§ "Where an estate, in respect of which Estate Duty is payable on the death of a person dying on or after the thirtieth day of April, nineteen hundred and nine, comprises land on which timber, trees, wood, or underwood are growing, the value of such timber, trees, wood, or underwood shall not be taken into account in estimating the principal value of the estate or the rate of Estate Duty, and Estate Duty shall not be payable thereon, but shall, at the rate due to the principal value of the estate be payable on the net moneys (if any) after deducting all necessary outgoings since the death of the deceased, which may from time to time be received from the sale of timber, trees, or wood when felled during the period which may elapse until the land, on the death of some other person, again becomes liable or would but for this Sub-section have become liable to Estate Duty, and the owners or trustees of such land shall account for and pay the same accordingly as and when such moneys are received, with interest at the rate of three per centum per annum from the date when such moneys are received.
§ "This Section shall take effect in substitution for Sub-section five of Section sixty-one of the Finance (1909–10) Act, 1910."
2226§ This Clause deals with the valuation of timber for Death Duties. We have had some debates on this matter on previous occasions. The Clause divides itself into two parts. The first part deals with the particular case of hardship of persons who died between 30th April, 1909, and the date of the passing of the Finance Act. The estates of those persons became liable to the new scale of duty, and, owing to the drafting of the Act, they were liable to pay duty at once, instead of having the benefit of the provision of the Act, which deferred payment of the duty until the timber was sold. Therefore they were obviously put in an unintended position of great hardship, and this Clause would have the effect of removing that hardship and putting them in the same position as the estates of persons who died since the passing of the Act. It gives no special favour to anybody. It merely assimilates the position for that period to the position now. I understand the Chancellor of the Exchequer is willing to accept that part of the Clause, and that he has words which will carry the proposal into effect. There may be some technical difficulty in inserting the words of my Clause, but I will leave to the Government to propose words to be inserted in place of those in the Clause which I move. I am sure that no hon. Member below the Gangway would for a moment desire that persons who died in that particular twelve months should be subjected to a special disability not intended to be inflicted by the Act itself, but merely by a mischance in the matter of drafting.
2227§ I come to the main point of the Clause which deals with the method of the valuation of timber for Death Duties. It is enacted by the Act that timber is to be valued for Death Duties separately from the land, and that the value of the timber is to be added to the value of the land by the process of aggregation, and become with the land the total value of the estate. But so far as regards the portion of the total value which is the value of the timber, payment upon it is deferred until the timber is actually sold. When the timber is sold the duty is to be paid at the same rate as upon the whole estate, and that payment is not only upon the value of the timber at the time of the death, but upon the increased value which the timber has obtained by growth since the death took place. In a previous Debate on this question the Chancellor of the Exchequer stated that the object of the Amendment was to give some relief from the previous state of things. I think when the Secretary to the Treasury gives his mind to this question he will see that there is really no relief. On the contrary, the position which existed before the Act as to timber is aggravated. Timber is under the law agricultural property. I think nobody will contradict that. Timber before came within the twenty-five years' limit, and therefore where an estate was up to the twenty-five years' limit there was no separate valuation of timber at all. Where an estate did not come up to the twenty-five years' limit, there was a valuation of timber, and timber was aggregated with the rest of the estate. I believe it was not a true timber valuation. It was taken on a percentage of the annual value on a sale of the wood. That is a matter that can be ascertained. I have no accurate knowledge on that point, but I am inclined to think that that was the method adopted.
