Commons Sitting of 13 December 1911

Preamble
The House met at a Quarter before Three of the clock, Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair.
MARRIAGE LAWS (FOREIGN COUNTRIES)
  (MISCELLANEOUS, No. 11, 1911).
  Copy presented of Laws relating to Marriage in force in certain Foreign Countries [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  MOROCCO (No. 3, 1911).
  Copy presented of Dispatch from His Majesty's Ambassador at Berlin, transmitting Translation of a Speech delivered in the Reichstag by the Imperial German Chancellor on the subject of the events preceding the Franco-German Morocco Agreement on 5th December, 1911 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
  EAST INDIA (LOANS RAISED IN INDIA).
  Copy presented of Return of all Loans raised in India, chargeable on the Revenues of India, outstanding at the commencement of the half-year ending on the 30th September, 1911, etc. [by Act]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.
  PAWNBROKERS' RETURNS (IRELAND).
  Copy presented of Returns from the City Marshal of Dublin for the year 1910 [by Act]; to lie upon the Table.

  WEST HIGHLAND RAILWAY (EXTENSION FROM BANAVIE TO MALLAIG).
  Copy presented of Tenth Annual Report by the Board of Trade as to the condition and working of the Banavie and Mallaig
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  Railway, the Rates and Charges for Traffic, and the Receipts and Expenditure of any Company in working the Railway, for the year 1910–11 [by Act]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.

  WEST INDIA MAIL SERVICE.
  Return presented relative thereto [ordered 12th December; Mr. McKinnon Wood]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.
ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS.

  Warships in Construction.
  Mr. BURGOYNEasked the First Lord of the Admiralty by how much the "Lion" and "Orion" are expected to exceed the regulation two years' period of construction; and whether the constant delays in the completion of warships are taken into consideration by the Admiralty in the preparation of their Estimates?
  The FIRST LORD of the ADMIRALTY (Mr. Churchill): The "Orion" was laid down on the 29th November, 1909, and it is expected that she will be completed by the end of this month, an excess of four weeks over the two years. The "Lion" was laid down on the 29th November, 1909, and, subject to her trials being satisfactory, will complete about the end of March, 1912. There are no constant delays in the completion of warships, but in the preparation of Navy Estimates consideration is given to meeting any outstanding liabilities that may be required to be met at a later date in consequence of delay.
  Mr. BURGOYNE: How is it that there has been in the case of the "Lion" four months' delay of the date of completion?
  Mr. CHURCHILL: From time to time there is no doubt delay, but on the whole the delays are much less prolonged and much less frequent in the preparation of warships than in any other part of the world.
  Mr. BURGOYNEasked, in view of the admiral's quarters being placed aft in the "King George V." now completing at Portsmouth, if a stern walk has been fitted; and whether a door in the stern of the ship leading to it from the admiral's cabin was omitted?
  Mr. CHURCHILL: A stern walk has been fitted in the "King George V." Doors leading from the admiral's cabin to the stern walk were arranged for in the design, are now in hand, and will be fitted shortly. There has been no error or omission.
  Mr. BURGOYNE: Is it not a fact that the doors were only arranged after the question was put upon the Paper?
  Mr. CHURCHILL: That is not true. I am informed that they were all arranged for in the original design, and we find that the method adopted is the best and cheapest.

  H.M.S. "Medina."
  Mr. BURGOYNEasked whether discontent was manifested by the lower deck of the "Medina" immediately prior to her departure from Porstmouth, at the accommodation provided for them; and whether, as a result, fifty-four men were removed from her, and many of these subsequently confined for various terms in the detention barracks?
  Mr. CHURCHILL: I have made careful inquiries, and am informed that the rumours which I understand the hon. Member desires to clear up by his question, are devoid of all foundation. Nothing of the sort ever occurred.

  Refits (Admiralty Policy).
  Mr. ASHLEYasked (1) whether the statement of Admiralty policy with regard to refits, promulgated on 30th November, 1905, still represents the policy of the Board; and, if so, why were two armoured cruisers absent in dockyard hands from each of the Home Fleet cruiser squadrons on 23rd November, one only being permitted under the terms of the Memorandum; (2) whether the statement of Admiralty policy with regard to refits, promulgated on 30th November, 1905, still represents the policy of the Board; and, if so, why were four battleships from the active divisions of the Home Fleet in dockyard hands on 23rd November last, three only being permitted to be absent for this purpose under the terms of the memorandum?
  Mr. CHURCHILL: The statement of Admiralty policy issued by the late Government before they left office is obviously not wholly applicable to the present time, when the organisation of the Fleet has been materially altered. There
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  is, however, no intention of reverting to the still earlier practice of placing whole squadrons in dockyard hands for refit at the same time.
  Mr. ASHLEY: May I ask what standard is now recognised at the Admiralty, and whether the change was made from the old Memorandum?
  Mr. CHURCHILL: If my hon. Friend would like an answer to that, perhaps he will put a question down.

  Torpedo Destroyers (Designed Speed).
  Mr. ASHLEYasked what was the designed speed of the destroyers provided for in the Estimates of 1908–9, 1909–10, and 1910–11; and what was the designed speed of the destroyers provided for in the corresponding German Estimates?
  Mr. CHURCHILL: It could not be reconciled with the public interest to give detailed statements as to the speed of British destroyers. Nothing is known officially as regards the speeds of German destroyers nor of the conditions under which their trial speeds are obtained.
  Mr. ASHLEY: Does not the right hon. Gentleman unofficially know that the German destroyers are at least seven knots an hour faster than ours?
  Mr. CHURCHILL: I should not like to go into any question of what I know; I only give to the House official information.
  Mr. ASHLEY: Does the right hon. Gentleman deny that these German destroyers are seven knots an hour faster than ours?
  Mr. CHURCHILL: No, Sir. I neither deny nor accept the statement. It should, I think, be assumed that the Admiralty of any country will, in the completion of a ship of any particular type, carry the vessel out on the most approved pattern. We are quite satisfied that the type of destroyers which we have for our purposes is the best, and there has not been any other consideration except what the Admiralty experts considered to be the best taken into account.

  Naval Ordnance Department, Chatham.
  Mr. TYSON WILSONasked whether the First Lord of the Admiralty is aware that the amount of wages of the men employed in the Naval Ordnance Department at Chatham kept in hand by the authorities has recently been increased; whether this has been done with the

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  sanction of the Admiralty; and whether he will give orders that the former practice shall be reverted to?
  The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the ADMIRALTY (Dr. Macnamara): The amount of wages kept, in hand in the Naval Ordnance Department in the Chatham district has recently been increased from two to three days in consequence of the increase in numbers and the difficulty experienced in preparing and checking the necessary cash documents in the limited time available between the day up to which the men are paid and the actual issue of the wages. I am afraid that the amount of time necessary to make up and check each account will not permit us to go back to the practice of keeping only two days' wages in hand.

  Home Fleet (Coal and Ammunition).
  Mr. HUNTasked whether, at any time during last September, any of the warships of the Home Fleet were short of the full amount of coal and ammunition required for a naval battle?
  Mr. CHURCHILL: A certain amount of practice ammunition is used at battle practice, and coal is burned from day to day by ships at sea. Regular arrangements for replenishing supplies are always made. At no time was the supply of service ammunition less than 98 per cent. of the full outfit, or the coal below two-thirds full supply. The Fleet was, therefore, at all times ready for action. I trust the hon. Member will not be too ready to give credence to excitable rumours.
  Mr. HUNT: Is it not the fact that an enormous amount of coal was rushed to the north at the time of the crisis?
  Mr. CHURCHILL: No, Sir. I have heard about that matter. The arrangement for taking the coal across the country at that particular time was many months before the occasion indicated arose.

  National Harbour of Refuge, Peterhead.
  Mr. FALCONERasked what were the terms of the reference to the Departmental Committee of 1909 with regard to the national harbour of refuge at Peterhead; whether any Report has been made, and, if so, whether the abandonment of the works required for the completion of the harbour was recommended by the Committee; and whether, in view of the importance attached to this question by those interested in the fishing and shipping
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  industries in Scotland, the Department will cause the Report to be published?
  The FINANCIAL SECRETARY to the TREASURY (Mr. McKinnon Wood): The reference is too long to quote in extenso in reply to a question, but I will hand a copy to my hon. Friend. In reply to the second and third parts of the question the Committee of 1909 were not directed by their reference to consider the question of the abandonment of the north breakwater.
  Mr. FALCONER: In view of the fact that Parliament is about to rise, and that this is a matter of great importance to large districts of Scotland, may we rely that nothing will be done in any way to abandon those works without the sanction of an Act of Parliament; and in view, further, of the fact that £750,000 has already been spent on the works, can we rely on the works not being abandoned without the sanction of an Act of Parliament, or at least without Parliament having an opportunity to discuss the matter?
  Mr. McKINNON WOOD: I have gone further than my hon. Friend suggests in an answer to a question the other day. I said if the local authorities had any representations to make as to the effect of the abandonment or continuance of these works upon the local harbour, I shall be very pleased to take the matter into consideration before coming to a final decision. At present they have not approached the Treasury in any way.
  Mr. FALCONER: Will the right hon. Gentleman take into account the fact that this question affects a number of communities all along the East coast—Aberdeen, Fraserburgh, and other places, and will he confer with those interested and give them an opportunity of putting their views before him?
  Mr. McKINNON WOOD: I shall have the greatest pleasure in doing that. I think it would be of great advantage to have the views of other great fishing centres like Aberdeen before a decision is ultimately arrived at.
  Mr. EUGENE WASON: May I ask that nothing will be done in the meantime in regard to the works until the right hon. Gentleman has heard the views of those interested?
  Mr. McKINNON WOOD: Yes; no final decision has been arrived at.
  Mr. WATT: If these works are abandoned the £750,000 which has been put into them will be lost, but if further work is done upon them they will be of great value.
  Mr. McKINNON WOOD: The facts are not as stated by my hon. Friend.
  Mr. FALCONERasked whether the proposed abandonment of the works required for the completion of the national harbour of refuge at Peterhead has been considered and approved by the Board of Trade; and, if so, whether, in view of the opposition which the proposal to abandon the works has aroused in Scotland, he will publish the Minute or Report setting forth the reasons for abandoning an undertaking which has been repeatedly approved by Committees and Royal Commissions and by the Board of Trade and sanctioned by an Act of Parliament, and on which £750,000 has been spent?
  Mr. BUXTON: The Board of Trade have no information on the subject. The harbour is not under their jurisdiction.

  Civil Service, India.
  Mr. MacCALLUM SCOTTasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he is aware that the opening of the Civil Service in India to all British subjects, irrespective of race and creed, is regarded by the India Office as having had satisfactory results; and whether he can now state in what respect the peculiar racial conditions in Hong Kong, Singapore, and the Federated Malay States, which have induced him to exclude from the Civil and Police services of these Colonies all British subjects who are not of pure European descent on both sides, differ from those of India?
  The SECRETARY of STATE for the COLONIES (Mr. Harcourt): I have explained to my hon. Friend, in answer to a previous question, the reasons for the restriction to which he refers, I am not prepared to admit that the experience of India has any direct bearing on the position in Hong Kong and the Malay Peninsula, since the racial conditions are quite different.
  Mr. MacCALLUM SCOTT: May I ask whether the right hon. Gentleman is aware that his colleague the Member for Ilkeston (Colonel Seely), when Under-Secretary of State, in reply to a question on 25th June, 1908, said, "I believe——
  Mr. SPEAKER: The hon. Member must surely give notice of that question. He cannot ask a Minister to remember all the answers given in this House.
  Mr. MacCALLUM SCOTT: May I ask whether the view of the Colonial Office three years ago, as expressed by the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, was that they believed——
  Mr. SPEAKER: The hon. Member is doing the very thing I asked him not to do. It is impossible for the Minister to remember answers which were given by the Under-Secretary for the Colonies three years ago when he himself was not at the Office.
  Mr. MacCALLUM SCOTT: I do not propose to ask whether the Under-Secretary for the Colonies did give this answer or not, but I propose to ask whether the policy of which surely the right hon. Gentleman is aware is still in force—may I ask that question?
  Mr. SPEAKER: I think the hon. Member ought to give notice of such an important question as that.

  Malay States Treaty.
  Mr. MacCALLUM SCOTTasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies if he will state whether the treaty of 1905, whereby the Malay States were federated, has been published, and where it can be seen?
  Mr. HARCOURT: There was no treaty of 1905. The treaty of 1895, to which my hon. Friend no doubt refers, has not been published officially in this country, but it is printed in the Government Gazette of the Straits Settlements and in several books of reference. I would suggest that my hon. Friend should consult the Hong Kong and China Directory, the Federated Malay States Civil Service List, or Mr. Belfield's Handbook of the Federated Malay States. I will lend him all or any of them.
  Mr. MacCALLUM SCOTT: Is it not desirable that an important treaty of this kind should be published in an official Government publication, and that I should not have to purchase books of that kind or to borrow them?
  Mr. HARCOURT: There has been a good deal of publication of this treaty. I will consider in future treaties the feelings of my hon. Friend.
  Mr. MacCALLUM SCOTT: Perhaps he would publish this treaty for the benefit of his Friend.
  Mr. HARCOURT: I think that perhaps when my hon. Friend has become acquainted with the details of the treaty he will not desire to have it published.

  Hong Kong, Singapore, and Federated Malay States.
  Mr. MacCALLUM SCOTTasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether, in making regulations for entrance to the civil and police services of Hong Kong, Singapore, and the Federated Malay States, he is acting under any and, if so, what statutory powers?
  Mr. HARCOURT: The answer is in the negative. The regulations are merely a statement of the conditions on which the Secretary of State is prepared to select persons for appointment to the service of these Colonies and Protected States.
  Mr. MacCALLUM SCOTTasked whether the police force in the Federated Malay States is chiefly composed of Indians and Malays; and whether the peculiar racial conditions which have induced him to exclude from the higher appointments of the police service all candidates who are not of pure European descent on both sides do not apply equally to the rank and file?
  Mr. HARCOURT: The answer to the first part of this question is in the affirmative, and the answer to the second part in the negative. I may add that the exclusion is no new act of mine, but has been in force for seven years.
  Mr. MacCALLUM SCOTT: I would like to know whether, owing to the racial conditions of those Colonies the natives object to being tried by persons who are not of pure European descent, but have no objection to being arrested by persons who are not of pure European descent?
  Mr. HARCOURT: The native population have not yet communicated to me their views on those refinements.
  Mr. MacCALLUM SCOTT: Will the right hon. Gentleman make it his duty to ascertain the views of the natives on these refinements?
  Mr. HARCOURT: I do not know whether my hon. Friend is suggesting any particular native. If so, perhaps he will send me his address.

  Singapore Assault Case.
  Mr. MacCALLUM SCOTTasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he is aware that on 24th October Captain Alexander Henderson Chalmers, senior boarding officer in the master attendant's office, Singapore, was fined $50 by one of His British Majesty's magistrates at Singapore—namely, Mr. A. de Mella, for assaulting Mr. A, W. Gooneratne, a Ceylon man who is chief clerk at the Siamese Consulate, Singapore; whether this magistrate, Mr. A. de Mella, entered the Civil Service before the present regulation excluding all British subjects who are not of pure European descent on both sides came into force; whether he would be excluded by the present regulations; and whether the Colonial Office has any control over Captain Alexander Henderson Chalmers?
  Mr. HARCOURT: The answer to the first part of this question is in the negative, and the answer to the second and third parts in the affirmative. Mr. Chalmers is under the control of the Secretary of State to the same extent as any other officer in the Colonial Service.
  Mr. MacCALLUM SCOTT: May I ask whether the Secretary of State has taken any steps with regard to the matter?
  Mr. HARCOURT: No, Sir. As I have informed you in answer to the first part of the question, the matter has not been brought to my notice.
  Mr. MacCALLUM SCOTT: Will the right hon. Gentleman make inquiries with regard to this matter?
  Mr. HARCOURT: Inquire of whom, of the gentlemen who are connected or of the gentleman who convicted him?
  Mr. MacCALLUM SCOTT: Does the right hon. Gentleman ask me to tell him the proper channels to make inquiries in his office?

