon., S ) | Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln) |
| Bryce, J. Annan | Higham, John Sharp | Roberts, G. H. (Norwich) |
| Buxton, Rt. Hon. Sydney Charles | Hobart, Sir Robert | Robertson, Sir G. Scott (Bradford) |
| Byles, William Pollard | Hobhouse, Rt. Hon. Charles E. H. | Robertson, J. M. (Tyneside) |
| Carr-Gomm, H, W. | Hogan, Michael | Robinson, S. |
| Cherry, Rt. Hon. R. R. | Horniman, Emslie John | Robson, Sir William Snowdon |
| Clough, William | Howard, -Hon. Geoffrey | Roch, Walter F. (Pembroke) |
| Collins, Sir Wm. J. (St. Pancras, w.) | Idris, T. H. W. | Rogers, F. E. Newman |
| Compton-Rickett, Sir J. | Illingworth, Percy H. | Rose, Sir Charles Day |
| Cooper, G. J. | Jenkins, J. | Rowlands, J. |
| Corbett, C. H. (Sussex, E. Grinstead) | Johnson, John (Gateshead) | Rutherford, V. H. (Brentford) |
| Cornwall, Sir Edwin A. | Jones, Leif (Appleby) | Samuel, S. M. (Whitechapel) |
| Cotton, Sir H. J. S. | Jones, William (Carnarvonshire) | Seely, Colonel |
| Crosfield, A. H. | Kelley, George D. | Shaw, Sir Charles E. (Stafford) |
| Crossley, William J. | Lamont, Norman | Silcock, Thomas Ball |
| Dalziel, Sir James Henry | Layland-Barrett, Sir Francis | Simon, John Allsebrook |
| Davies, Sir W. Howell (Bristol, S.) | Lehmann, R. C. | Spicer, Sir Albert |
| Dewar, Arthur (Edinburgh, S.) | Levy, Sir Maurice | Stanley, Hon. A. Lyulph (Cheshire) |
| Dickinson, W. H. (St. Pancras, N.) | Lloyd-George, Rt. Hon. David | Stracey, Sir Edward |
| Duncan, C. (Barrow-in-Furness) | Lundon, T. | Summerbell, T. |
| Dunn, A. Edward (Camborne) | Lupton, Arnold | Taylor, John W. (Durham) |
| Dunne, Major E. Martin (Walsall) | Lyell, Charles Henry | Tennant, H. J. (Berwickshire) |
| Edwards, Sir Francis (Radnor) | Macdonald, J. R. (Leicester) | Thomas, Abel (Carmarthen, E.) |
| Elibank, Master of | Macnamara, Dr. Thomas J. | Thompson, J. W. H. (Somerset, F) |
| Essex, R. W. | MacVeagh, Jeremiah (Down, S.) | Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton) |
| Esslemont, George Birnie | McKenna, Rt. Hon. Reginald | Tomkinson, James |
| Evans, Sir S. T. | M'Laren, H. D. (Stafford, W.) | Toulmin, George |
| Everett, R. Lacey | M'Micking, Major G. | Trevelyan, Charles Philips |
| Falconer, James | Maddison, Frederick | Ure, Rt. Hon. Alexander |
| Fenwick, Charles | Markham, Arthur Basil | Verney, F. W. |
| Fiennes, Hon. Eustaoe | Micklem, Nathaniel | Villiers, Ernest Amherst |
| Fuller, John Michael F. | Middlebrook, William | Ward, W. Dudley (Southampton) |
| Gibb, James (Harrow) | Morrell, Philip | Wardle, George J. |
| Warner, Thomas Courtenay T. | White, Sir Luke (York, E.R.) | Wilton, W. T. (Westhoughton) |
| Wason, Rt. Hon. E. (Clackmannan) | Whitley, John Henry (Halifax) | Winfrey, R. |
| Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney) | Wiles, Thomas | Wood, T. M'Kinnon |
| Wedgwood, Josiah C. | Williamson, Sir A. | |
| White, Sir George (Norfolk) | Wilson, Hon. G. G. (Hull, W.) | TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—Mr. Joseph Pease and Mr. Herbert Lewis. |
| White, J. Dundas (Dumbartonshire) | Wilson, P. W. (St. Pancras, S.) | |
| NOES. | ||
| Acland-Hood, Rt. Hon. Sir Alex. F. | Gretton, John | Nicholson, Wm. G. (Petersfield) |
| Arkwright, John Stanhope | Guinness, Hon. R. (Haggerston) | Oddy, John James |
| Baldwin, Stanley | Guinness, Hon. W. E. (B'y St. Edm'ds) | Peel, Hon. W. R. W. |
| Banner, John S. Harmood- | Hamilton, Marquess of | Pretyman, E. G. |
| Barrie, H. T. (Londonderry, N.) | Harris, Frederick Leverton | Ratcliffe, Major R. F. |