§ What happens now is that the valuation for timber is taken on the basis—I think I am quite accurate, but the right hon. Gentleman will correct me if I am wrong—which obtains in some parts of the country on purchasing. Supposing a property is for sale a certain price is fixed for the property as a whole, and timber is, in addition, to be taken at a valuation. That is the method of sale, and though not very common, it is one which is well known, and certainly does occur in practice. But in that method the valuation of timber is really valued twice, because, first of all, the land is not valued as though denuded. That is a point of some importance, 2228 because the Chancellor of the Exchequer was apparently under the impression that if an Amendment of this character were accepted, it would mean that the land was to be valued as though denuded of timber. That is not the intention of the Amendment at all, and I do not think it would have that effect. Let us take the case of a residential property of some 500 acres in the Surrey hills which is nicely timbered. That property has a residential value of £60 or £70 an acre. Some of it has beautiful ornamental timber, and if you were to divest the property of the timber and give the value of the property as bare land, you would reduce the value to £30 an acre. I do not make any such suggestion. When this matter was debated recently the Chancellor of the Exchequer appeared to be under the impression that the Amendment would involve the taking of the value of the land as bare land after stripping it of the timber. I do not desire that. What the Clause is intended to enact, and what I believe it would enact, is that you should merely take the value of the land as it would sell in the market as it stands, including the value of the timber on it as a residential property. The valuation would include the amenity value of the timber. This is a very difficult matter I know, but I think I am right in stating that the value of the timber referred to in the Act, and in the new Clause, is quite clearly the timber value pure and simple. Trees have two values—the timber value and the amenity value, and what is dealt with in the Clause is the timber value and not the amenity value at all. I am willing that words should be inserted so that the land should be valued as the value in the open market, not taking into account the special timber value, but taking the property as it stands with the trees upon it. I should be the last to suggest that the owner of that land should be able to ask that the value of it should be the value as a cleared site with the value of the timber removed from it. I think we have to treat timber clearly as timber value, and I claim the sympathy of the whole House in the demand that those who plant timber should have equal treatment with those who buy pictures and things which have an artistic or scientific interest. Men sometimes put their money in china, pictures, old furniture, or anything which has a scientific, artistic, or historic interest. We have a Clause in this very Finance Bill which enormously improves the position of those people. This Bill provides that the word "artistic" is to be read into the Clause, and things 2229 with artistic value of which any person dies possessed, whether settled or not settled, are as regards Succession and Estate Duties to be exempt. They are not aggregated as estate in any shape or form.
§ Say there are two persons of equal wealth, each worth £100,000. One collects artistic objects, pictures, china, and handsome furniture, which has an artistic value, and has these up to £20,000. He dies, and his estate is valued, minus all those objects of art. Not one single penny of that is taken into account, and his estate is only valued at £80,000, and duty would be paid only on that amount. But if at a subsequent date any of those objects are sold by his successor, duty would then be paid on their value, at the rate due to £80,000. All that I ask is that the timber value of standing trees should be treated on exactly the same basis. Which is the greater value to the nation, ornamental timber standing in the hedges, parks, or different parts of the country, or pictures and objects of artistic merit which are shut up in houses? To my mind there is no comparison. The nation derives more enjoyment from ornamental timber throughout the country than from objects of artistic merit. What would be the effect on our climate if, following this Act, the timber was cut down? I am quite sure that hon. Gentlemen do not realise what the effect of the present Clause as it stands is. I cannot believe that if the subject were really understood by the House they would refuse to make this Amendment.
§ The second case is the man with £100,000 who, instead of putting £20,000 into pictures, puts it into plantations and employs labour to do it. Hon. Gentlemen opposite will admit that one of the subjects which they are most fond of referring to on platforms in the country is an increase of afforestation and State schemes have been proposed with this object. Surely it is more economical and wiser for the State to encourage those who are in a position to carry out such afforestation work upon their estates, at considerable trouble and sacrifice of revenue, than to spend enormous sums planting large areas, many of them very unsuitable for afforestation. The same should apply, suppose that this owner of land who dies and leaves £20,000 worth of timber value on his estate, as applies in the case of objects of artistic merit, and if his successor cuts down a tree and sells it let him pay the duty just the same as the 2230 man who sells the picture. But I say to take that £20,000 and aggregate that with the remainder of the property and increase the whole rate 1 per cent. on the remainder of the property because the man has planted trees when you do not increase a farthing on the man who buys pictures is grossly unfair as between those two classes. I do not ask for any favour for the owners of land, but purely on national grounds I appeal to hon. Members in all parts of the House. If a man has got pictures and shuts the door on them he can prevent other people from enjoying them, but if he has got trees he cannot prevent other people from enjoying them. No man can plant a tree and allow it to grow without benefiting others as well as himself. On that ground, which is really unanswerable, I ask that the Amendment should be accepted. The effect is simply to give exactly the same treatment to the planters of timber as is now given to the owners of pictures and objects of artistic merit. I should be inclined to ask on national grounds for better treatment, but I do not ask for better treatment. I only ask for equal treatment, and I feel perfectly certain that the right hon. Gentleman cannot in fairness, on national grounds, refuse this concession.