  Sleeping Sickness.
  Dr. CHAPPLEasked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether the evidence that glossina morsitans is a carrier of the trypanosome of sleeping sickness is now sufficiently conclusive to justify him in so relaxing the severity of the game laws of Nyasaland as to permit of the natives hunting game known to harbour the trypanosome in their blood, in order that both the game and the infecting fly which invariably accompanies it

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  may be driven off from the populous centres and the black and the European population and their domestic animals be protected from the spread of this disease?
  Mr. HARCOURT: There is not yet sufficiently conclusive evidence to justify my taking the course suggested. A scientific commission under the direction of Colonel Sir David Bruce is now engaged in investigating in the Protectorate the relations between the fauna of the country, the tsetse fly, and the trypanosome, and, when definite results are reached, I shall not hesitate to adopt such measures as may be required. It must be remembered that domestic animals as well as game are suspected of being carriers of the trypanosome.
  Dr. CHAPPLE: Is the right hon. Gentleman not aware that sleeping sickness in man and trypanosomiasis in domestic animals are spreading in Nyasaland, and that these are associated with the presence of game and tsetse around the populous centres?
  Mr. HARCOURT: I have been in close communication with Dr. Kinghorn, and I am considering the matter very carefully. Whilst the Commission is inquiring into it I think I ought to be allowed to wait for their recommendations.
  Dr. CHAPPLE: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that in the meantime sleeping sickness is spreading very rapidly in Nyasaland and that Professor Koch recommended that the game be driven back from populous centres because of the danger to natives and domestic animals from the proximity of game and infective tsetse, and is it not a fact that Dr. King-horn has experimentally inoculated susceptible animals with trypanosomiasis from the bite of infected glossina morsitons, the tsetse fly of Nyasaland?
  Mr. SPEAKER: The hon. Member can hardly expect the Secretary of State for the Colonies to answer those matters without notice.
  Dr. CHAPPLE: I beg to give notice that on the Motion for Adjournment to-night I shall raise the question.

  NATIONAL INSURANCE BILL.

    WELSH AND SCOTTISH COMMISSIONERS.
    Mr. GODFREY LOCKER-LAMPSONasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he can now announce the names
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    of the Welsh and Scottish Insurance Commissioners; and, if not, when the announcement will be made?
    Mr. McKINNON WOOD: I regret that I am not in a position to make this announcement to-day. My right hon. Friend hopes to be able to do so before the House rises, but he cannot pledge himself to a particular date.
    Mr. WATT: Is it the fact that the announcement of the names of the English Commissioners had such a bad effect that the names of those for Wales and Scotland are being kept back?
    Mr. McKINNON WOOD: No, Sir.

    DEFICIENCIES IN CONTRIBUTIONS.
    Mr. GODFREY LOCKER-LAMPSONasked whether a compulsorily insured person, under the National Insurance Bill, who has always paid his full contributions, will have any claim upon the Treasury if his benefits are reduced at any time, under Clause 37, on account of a deficiency in his approved society?
    Mr. McKINNON WOOD: No, Sir; he will have no claim except for two-ninths of his reduced benefits.

    EXPLANATORY MEMORANDUM.
    Mr. GODFREY LOCKER-LAMPSONasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he will issue a revised copy of the last memorandum explanatory of the National Insurance Bill, so that an explanation may be added as to whether or not the Treasury will guarantee the full minimum benefits for which compulsory contributions are to be made?
    Mr. McKINNON WOOD: There has never been any question of the Treasury guaranteeing the minimum benefits. We are advised on the best actuarial authority that a well-managed society will be able to give those benefits, but to guarantee them would be to stultify the whole principle of working through voluntary associations.

    MEDICAL BENEFIT.
    Mr. NORMAN CRAIGasked whether any, and, if so, what, steps will be taken to ensure that, in the event of the National Insurance Bill becoming law, insured persons will receive the medical benefit purported to be secured to them by the Bill?
    Mr. McKINNON WOOD: I trust that no difficulties will arise in this respect, but

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    I can assure the hon. Member that, if they should arise, adequate steps will be taken to deal with them.

    HAWKERS AND WINDOW CLEANERS.
    Mr. HARRY LAWSONasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will state how far hawkers or costermongers hiring barrows for one or two days in the week, at a cost of say 3d. a day, are brought under the National Insurance Bill; how it will affect window-cleaners paid by the job; and how it will affect outside porters at railway stations not in the employment of a railway company but regularly employed and paid by the load?
    Mr. McKINNON WOOD: The hon. Member is asking me to give general replies to questions which can only be decided in the light of the details of each case. He is of course aware that the general principle of the Insurance Bill is that persons employed under a contract of service, express or implied, are compulsorily insured, but that casual employment otherwise than for the purposes of the employer's trade or business is exempt. Applying these tests, it is improbable that any of the persons mentioned by the hon. Member would be compulsorily insured, but I can imagine circumstances in which the two latter classes might be liable.
    Mr. HARRY LAWSON: Will the Insurance Commissioners settle on broad principles the exact classes that will come in?
    Mr. McKINNON WOOD: They will undoubtedly do their best to do so; but, as the hon. Member knows, there are many cases on the fringe which are very difficult to settle by broad principles.

    APPROVED SOCIETIES.
    Mr. BARNESasked when consideration was being given to applications from societies desiring to become approved societies under the Act, would the Insurance Commissioners have power under the Act to take into account whether or not the applying societies were being properly conducted as well as the soundness of their actuarial position?
    Mr. McKINNON WOOD: I am not quite sure what my hon. Friend means by "properly conducted." The conditions with which societies desirous of being approved must comply are enumerated in Clause 23 of the Bill. After a society has become an approved society it must make
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    rules to the satisfaction of the Insurance Commissioners for the administration of its affairs under the Bill.

    MARGIN OF SAFETY (INITIAL BENEFITS).
    Mr. AMERYasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer what is the present estimated margin of safety on the initial benefits provided by Part I. of the National Insurance Bill; whether this margin is based on the assumption that the medical benefit will be provided at a contract rate of 4s. 6d. a head with drugs at 1s. 6d. a head; to what extent initial benefits would have to be reduced if the average contract rate was 7s. 6d. without drugs; firstly, in the case of all insured persons; secondly, in the case of those earning incomes not, exceeding £2 a week?
    Mr. McKINNON WOOD: The estimated margin is 42d. a week in the case of men, and 53d. in the case of women. The answer to the second part of the hon Member's question is in the affirmative. To increase the cost of medical benefit by two-thirds at the expense of the insurance fund as suggested by the hon. Member would cost another ½d. a week, which is practically equivalent to the absorption of the margin. There is no material available for calculating the answer to the last part of the question.
    Mr. AMERY: Is not the margin of 4 mentioned in the right hon. Gentleman's reply very much nearer a farthing, and is not the addition of the extra 2s 6d. to the contract rate considerably over a half penny?
    Mr. McKINNON WOOD: No, Sir. In the case of men it is a little under a half penny, and in the case of women a little over a halfpenny.

  Telephone Transfer (Contributions to Local Authorities).
  Captain MORRISON-BELLasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he can now inform the House as to the basis upon which contributions will be given to local authorities for the loss of rateable value arising out of the transfer to the Government of the undertaking of the National Telephone Company on 1st January, 1912?
  Mr. McKINNON WOOD: I have nothing as yet to add to my previous answer to the hon. Member for St. Albans on 29th November.
  Captain MORRISON-BELL: May we expect any indication of the basis arrived at before the Act comes into force?
  Mr. McKINNON WOOD: It is not a question of the Act coming into force, it is a question of the transfer taking place on 1st January. I am not sure that I will be able to promise them, but of course the contributions will be made in the usual way on a fair valuation of the premises.

  Income Tax.
  Mr. C. BATHURSTasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer how many owners of land or houses have, during the current financial year made claims for repayment of excess of Income Tax paid in respect of moneys expended upon maintenance, repairs, insurance, and management under Section 69 of the Finance (1909–10) Act, 1910, and what is the aggregate amount so repaid to such owners; and how do these figures compare with those for the preceding financial year?
  Mr. McKINNON WOOD: During the current financial year claims for repayment of Income Tax under Section 69 of the Finance (1909–10) Act, 1910, have been made by 1,165 owners, and the amount repaid is £23,236. These figures refer to England and Wales only, the figures for Ireland and Scotland not being at present available. In the financial year 1910–11 claims were made by 573 owners in the United Kingdom, and the amount repaid was £5,122.
  Mr. C. BATHURST: Can the right hon. Gentleman give any reason why the returns for Scotland are not available?
  Mr. McKINNON WOOD: Will the hon. Member give me notice, and I will inquire?

  Licence Duties.
  Mr. CLYNESasked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he had received representations from licence holders in Lancashire and other counties indicating that where brewers and distillers had paid the duties established by the Finance Act of 1910 they had more than recouped themselves by raising prices to their tenants; and whether, in view of the effect upon numerous licence holders, he could take any action to cause the duties to be only paid by the parties intended by the Act?
  Mr. McKINNON WOOD: My right hon. Friend has received representations of the nature referred to in the question. The
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  difficulty pointed out seems to be inherent in the tied-house system, and he does not at present see his way to try and deal with it by legislation.

  Small Holdings (Crown Lands).
  Mr. WEDGWOODasked the President of the Board of Agriculture whether he could state the acreage of the Crown lands which had been turned into small holdings in the years 1906–10; what the total rental and assessment for rates of these lands were before they were used for small holdings; what the present rental and assessment was; and what the total capital expenditure in connection with the transformation had amounted to?
  The PRESIDENT of the BOARD of AGRICULTURE (Mr. Runciman): The acreage of the Crown lands under the charge of the President of the Board of Agriculture, as a Commissioner of Woods, which have been let for small holdings and allotments in the five years ended 31st March, 1911, is 6,130 acres. The approximate total rental of these lands amounted, before they were taken for small holdings, to £7,514, and the rental for the same lands for the year 1911 amounted to £9,835. This sum includes interest on capital expended. I have no information as to the assessments for rates of the lands. The rates are not paid by the Crown. I should add that in the majority of cases the small holdings were formerly included in larger holdings, and they have as a rule been established on the best land of the former holding. Further, the residue of the former holding has in several cases been subsequently let at an enhanced rent. These facts, in conjunction with the fact that over £35,000 has been expended on buildings, equipment, etc., for the small holders, must be taken into account in connection with any attempt to make a comparison of the former with the existing total rents.

  Foot-and-Mouth Disease.
  Mr. STANIERasked if it was known which were the farms to which the manure from the Deptford slaughter-houses was sent; if it had ever been known to have brought disease on to those farms; and, if so, what?
  Mr. RUNCIMAN: The Foreign Animals Order of 1903 provides that all dung and manure shall, before being removed from a foreign animals' wharf, be disinfected to

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  the satisfaction of an inspector of the Board. The Board are not aware to what farm, if any, manure from the Deptford Wharf has been taken; but in no case has there been any suggestion, so far as the Board are aware, that any outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease was due to this source.
  Mr. STANIER: Does not the right hon. Gentleman think it would be a good thing to make inquiries in this direction, seeing that so much foot-and-mouth disease has broken out in the last few years?
  Mr. RUNCIMAN: Yes. As the hon. Member probably knows, the fullest inquiry was made into the possible origin of the outbreaks of last year and previous years, but in no single case has there been the least suggestion that foot-and-mouth disease was traceable to this cause.
  Mr. C. BATHURST: Does the right hon. Gentleman mean to indicate that there is any difference between dung and manure?
  Mr. C. BATHURSTasked whether the cause of the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease near Yeovil had been discovered; whether any connection had been traced between it and the recent outbreak near Bridgwater; and what steps had been, and were being, taken to prevent its spreading?
  Mr. RUNCIMAN: The most careful inquiries have been, and are being, made with a view to discovering the cause of the outbreaks, but so far without success. There is no evidence of any connection between this outbreak and the recent outbreak near Bridgwater. The same measures have been adopted for preventing the spread of the disease in this case as those which have been adopted with complete success in the case of the other outbreaks which have recently occurred. All the cattle, sheep, and swine on the infected farm have been slaughtered, and restrictions have been placed on the movement of stock into, out of, and within an area of approximately fifteen miles from the place where the disease appeared.
  Mr. STANIER: On these farms is the dung or manure, whichever the right hon. Gentleman calls it, burnt?
  Mr. RUNCIMAN: Yes. Any dung or manure which can by any possibility be infected, is burnt.

  House of Commons Tea Room (Indicator).
  Mr. T. E. HARVEYasked whether arrangements could be made to place in the Members' Tea Room an indicator recording the business before the House?
  The TREASURER of the HOUSEHOLD (Mr. Dudley Ward): In view of the restricted time during which this room is in use during the day the First Commissioner feels that the cost of installing an indicator can hardly be justified.

  Fair-Wages Clause (Government Contracts).
  Mr. BOWERMANasked the hon. Member for Southampton, as representing the First Commissioner of Works, whether he was aware that when the Fair-Wages Resolution was before this House in 1909 the President of the Board of Trade declared that in the administration of the Clause regard would be had to the wages and conditions of service of all the employés of a firm of contractors, and that for a contractor to simply observe the Clause so far as his workmen directly engaged on the contract were concerned would not be sufficient; whether he was aware that, in reply to a complaint that the firm of Tozer and Sons, contractors for the cartage of coal, were not observing the Fair-Wage Clause in the payment of the wheelwrights and painters in their employ, the policy adumbrated by the President of the Board of Trade was not endorsed; whether he was aware that a wheelwright employed by the firm in question on the carts used for cartage of coal had been discharged for making a request to be paid the trade union rate; and whether he would have further inquiries made into this case with a view to the Fair-Wages Clause and the Government's declared policy in regard thereto being carried out?
  Mr. DUDLEY WARD: In the Debate on 10th March, 1909, on the Fair-Wages Resolution of this House, the President of the Board of Trade stated that:—"The Fair-Wages Resolution applies as a legal obligation only to workers engaged on the Government contract in question." Firms who are notoriously bad employers in other directions are not employed by the Office of Works. The First Commissioner has inquired into the dismissal of the wheelwright referred to; and he is satisfied that the man was not dismissed for demanding the trade union rate of wages. Having regard to the information at his disposal, the First Commissioner is of

  2359
  opinion that the firm in question are not violating the Fair-Wages Clause of their contract.
  Mr. CLYNES: In connection with the inquiries, was the trade union in question approached?
  Mr. DUDLEY WARD: I should like notice of that question.

  Unemployment (Government Work).
  Mr. CAWLEYasked the hon. Member for Southampton, as representing the First Commissioner of Works, whether any works to be done by his Department had been suspended or delayed during the continuance of the present low rate of unemployment with a view to furnishing more employment when that rate rose; and, if so, in what instances this had been done?
  Mr. DUDLEY WARD: Although some attempt has been made by the Office of Works to arrange its work so as to meet seasonal depressions in trade, it has not been found possible to deal with cyclical trade depressions in the manner suggested in the question.

  Labour Adviser (Home Office).
  Mr. JOYNSON-HICKSasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he was aware that the salary of £500 per annum, rising to £700 per annum, for the senior Labour Adviser to the Home Office was personal to Mr. Shackleton; and whether, in any new appointment he might make, he would revert to the lower scale?
  The SECRETARY of STATE for the HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. McKenna): I am aware that the scale of salary on which Mr. Shackleton was placed was personal to himself. In the ordinary course, future holders of the appointment would receive the normal scale of salary assigned to the appointment, but I am not prepared to say that in special cases the normal scale might not be departed from.
  Mr. JOYNSON-HICKS: Having regard to the undertaking given to the House by his predecessor, will the right hon. Gentleman say that no appointment at other than the normal salary shall be made without the sanction of the House?
  Mr. McKENNA: I have not before me the terms of the undertaking, but any undertaking that may have been given will, of course, be observed.

  Women Factory Inspectors.
  Mr. T. E. HARVEYasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he was aware that, with the exception of some vacancies which had been filled, there had been no additional appointments to the staff of His Majesty's women factory inspectors since 1908; and, whether, in view of the demand there was for their services, he could see his way to promising some further appointments?
  Mr. McKENNA: I would refer my hon. Friend to the answer given by my predecessor to a similar question by the hon. Member for Durham on the 17th May last.