| Beach, Hon. Michael Hugh Hicks | Harrison-Broadley, H. B. | Renwick, George |
| Beckett, Hon. Gervase | Hay, Hon. Claude George | Rutherford, W. W. (Liverpool) |
| Bignold, Sir Arthur | Helmsley, Viscount | Salter, Arthur Clavell |
| Bridgeman, W. Clive | Hill, Sir Clement | Scott, Sir S. (Marylebone, W.) |
| Bull, Sir William James | Hope, James Fitzalan (Sheffield) | Stanier, Beville |
| Campbell, Rt. Hon. J. H. M. | Hunt, Rowland | Starkey, John R. |
| Carlile, E. Hildred | Joynson-Hicks, William | Staveley-Hill, Henry (Staffordshire) |
| Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor) | Kerry, Earl of | Valentia, Viscount |
| Chamberlain, Rt. Hon. J. A. (Worc'r.) | Lane-Fox, G. R. | Walker, Col. W. H. (Lancashire) |
| Clive, Percy Archer | Law, Andrew Bonar (Dulwich) | Walrond, Hon. Lionel |
| Clyde, J. Avon | Lockwood, Rt. Hon. Lt.-Col. A. R. | Warde, Col. C. E. (Kent, Mid) |
| Coates, Major E. F. (Lewisham) | Long, Rt. Hon. Walter (Dublin, S.) | Williams, Col. R. (Dorset, W.) |
| Cochrane, Hon. Thomas H. A. E, | Lonsdale, John Brownlee | Wilson, A. Stanley (York, E.R.) |
| Craig, Charles Curtis (Antrim, S.) | MacCaw, William J. MacGeagh | Winterton, Earl |
| Craig, Captain James (Down, E.) | M'Calmont, Col. James | Wortley, Rt. Hon. C. B. Stuart. |
| Craik, Sir Henry | Meysey-Thompson, E. C. | Wyndham, Rt. Hon. George |
| Dalrymple, Viscount | Moore, William | Younger, George |
| Douglas, Rt. Hon. A. Akers- | Morpeth, Viscount | |
| Faber, George Denison (York) | Morrison-Bell, Captain | TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Mr. Forster and Lord Edmund Talbot. |
| Fell, Arthur | Newdegate, F. A. | |
| Foster, P. S. |
Question put, and agreed to.
§ Mr. RIDSDALE moved, "That the Chairman do report Progress, and ask leave to sit again."
Captain CRAIGI would like to elicit, if possible, from the Chancellor of the Exchequer what he intends to do in regard to the Budget after to-night. It seems extraordinary that as soon as we are settled down to the Budget the Government should move to report Progress at half-past three o'clock. [HON. MEMBERS: "They did not."] The Chancellor of the Exchequer, at all events, turned round and assented at once to the Motion. I shall resist the Motion, and for one reason, that the Prime Minister has not been in the House on one of these occasions to give us the benefit of his views on the subject.
§ Mr. RIDSDALEI beg to withdraw the Motion.
§ Mr. H. W. FORSTERIs the hon. Gentleman in order in withdrawing the Motion?
Captain CRAIGWe are practically being bullied on this side. We ought to be able to say whether we shall continue the business or not, and I hold that we ought to continue. The question is whether the discussion on the Budget is going to last up to Christmas or after, or whether we are to go right through and 560 finish with this peculiar piece of legislation. We have heard that fortnightly rest-cures have been arranged by the Government's supporters so as to overwhelm the minority on this side. These elaborate precautions have been made by hon. Gentlemen opposite, who return after a very pleasant week-end at the seaside, to meet us who are fatigued, and I do think it is time that this farce came to an end. If the Government are sincere about then-Budget they will push forward and get rid of it. If they are not sincere, they will continue night after night to get a few lines closured. I recommend the Chancellor of the Exchequer to take the bull by the horns and go forward with the Budget.