MARQUESS of TULLIBARDINEI desire to support the Clause moved by my hon. Friend. Timber, or rather the want of timber, is a subject more connected with rural depopulation than almost anything else in my part of the country. I do not want to make a personal attack upon the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but the right hon. Gentleman has helped to put down the planting of timber, and I only hope he will help it up again. He has expressed a great deal of sympathy with and taken more interest in the question than I think any other Chancellor of the Exchequer. At the same time, quite unconsciously—I do not think he wished to do it—he has done more harm to timber plantation by the last Budget than was ever done before. The hon. Gentleman who has last spoken comes from a wealthy part of the country where they can afford possibly to have ornamental timber, and he was thinking of the artistic side of the case. But I come from Scotland, where we plant absolutely from the commercial point of view, which I think is very much more important when considering the employment that will be given to the country. In my part of the country, 2231 if you want commercial timber, it has got to be grown in very big lots, and therefore as a rule on biggish estates. Estates are very much bigger in Scotland because the land is very much poorer, and an estate worth £5,000 a year there would be perhaps ten times the size of an estate worth £5,000 a year here. The land is very much poorer, and almost the only or the best use that it can be put to, if the altitude and other things are correct, is growing timber. On these estates after the risings of 1745 and towards the end of the eighteenth century, landlords were beginning to realise modern economic ideas as to their duty to the people on these estates. The result was that they borrowed very large sums of money and spent them in improving their estates and in many cases planting.
Probably when it amounted to £2,000 or £3,000 they would not only be able to pay off the debt, but have very much more valuable properties. Things moved tremendously in the seventies, and the landlords thought these things were going to continue. They may have been stupid, possibly, in not having a sinking fund instead of putting the money back into the land and improving their estate. There is no question of riotous living; the money was put back during the boom, and, instead of its continuing, there was a slump, and at the present moment owners of estates find a very great difficulty in paying off mortgages and paying the duties on their estates. Every single tax that comes on such estates means that there is greater difficulty in developing them or in maintaining the present state of development, of which planting is one of the principal features. Take two estates of absolutely the same value, one with a little bit of agricultural land, and little bit of moorland behind. The hon. Member for New-castle-under-Lyme (Mr. Wedgwood) spoke of screwing up the estates, but the very estates that are pushed up in value are being hammered under this Clause of the Finance Bill. The value of the two estates which I take for the sake of illustration, is, say, £60,000 each. In each case the 7 per cent. Death Duty would amount to £4,200. One landlord may have possibly established small holdings on part of his estate. In the case of the second estate, it may be divided into two or three big farms, or a deer forest. I mention deer forests because deer forests are not very popular among hon. Members opposite.