  Medical Matters (Select Committee).
  Mr. LYNCHasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether in regard to the Select Committee to consider medical matters he would consider the advisability of making the terms of reference fairly extensive, so that not merely questions of patent medicines might be dealt, with, but also the practice of medicine by unqualified men?
  Mr. McKENNA: I do not think it would be wise to extend the scope of the inquiry beyond patent medicines.
  Mr. LYNCHasked the Home Secretary whether he was in a position to state whether the Select Committee promised for next Session to inquire into the subject of patent medicines and allied matters would be a Departmental Committee or in the nature of a Royal Commission; and whether the medical profession would be represented both in regard to science and to professional practice?
  Mr. McKENNA: I am unable at present to make a definite announcement, but it is proposed that the inquiry should be by a Select Committee of this House or possibly a Joint Select Committee.

  Safety Lamps (Scotland).
  Mr. DUNCAN MILLARasked the Home Secretary whether, having regard to the expression of opinion from Scotland, and to the character of the Scottish mines, he would consider as to exempting Scottish mines from the provisions of paragraph 1 (b) of Clause 32 of the Coal Mines Bill in regard to the use of safety lamps, under the exemption proviso contained in that paragraph?
  Mr. McKENNA: The paragraph of the Clause referred to does not apply to any

  2361
  mine where naked lights are used until an explosion has occurred which has caused injury to a workman. It is only after such an explosion that the question of the exercise of the power of exemption given to the Secretary of State would arise, and each case will be considered on its merits. I am informed that it will be possible very greatly to reduce the number of such explosions by improving the ventilation of the mines, and a period of six months is being allowed to enable mine owners to make such improvements.
  Dr. CHAPPLE: Many of the explosions in Scottish mines are of a minor nature—they sometimes simply singe the brow, and do nothing else. Would they be deemed explosions under the Act?
  Mr. McKENNA: No; they must cause injury. I understand my hon. Friend to imply explosions which have not caused injury.

  Blasphemy Laws.
  Sir W. BYLESasked the Home Secretary whether his attention had been called to the sentences recently passed at the Leeds Assizes upon J. W. Gott and Dr. Nikola; whether the accused were simply convicted of uttering provocatively opinions now widely current and widely published with impunity; and whether, in view of the length of these sentences, he would take immediate steps to have the prisoners released?
  Mr. McKENNA: As I explained to the House yesterday, one of these prisoners has applied for leave to appeal against his conviction and sentence, and so long as the case is before the Court of Criminal Appeal, I cannot say anything about it.
  Sir W. BYLES: As the House will be rising in a few days, will the right hon. Gentleman give a pledge that he will act promptly as soon as the result of the appeal is known? If these men are in prison under a bad and obsolete law, surely——
  Mr. SPEAKER: The hon. Member is now entering upon an argument.

  Hull Riots (Cost of Police).
  Mr. REMNANTasked if the cost of the extra police employed in the Hull riots had been paid by the local authority?
  Mr. McKENNA: The account for this service was paid by the local authority in August last.

  Stage Play Licences.
  Mr. ROBERT HARCOURTasked the Home Secretary whether he was aware that the Lord Chamberlain was considering certain applications for stage play licences by places of entertainment within the area of his jurisdiction already holding the music hall licence, and had proposed to attach to the licence the condition that stage plays in such theatres should not exceed thirty minutes in length; and whether it could be stated what was the statutory authority under which the Lord Chamberlain could grant such licences or impose such a condition as to the length of plays?
  Mr. McKENNA: The Law Officers are being consulted on this subject. I do not understand that the Lord Chamberlain has made the proposal suggested.
  Mr. R. HARCOURT: Would it be possible, in keeping with the Rules of the House, to communicate the opinion of the Law Officers?
  Mr. McKENNA: I do not think so, but the question might be addressed to the Attorney-General.

  Solvency of Assurance Companies.
  Mr. GINNELLasked the Attorney-General whether the Director of Public Prosecutions had power, apart from an action, to investigate the practices and documents of insurance companies and societies to which his attention was directed; whether a company or society would be brought within his jurisdiction by the practice of getting agents to cease calling for premiums in order that the insurances might lapse and the money paid become forfeited to the company or society, or by the practice of getting newly insured persons in a concern about to fail to join another company under the same management, and affording no such option to insured persons whose claims approached maturity, but leaving them to lose all in the failure; and, the persons so treated being all poor, what action he proposed to take with reference to the directors of the London and Provincial Assurance Company who, as directors of the Irish Provident Assurance Company, treated persons insured with them in this manner?
  Mr. GINNELLalso asked the Attorney-General if the Director of Public Prosecutions had a staff competent and entitled to

  2363
  prevent bogus banks and insurance companies trading on the credulity of the poor; would he explain why so many of those institutions were allowed such a measure of success; why, for example, was one group of persons allowed to collect from poor people and appropriate to themselves £17,000, as reported by the Board of Trade; and whether the Director of Public Prosecutions was entitled to test the condition of suspected institutions, without detriment to any found solvent, by checking their real as distinguished from their paper assets and liabilities?
  The ATTORNEY-GENERAL (Sir Rufus Isaacs): The powers of investigation of the Director of Public Prosecutions are confined to cases disclosing the commission of a criminal offence. Unless the evidence available were sufficient to support the prosecution for a criminal offence he would be powerless to take any action. The Director of Public Prosecutions does in fact both consider and investigate every statement laid before him which alleges the commission of a criminal offence. If the hon. Member will lay a statement in writing before the Director of Public Prosecutions which alleges or discloses primâ facie evidence of the commission by any named person or persons of any crimina1 offence in England or in Wales, I will undertake that it shall receive both the consideration of and investigation by the Director of Public Prosecutions.
  Mr. GINNELL: If a bank makes an advance to one of its own officials to run an insurance society, there being no other money but the premiums received, the advance therefore being speculative and without security, would that act entitle the Director of Public Prosecutions to intervene?
  Sir RUFUS ISAACS: The facts stated by the hon. Member would not be sufficient in themselves to warrant the intervention of the Director of Public Prosecutions.

  Workmen's Compensation Act.
  Mr. ADAMSONasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether his attention had been directed to the case of Rosie v. Mackay, 1910, reported in Session Cases, 714; and whether he would bring in a Bill to amend the Workmen's Compensation Act, 1906, providing that it should be competent to award a nominal sum of compensation when the judge who
  2364
  tried the case was of opinion that, owing to the injuries which the workman had sustained the workman might reasonably be expected at some later date to be totally or partially incapacitated for work in consequence of the injuries, although for the time being he might be able to earn the same rate of wages as he did before the accident?
  Mr. McKENNA: I am aware of the decision referred to in the question. The point is one on which the English and Scottish Courts have taken different views; the English Court of Appeal having held that the judge has jurisdiction to make a suspensory award for the purpose of keeping alive the workman's claim for compensation in cases where incapacity is likely to recur, while the Scottish Court in the case mentioned has held that this cannot be done. The point can only be determined finally by a decision of the House of Lords. I am afraid I cannot give any promise to bring in legislation for the purpose of clearing up the point, but I will see that it is noted for consideration in connection with the next amending Bill.
  Mr. CAWLEYasked the Attorney-General whether he was aware that lump sums awarded under the Workmen's Compensation Act and invested by order of the County Court were by the rules only allowed to be invested in the Post Office Savings Bank; and whether he could do anything to have such rules altered so that such sums could be invested in trustee securities or other stocks returning a fair rate of interest?
  Sir RUFUS ISAACS: I will bring this matter to the attention of the Rule Committee of the County Court Judges.

  Scottish Votes (Closure).
  Mr. PIRIEasked the Lord Advocate if he is aware that, for the years 1906–10, out of the eleven Scottish Votes the numbers passed by Closure in this House and not previously discussed were, yearly, ten, eight, ten, nine, and seven respectively, or for the period an average of nearly ten Scottish Votes undiscussed per annum out of eleven, and also that for the years 1907–9 a total amount of £4,138,000 was likewise voted for Scotland without opportunity for discussion; and whether the Government will be prepared to propose a wider latitude for the examination of Scottish Estimates next year so as to secure more facility for the discussion of Scottish affairs?
  The LORD ADVOCATE (Mr. Ure): In reply to the first part of the question, I have no doubt that the figures given by my hon. Friend are correct. With regard to the second part of the question, the Government has no power to give wider latitude in debate. By the practice of the House, discussion must be limited to the particular Vote which is read out from the Chair, and the Debate on that Vote cannot be made the opportunity for discussing a topic which arises on another Vote. The Government has no desire to limit discussion: but the practice of the House is quite well recognised.
  Mr. MUNRO-FERGUSON: In view of the facts stated in the right hon. Gentleman's answer, is he still of the opinion that the Government of Scotland is one of the best known to the world?
  Mr. URE: Yes, Sir.
  Mr. WATT: Can the right hon. Gentleman say why the Scottish Office did not furnish the information to the hon. Member for Aberdeen instead of sending him to another Department?
  Mr. URE: Because that was the proper Department to send him to.

  Ecclesiastical Assessment Taxes (Scotland).
  Dr. CHAPPLEasked the Lord Advocate whether he can offer to feuars in Scotland any hope of relief from Ecclesiastical Assessment Taxes which are still being levied for the erection and repair of churches in which they have no interest nor concern?
  Mr. URE: The attitude of the Government towards this measure was stated by Lord Shaw of Dunfermline, when Lord Advocate, in the Debate on the Ecclesiastical Assessments (Scotland) Bill in the House of Commons on 26th February, 1907 (Parliamentary Debates, 4th Series, vol. 169, pp. 1547–1552), and I do not think that I can add to what was said then.
  Dr. CHAPPLE: Will the right hon. Gentleman kindly explain what was the cause of the delay in carrying out that policy?
  Mr. URE: There was no definite promise given that legislation would be introduced, but Lord Shaw expressed entire approval of the resolution.
  Dr. CHAPPLE: Can no hope be given of redress of the grievances under which these people are suffering from this tax?
  Mr. URE: I am afraid not this Session.
  Mr. KING: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that grievances of this kind have led to passive resistance in England and may do so even in Scotland.
  Dr. CHAPPLE: Will the right hon. Gentleman offer any hope that next Session some relief will be given?

  Sheriff Court Districts, Fifeshire.
  Mr. ADAMSONasked the Lord Advocate whether he is now in a position to make any definite statement in regard to the readjustment of the Sheriff Court districts in Fifeshire?
  Mr. URE: The readjustment of The Sheriff Court districts in Fifeshire has now been made, and the appropriate order giving effect to the new arrangement will be issued in a few days.
  Sir G. YOUNGER: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether there is to be any alteration of the district close to Fife?
  Mr. URE: Not at the same lime; there will be subsequently.

  Labour Exchanges.
  Mr. WILLIAM PEELasked the President of the Board of Trade whether his attention has been called to the receipt of a letter by the London County Council from the south-eastern divisional officer of the Labour Exchanges of the Board of Trade, stating that, with the approval of the general manager, a scheme for the instruction of the officials in Labour Exchanges has been prepared, and asking the council to give such assistance as will enable this scheme to be put into operation; whether it is the practice of the Board to appoint unqualified and uneducated persons to posts on Labour Exchanges; and whether he will undertake in future to appoint persons who have undergone at least an elementary training in the duties which they are to discharge before their appointment and thus protect the ratepayers from unnecessary expenditure on education?
  The PRESIDENT of the BOARD of TRADE (Mr. Buxton): No official letter has been addressed by the Board of Trade to the London County Council on this subject, but I understand that various verbal and written communications have passed between individual officers of the county council and of the Labour Exchanges branch. As I understand from the newspapers

  2367
  that the London County Council, in their discretion, have refrained from sanctioning the scheme of classes jointly prepared for their consideration by these officers, the scheme, of course, falls to the ground. There is, of course, no justification -whatever for the insinuation contained in the last part of the hon. Member's question directed against the capable and devoted staff of the London Labour Exchanges.
  Mr. PEEL: Would the right hon. Gentleman be good enough to answer the last part of the question whether he will undertake in future to appoint persons who have undergone at least an elementary training in the duties which they are to discharge before their appointment?
  Mr. BUXTON: I have answered that part by saying there is no justification whatever for the insinuation contained in the last part of the question, namely, that they are not fit for their work. These classes are a matter that ought to be encouraged, I should think, rather than be discouraged.
  Mr. PEEL: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that these classes, of which I have seen the syllabus, deal with the most elementary matters about the writing of business letters and so on, and may I not insinuate that it is essential that those gentlemen ought to be instructed in such matters before taking salaries from the Government, and not be given this education at the expense of the ratepayers?
  Mr. BUXTON: These officers were appointed because they were thought to be the most suitable for the work, and I think it may be an advantage from the point of view of the public that they should have an opportunity of improving their education.
  Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: Will the right hon. Gentleman circulate a copy of the syllabus?
  Mr. BUXTON: If the right hon. Gentleman wishes. I have not seen it.
  Mr. PEEL: I will send the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade a copy.
  Mr. SCANLANasked when the Labour Exchange in Sligo will be opened?
  Mr. BUXTON: It is hoped that this Exchange will be opened about the middle of next month.

  Kilkenny Railway Station.
  Mr. PATRICK O'BRIENasked whether any and, if so, which, of the recommendations of Colonel von Donop, consequent upon his recent inspection of the Kilkenny railway station of the Great Southern and Western Railway Company have been carried out; and, if not, will he take steps to see that, for the safety and convenience of the public, they are carried out without further delay?
  Mr. BUXTON: The railway company have not yet informed me of the result of their consideration of Colonel von Donop's recommendations, but as soon as they do so I will communicate with my hon. Friend. Their attention has been recently called to the matter. I should, perhaps, explain that the Board of Trade have no compulsory powers in the matter.

  United Turkey Red Company.
  Mr. ACLAND ALLENasked the President of the Board of Trade whether his attention has been drawn to the dispute between the United Turkey Red Company, Vale of Leven, and their workers; and what action his Department proposed to take in the matter?
  Mr. BUXTON: The Chief Industrial Commissioner is at present in communication with the parties to this dispute.

  Trade Boards (Inspectors).
  Mr. ARTHUR HENDERSONasked the number of inspectors proposed to be appointed under the Trade Boards Act; the amount of salary to be paid to each inspector; and the methods of appointment?
  Mr. BUXTON: The estimates for this year provide for eight officers in connection with the Trade Boards Act, with salaries ranging from £150 to £200 in the third-class, to £300 to £400 in the first class. At present four have been appointed, and the question whether further appointments should be made is now being considered. The appointments are made by the Board of Trade.

  Post Office Savings Banks.
  Dr. CHAPPLEasked the Postmaster-General, whether any Return of the position of the various Post Office Savings Banks in the United Kingdom has been issued since 1895; and, if not, whether he will consider the advisability of issuing a Return periodically?
  The POSTMASTER-GENERAL (Mr. Herbert Samuel): No complete Return of this nature has been prepared since 1895, as the cost of compiling that Return, which was considerable, was not justified by its value. I do not consider it advisable to issue such a Return periodically.

  Automatic Telephone System.
  Captain MURRAYasked what, if any, inquiry has been made into the feasibility and value of introducing into this country the automatic telephone system which has been tested in certain cities in America?
  Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL: As I stated in reply to a question on 30th November, three experimental automatic telephone exchanges are about to be installed at Epsom, Caterham, and the General Post Office.

  Postal and Telephone Facilities (Sligo).
  Mr. SCANLANasked the Postmaster-General if he can see his way to retain the postal telegraph facilities for Templeboy and Skreen, county Sligo, at the expense of his Department, in view of the want of railway and other communication in those districts and in view of the rates which have already to be paid for the various county and local purposes by the ratepayers?
  Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL: I am having inquiry made, and will communicate with the hon. Member as soon as possible.
  Mr. SCANLANasked why the trunk telephone facilities extended to Sligo only enable calls to be made by subscribers as far as Enniskillen; and whether he will provide such additional facilities as will enable traders and other subscribers in Sligo to use the trunk lines all over the postal telephone area?
  Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL: The hon. Member's question appears to be based on a misapprehension. Subscribers at Sligo can obtain communication with the general telephone system through Enniskillen, although, owing to the electrical limitations imposed by the cross-channel submarine cable, it may not be possible to speak from Sligo to the more distant parts of England and Scotland.