§ Mr. LLOYD-GEORGEThis is rather unexpected opposition to a Motion which I understood was arranged, or at least, an intimation was conveyed to the Opposition that we should not proceed further when we reached the Amendment of the hon. Member for Brighton. Amongst others who were made acquainted with this suggestion was the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Worcestershire (Mr. Austen Chamberlain). However, if it is the general desire that we should go on, I am prepared to do so, although I understood there was a general desire that we should go no further to-night.
§ Mr. WALTER LONGI only desire to know whether there has been any arrangement, because in the ordinary way I was certainly not aware of it.
§ Mr. LLOYD-GEORGEI do not wish to use the word "arrangement."
§ Mr. WALTER LONGOf course it is entirely a question for the Government whether they should put aside a Motion made, I imagine, quite seriously by the hon. Member for Brighton, and most certainly made with the full knowledge of the Treasury Bench. Therefore I cannot help commenting upon the extraordinary position in which we are placed. My hon. Friend, who has been kept up to an extraordinary hour to discuss this Motion, suggests that the Government should go on, and thereupon the Government immediately brush aside the Motion of the hon. Member for Brighton (Mr. Ridsdale), who is so anxious that he rises to withdraw it in the midst of my hon. Friend's speech. Surely the Government have made up their minds whether to adjourn now or go on. [MINISTERIAL cries of "Go on."] That was not the Government's Motion. The Motion made, with the approval of the Government, was that the Debate should be adjourned. If they intend to abandon their proposal at the request of my hon. Friend I do not complain, but it is another matter if the right hon. Gentleman falls in with it for the purpose of scoring over his political opponents. If practically at the beginning of these troublesome, anxious, and grave Debates the Government are going to lay down the precedent of not controlling the Debate, but are going to leave the whole conduct of this serious business in the hands of those who have not that responsibility which should properly rest with the Government, then they will be taking a course which I think they will have grave cause to regret.
§ Mr. LLOYD-GEORGEI do not think the right hon. Gentleman has shown his usual fairness in the observations he has made. I intimated to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Worcestershire (Mr. Austen Chamberlain) that we did not propose to proceed, and immediately afterwards we assented to a Motion to report Progress, having given my word to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Worcestershire that we would do so. I must say I was somewhat surprised to find that it was resisted by the Opposition.
§ Mr. WALTER LONGI only want to know on what the right hon. Gentleman rests his charge against me of unfairness. If he had adhered to the arrangement made with my right hon. Friend, I should have had nothing to say.
§ Mr. LLOYD-GEORGEI do adhere to it; and if the Opposition persist in resisting the Motion to report Progress, it is perfectly clear that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Worcester did not represent the Opposition when he tacitly assented to that course, and I must have misundertood the position. If the Opposition are really desirous of going on, and prefer to do so, we are quite willing to meet their convenience in the matter. I am not trying to get out of any arrangement, and the right hon. Gentleman must not think I am trying to take advantage of a rather absurd and futile Division. I still adhere to the arrangement, and if that is the view of the responsible Leaders of the Opposition, I shall support the Motion if it goes to a Division.
§ Mr. WALTER LONGThe right hon. Gentleman suggested that there was something unfair in my attitude. I do not think that charge can be substantiated. All I have to say is, that, if any arrangement were made between the Chancellor of the Exchequer and my right hon. Friend, the Member for Worcester, as representing the Opposition, to that arrangement I absolutely adhere in the fullest detail. What I said was that I was unaware that any communication was made to him or that any such arrangement was arrived at. I naturally asked the question, and I do not think any charge of unfairness can properly be levied against me because I said that, if the Government accepted the withdrawal of a Motion made by one of their own supporters, they would be abandoning the position they had taken up.
§ Mr. MEYSEY-THOMPSONA charge has been made against my right hon. Friend, and I think I have a perfect right to make my protest. I was the first speaker, and I was ruled out of order; afterwards I was closured at a quarter past eight, and now we are kept up till a quarter to four and we are accused of delaying the Committee. You accused my right hon. Friend of unfairness, and I think I have an equal claim to protest.