2232 The result of that is that an injustice is done in the case of the first estate when the owner dies, and the estate is valued for Death Duties. The Chancellor of the Exchequer or his myrmidions in my part of the world take the whole of the timber, and put it on one side to value it. Having valued it separately, they put it back to the estate, and the two aggregated make a higher value. It would be quite easy to have timber worth £200,000, and that would immediately bring the simple value of the estate to £260,000 under the aggregation, although the owner might never possibly enjoy the result of that value. He would pay 11 per cent. on that total, making £28,600 instead of £4,200. Taking the timber away from the aggregation the actual land itself, in the case of the good landlord, would be liable to £6,200, while the estate of the bad landlord would remain at £4,200. That is where the real hardship comes in. By this system of aggregation the agricultural industry is going to be absolutely throttled in that part of the country. I wish to ask one or two questions in respect of this Clause. If you cut the whole of your timber, that is well and good; you have got £200,000 worth on which I have to pay duty. That is not the point I am grumbling about. I do not quite understand whether we pay simply on the value of the timber as it originally was. Supposing instead of £200,000 worth of timber, I cut during lifetime £90,000 worth. That means, of course, that I have enjoyed £90,000, plus the £60,000, making altogether £150,000. You make me pay 11 per cent. on the profits and also the 7 per cent. on the value it had originally, £150,000. You admit that you only want me to pay on the timber that I have enjoyed, and I think you ought to let my successor off the percentage on the £150,000. That would be perfectly fair to both parties. The next injustice is this: The Financial Secretary to the Treasury just now was talking of the absurdity of the idea of trying to come to any conclusion as to what would be the value of the land ten, twenty, thirty, or forty years hence. What will you do about timber? Timber may have gone up in value. I am sure it is perfectly possible. Surely you do not mean us to pay on the value of timber when it is cut. It would be so monstrously unjust that I do not think the Chancellor of the Exchequer entertains the idea.
Certainly, I have to pay on the value of the timber, £200,000. Do you mean to say when I cut that timber twenty years after, 2233 when it happens to have gone up in value during my lifetime, that you are going to add to the value of that timber as it was when I succeeded. What happens if I cut a piece of that timber? Supposing I take block B, worth £22,000, are you going to make me pay the whole of my Death Duties on the profits of that block which has been out, or are you going to make me pay any proportion that is due on that block at its value when I succeed? Really, I ought only to pay a very small amount on it, and you are surely not going to make me pay the Death Duties on the whole of my estate, or only a part of it. It could be read that way, but I do not think that is the spirit of the Clause. There is one other point. I wish to know from the right hon. Gentleman if he will tell me the answer to a third question I will put to him. Nothing fluctuates like the price of timber, and I do not see how on earth they can value it. It is very difficult from the timber point of view, though quite easy from the ornamental point of view. If you take the timber point of view, you may have a variety of circumstances sending up the price of wood—such as the Admiralty building "Dreadnoughts," and so on, which would affect the value of timber at the time. Or, you may have an earthquake, such as was experienced at San Francisco, which would put up the value of wood. The value of wood would be higher although a greater proportion of it would not be ready for the market. A slump might come later, and I should never be able to realise the amount put upon my timber. It is very difficult really to arrive at any proper valuation. Then again the valuation is entirely different in various parts of the country.
Just to show how difficult it is to value wood, I am going to give hon. Members the offers I have had for certain blocks of wood last year. Those were made by experts in the trade, wood merchants, and if they were so hopelessly out you may imagine how hopelessly out a valuer would be. I had five offers for one block, the highest being £2,800, and the lowest £2,120, or a difference of £700. That shows how very difficult it is. It all depends on whether the particular wood merchant has a market for the moment. The valuer who came to value might hear of the highest of those prices, and he might value accordingly. For the next lot the highest offer I received was £1,460 and the lowest £840. For the next the highest I received was £2,803, and the lowest, £2,150, and in quite a small little bit of 2234 wood that had got a bit damaged there was actually a limit of error of about 33 per cent., the highest offer being £145 10s., and the lowest £103, which shows how extraordinarily hard it is to value wood. My point is that it is a very difficult industry to carry on. We built up the industry with a great deal of trouble, and now, when we are just getting it right, the Chancellor of the Exchequer comes down with these enormously heavy duties. The industry was built up first of all upwards of a hundred years ago, when we knew nothing about it in this country, and we had to buy our experience. Since that we have had a number of gales, a great deal of it has been injured, and we have had fires and diseases. It does not give a good percentage on the money invested, and now, last but not least, we have the Chancellor of the Exchequer with his Death Duties, which will kill off the trade in my opinion.