  Sugar Beet in England.
  Mr. STANIERasked the Vice-President of the Department of Agricuture (Ireland) whether he could give the data as
  2370
  to where the cultivation of sugar beet in England has not been successful in 1911?
  The CHIEF SECRETARY for IRELAND (Mr. Birrell): The statement of my right hon. Friend the Vice-President of the Department of Agriculture, made on the 23rd November, was based upon official and other information in regard to the beet growing experiments in Norfolk not having proved so successful as had been hoped for. It was intended to cover the whole course of the experiments, and not merely those of last year.
  Mr. STANIER: Will the Chief Secretary call his right hon. Friend's attention to the fact that the results of the experiments were very nearly double as good as on the Continent?
  Mr. BIRRELL: Of course I will call attention to that. I suppose most of us have seen the reports of the growing in Norfolk and formed our own opinion upon it. I shall call my right hon. Friend's attention to the matter.

  Estimated True Revenue of Ireland.
  Mr. PATRICK WHITEasked the Secretary to the Treasury (1) whether he will state upon what basis the estimated true revenue of Ireland, as given in the White Paper, No. 221, ordered to be printed 12th July, 1911, is calculated; if he will state in what year it was first adopted; whether he will state if any, and what, record has been kept of dutiable articles entering or leaving Ireland, in what year, and for how many months such record was kept; and what authority kept the record; (2) whether there is in existence at present any machinery for estimating the true revenue of Ireland; and, if not, whether he will state if, in order to calculate accurately the produce of Customs and Excise duties derivable from the respective articles under those headings consumed in Ireland, it would be necessary to establish an authority in Ireland with power to compel the recording of any dutiable articles entering or leaving that country?
  Mr. McKINNON WOOD: The basis on which the Return is prepared will be found explained in House of Commons Paper 313 of 1894, which also contains a history of the Return. Reference should also be made to House of Commons Papers 329 of 1891, 314 of 1894, and 225 and 269 of 1904. Very thorough inquiries extending over the whole financial year were made by the Customs Department in the year 1903–4

  2371
  as to the import and export to and from Ireland of dutiable articles. Further investigations as regards special articles have been made by the Customs and Excise Department during the course of the present year. As regards the concluding question, I would refer the hon. Member to the answer given by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister to a question by the Member for Dublin University on the 27th ultimo.

  Board of Education (Employés).
  Mr. CHARLES DUNCANasked whether he will state the present designation of the employés in the Board of Education and Probate Registry whose conditions of service are so similar to those of dockyard writers and certain persons employed in the War Office and Army Ordnance Department that any suggestions for a change in the conditions of service of the dockyard writers would have also to be considered in relation to them?
  Mr. McKINNON WOOD: I cannot add anything to my answer of 28th ultimo to the hon. Member.

  Caves of Elephanta.
  Mr. JOYNSON-HICKSasked the Under-Secretary of State for India whether his attention has been called to the treatment of the Caves of Elephanta, and will he say by whose authority this action has been taken; and whether he will see that other monuments in India are preserved from similar treatment?
  The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for INDIA (Mr. Montagu): I am aware that certain works which have been recently carried out for the purpose of securing the safety and otherwise conserving the rock temples at Elephanta have been unfavourably criticised an the public Press, but I have no official information. The Bombay Government is the responsible authority, and will no doubt consider these criticisms, and will take such action as may be necessary in consultation with the Department of Archæology.
  Mr. JOYNSON-HICKS: When is the hon. Gentleman likely to have the information, and is he aware that this question of preventing vandalism is one of the greatest importance in India?
  Mr. MONTAGU: It was in order to avoid vandalism that the Department of Archæology was instituted.
  Mr. JOYNSON-HICKS: Would the hon. Gentleman, since he has seen what appeared in the Press, call for an inquiry as to what has been done and see whether it calls for interference?
  Mr. MONTAGU: Of course, the letters that appeared in the public Press, and the hon. Member's question itself, will be taken into consideration by the Bombay Government, but if the hon. Member wishes I shall direct special attention to it.

  Durbar Commemoration Medal Ribbons.
  Mr. WILLIAM PEELasked the Under-Secretary of State for India whether his attention has been drawn to the fact that the ribbon to which the commemoration medals for the Durbar are attached, as well as the machine for cutting the ribbon, was made in Germany; and whether it is not possible to obtain these articles within the four corners of the British Empire?
  Mr. MONTAGU: The contract for the supply of ribbon for the Durbar medal was placed with the same British firm that supplied the ribbon for the Coronation medal, which is of the same pattern. The firm, Messrs. Redmayne and Co., of New Bond Street, stated on their tender that the ribbon would be made at Coventry and elsewhere, and I have no reason to suppose that the conditions of the tender were not observed. I have no information as to the make of the machine used to cut the ribbon.

  Irish and English Assurance Societies.
  Mr. GINNELLasked the Chief Secretary for Ireland if he will explain why the Director of Public Prosecutions in Ireland has not availed himself of public information pointing to cases of systematic fraud; why the practice has been allowed to grow-up of the same group of persons starting several companies to help each other in evading the law, doing business contrary to statute and by improper means transferring their victims from one company to another; and, if he has not already done so, whether he will make himself acquainted with the origin and character of the relations between the National United Assurance Society, Limited, and the United National Friendly Assurance Collecting Society, between the Irish Provident Assurance Company and the London and Provincial Assurance Company, and between Ireland's Life Assurance Collecting Society and the Guardian Bank, and make the result of his investigation known for the guidance of the public?
  Mr. BIRRELL: The Attorney-General has no information of cases of fraud practised by any of the companies referred to. He is causing inquiries to be made into the constitution and operations of these companies, and he can form no opinion on the matter involved until he becomes acquainted with the facts.
  Mr. GINNELL: Will the right hon. Gentleman ask the Director of Public Prosecutions in Ireland to investigate the advance of money by the Guardian Bank to one of its own officials to run an insurance society?
  Mr. BIRRELL: If anyone calls the attention of the Public Prosecutor to the matter and makes allegations to the effect which, as the Attorney-General has already said, that disclose a primâ facie case of evidence for a criminal prosecution, such prosecution will take place.
  Mr. GINNELL: Will a question in this House cause the Public Prosecutor in Ireland to institute in Ireland?
  Mr. BIRRELL: No, Sir; if someone takes the responsibility of calling the attention of the Public Prosecutor to the matter in a form which discloses a criminal offence a prosecution will be undertaken.
  Mr. GINNELLasked in view of the number of people in Ireland brought to grief by the Irish Provident Assurance Company, whether the Director of Public Prosecutions in Ireland has made himself acquainted with the connection and methods of some of its ex-directors now operating in Ireland as the Law Integrity Insurance Company and the National Protector Insurance Company; and what notice, if any, he has taken of the failure of these twin companies this year to comply with the statutory requirements governing the production and publication of accounts of such companies?
  Mr. BIRRELL: The Attorney-General has no information concerning the Law Integrity Insurance Company, or the National Protector Insurance Company, but he is causing inquiries to be made with a view to seeing whether he should take any action.

  Labourers (Ireland) Acts.
  Mr. GINNELLasked if the right hon. Gentleman will say by what authority and for what reason the Local Government Board for Ireland propose to disregard the
  2374
  sanitary reasons for the Labourers (Ireland) Acts and to allocate the money now available at low interest on entirely different grounds not contemplated in any of those Acts; and whether, having regard to the express purposes of those Acts and the desirability of preventing consumption, he will have the recent circular of the Board recalled, and the money allocated in proportion to the need for it on sanitary grounds?
  Mr. BIRRELL: The great bulk of the cottages already authorised to be provided in the several rural districts were sanctioned on sanitary grounds, that is, for the purpose of replacing condemned dwellings; and (as in promoting each of the schemes now being submitted, the councils have the like object in view), the hon. Member need have no fears that the money will not be applied mainly for the erection of labourers' cottages in lieu of insanitary dwellings. There is nothing whatever in the circular to warrant the hon. Member's assumption that the Local Government Board "propose to disregard the sanitary reasons for the Labourers (Ireland) Acts" in the allocation of the additional million provided by the Act of 1911.

  Valuation Office Staff (Ireland).
  Mr. GINNELLasked whether the Valuation Office in Ireland has a staff of qualified inspectors of land; when they were given power to revise the valuation of agricultural land in Ireland as distinct from buildings; what their procedure is; why it is done here and there partially in the absence of a general revaluation; and if he will say by whom and by what process the valuations of the lands of some purchasers and payers of interest are now being increased, with corresponding increase of rates, without any notice to the farmers or any inspector having gone on the lands?
  Mr. McKINNON WOOD: The Valuation Office has a staff of qualified valuers. They are given the power to revise the Valuation of agricultural land in accordance with the provisions of the Valuation Acts whenever they are sent out by the Commissioner of Valuation to do so. The Revision only takes place when there is an application for such through the rating authorities. Outside the cities of Dublin and Belfast the total valuation of the agricultural land in any townland is not being increased. The valuer visits the land in all cases.
  Mr. GINNELL: How does the right hon. Gentleman account for farms here and there being valued without any general revaluation and valued without the owner being aware of it?
  Mr. McKINNON WOOD: Changes in periodical valuation are made without informing the owner in cases like that all over the country. I cannot give the hon. Member any more information unless he gives me notice.
  Mr. GINNELL: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that land cannot be valued, like houses, without going upon it and testing it?
  Mr. McKINNON WOOD: I have already stated that the valuer visits the land in all cases.

  Land Purchase (Ireland).
  Mr. SCANLANasked if the right hon. Gentleman can state what rate in years' purchase of rent the Congested Districts Board have purchased estates in county Sligo since the commencement of the Land Act of 1909?
  Mr. BIRRELL: The rates vary, and an average would be altogether misleading.
  Mr. SCANLANasked whether the attention of the Congested Districts Board has been directed to a resolution passed by the tenants of the parish of Castleconnor, county Sligo, complaining that the Board have not yet started operations in this parish, and calling on the Board to approach the various landlords interested; and whether he can state what action the Board propose to take in this and other districts in county Sligo?
  Mr. BIRRELL: The resolution referred to has been received by the Congested Districts Board. The question of purchasing estates in this and other districts in county Sligo is receiving the attention of the Board.
  Mr. SCANLANasked if the right hon. Gentleman will state what action, if any, the Estates Commissioners propose to take in the matter of the application for reinstatement or for a new holding of Patrick Murrin, who was evicted on 31st January, 1905, from his holding of land on the Lewis estate, situated in the townland of Muck-duff, Dromore, West Union, county Sligo; and if he will explain why this case has not been already dealt with by the Commissioners, seeing that the tenants appealed to them two years ago?
  Mr. BIRRELL: The Estates Commissioners have received an application from Patrick Murrin for reinstatement in a holding formerly occupied by him on this estate. His application was not received within the period prescribed by the Evicted Tenants Act, 1907, and cannot, therefore, be dealt with under the provisions of that Act.

  Home Rule Bill.
  Mr. ASTORasked if the right hon. Gentleman will circulate copies of the Home Rule Bill before the end of the present Session so that Members of the House of Commons may have an opportunity of discussing the measure with their constituents before Parliament reassembles in February?
  Mr. BIRRELL: No, Sir.
  Mr. ASTOR: May I ask if the Bill has up to the present been drafted?
  Mr. BIRRELL: Yes.
  Mr. ASTOR: Does the right hon. Gentleman see any good reason for not producing it?
  Mr. BIRRELL: Yes, I do.

  British Army (General Annual Report).
  Mr. SANDYSasked the Under-Secretary of State for War whether, for the convenience of Members, it would be possible to arrange for the General Annual Report on the British Army to be published at least a month before the Debate on Army Estimates?
  The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for WAR (Colonel Seely): Every effort is made to publish the General Annual Report at the earliest possible date, but the time required for the compilation and printing of the tables is considerable. It is hoped that the Report for the twelve months ending the 30th September last will be ready for circulation by the end of February next.

  Cavalry Horses.
  Major ARCHER-SHEEasked whether the right hon. Gentleman is aware that the majority of Government horses are at present rugged in cold weather from funds other than public funds; and whether, in view of the feeling which exists amongst officers of mounted corps that the present regulations, which do not allow of the issue of rugs for cavalry horses, are the cause of serious loss to public funds and

  2377
  impair the efficiency of mounted corps, he will cause an inquiry to be made and reports called for from commanding officers?
  Colonel SEELY: This question has recently received the fullest consideration and instructions were issued in October last, in the form of an additional paragraph 1220a in the King's Regulations, to the effect that a commanding officer should exercise his discretion as regards clipping and the extent to which it should be carried out and that it should as a rule be done in November, December and January. If the provisions of this Regulation are earried out and if the horse is given his full allowance of forage, it is considered that the issue of rugs, beyond the present allotment, should be unnecessary.

  Territorial Battalions.
  Major ANSTRUTHER-GRAYasked whether the right hon. Gentleman can state the number of Territorial Battalions that have not completed their full course of musketry ball practice this year; and whether he can state approximately the total number of men in the Territorial Forces who come under this category?
  Colonel SEELY: The returns are not yet to hand to enable me to give the required information.

  Pointed Rifle Bullet.
  Mr. HUNTasked how many British Regular troops and how many of the auxiliary troops could at the present time, in case of sudden war, be armed with rifles correctly sighted for shooting with the new pointed bullet?
  Colonel SEELY: It is not considered to be in the interests of the public service to publish this information.
  Mr. HUNT: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the bullet used by foreign nations makes a much more severe wound than the old bullet which we shall have to use?
  Mr. SPEAKER: That question does not arise out of the answer.

  21st Lancers (Service in India).
  Colonel YATEasked if the draft which is to be sent to the 21st Lancers this trooping season will not, as at present arranged, arrive in Egypt till April; and whether, considering that April and May, owing to the hot desert winds, are about the worst and most trying months of the year in that
  2378
  country, and the fact that British cavalry in Egypt have no native followers to assist in stable duties as in India, he will consider the advisability of sending out the draft earlier in the year so as to permit of the men getting acclimatised before the hot weather sets in, and thus to avoid, as far as possible, wastage through sickness?
  Colonel SEELY: The draft of the 21st Lancers will reach Alexandria on 3rd April, and proceed to Cairo. Owing to the requirements in drafts and reliefs at other stations, it is necessary to run one transport to the Mediterranean Stations and Egypt early in the trooping season, and a second towards the end of the season. It is not possible to send all the drafts for Egypt in the first of these transports.

  REPORTED MURDER OF DURBAR OFFICIAL.
  Captain MURRAY: I desire to ask the Under-Secretary of State for India a question of which I have given him private notice—whether his attention has been drawn to a newspaper rumour to the effect that a Durbar official in India has been murdered, and whether he has any information to give to the House on that point?
  Mr. MONTAGU: My attention has been called to a poster and a paragraph, but I am glad to be able to say that there is no foundation for it. I regret to say, however, that a police inspector, according to a newspaper telegram, was murdered in Eastern Bengal yesterday. The telegram arrived from a newspaper correspondent who addressed it from the Durbar Camp. That is probably the explanation.
  Captain MURRAY: Has the hon. Member any official information of this murder?
  Mr. MONTAGU: None, except from the newspapers this morning.
  Sir W. BYLES: Which enterprising newspaper is this?

BILLS PRESENTED.

  ECCLESIASTICAL ASSESSMENTS (SCOTLAND) BILL.
  "To amend the law regarding Ecclesiastical Assessments in Scotland," presented by Dr. CHAPPLE; supported by Mr. Acland

  2379
  Allen, Mr. Eugene Mason, Mr. Munro-Fer-guson, Mr. M'Callum, Mr. Sutherland, Mr. Price, Mr. Dundas White, and Mr. Whyte; to be read a second time to-morrow, and to be printed.