§ Earl WINTERTONI do not desire to oppose the Motion which has been made by my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton 563 (Mr. Ridsdale). I accept entirely the explanation of the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but I do think, before we go away, we are entitled to protest against the attitude taken up by the Government this evening. There is a very strong feeling on this side of the House that we are not fairly treated in this matter by the right hon. Gentleman. At one o'clock in the morning the right hon. Gentleman insists on us taking what is admitted by both sides of the House to be an Amendment raising important questions of principle, moved not from this side of the House, but by an hon. Member on the other side of the House, who, I understand, is a supporter of the Budget and a Member of the Budget Committee. That is discussed for over an hour at an unreasonable time, and, the moment it has been hustled through, an hon. Gentleman opposite moved to report Progress. I do not think the right hon. Gentleman has really treated me fairly; and I hope, before we agree to this Motion, as I think all my hon. Friends on this side are prepared to do, we shall have some undertaking from the right hon. Gentleman that he will not on future occasions take important Amendments at one o'clock in the morning, and immediately afterwards encourage his hon. Friends behind him to move to report Progress. If we, and the House generally, are to be put to all the inconvenience of sitting up till three o'clock in the morning, we may just as well sit up till eight. If it is to be a question of relays and shifts and a contest in sheer physical endurance, let me inform the right hon. Gentleman he will find very soon that this House will adjourn not at three but at eleven or twelve in the morning. Some of his hon. Friends behind him seem prepared to challenge us to a contest in sheer physical endurance—are they prepared to carry the matter to its logical conclusion and discuss this Budget not on a Wednesday night, when there is Thursday which the right hon. Gentleman can spend in bed, but on Mondays and Tuesdays till eleven and twelve in the morning. ["Yes."] That is an important admission. We know now that the party which boasts of its intellectuality is not going to rely upon that intellectuality and their speeches, but upon sheer physical endurance and the support of their sleepy adherents in the Lobby. We protest in the strongest possible manner against the absence from these Debates of the Prime Minister.
§ Earl WINTERTONIs that grossly offensive remark in order?
§ The CHAIRMANReally this kind of behaviour must not go on. The observation is a most improper one.
§ Mr. CLAUDE HAYDo I understand you to rule the hon. Member's observation cut of order, and if so, should he not withdraw it?
§ The CHAIRMANI hope the hon. Member will see the propriety of withdrawing it.
§ Mr. BYLESI thought it was entirely a classic remark in this House. If it is offensive to hon. Gentleman opposite I will use it outside.
§ Earl WINTERTONI have no desire to make any further reference to the interruption of the hon. Member, for I feel sure that he, like most hon. Gentlemen opposite, is not at this hour of the morning in a clear state of mind as to what is going on around him. In conclusion, I say that we are entitled to demand that in the future, if we are kept up till this hour, the Prime Minister should be present. Anyone who was a Member of the last Parliament will remember that time after time, when the House sat after midnight, Motions to report Progress were made.
§ Sir J. DALZIELIs it in order on a Motion to report Progress to give a general lecture on the conduct of the Opposition on previous occasions and what it might be in the future?
§ The CHAIRMANThe noble Lord is not out of order.
§ Earl WINTERTONI hope that in the future the right hon. Gentleman will not ask us to adopt the same methods as he has to-night. While I am not prepared to vote against the Motion, I am bound to protest against the utterly unconstitutional procedure adopted by the Government to-night, which, if persisted in, will before these Debates come to an end lead to such scenes as the right hon. Gentleman never dreamed of even in his most stormy days of Opposition.
§ Sir J. DALZIELI hope it may be possible for the constituencies outside to take note of the conduct of the Opposition during the present sitting. The 565 Committee will remember that we had a Debate of something like two hours on an Amendment from the Opposition side of the House, but when the time came for taking a Division they deliberately refused to make any challenge, and said that they would raise the whole question again on a future occasion. There was a subsequent Amendment moved by the hon. Baronet below the Gangway (Sir J. Dick-son-Poynder), and when a Division was taken only 34 Members voted for it.