We are carrying on the industry to a great extent from a patriotic point of view. We have been trying to get people on the land, but all that is going to be impossible if you are going to put on heavy burdens of this sort. The timber is being cut down before the succession, and that the money is being invested in something better somewhere else, and surely you do not want that to happen. If you give the slightest hint that you are going to help it you will see the money put back into the industry, and that will result in putting a great many people on the land. You may have afforestation which would be free of taxes and rent, and that would be another competitor against those who have to pay this tax. We have got to compete against virgin forests abroad in America, and if you are going to continue this aggregate system of Death Duties, you will absolutely destroy the industry. I do hope the Financial Secretary to the Treasury will convey our views to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and will do what he can to get the views of my hon. and gallant Friend accepted. I am quite well aware that the Financial Secretary probably himself cannot promise anything, and cannot keep a promise. I do not mean it in any sense save that it is impossible for him to give a promise. Last year the Chancellor of the Exchequer showed great sympathy and wept tears, which, if I may say so, were also the tears of another voracious animal. We had no result then, but I hope the right hon. Gentleman will really try to help what is a very useful industry in this country.
Mr. McKINNON WOODWe are now only dealing with the fourth new Clause, and I believe there are about seventy new Clauses to be discussed. I think I quite understand the sense in which the Noble Lord said that I could not keep a promise, but he did me the justice as a fellow countryman, of assuming that I should not make a promise which I could not keep. In regard to this matter there are two points. The first is the question of the treatment that ought to be fairly given in case of deaths between the 30th April, 1909, and the 30th April, 1910, in regard to which the Government are perfectly prepared to meet the request of the hon. and gallant Gentleman which seems a perfectly reasonable request. It is not practical to deal with it by Amendment to the Clause which is put down, but there is another Amendment in the name of the hon. Member for Sleaford later on on the Paper which will effect the object he desires. With regard to the other matter, the question of aggregation, that is a matter about which the Government do not see eye to eye with the hon. and gallant Member. I think perhaps it would be convenient if I answered the question put to me by the Noble Lord as to the basis upon which the duty would be levied. He asked me whether you took the value of the timber as it originally was at the time of the inheritance or if you took the price of the timber when cut. The Section of the Act provides that the duties
shall be payable on the net moneys (if any) after deducting all the necessary outgoings since the death of the deceased which may from time to time be received from the sale of the timber, trees or wood when felled.
Mr. McKINNON WOODOn the basis of net moneys received from time to time making allowances for outgoings.
MARQUESS of TULLIBARDINEI want to know, is it the value when I succeed or on the growth twenty years afterwards?
Mr. McKINNON WOODI think the basis from which you start is the net moneys which you from time to time receive subject to the deduction of necessary outgoings. Those are the words of the Act. The argument used by the hon. and gallant Gentleman to justify the differentiation of timber from other kinds of property in 2236 arriving at the total value and the estimate of the rate of duty was that it was similar to pictures or other objects of art, and that it ought to be treated in the same way; but I think there is a very marked distinction between the two cases. In the case of pictures and objects of art you derive no income from them and you cannot derive any income from them until you sell them, but in the case of timber you do derive income, and duty is put on that income as it is derived.
§ Mr. PRETYMANNot until you sell it, and it is the same with the picture.
Mr. McKINNON WOODI do not think it is quite the same. You have a picture, but you cannot sell a piece of it while you can sell part of the wood.
§ Mr. PRETYMANYou cannot sell a piece of a tree.
§ Mr. PRETYMANNot ornamental timber.
§ Mr. PRETYMANBut you aggregate it.