  LAND VALUES (SCOTLAND) BILL.
  "To provide for the ascertainment of Land Values in Scotland; and for other purposes connected therewith," presented by Mr. DUNDAS WHITE; supported by Mr. Sutherland, Mr. Murray Macdonald, Mr. M'Callum, Mr. Price, Mr. Watt, Colonel Greig, Mr. Godfrey Collins, and Mr. Mac-Callum Scott; to be read a second time to-morrow, and to be printed.

FINANCE BILL.
Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read the third time."—[Mr. Lloyd George.]
Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: The House is not in the mood for listening to lengthy speeches at this stage of the Bill and at this period of the Session, and I intend to occupy only a short space of time. Under the circumstances in which we find ourselves, and considering the conditions we have had to work under during the last few days, it has been impossible for me to equip myself with the material required for a proper survey of our financial position or even to go through such material as I had ready to hand. What I am going to say will, therefore, be of a general character. I do not propose to go into any details in regard to our financial legislation, but I cannot allow this Bill to finally leave the House without entering on behalf of the Opposition—I think I might also say on behalf of a great number of hon. Members on the other side of the House, although I have no title to speak for them—the strongest protest in my power against the course which the Government have taken, not for the first time, in regard to the Finance Bill of the year. For many years the chief pride of the Liberal party was the finance of Mr. Gladstone. In Mr. Gladstone's view economy and retrenchment were the first of all the obligations of a Chancellor of the Exchequer, whatever the risk to his own popularity or the popularity of his party. Mr. Gladstone recognised no higher duty in the House of Commons than that it should keep a jealous and watchful control over the
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taxation and expenditure of the country. If Mr. Gladstone could revisit the scene of our activities what would he say of his successor in title? I do not think there is a canon of Gladstonian finance to which the Government has not been false, and certainly no Government could treat finance with greater levity than they have done.
Just look at the history of the past few years! We had in 1909 a Budget of extreme importance. It was discussed at very considerable length in this House. I make no complaint of the way in which it was treated, though we were often obliged to discuss very important questions in the early hours of all-night sittings, and even into what we habitually call the morning of the next day. That Bill was not accepted in another place, and a General Election took place upon it. During that election every Liberal platform reverberated with condemnation of the House of Lords for the inconvenience, the confusion, and the injury which they had inflicted on the country by hanging up the financial provisions of the year.
What happened in the following year? That Bill, as the result of the election, went through in the early months of 1918. The Budget Resolutions and the Budget Statement of the Chancellor of the Exchequer of 1910 itself were not presented to the House until the middle of July was passed. No attempt was made to proceed with the further consideration of that Budget until the Autumn Session, and it was not taken up again until a stringent Guillotine Resolution had been passed rendering anything like adequate discussion absolutely impossible, and a Resolution of such a character that in fact the Opposition declined to take part in a discussion which had become absolutely farcical. The Government, confronted last year with the contradiction between their practice and their platform speeches, pleaded that the circumstances of last year were wholly exceptional, that they had to pass two Finance Bills within one year, that the Coronation had intervened in the middle of the period which is ordinarily allotted to the Session, and that all these circumstances had made it impossible for them to treat finance in the normal way; and they pleaded to be excused on account of the abnormal circumstances of the year. I did not think their excuses were sufficient, but I am bound to admit they had some force behind them.

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Now we come to the present year. In the present year there were no abnormal circumstances. There was no carrying over from the previous year of a previous Finance Bill. The finance of the year was normal. Yet the Government made no effort to introduce the Finance Bill at the usual time, and, having introduced the Bill, they again postponed it to the Autumn Session for all its further stages; and, not only so, but they reserved the most important of those stages for almost the last business of this prolonged Session, and actually for three successive days in the week before Christmas. What control can the House of Commons have of the finance of the country when its opportunities of considering that finance are of that limited character, and are postponed to that period of the year? It renders our control of finance an absolute farce. It deprives the country of redress for grievances, it deprives the House of Commons of its power effectively to criticise or to control the action of the Government, and it reduces the financial legislation, just as by similar actions they have reduced other legislation, to the position of being not the work of the House of Commons, but the decree of the Government registered by an automatic vote of the House of Commons. I could illustrate the ill effects of this in many ways. I will content myself with one illustration, for the details of which I am indebted to my hon. Friend the Member for the Ayr Burghs (Sir G. Younger), who had a new Clause down for consideration on the present Bill which we were unable to deal with at all on the Committee stage, because we had only one day for the whole of that stage, and which, on the Repot stage, was not reached till one o'clock in the morning, when the Chancellor of the Exchequer was absent from the House. As I have mentioned the absence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, I hope he will permit me to say that I recognise, as we all do, that the labours which he has had to undergo have been enormous, and I think we may congratulate him that he sustains them with extraordinary vigour. I am not complaining that he is idle—far from it—but I do complain that owing to the way in which Government business is transacted it is impossible for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to give that attention to finance and that attendance on the Finance Bill in the House of Commons which every one of his predecessors made it their first duty to give.
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4.0 P.M.
I have never known Finance Bills discussed so largely in the absence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He has been very ably seconded by his colleagues. In these days you never know what Minister will be in charge of the Finance Bill. At one moment it is the Under-Secretary for the Home Office, at another it is the First Lord of the Admiralty, and sometimes it was the Secretary of State for War, and then the Government generally got into a muddle, and took it out of military hands. Sometimes it is one or other of the Law Officers, and frequently the presence of a Law Officer is really essential, as, indeed, it was essential last night, though, owing to the ill-health of the Solicitor-General, we were deprived of his assistance when it would have been very valuable. Whatever be the competence of these Gentlemen, whether connected with the Treasury or whether drawn in from other Departments, to deal with the Finance Bill, they have not the authority or the freedom of action of the Chancellor of the Exchequer himself, and anyone who has followed, as it has been my duty to do pretty closely—I think I may say very closely—the discussions of these Finance Bills, knows how much the House suffers when the Chancellor of the Exchequer himself is not present. Again and again we have had cases where we were confident that if we had had the Minister really responsible for the Bill, with the real authority to deal with the Bill, present in the House, he would have been convinced by the arguments adduced that there was a case with which he ought to deal, and I am bound to say the Chancellor of the Exchequer, when he is so convinced, has shown very considerable readiness to accept Amendments to his measures. No other Minister, however able, has the same authority. He acts on instructions left him by the Chancellor of the Exchequer before the Chancellor of the Exchequer has heard the Debate, and he sits there making the best case he can, shutting his ears as far as possible to the arguments that he cannot answer, and holding the ground which the Chancellor of the Exchequer has told him to occupy, like the general of a besieged fortress, with the knowledge that if he can only sit tight and not give way for a time, presently the operation of the guillotine, or the pressure of an arrangement to conclude the Debate within a certain limit, will force the House to divide, and he will be relieved of all further trouble.

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What is the effect of that on the interests of all classes of tax payers, or even of individual taxpayers? I said I would give one instance. My hon. Friend the Member for Ayr Burghs (Sir G. Younger) had last night on the Paper a new Clause dealing with the case of a free tenant of a public-house, and the offering to him the same opportunity for transfer ring to his landlord a part of the increased taxation which is accorded to the tied tenant when his landlord is a brewer. What is the history of that Amendment? It was put down on the Committee stage of the right hon. Gentleman's 1909 Budget. It was reached at a very late stage of that Committee, and, when the right hon. Gentleman was getting tired, and he told my hon. Friend that there was a good deal in it—I am not giving his exact words, of course—but at any rate he received the idea sympathetically, and he asked my hon. Friend to postpone it, with the promise——
The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER (Mr. Lloyd George): Was that last year?
Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: It was on the original 1909 Budget. The right hon. Gentleman's promise was that it should have consideration, with a desire to accept it if possible; but, owing to a technicality in the exact form of the Amendment, when it was reached on the Report stage it was found to be out of order. My hon. Friend had waived his opportunity of pressing it on the Committee stage on the assurance of the Chancellor of the Exchequer that, at a later stage, it would be considered in no hostile spirit, and then he was deprived of his opportunity of bringing it on at that later stage. Last year the Budget was put off till November, and he again had no opportunity of raising it. He desired to raise it this year. He got no opportunity in Committee, and it did not come on till one o'clock this morning on the Report stage. Then the Chancellor of the Exchequer was not in the House, and my hon. Friend came to the conclusion that it was both useless and impossible to press it. I have said nothing about the working of the particular Clause. That is obviously a matter for legal advice, but I am fully confident that neither the Government nor the House meant a free tenant to be in a worse position than a tied tenant, and, if Parliament had been sitting at a normal time,
2384
and if there had been a fair chance of discussing the Amendment, I believe it would, with the full consent of the right hon. Gentleman, have been embodied in the Bill. When we are pressed with our financial legislation, and when the Government force the House to proceed with it, the most reasonable propositions get no chance of fair consideration, and the subject of the Crown is deprived of his right of redress.
The evil is really more serious. It is too serious and widespread to be rested on a single Amendment. The Budget of 1909 introduced entirely new principles of taxation and most complicated administrative machinery. The House has never had an adequate opportunity, since those proposals passed into law, of discussing their practical working. From time to time we have debated them in a more or less limited fashion, but often our grievances have been raised in the absence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and in the presence of the Financial Secretary, who usually gives, as he did last night, certain replies. The first answer is that general charges are no good, and that you must support your attack by particular instances. Then if we give particular instances we are told it is useless to bring them forward, as obviously it is impossible to reply to them in the course of the Debate. I do not say that either answer is wholly unreasonable, but I do say that just in proportion as they are reasonable there is an obligation on the Government to give us reasonable opportunity for bringing these matters up. We not only require that there shall be such opportunity of discussion at reasonable periods as will enable the Government to investigate the charges which we make, but we require also that there shall be such reasonable opportunities as will enable us to examine the answers which the Government give and to recur to the matter if we think it necessary. I do not think the Chancellor of the Exchequer needs reminding that our recent experience shows how important these things are. We have, in spite of all these difficulties, brought certain cases repeatedly before the House. There is the famous Richmond case, and nothing but the persistency with which we brought that case before the House has enabled the merits of that case to be tried. If it had not been for the action of this House the merits of that case would never have been tried. It was the pressure we brought to bear that enabled the case to be brought before the Courts.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: Are you referring to the Highbury case?
Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: No, that illustrates another matter. May I say I am much obliged to the right hon. Gentleman for the concession he made in the Richmond case. We made an allegation which the Government required time to answer. I think we made our allegations on three occasions at long intervals, and it was on the third occasion that the Government were induced to give their answer. We made some further inquiry, which showed that the answer supplied to the Government was either inaccurate or misleading, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, acting on that information, undertook an inquiry. We only know the disciplinary result of that inquiry, but apparently it was clear there was ground for our complaint that the information supplied to the Government was not satisfactory. The second instance was of course of a very peculiar and serious character—one happily very rare. In most of these cases there is no allegation that any official is trying to do anything but his duty, or is knowingly doing otherwise than his duty. They have to administer most complicated and difficult matters and one of our principal criticisms against the Act was the complication and difficulty of doing what these officials are directed to do. It really is a refusal of justice to the subject when, after an Act is in operation the House of Commons is prevented, in this way, from having a complete review of the result of its working. I have asked before now, as I propose again to ask, that, having regard to the result of the Act in cases which we have been able to follow up by repeated references to them in this House, the Government should agree to an independent inquiry into the working of valuations under the Act. If they would do so, while I do not suppose it would change their views as to the merits of their taxation, it would lead probably to a large modification of the machinery by which it is enforced. I am certain that before such an inquiry, competently conducted, it can be shown that such a case as my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr. Pretyman)—to whom the greatest credit in this matter is due for the time, attention and ability with which he has pursued the subject'—such a case as he has brought before the House, although they are treated as exceptional, are really of frequent occurrence under our present system.
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Passing from the right, as I consider, of the House of Commons to review at its leisure the effects of so novel a piece of legislation as the Budget of 1909, and to review them in the light of acquired experience, I come to another question of at least equal importance. We have had no opportunity for three years of a real discussion on the financial situation of the nation. No one on either side of the House will pretend that that financial situation to-day is so satisfactory that we should habitually affirm the Act now in sittings intermitted over a space of three days. Members of the House interested in financial matters do not need to be told that among persons of authority, belonging to both parties, and many men who have never taken any active part in political party life, especially when they have been associated with the public service, there is great uneasiness as to the financial position in which we stand, and there is still greater uneasiness at the position into which we are drifting. It used to be the boast of the Liberal party that they stood for retrenchment. That was their boast up to the moment when they got into office. It continued to be their claim down to the election of 1906. But from the time they got into office retrenchment went by the board. Expenditure has gone up by leaps and bounds, and we are now passing the Third Reading of the biggest Budget the country has ever had to consider, with the certainty that the measures already taken will cause the Budget to put not a limit to our expenditure, but to be a starting point for fresh expenditure. The Chancellor of the Exchequer will perhaps forgive me if I recall to the memory of this House a speech which he made on the 25th July, 1904, in which he said that the chances of the Chancellor of the Exchequer were, after all, very few. I believe the right hon. Gentleman is one of those who habitually advises us not to prophesy. He has been a successful prophet in his time. He said:
"Chancellors of the Exchequer are, after all, very human. …. The old tradition of Chancellors of Exchequer was to reduce taxation. The line of new Chancellors of Exchequer is to say 'Look at my term of office! My predecessor put on five millions; I will put on fifteen millions. My little finger shall be thicker than his loin.'"
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: That was about you.
Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: The right hon. Gentleman says it was about me. But about who is it now? De te fabula narratur. I was engaged in liquidating

2387
the liabilities of a great war. I was confronted with very particular demands at the moment for the Navy. The main feature of the two years for which I was responsible was that we were still liquidating the expense of that great war. It is not for that purpose that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has put on his £15,000,000. I think it was much more than £15,000,000, but I have not got the exact figure in my mind. But the right hon. Gentleman has outdone himself; he has surpassed his own prophecy; he is not putting this on to wipe out past expenditure or to reduce the outstanding liabilities of the country.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: It was enormous on the Navy.
Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: I think I have already mentioned that the Chancellor of the Exchequer had to meet a tremendous demand on the part of the Navy. Let me say at once, if there be any question about it, that I do not blame the Chancellor of the Exchequer for his expenditure on the Navy, and if anybody has blamed him for it, I should hope that the events of this year will have taught that person to be cautious in the future But, of course, it is not only necessary expenditure of that kind for our self-preservation that has been incurred by the Government. They have largely increased the liabilities in connection with their measures for social reform. They have even largely increased the liabilities of the State in connection with the enormous addition to the Civil Service, under circumstances of patronage which are a bad reversion to a bad tradition, and they have not even met the full liabilities which they themselves were creating. At what time is this being done? It is being done at a time when all our taxes stand at a high level; all of them without exception. It is being done simultaneously with a reduction in the provision for the reduction of debt, at a moment when Consols stand lower than they have ever stood in our time, and when the credit of Consols is so affected that their recovery is a matter of doubt and uncertainty, and the whole position of the Consol market is one that causes the gravest anxiety to all concerned in it—to the financial authorities in the City of London, and not less, I venture to say, to the Chancellor of the Exchequer himself, when he has to consider, as a Chancellor of the Exchequer always has to do, even in times of profound peace, what reserves are available for him if he
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were called upon for a sudden expansion of revenue owing to a breach of the peace occurring in Europe, whether we ourselves were immediately engaged in it or not.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer, in another speech, which I will not quote verbatim unless he wishes it, spoke of the financial resources which had carried us through the great Napoleonic wars. He said that we fought then, not with lead, but with money; that our financial resources were what beat down our opponents in Europe; and then he went on to say that we ought to carefully guard the same reserves and see that we were in a good financial position, so that if an hour of trial came Britain might give the same good account of herself as in the past. Again, that was in 1904, when the Chancellor of the Exchequer's observations were theories that flowed from, him lightly and involved him in no immediate responsibility. But now he is in a position to give effect to them. It is more urgent that they should be given effect to now than it was even in 1904. He said that we were squandering the reserves, and that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who declined to face the situation courageously, was not one who took a patriotic view of his duty to the country. I venture to say that when the Chancellor of the Exchequer goes out of office his record will have been written by himself in anticipation. What is the position? The Chancellor of the Exchequer has reduced the Sinking Fund. The Sinking Fund is one part of the country's reserves for a great emergency. The two great immediate financial reserves on which Chancellors of the Exchequer have relied on the outbreak of war have been the suspension of the Sinking Fund, which at once places several millions of revenue at their disposal, and the increase of the Income Tax, which can be done immediately, provided the Income Tax was kept at a moderate figure before. I think the Government themselves, when in Opposition, gave expression to a pious belief that an Income Tax of a shilling was too high. I think they have made it certain that the average of the Income Tax can never go below that figure. It stands to-day at 1s. 2d. without the Super-tax. The Sinking Fund is reduced. Both the great financial reserves are rendered less efficacious, and that at a time when the credit of the State for the purposes of borrowing is lower than it has ever been within our memory.
I think that is a grave situation. I think it is one to which the attention of the