§ Sir J. DALZIELI submit we have had a great and important object lesson tonight on the opposition to this Bill. After the two Amendments were disposed of the suggestion was made from the other side that the Chancellor of the Exchequer was keeping the Committee sitting too long. Having gone on with another Amendment, the Opposition now say we ought to sit longer still. That is bringing Debates in this House to an absolute farce. It is obvious that the Opposition have no policy whatever except to continue criticising and delaying the passing of this Budget. I hope the Chancellor of the Exchequer will take particular note of what has occurred to-night, and as a humble private Member I hope he will go on boldly with this Bill.
§ Mr. W. W. RUTHERFORDi wish to say one word in fairness to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I saw the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Worcestershire (Mr. A. Chamberlain) beckon to the Chancellor of the Exchequer as we were going to the Division, and, at the invitation of my right hon. Friend, the Chancellor was good enough to say that, immediately after that Division, Progress would be reported. Upon the faith of that, my right hon. Friend and a good many Members on both sides went home. In these circumstances there was a distinct understanding, and in fairness to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, I think I ought to mention it.
§ Viscount HELMSLEYIt is pretty obvious to the Committee that our object in resisting the Motion to report Progress is not to prevent discussion on the Finance Bill, but to enter a protest against the way in which the Debate has been conducted by the Government. It does not lie with the last speaker, who lectured us, to blame us if we take a leaf out of his book.
§ Sir J. DALZIELWe never complained that the Government rose too early in the last Parliament.
§ Viscount HELMSLEYIt is only natural that we should object when the Government keep us several hours beyond the normal hour for rising, discussing important points which most Members considered would have been better postponed till another day. Some felt very strongly in previous Parliaments—although I was not here—the constant remarks made by hon. Members opposite about the absence of the Prime Minister; but hon. Members opposite assumed an air of superior virtue when we ventured to call attention to the fact that the Prime Minister and Leader of the House has not been present more during the discussions on such an important measure as the Finance Bill. He has allowed this Debate to go on for five days, and has not said a word in regard to it. He and right hon. Gentlemen opposite, I think, will find that the opposition to this measure will be of a serious and determined character, and that we do not mean to be shouted down or prevented from opposing this Bill.
§ Mr. F. MADDISONI really think the source of the whole mischief is to be found in the peculiar method of doing business on the Front Opposition Bench. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has told us that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Worcestershire (Mr, A. Chamberlain) came to a certain arrangement. Now it appears that the right hon. Gentleman for South Dublin (Mr. Walter Long) knew nothing about it. There has been a good deal of twitting going on about the absence of the Prime Minister, but surely if the Opposition leaders had told each other what arrangements had been made all this bother would have been saved. The right hon. Gentleman for South Dublin heard with amazement—and I can sympathise a good deal with him—from the Chancellor of the Exchequer that a certain arrangement had been come to. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, it seems, did not want to go so far as to call it an "arrangement"; but it was something so binding on the right hon. Gentleman of the Front Opposition Bench that he at once agreed to it as an arrangement, and had it been known to his colleagues this mischief would have been saved. Therefore, before right hon. Gentlemen opposite allow their followers to make all sorts of rude remarks——
§ Mr. E. A. RIDSDALE rose in his place and claimed to move "That the Question be now put," but the Chairman withheld his assent, and declined then to put that Question. Debate resumed.
§ Mr. MADDISONI was going to say that hon. Members opposite should first of all be sure who is their leader, and then when they have done so follow him.
§ Mr. STANLEY WILSONOne hon. Member said he hoped the people opposite would take notice of the opposition. I trust the people opposite will take notice of the way in which the Prime Minister has treated this House.
§ The CHAIRMANOrder, order. This is merely tedious repetition.
§ Mr. STANLEY WILSONAfter all, the Prime Minister is the Leader of the House, and I cannot help thinking there are—
§ The CHAIRMANcalled the attention of the Committee to the tedious repetition on the part of the hon. Member for the Holderness Division, East Biding of Yorkshire, and directed him to discontinue his speech.
§ Committee report Progress; to sit again upon Monday next.
§ And it being after half-past Eleven of the clock on Wednesday evening, Mr. Deputy Speaker adjourned the House without Question put, in pursuance of the Standing Order.
§ Adjourned at Eight minutes after Four o'clock a.m. [Thursday. 1st July.]