Mr. McKINNON WOODThat is fair, because ornamental timber adds to the value of the estate and the price you obtain for it. I cannot see why you should treat timber in arriving at the aggregate value different from any other kind of property. The concession with regard to objects of art was made for the reason that they are not income producing, whereas the growth of timber is income producing.
MARQUESS of TULLIBARDINEI thought I had made the point clear. It takes at least eighty years, and often upwards of 100 years, to grow timber, and to all intents and purposes the man who plants it gets no profit out of it.
Mr. McKINNON WOODI am afraid we must differ in opinion. The Government are prepared to meet the case of deaths between April, 1909, and April, 1910, but we are not able to meet the case as regards aggregations.
§ Mr. ELLIS DAVIESI am glad the right hon. Gentleman does not see his way to accept the Amendment. I must confess, however, that I did not quite follow his argument in regard to the difference between timber and works of art. I should 2237 have been more pleased if he had taken up the position that the exemption of works of art was made by a Tory Government.
§ Mr. PRETYMANNo. It was in this very same Budget.
§ Mr. ELLIS DAVIESI was under the impression that it was in the Estate Duties Act passed by a Conservative Government. The hon. and gallant Member is right. But the exemption of works of art is not the principle. I remember a statement being made by a leading financier, who objected most strongly to the incidence of the Estate Duties on the ground that, while he himself put all his money into industrial concerns on which he was taxed, a relative of his invested an enormous sum in works of art, on which he paid neither duty nor Income Tax. The hon. Member, in moving his Amendment, practically confined his argument to ornamental timber, but I fail to find anything in the Amendment itself limiting the provision in that way. If that is so, his object was to exempt not merely ornamental timber, but all timber. If we exempt anything which at present brings in taxation to the coffers of the Government, we must increase the taxation upon other property. I submit that after the position taken up by the Chancellor of the Exchequer last night the Government should not now be asked to do away with this tax on a certain kind of property. Further, the hon. Member's Amendment is impracticable, and would be unworkable in practice. What does it amount to? The wording is not very clear, but as I read it it means that on the death of the owner of an estate the value of the timber must not be calculated, and that no Death Duty is to be payable upon it until that timber is being sold. If the estate changes hands Estate Duty will be payable, not by the representatives of the deceased, but by the assignees of the estate. I submit that if such a duty was enforced upon those assignees it would hinder rather than facilitate the transfer of land.
§ Mr. C. BATHURSTI am disappointed that the right hon. Gentleman has not seen fit to reply to that part of my hon. Friend's argument in which was pointed out the very good parallel between timber and works of art. The hon. Member opposite (Mr. Ellis Davies) described a certain investment in a commercial undertaking as one of considerable risk, and, by way of contrast, he seemed to indicate that there 2238 was not any considerable risk involved in the cultivation of timber. I know of no species of property that is attended with such considerable risk as is the planting and ownership of timber.
§ Mr. ELLIS DAVIESI made my statement on the authority of the Report of the Afforestation Committee, which stated that timber growing in this country could be made to pay, not in eighty, but in forty years.
§ Mr. C. BATHURSTAssuming the Report of the Afforestation Committee to be correct—and I may say that there is not a single timber expert in the United Kingdom who endorses the view of the Committee in that respect—the Committee pointed out that there is no kind of property, certainly no kind of agricultural property, that is subject to a greater extent to the results of unforeseen events than timber is. Not only does it suffer at times from serious gales, and from still more serious fungoid diseases, but there is a chance of the whole of it being swept away by a serious fire. In addition to that, the successor to such a property would certainly never enjoy any sort of return from the growing part of the timber upon his estate, and it is quite conceivable that he might enjoy no profit whatever from the presence of that timber. In the case of hard-wood trees, at least four generations have to elapse between the time when the timber is planted and the time when money is given in consideration of its sale. In the case of conifers, at least two generations, and in some parts of the United Kingdom, certainly north of the Tweed, three or four generations have to elapse before the timber can be put on the market. That means that on every occasion when the so-called owner of the estate dies there is to be aggregated as part of the estate the value of the timber in respect of which his successor receives no benefit whatever. If the Government are sincere in their desire to put a premium upon the cultivation of timber, if they are anxicus to see afforestation develop with its larger employment of labour, particularly in connection with small holdings—which, by the way, cannot be carried on economically in many parts of the country without employing labour in the woods for a part of the year—surely they must desire to do nothing that would check the tendency on the part of owners to plant timber. The tendency at the present time, as is seen by the result of sales which have taken place 2239 during the last three years, is all against the purchase of land largely timbered, and certainly all against present owners continuing the plantation of timber, which has been a feature of estate management in previous days.