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House of Commons ought to have been given, as it has been occupying the attention of those competent to express an opinion upon it outside, and I regret that during the last, three years, by the direct action of the Government, the House of Commons should have been deprived of any opportunity of doing its duty by the country in the review of National Finance. I believe the Government have accomplished one thing which no other Government has hitherto been able to accomplish. They have interested the country in the procedure of the House of Commons. Hitherto I have never known meetings in the country concerned about Closure Resolutions, Guillotine by compartments, or any other manner of procedure of that kind. It is by the action of the Government on another Bill that they have brought home to vast masses of the people, in a way they have never understood it before, how that directly affects their interests and shuts them out from the tribunal of the House of Commons. Once having had their attention drawn to this matter, they will note every instance of the same kind, and they will take note that by the Guillotine and postponement last year, and by the absolutely unparalleled postponement of the Budget this year, and by the pressure the Government have put upon us in regard to other matters, that they have made it absolutely impossible that the House of Commons should do its duty to its constituents by taking a proper financial review of the year. I believe that the Government themselves will find that their own hands are weakened, and that they are deprived of useful advice and guidance by refusing to competent people in the House of Commons the opportunity of discussing those questions which the Chancellor of the Exchequer ought to be the first to desire them to have. I only say in conclusion, that the worst of procedure of this kind is that it tends to perpetuate itself. Those who have supported the Government in the methods which they have adopted will one day change places and sit on this side of the House. They may then have Budget proposals produced to them which they do not like, and of a complicated and elaborate character, which they may think will require a great deal of discussion. It is not for me to foreshadow what a Unionist Government producing such proposals might think proper to do in regard to them. But if they want precedents for the suppression of Debate, they will find
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it in the action of the present Government, and if Gentlemen who now support them make an appeal for time, those Gentlemen will be ruled out of court by a simple reference to their action in the present House of Commons.
Mr. SNOWDEN: I do not intend to follow the right hon. Gentleman in the protest he has made against the way in which discussion of the Finance Bill has been curtailed by the Government this year. I must confess that I listened to his concluding sentences with a good deal of disappointment. He had made such a powerful case against the Government that I quite anticipated that he would devote his peroration to a declaration that, when the day does come when he and his party cross the floor, the House of Commons would get back to the good old days and be provided with ample time and opportunity for a full discussion of all financial proposals. My Parliamentary experience is not a very lengthy one, but I do not think I shall be far wrong if I were to say that the right hon. Gentleman will not find the first precedent for the curtailment of discussion in this House in the Parliamentary records of the last six years. I think Parliamentary precedents can be found during the time that the right hon. Gentleman and his party occupied the seat of power. I rise mainly to offer a few observations on behalf of myself and my party upon the Finance Bill, and on the general question which is raised by the Finance Bill. I would venture to say that we do not quarrel with the fact that this Budget, according to the statement just made to the House, proposes to raise the largest amount of Revenue on record. We do not object to a big Budget, but we do object to a good many of the purposes to which the Revenue which is to be raised by this Budget is going to be put. The right hon. Gentleman who just sat down devoted a considerable part of the middle of his speech to a criticism of the increased taxation within the last few years, and I was waiting with a good deal of interest to discover the particular items of expenditure to which he objected. We got no information, however, upon that matter whatever. The two items which account almost wholly for the increase in expenditure are the increase on the Navy and old age pensions. The right hon. Gentleman expressed his approval of the increase in the Navy Votes, and he urged no word of

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objection to the increase which was necessary for the purposes of old age pensions. He did make a passing reference to the increase in Civil Service expenditure by the creation of a number of official posts. He was very careful not to give us the amount of the increase due to this cause. I think an investigation of the facts will show that that accounts for a very infinitesimal amount of the total increase in the expenditure during the last few years.
Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: It amounts to £500,000.
Mr. SNOWDEN: What is £500,000 in our expenditure? We have nearly £13,000,000 increase in the Navy expenditure in the last few years, and there is £13,000,000 for old age pensions—£26,000,000 on these items alone. Therefore an increase in the expenditure of £500,000 for the purpose of carrying out some of the social reforms——
Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: And paying Members of Parliament.
Mr. SNOWDEN: That is £200,000, which is less than a hundredth part of the increased expenditure comprised in the items to which I have just referred. I do object very strongly to some part of the increased expenditure which has accrued during the last few years. I protest with all the strength of my feeling against the increase of £13,000,000 which has taken place in the Navy expenditure. This Government came into office six years ago pledged to economy, and instead of redeeming their platform promises, we have had the expenditure on the Navy going to a higher figure than it has ever reached before in the history of this country. Leaving out of consideration what we have raised by non-tax revenue—that is, the income from the Post Office—the amount of revenue to be raised by taxation is about £152,000,000, and of this just about two-thirds, or to be precise £96,500,000, is required for the Army and Navy and the payment of interest on the National Debt. That is to say, £96,500,000 is to be raised by taxation this year for fighting purposes—past, present, and future. This represents £10 a year, or 4s. a week, for each family in the country for fighting purposes alone. I recognise that as long as the present ideas which dominate political opinion in this country in regard to armaments continue we cannot have large
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measures of social reform and at the same time large expenditure for naval and military purposes. Therefore those with whom I am associated—and I believe in expressing this opinion we are expressing the views and wishes of a considerable number of Members who sit on this side of the House—want to see this enormous expenditure upon armaments reduced in order that the taxable capacity of the country may be devoted to much more profitable purposes in building up the manhood and intelligence of the nation.
I want to voice the dissatisfaction of my colleagues at the incidence of a very large proportion of the taxation which is to be raised under this Finance Bill. We hold that revenue from taxation may be imposed for two purposes. It may be and must be imposed for the purpose of meeting necessary expenditure, but the instruments of taxation may be used also for the purpose of bringing about a better distribution of wealth, and we should like to see the instrument of finance used much more effectually than it is at present to accomplish the latter of these purposes. I quite admit that the Chancellor of the Exchequer two years ago did make a new departure upon those lines, but I have read with a good deal of regret speeches made in the country and in this House since that Budget was passed, from which I gather that he has become weary of welldoing, and that so long as he occupies his present responsible position he is not prepared to impose additional taxation on the country for the purpose of carrying out much needed social reforms. All I can say is—and I hope the right hon. Gentleman will understand that if I say it frankly, I say it far more in sorrow than in anger—that if he is not prepared to pursue the path he entered upon two years ago, then we as Socialists have no further use for his services. In laying down the principle that taxation may be used for the purpose of redressing the inequalities of wealth, I venture to think that I am laying down no new principle. It is an established principle in English finance and in English law that property must be called upon to the extent of the amount of that property to meet what the community regard as necessary social purposes. There have been in the past many occasions on which very heavy taxation has been levied and very heavy rates have been imposed locally in times of great public need. There have been occasions, and I think it is possible to find an instance in the

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present time, where the rate for Poor Law purposes has exceeded 10s. in the £.
We would like to see a number of principles accepted and embodied in our financial proposals and in our financial system. In the first place, we would like it to be recognised that it should be the aim of our finance to secure socially created wealth for social purposes; and, secondly, we would like the instrument of taxation to be used deliberately for the purpose of preventing the retention of large fortunes in individual hands. In the third place—and we are not alone in believing in this canon of national taxation—we think it should be levied in accordance with ability to pay, and in proportion to the benefit which each individual gains from the law and the State. A further proposal we would lay down would be this, that there should be no taxation of poverty. It is very largely socially created. That contention was admitted by the Leader of the Opposition during the Budget Debates two or three years ago. Indeed, so far as I could understand the attitude of the right hon. Gentleman at that time, he really had no objection at all to the Land Taxes of the Budget, except that he did object at the singling out for taxation of one special form of socially created wealth. I understood that he was not only willing, but anxious to apply the same principle to other forms of socially created wealth, whatever form that wealth may take. I think it is now time to think that the weapon of taxation may be used for the purpose of preventing the retention of large fortunes in individual hands. We hold that the existence of the idle rich class is the greatest curse there could be in a community. I have support for that contention in what was stated by an eminent political economist, the late Professor Cairns, who, in dealing with some disputed questions of political economy, said it could not be too often stated that no public advantage whatever arises from the existence of a rich idle class. He said that the wealth they spend may employ labour, but the wealth they spend upon themselves does nothing except to keep alive their own unprofitable lives, and the sooner they take their places as drones in the hive the better for the community at large. That is the position which we take.
We object to our present methods of taxation. I find that under the Finance Bill, which we are now asked to pass, of the £152,000,000 of revenue which is to be raised no less than £69,500,000 is to be
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raised by indirect taxation. I have on many occasions endeavoured to get to know from the representatives of the Treasury whether they regard stamps as direct or indirect taxation, but I have not been able to ascertain. Therefore I have left the £9,000,000 of revenue derived from stamps outside my figures of direct and indirect taxation. I am glad to be able to admit that during the last twenty years there has been a tendency, though a slow tendency, in the right direction, but even now the amount to be raised by indirect taxation represents over two-fifths of the total revenue of the country. The proportion still is far too high, and I would like to call the attention of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to one other fact, namely, that this Government have not reduced indirect taxation since they came into office in 1906. They have reduced the Tea Duty and the Sugar Duty.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: We repealed the Coal Tax.
Mr. SNOWDEN: The right hon. Gentleman reminds me that they took off the Export Duty on coal. May I remind him that he increased indirect taxation largely in the increases of the duties on tobacco and liquor. I am inclined to think that the figures which I will give in a moment support my contention that the Government have raised indirect taxation by an amount equal to the reduction made on the two or three items I have mentioned. I find that although these reductions in indirect taxation have taken place, the amount which the Chancellor of the Exchequer expects this year from indirect taxation is larger than in the financial year for which his Government were first responsible. We had an extremely interesting speech from the right hon. Gentleman in the Debate on the Tea Duty. He there showed that he had learned all the tricks of the politician. [An HON. MEMBER: "He knew them to begin with."] The hon. Member says he knew them to begin with. He was born so. One might be inclined to believe that when one sees the agility with which he uses all these political weapons. He expressed the view—I do not say the wish—that it might be desirable to impose direct taxation in the form of Income Tax by way of replacing the loss of revenue through the abolition of some form of indirect taxation. He expressed himself as being sympathetic to the proposal to reduce the Income Tax minimum to £45 or £50 a year, and then he finally

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stands on this ground, that he did not think it would be a popular thing to do. I am afraid that the question of the popularity of the tax——
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: I must put the hon. Gentleman right. I gave two reasons—one was that it was politically impracticable, and the other was that it was administratively impracticable.
Mr. SNOWDEN: I am dealing with the political impracticability. I am afraid that in the past this question of party interests has influenced the action of Chancellors of the Exchequer far more than the question of the justice of taxation. I have referred to the enormous amount of indirect taxation which was levied from the time of Waterloo up to about twenty years ago. In my opinion there were two reasons for that. First of all these, political reasons; and, second, because those who had control of the national finance had found it much easier to obtain the money in this way from the pockets of the people, and much more convenient than to take it out of their own pockets. William Pitt more than one hundred years ago, in speaking of the proposals to impose an Income Tax of 7 per cent. on small incomes, said that if you levy a direct tax of 7 per cent. on the people you will produce a bloody revolution. But there is a way in which you can tax the last bite from their mouth without ever causing a murmur against heavy taxation, and that is by taxing a large number of articles in daily use. The tax will then pass on to the price of the article, and people will grumble about high prices, but they will never know that these high prices are caused by war taxation. That was the policy that was adopted from 1815 to about twenty years ago, and we have not even yet to a very great extent got rid of that very pernicious system of taxation.
Indirect taxation is a violation of every just and every sound principle of taxation. It does not tax a citizen according to his ability to pay, neither does it tax anyone according to the benefit he gets from the protection of the law. Indirect taxes are liable to evasion, and are evaded to a great extent. For instance, a person who has an income just below the limit of £160 a year could, if so disposed, avoid paying a single penny contribution to the national revenue. He need only not smoke, not drink, and not take sugar, as a very large number of people do not. He need
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not drink tea—and we know that a large number of people do not drink tea—and he need not take cocoa or coffee, and he will then not contribute a single penny to the taxation of the country, although his income may be just under £160 a year. The fact that it is possible to do that under a system of indirect taxation condemns that system. An indirect tax takes a great deal more out of the pockets of the taxpayers than it brings into the Exchequer. One of the hon. Members for Edinburgh made a most interesting and valuable speech on the Tea Duty two or three days ago. He said that a tax of 5d. in the pound represents something like 8s. 4d. of the whole price of tea. The Tea Tax takes a great deal more than 5d. per lb. from the consumer. I do not think I exaggerate if I say that the amount paid By the tea consumer is certainly not less than 6d. per lb., because there are profits levied on every transaction, not only on the original cost of the tea, but also on the duty which has been paid.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer said the other day in this speech to which I have referred that he never had any sympathy with those who suggested that a certain section of the community should be relieved altogether from taxation. I maintain that the State has no right to tax any man until it has provided that man with at least the means of satisfying his physical needs. In putting forward that contention I have the authority of John Stuart Mill. We all know what he says, and, generally speaking, if we have not a higher standard of living to-day we have a great deal more unsatisfied aspirations on the part of the working people than they had in the days of John Stuart Mill. He said that the State had no right to tax anything below £50 a year. Assuming that that is just sufficient to provide the bare necessities of physical existence, why should the working classes not pay taxation? One reason I have already given. I will give another: because the working class pay the greater part of the taxation which is nominally paid by the rich class. An idle man, whether he be duke or anything else, is living at the expense of those who work. Therefore, if the working classes, I mean the poorer working classes, were exempted from taxation altogether it could not even then be maintained that they were not contributing to the up-keep of the country, because it is by a toll on their labour that the great bulk of the taxation has been raised. The rents of

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the landlords and the dividends of shareholders represent tribute which has been levied upon the working people. I do not suppose that I shall carry the House with me in the statement which I am about to make, but I would ask hon. Members to think about it. I am prepared to maintain that a great mass of the working people of this country would be better off if they had not the protection of law. I will tell you what I mean. Law makes them poor. It is by law that the landlord levies his tribute; it is by law that the capitalist takes his dividend; it is by law and the protection of law that the classes keep the masses poor. If there were no law—I am not advocating the abrogation of law—do not let me be misunderstood. If we had not law we should have anarchy. But under a condition of anarchy the strongest of the working people I am quite sure would be much better off than they are to-day. I would ask hon. Members to think about it and not to make up their mind at once.
It is maintained that the taxation which is paid by the working people is only on certain articles. Those who urge that objection seem to lose sight of the very reason why this indirect taxation is imposed. It is imposed because the working people do consume the articles which are taxed. If the working people ceased to consume tea, tobacco, or liquor, then the taxation would be imposed on some of the articles which were consumed by the working people. It is said that the working man ought to pay these taxes because it gives him a sense of citizenship and gives him an interest in looking after the expenditure of the country. That is just what indirect taxation does not do. Nothing has struck me more in addressing public meetings in the country on the question of taxation than the general ignorance as to the amount of indirect taxation which is paid in this country. Very often when I have been addressing meetings of thousands of men I have asked if there was any man at that meeting who could tell me what was the duty on tobacco or tea, and rarely indeed among all these people have I been able to get an answer to that simple question. There is one very strong fact. An indictment against indirect taxation does not make the taxpayer aware of what he is contributing to the expenditure of the country. What we need is not tinkering with fiscal reform, but wholesale reform. If the right hon. Gentleman wants to immortalise himself still more, may I suggest a great work which is waiting
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for his energy, ability and determination, and that is the complete overhauling of the financial system of the country.
Eighteen months ago he said that whoever stood at that desk this year, presenting the Financial Statement, would have to deal with the relations between local and national taxation. I understand that a Committee is sitting, inquiring into this matter, and I hope, therefore, that next year the Chancellor of the Exchequer will be in a position to redeem his deferred promise. That will provide an excellent opportunity for doing what I now suggest—that is, overhauling the whole of our system of taxation. What I would further suggest is this: that he should abolish all indirect taxation except taxes upon liquor and possibly upon tobacco. I do not think it would be desirable to abolish liquor taxes for two reasons. First of all, because I believe that taxation upon liquor helps in the promotion of temperance; and, in the second place, owing to the fact that the liquor traffic is a monopoly, and if the taxes were removed I think it would be simply a further endowment of the trade. But in regard to tobacco, I think that the duties are too high, and that something should be done to reduce the duty on the working man's tobacco. I recognise the impossibility of carrying out the suggestion made by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Worcestershire the other day in regard to the Tea Duty, that it should be an ad valorem duty. I do not believe it is possible to do that either in regard to tea or tobacco.
Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: I was considering the suggestion, but not making it.
Mr. SNOWDEN: But still it is very unjust that the workman on his tobacco should pay 500 or 600 per cent., while the rich man's cigar only pays 50 per cent. There is a number of smaller taxes, legacies from the old days, which ought to be swept away, such as, for instance, taxes on auctioneers, house agents, and hackney carriages and the like. [An HON. MEMBER: "And solicitors."] Yes, these taxes are simply protective. They are a bad legacy of the old vicious days of Protection. I think that no delay should take place in removing the tax on hackney carriages, the owners of which, in the case of horse-driven carriages, have to enter into such severe competition with the motor cars. I want also to put in a word for the abolition of Inhabited House Duty. Owing to the increase of rates in urban

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centres in recent years this has become a very burdensome tax indeed. It is really a tax upon public health, and, owing to the variation of rents as between different parts of the country, the incidence of the tax is most unfair. For instance, a man will get a house in a town in the north at a rate which does not make him liable for Inhabited House Duty. But suppose he comes to London. Then he has to pay a rent which brings him within the Inhabited House Duty though he has not more accommodation, and it is really a tax upon a family, because a man with a family very often has to take a large house, on which Inhabited House Duty has to be paid, on account of the largeness of his family. It is simply a vicious form of Income Tax, and instead of raising revenue by means of Inhabited House Duty, it would be far juster if the Chancellor of the Exchequer were to endeavour to get compensating revenue by increasing the Income Tax, because by taxing a man's income he would be taxing a man according to his ability to pay. Then I suggest that the Chancellor of the Exchequer should sweep away all the taxation on food. For fifty years or more the Radical party has been pledged to the abolition of taxes upon food. Ten million pounds of taxation upon food represents an Income Tax of 5d. in the £ upon food. The indirect taxation of £69,500,000, to which I have referred, represents £7 per family, and that, in the case of a man with an income of £1 a week, represents an Income Tax of 2s. 8d. in the £. I am quite sure the Chancellor of the Exchequer would not attempt to justify that. He cannot justify it. No one can justify it. Therefore it is his duty to do what lies in his power to remove such an injustice as that. A man with an income of £1 a week pays in indirect taxation 2s. 8d. in the £. A family with an income of £5,000 a year pays in indirect taxation only a ¼d. in the £. That family will, of course, pay other taxes. They will pay Super-tax, which amounts to 1s. 8d. in the £, and they will pay other taxes. But, taking the taxation which a family with £5,000 a year pays, it does not amount to the same poundage as the Income Tax which is levied upon a man with a large family whose total income is less than £1 a week. I want to make a strong plea for the urgency of an alteration in the system of taxation which perpetuates such things as that.
5.0 P.M.
2400
May I make a suggestion as to the way to get new revenue? I was very much disappointed to hear the Chancellor of the Exchequer the other afternoon suggest that the only way in which he could get compensating revenue for the abolition of the £6,000,000 for Tea Duty was by going down to an Income Tax upon incomes, perhaps, of £45 or £50 a year. May I suggest that that is the wrong way. What he should do is to go up. This is my principle of taxation, to take as much as you possibly can from the top and never to go down at all, not one step, until you have robbed all the hen-roosts at the top, and there are plenty of them still there. We have had the right hon. Gentleman's Budget in operation now for nearly two years, but I see no signs anywhere of any falling away in the ostentatious display of wealth on the part of the rich. The Chancellor of the Exchequer said, in one of his public speeches in support of the Bill, that there was a pleasanter road for the poor through fields of waving corn. The fields of waving corn may be there, but if the working people attempt to reap that corn they will still be put into prison as trespassers and stealers. The waving corn is not theirs. I see, as yet, no sign of latent poverty on the part of the rich. There are more motor cars, and more luxurious motor cars, in the streets than there were two years ago when the right hon. Gentleman introduced his Budget. I still read in the records of auction sales that thousands of pounds are being given for a few inches of canvas and hundreds of pounds are being given for a few ounces of silver. The rich are still rich. There is plenty there still, not only to meet the £6,000,000 of revenue from the repeal of the Tea Duty, but to abolish the whole of this £69,500,000 of taxation. The working people cannot afford it. The rich can. The working people are getting poorer. The rich are getting richer. In the last eleven years the wages of the working people, according to the Board of Trade returns, has risen by an average of 2d. a week. There has been during the same period an increase—I can give the House facts which would justify my placing the figure far higher—of not less than 2s. 6d. in the £ in the cost of living. Therefore the working people to-day are 2s. 4d. in the £ poorer than they were eleven years ago. The rich are getting richer every day. They are getting enormously richer. They are getting shamefully rich. They are getting dangerously rich, and it is the duty of the Chancellor of the Exchequer not

2401
only to finance his scheme of social reform by the taxation of the rich but to do what he can by using the instrument of taxation to lessen the great social curse of an idle rich class. The right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Austen Chamberlain) stated the other day that he welcomes enthusiastically the suggestion of the Chancellor of the Exchequer that we should extend taxation downwards. That is a good old Tory doctrine. Let the poor pay all, and let the rich escape. That is the real motive of the Tariff Reform agitation. The real motive of the Tariff Reform agitation——
Mr. SPEAKER: There is nothing about Tariff Reform. We are now discussing the Third Reading of this Finance Bill. I have given the hon. Member a great deal of latitude. I hope he will not enter upon that topic.
Mr. SNOWDEN: I did not intend to filter upon the general question of Tariff Reform, I was only going to point out its relation to the question of taxation.
Mr. SPEAKER: That, of course, will lead to replies, and those will lead to rejoinders, and those will lead to surrejoinders, and those will lead to rebutters, and those will lead to surrebutters, and in that way we shall be involved in an interminable discussion upon a matter which is not connected in any way whatever with the Bill we are now discussing.
Mr. SNOWDEN: I remember an occasion two years ago when an hon. Member opposite interposed a long speech on the question of Tariff Reform, and a point of Order was raised by one of my colleagues, and it was ruled in order.
Mr. SPEAKER: On the Third Reading of the Finance Bill?
Mr. SNOWDEN: On the Third Reading of the Finance Bill.
Mr. SPEAKER: On the Second Reading possibly, but not on the Third Reading.
Mr. SNOWDEN: It is suggested as a means of raising revenue that taxes should be placed upon luxuries consumed by the rich. Why place taxes upon luxuries consumed by the rich? They would have to pay them, and therefore why not pay them by means of an Income Tax? It would save a lot of trouble. I am altogether opposed to such nonsensical proposals as raising revenue by means of taxing amusements, football matches, and the
2402
like. We want to tax a man according to his means to pay, and the one means by which we can accurately find out what a man's power to pay is, is the amount of his income. May I say one word with reference to the Land Taxes. We supported the Land Taxes of the Budget, but I did so with no great amount of enthusiasm because I do not believe the method that is proposed here, or which is confirmed by this Finance Bill, is the best method of getting at the unearned increment of land. It is a slow, a cumbersome, an irritating and a costly method, and it is a method by which we shall never get hold of the landlord and be able to take from him the whole of the unearned increment that he has appropriated. A far better plan of getting unearned increment for social purposes is to buy the land up root and branch, fully compensating the present holders, and then the whole of the future increment will accrue to the community. I would make a further suggestion. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is turning everywhere to obtain revenue for increased national expenditure. May I give him a hint of another source of revenue which is waiting to be appropriated, and that is the nationalisation of the railways of the country. I find a report has just been presented from the British Consul at Frankfort. He there points out that the German Exchequer receives a very considerable revenue each year from the profits of the State railway system, and if the Government were to follow the example of Germany in this respect it is extremely likely, nay, certain, that in three years' time there will be, as there is in the case of the Post Office, a very considerable revenue available for the purpose of national expenditure. I conclude as I began, by expressing my regret that more opportunity has not been given to the House of Commons during this Session to deal adequately with these proposals. The way in which the Bill has been delayed till the very end of the Session is only one further instance of the degradation of Parliament in these later days. Parliament has ceased to be a deliberative assembly, and if such examples as this will only bring to the country a sense of the seriousness of the position in which Parliament now is, then perhaps the present experiences will not have been altogether in vain.
Mr. JOYNSON-HICKS: I do not propose to follow the hon. Member through the whole of the essay he has just

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delivered, I believe perfectly sincerely, on what he considers the right principles of taxation. I have always been brought up in the canon of Gladstonian finance, that finance should be used for financial purposes, and not to injure political opponents or to effect a complete alteration in the distribution of wealth. That alteration may or may not be desirable, but it is not either right or justifiable, particularly when we have so very little opportunity for debating Budgets, that Budgets should be used for altering the entire canons of the distribution of wealth.
I am bound to say I was very much interested and pleased to hear from the hon. Member for Blackburn that he has no further use for his very apt pupil the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Two years ago the Chancellor of the Exchequer was the somewhat favourite pupil of the hon. Member for Blackburn. The right hon. Gentleman's Budget of 1909 was founded, I think the hon. Member will agree with me, very largely on a small red-covered book; but it is the hon. Member for Blackburn who has now become the pupil, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, his master, is extending the views of the hon. Member for Blackburn in a Socialist direction through the agency of finance. The hon. Member complained that £96,000,000 is devoted to fighting purposes, but I am prepared to see a considerable increase upon the £96,000,000 without the slightest misgiving, because the working classes, by reason of this taxation, are enabled to work. If that: taxation were not present, and if the Army and Navy of Great Britain were not kept up to such a pitch as to fit it to protect our shores, the condition of the working classes would be very different under a German Government than under the present free Constitution of Great Britain. There was, however, one point on which I entirely agreed with the hon. Member for Blackburn, and it was where he spoke, I will not say of the degradation of the House of Commons, but, at all events, of the degradation of the Budget, the great financial measure of the year, which used to be brought in early, and, certainly under Liberal administration, always was one of the principal measures of the year. It was brought in for Second Reading just before the adjournment in August, and it was rushed through last night and the night before, in the small hours of the morning, without any possible means of debating the various financial proposals of the Government.
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We have only one more day at the end of the Session for the Third Reading.
What is to happen next year? The hon. Member for Blackburn suggested a whole scheme of finance to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I am not quite sure that the Chancellor of the Exchequer will have time for it. What are we likely to get next year for discussion? There will be the ordinary Budget, there will be Home Rule, there will be Welsh Disestablishment, Manhood Suffrage, possibly Adult Suffrage, and all these measures will take up the time of the House of Commons. What possible opportunity will there be for the House of Commons to exercise its inalienable right to discuss the financial measures of the year and exercise its proper control over Government finance? In 1909, I am prepared to admit we 'had ample opportunity to discuss the "big, bold Budget," which has lost its electioneering value. We are unable to find out anything about its working except by question and answer in this House. I think we are entitled in full Debate to an explanation from the Chancellor of the Exchequer as to whether the Budget of 1909, with the Land Clauses, is really having the effect on the finance of the country which he led us to expect. The right hon. Gentleman made very great promises in 1909 with regard to the effect which these Land Taxes would have upon the revenue of the country, but, like most of the promises of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, they are not going to be fulfilled. I wish, if I may, to compliment my right hon. Friend the Member for Worcestershire on his speech with regard to the general finance and general expenditure of the present Government. This Government of retrenchment and economy, ever since it came into office, has constantly added to taxation. The present Prime Minister, in 1907, when the Government had been in power a year, said in this House:—
"I count with confidence on further economies in expenditure."
But where are those economics since 1907? The Prime Minister (then Chancellor of the Exchequer) Budgeted for £153,000,000, and this year the Budget is for £181,000,000. We have passed legislation this year which, next year and the following year, will undoubtedly increase expenditure. A well-known Member of this House, but now no longer a Member, told me the other day of the joy which Lord Randolph Churchill felt when the Liberal party put itself in the hands of the

2405
Opposition on the occasion of Mr. Childer's propounding the Budget for £100,000,000. Lord Randolph Churchill thought it a startling rise in national expenditure, and delivered a speech cutting up the Liberal party, the party of economy. I wonder what he would have said to-day; I wonder what the feeling of his son, the First Lord of the Admiralty, must be, as a Member of a Liberal and economical Government, in face of a Budget for £181,000,000. [An HON. MEMBER: "What are you complaining about?"] I will tell the hon. Member in a moment what I am complaining about. I am not complaining about the purposes on which this money is expended, but I do complain that the Liberal party, which professes to be the party of economy and retrenchment, should be the party to place these huge taxes one after another on the shoulders of the taxpayers. The Publication Department of the Liberal party in 1904 issued a leaflet in which they stated that the last Budget of Liberal Government, in 1895, was for £93,000,000, and the leaflet pointed out that the increase of the Tory Budget before 1905 was forty-five millions sterling, mostly on the Army and Navy. What did that mean? It meant clearly that the Liberal party, if they again came back to power, would make it their object to cut the Tory Budget down to the Liberal figure of £93,000,000, or as near it as possible. If that was not the meaning of the leaflet, why was it issued? Why did they go to the country and say that their Budget was £93,000,000, and that the Conservatives had increased the total by forty-five millions. They put the figures by way of contrast, in order that there might be an expectation that they would reduce the Tory Budget to somewhere about the level of the Budget of 1895. But they have gone on adding to the total amount of the Budget. It took the Tory Government ten years to increase the expenditure by thirty-four millions, and during that ten years they paid for a very great war. But the Liberals, in five years, and without any war, have increased the expenditure by forty-one millions, and it is now up to £181,000,000. My right hon. Friend the Member for East Worcestershire says it is the highest figure at which the Budget of this country has ever stood—certainly the highest in time of peace.
I submit that the Liberal party has no right for a single day longer to pose as the party of economy when they bring in Budgets year after year, until the total reached is £181,000,000, and, when it is
2406
perfectly clear, with the obligations into which they have entered in regard to old age pensions, and under the Insurance Bill, to fulfil, there must be a Budget for nearly £200,000,000 yearly. There can be no possible doubt about that. The Chancellor of the Exchequer led us in 1909 to believe that the Land Taxes were going to pay for old age pensions, and partly for "Dreadnoughts." I do not think he said that in this House; I think it was stated in one of those speeches in which he lets off steam a little more perhaps than he is wont to do in this House, and he complained bitterly that the landowner class would not spare even a halfpenny for old age pensions. Old age pensions cost between £12,000,000 and £13,000,000 a year. The Land Taxes produce nothing like £13,000,000 a year, and they produce nothing to pay for old age pensions, leaving out the question altogether of "Dreadnoughts." Last year the Chancellor of the Exchequer said these taxes were going to produce "appreciable revenue." In 1910 the receipts in the case of Increment Duty is "insignificant," the Reversion Duty is insignificant, and the Undeveloped Land Duty was little over £1,000. That is the Inland Revenue Report for 1910, and even up to September of this year the Land Taxes have only produced the sum of £20,000. If the old age pensioners had been called upon to wait for their pensions until the Land Taxes produced sufficient money to pay them, I think they would have gone without their pensions for a good many years to come. A great deal more money has to be found. During the last five years—and this is perhaps the most serious point of view to which I want to call the attention of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, because I believe the Prime Minister looked upon it really as an advantage—during the last five years the income brought into Great Britain from investments abroad has increased by £27,000,000 a year. This has occurred during the period a Radical Government has had control of the affairs of this country. During the previous five years the increase was only £6,000,000.
During the last five years capital sums must have been sent abroad to the extent of over £500,000,000 sterling. If it is an advantage to send capital abroad, to what extent is it to be of advantage to send that capital abroad? If it is an advantage, as the Prime Minister put it then would it be an advantage to send abroad, say, £5,000,000,000? [An HON. MEMBER: "HOW did it go?"] What does