I should like in particular to point to the frequent case of a tenant for life under the Settled Lands Acts. That tenant for life is unable, except in the case of what is called a timbered estate—an estate where timber is cut by rotation on the same system as farm crops—to put any of the proceeds of the sale of the timber into his own pocket. In the case of a timbered estate he is able to have one-fourth only of the value of that timber when it is sold, and the rest of it, as my hon. Friend being a lawyer will realise, is treated as capital monies over which he has no control whatever. In the case of ornamental timber, to which my hon. Friend referred, he has no power whatever even to cut such timber, and he derives no possible benefit therefore from its conversion. Surely if this aggregation is defensible at all it is only on the ground that the settlement of landed estates as existing in the country at the present time is materially altered before such aggregations become a part of a system of valuation for the purpose of the Death Duties.
For all these reasons I feel confident that this aggregation is not only calculated to operate most unfairly upon the successors to landed estates throughout the country, but is calculated, above all, to put a discount upon what is regarded from a national point of view as a desirable enterprise, that is, the continuous appropriation of a portion of our large landed estates to the cultivation of timber with a view to its being made, not merely an economic proposition, but of employing the largest number of persons in a most desirable way. There can be no object for any valuation of timber except for the purpose of this aggregation. There can be no object for such an aggregation for undeveloped land value, or for the purpose of Increment Value Duty, in which case the whole land can be reckoned as though the timber did not exist. Therefore the valuation is only to be undertaken for this purpose. It seems to me not only undesirable from a national point of view and unfair from a private point of view, but a serious waste of energy involving a very considerable cost, with nothing to be gained from any standpoint.
§ Mr. PRETYMANAfter what the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for the Treasury has said, it is obvious that the Government will not accept this Amendment. I must say that I am profoundly dissatisfied. I think that the whole agricultural industry and the country at large has reason to complain of the most perfunctory manner in which this very serious question has been dealt with. [An HON. MEMBER: "The time."] I do not think it is too much to grudge an hour in discussing this matter? I am sorry that in this respect matters are as they are; but I do not desire to delay the House, and in order to meet the Government, which has been good enough to accept one part of the Amendment, I shall propose that this Amendment be read a second time then amended. If you, Mr. Whitley, can see your way to accept that I shall propose the words which the Government have suggested to meet the case of those dying between April, 1909, and April, 1910, should be subsequently added to the amended Amendment. It will then become the Government's Clause.
§ 9.0 P.M.
§ Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER (Mr. Whitley)I think it would be permissible that the Clause should be read a second time, and then that the subsequent Clause referred to be moved as an Amendment to it. Then, having left out the words down to "Sub-section" ["for Sub-section (5) of Section 61"], at the end to add the further words which appear as set down by the hon. Member (Mr. Pretyman).
§ Question, "That the words proposed to be left out stand part of the Clause," put, and negatived.
§ Mr. PRETYMANI beg to move, at the end of the Clause to add the words,
"Sub-section (5) of Section sixty-one of the Finance (1909–10) Act, 1910 (which relates to duty in respect of timber, trees, or wood), shall have effect and shall be deemed always to have had effect as if the words 'on or after the thirtieth day of April, nineteen hundred and nine,' were substituted for the words 'after the passing of this Act.'"
§ Mr. CASSELI beg to move, that the following new Clause be read a second time:—