2407
it matter how it went? It has gone, and, if I may say so, it has gone outside the clutches of hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite. But from the point of view of the finance of this country, I deplore it as much as any Chancellor of the Exchequer can deplore it. If this money had been retained in England it could have been employed in fruitful commerce and in useful manufactures here; it would have all created income here, and paid taxation, thus reducing the very heavy burdens which have been put upon us by right hon. Gentlemen opposite. An eminent Liberal financier, Lord Welby, who certainly should have the respect of hon. Gentlemen opposite, only last month said that he was extremely alarmed at the present rate of public expenditure. Is it surprising that capitalists in England should seek to place their securities and savings abroad? Is there anything to prevent this drain going on? There will probably be an increase of expenditure upon the Navy, and we hear rumours of a Navy Loan. What effect will that have on the price of Consols? We hear that next year there is going to be Home Rule for Ireland. What effect will that have upon the price of Consols? The last Home Rule Bill in 1893 was followed in the first fortnight by a fall in Irish Land Stock of nearly £2,000,000 sterling. What would be the effect of the passing of a Home Rule measure next year upon Irish Land Stock? Would any of these measures be likely to raise the price of Consols?
Wherever you go in the City of London you will find the same anxiety owing to the constant and persistent fall in the price of the premier security of the world. Banks cannot go on for ever writing down out of profits their holdings, and their very large holdings, in Consols. The Government themselves are enormous holders of Consols as trustees for the public in the Post Office Savings Bank and in the Trustee Savings Bank. I believe there is in those two banks funds amounting to £221,000,000 sterling. What is the value of those investments at the present day, investments which have been made by the Government largely in Consols on a falling market during the last thirty years? I wonder how much of that is in Consols and Irish Land Stock, and how much of it could be produced in cash from the funds of the Post Office and the Trustee Savings Bank if a run were made upon them? I know the Consolidated Fund is liable. [An HON. MEMBER: "For
2408
the interest."] But if a demand were made upon the Post Office Savings Bank by the depositor as runs have been made on other banks, I wonder what the position would be? I say that the position would be bad, and very largely bad as a result of the finances of the present Government. The only answer that we have ever got from the Chancellor of the Exchequer with regard to the fall in the price of Consols is the answer which the vulgar small boys on the street make, "You're another!" In other words, the only answer he can give to us when we point out that Consols are steadily falling is that they fell while the Conservative party was in office. That is the kind of remark which goes down very well on a Limehouse platform, but not the kind of remark which Mr. Gladstone would have made when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer and had regard for the finances and responsibilities of this country. When we ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what steps he is taking to restore the credit of the country and to prevent this constant fall in the price of our premier security, it is no answer to us to say, "While I admit it has gone down seriously, it went down equally when you were in office."
An HON. MEMBER: What was your answer?
Mr. JOYNSON-HICKS: Our answer undoubtedly was that it went down ten points while we were in office owing to the reduction of a half per cent. in the interest. That clearly accounted for a fall of 10 per cent. The next answer was that it was undoubtedly caused to a great extent by the Boer War. That I think is perfectly clear. But there is all the difference in the world between a fall from a high price to a moderate price and a fall from a moderate price to a desperately low price. Those two things are absolutely incomparable. The right hon. Gentleman goes on still further creating a depreciation in Consols by his attacks upon the Sinking Fund. Savings instead of being applied as they should be from year to year in the reduction of the National Debt are no longer expended in that way. This year a sum of £3,250,000 which ought to be given to the Old Sinking Fund has been diverted and taken to other purposes. In the Budget speech of 1907 the Prime Minister stated that the reduction of debt was "one of the permanent duties of the Government." I wonder what the Prime Minister himself

2409
now thinks of the acts of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in neglecting that permanent duty and making this further raid on the Sinking Fund. I would like to deal with a few figures which show the very serious position of the fall in Consols and the fall in English securities relatively to the fall in other securities. If hon. Members opposite and the Chancellor of the Exchequer were able to say, "It is perfectly true, that Consols have fallen since we came into office in 1905 on top of the very considerable fall that had taken place in previous years, but at the same time foreign securities have fallen in like ratio," then I should have been prepared to say to him that he had made out a very considerable answer, and an answer, at all events, that would need considerable discussion on our part before we could blame him for this fall in the price of Consols. In 1905 Consols stood at 87½. I am taking the lowest figure in each year. To-day Consols are 76⅝, so that they have fallen about 10½ points. German Three per cent. Stock has fallen in the same period from 86¾ to 81, or 5¾, which is half the fall in Consols. French Three per cent. Rentes fell from 97 to 94. [An HON. MEMBER: "What is the rate of interest?"] What does it matter? It makes not the slightest difference at all what the stock is yielding. The point is the actual fall in proportion of values between Germany and this country.
Mr. CRAWSHAY-WILLIAMS: The hon. Member has said that our stock has fallen desperately low. If our yield is less than theirs what is theirs when ours is desperately low?
Mr. JOYNSON-HICKS: The hon. Member who has the advantage of having a red box beside him, does not realise the point. The point I am trying to make is that the credit of a country determines the rise or fall in the price of the premier security. That, I think, is perfectly clear. [An HON. MEMBER: "No, no."] What does?
Sir F. BANBURY: Is not the rate of interest dependent on the credit?
Mr. JOYNSON-HICKS: During the last six years my point is that the premier security of Great Britain, whatever the rate of interest payable upon it, has fallen 11 points, while the premier German security has fallen only 5½ points, and the premier security of France has fallen only 3 points. If you were able to tell me that
2410
the premier security of France had also fallen 11 points that would answer my argument, but when you have one security which falls 11 points, and the other only falls 3, that can only be because the credit of one country has fallen to the extent of 11 points and the credit of the other country only by 3. I should also like to take the very finest gilt-edged securities that we know outside our Government Stock. The Great Western Railway debentures during this same period of Radical finance have fallen from 124 to 110, the North Western 95 to 83, and the Midland 77 to 68. There you have different rates of interest, but the diminution in value is about the same. That answers the point which the hon. Member attempted to make against me regarding the difference in the rate of interest between Germany and Great Britain. Our other stock for which we are responsible, India Stock, has also fallen. The Three per Cent. India Stock, not 2½ per cent., has fallen from 94½ to 79. That, I think, is a better answer even than the debenture stocks of railways. French Three per Cents, fell from 97 to 94, and India Three per Cents., for which this Government is responsible, have fallen from 94 to 79. How can the hon. Member explain that, if the credit of Great Britain is as good as the credit of France?
There are other securities of other countries which have not fallen at all, and securities of countries which we were wont to consider twenty years ago as far inferior in their financial position to Great Britain, places like the Argentine, where their bonds have gone up by 4 per cent. Japan and Russia had a very serious war, more serious even than we had in 1899. After their war, instead of their premier securities continuing to go steadily down, down, down as ours have done, the Japanese securities during the last six years, the period of Radical finance, have gone up by 12 per cent., and the Russian securities have gone up by 18 per cent. I put it to the House that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has got something to answer with regard to this continued and constant fall in the credit of Great Britain as shown, and I submit shown conclusively, by the price of our premier securities as against the fact that the premier securities of other countries have gone down slightly, and that the premier securities of Japan and Russia have gone up considerably. If they had all gone down equally, my argument would be faced, but as we have gone down more, I submit that

2411
the only possible conclusion to be drawn is that it is on account of the insecurity which financiers have and with which everybody is regarding, not merely the finances of the Radical Government today, but as to what we may expect in the near future.
Mr. CRAWSHAY-WILLIAMS: I do not think the hon. Member can have it both ways. When we were discussing the fall in securities under a Conservative Government he said it was the depth to which the stock fell which was important, but when we were discussing the depth of the German drop he said it was the amount of the fall that mattered.
Mr. JOYNSON-HICKS: I never said that.
Mr. CRAWSHAY-WILLIAMS: I understood the hon. Member to say that it was the amount of the drop, and not the yield. He cannot have it both ways. As regards the drop while the Conservatives were in office, he said apparently that a large drop did not matter as long as it was not to a considerable depth. That was what I understood him to say in answer to a remark. He explained as the two reasons which accounted for the drop during the Conservative tenure of office, the Boer war and the rate of interest. I think he was perfectly right, but he omitted to supply another very great reason indeed for the drop in the price of Consols, which was the extension of trustee securities to Colonial stock. Everyone knows perfectly well that that probably has more to do with the drop in Consols than anything else, and it is a cause which has not yet spent itself, but which will go on. I do not think anybody supposes that Consols can revive to the level at which they stood before the extension of trustee stock to Colonial securities. I do not think anyone who wishes to be fair on this subject can omit to take that great item into account, and I do not think that anyone who takes the position of Consols at present, with their yield of about 3 per cent., can deny that our credit is still the best in the world.
Mr. C. T. MILLS: I wish to speak as to the way in which the Chancellor of the Exchequer is proposing to dispose of the surplus with which he has to deal in this Budget, and also as to the general provisions he is making for the reduction of debt. I do not raise the point as to the disposal of the surplus because I object to
2412
the objects upon which the Government propose to spend the major portion of it. I admit that these are necessary and desirable things, but I very strongly object to the sources from which the Chancellor of the Exchequer has drawn the money to pay for sanatoria, road development, and so on. I agree that it is the Chancellor of the Exchequer's business to raise the money required to meet the expenditure which this House has sanctioned, but I contend that it is also his business to see that that money is not raised at the expense of the national credit. If the Chancellor of the Exchequer finds that the revenue for which he is budgeting is not sufficient to meet the expenditure which he has to face, I suppose it is his duty either to propose some fresh scheme of taxation or to suggest some possible economies. It is easy to suggest some economies which could be effected. For instance, the Chancellor of the Exchequer might think fit to reduce some of the enormous army of Civil servants which the Government have created, or he might have postponed the payment of salaries to Members of Parliament for a few years, although I do not suppose that that would be quite a popular policy in this House. The Chancellor of the Exchequer wishes to say, on the other hand, that, thanks to the fiscal system which we enjoy, backed up by his financial genius, it is quite possible for the Government to raise £1,500,000 for sanatoria, £1,500,000 for development grants, and other sums, without imposing any extra taxation upon the people. Therefore, he has decided to apply money to these objects which ought by rights to go to the reduction of debt. He takes this course, I suppose, because he thinks that the country will not bother to inquire where he finds the money, so long as they do not have to provide it themselves at the moment in extra taxation. But I think it can be shown that this is a very dangerous policy, and also that in the long run it will probably injure most the very people whom it is now sought to relieve.
I would ask the House to consider very seriously the financial position of the country, especially in the light of the international crisis through which we have just passed. The Government are never tired of taking great credit to themselves for the enormous amount of debt reduction that they have effected since they have been in office. They quite forget to tell the country that a great deal of that debt reduction has been involuntary, owing to some £1,000,000 a year being automatically

2413
reduced by the falling in of terminable annuities. It is quite true that the Government found the National Debt standing at £743,000,000 on 31st March, 1906, and that on 31st March, 1911, it stood at £685,000,000, a reduction of £58,000,000; but it ought to be remembered that the large increase of debt between the years 1900 and 1903 was due to a special cause—a cause which we all hope will not recur for a very long time, namely, a great war. It would be fair, if we wanted to get an adequate view of our financial situation, that we should take as our standard of comparison the Debt, not as it stood at the end of the South African War, but as it stood in the year 1899 before the war. On 31st March, 1899, the National Debt stood at £628,000,000—that is to say, £57,000,000 less than it is at this moment. Nobody can say when we may not be called upon to meet an equal or an even greater strain on our resources. Surely, therefore, the Government of the day should make it their object to reduce the Debt, at all events to what I might call the peace level, before they take steps to retard the automatic reduction of our capital liabilities. I do not think they ought to rest content with having reduced the Debt by £58,000,000 while it is still £57,000,000 above the level which I have indicated. I quite realise that you cannot pay for a great war like the South African War in a few years, and the Government may well take up the attitude that they could not have made greater progress in paying off the Debt than they have actually done. But if they make that contention, I think it is instructive to see what steps the present Chancellor of the Exchequer has taken in the direction of putting our national finances and our national credit on a sound basis.
To start with, the right hon. Gentleman has probably added more to the actual and contingent liabilities of the country than any previous occupant of his high office in time of peace. At the same time—and this is the point to which I wish to draw the attention of the House—while he has increased the liabilities, he has made no adequate provision whatever to put the national credit in a state to withstand this increased strain upon it. In the year 1909, in the people's Budget, he reduced the sum voted for the service of the debt by £3,500,000—from £28,000,000 to £24,500,000. That is to say, he applied £1,500,000 less to that object than was so applied in the year 1898–9, although the debt at that moment was £57,000,000 less than in 1909. The
2414
excuse which the Chancellor of the Exchequer made for taking this step, which I think it may fairly be said created consternation all over the City of London, was that he had effected such an enormous reduction in the debt. Surely he had better have waited until the debt stood at what I call a normal level before taking the very exceptional step of reducing the amount voted for the service of the debt, and therefore of reducing the New Sinking Fund. He took this step when the reduction of the debt could most easily have been accomplished; that is to say, Consols were standing at such a low level that any money applied to the reduction of debt in 1909, when Consols stood at 84, would naturally have had far greater effect in reducing the total of our liabilities than in the year 1898, when Consols stood at 110. But he did more than this. He took the hanging up of the Budget of 1909–10 as an excuse to take £2,500,000 from the New Sinking Fund and to use it to meet the ordinary expenditure of the year. That is to say, having reduced the amount which he had put to the service of the debt by £3,500,000, he further reduced the New Sinking Fund by £2,500,000 in order to meet the current expenditure of the year.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer may say that owing to the action of the Lords this action was a necessity in the existing circumstances. I do not propose to argue that point, but I think the House will admit that, at any rate, having made this raid on the New Sinking Fund, he ought to have made it a first charge upon the revenue of the following year to pay back to that Sinking Fund the money which he had borrowed from it in the previous year. He did nothing of the kind, as a matter of fact, although he tried in his Budget statement to make it appear as though he did I think the Chancellor of the Exchequer's handling of the situation would have done great credit to the chairman of a rather second-rate company trying to explain away to a meeting of shareholders some financial sleight-of-hand. The Chancellor of the Exchequer misled both the country and the House on this matter. I do not think it was very difficult for him to do so, because the majority of the people in the country are so under the spell of his oratory that they have come to look upon such minor matters as Sinking Funds, Consols, and national credit as very dull and prosaic details in comparison with the great gains which has been so ably advocated by the hon. Member for Blackburn

2415
(Mr. Snowden) of robbing the hen-roosts. The real action which the Chancellor of the Exchequer took to repay the £2,500,000 of the Sinking Fund was something as follows: He had a surplus of some £5,500,000 to dispose of in the present Budget. I maintain that in the present state of our finances the whole of that surplus should undoubtedly have been applied to the Old Sinking Fund for the reduction of debt. He intends to apply none of that money whatever to the Old Sinking Fund, although I quite agree he has apparently made it clear in his Budget statement that he is going to do so; £3,250,000 he is spending in various ways, and £2,500,000 he is putting aside to pay back the debt which he borrowed from the New Sinking Fund for the year 1909–10. Although he refers to this £2,500,000 as if he were putting it to the Old Sinking Fund, he will not say he is doing anything of the sort. He is paying back the debt to the New Sinking Fund of 1909, not out of the revenue of the following year, but out of the surplus of the year 1910, which should have gone to the reduction of debt anyhow, quite apart from any action that he may have taken in the previous year. Instead of repaying the debt out of revenue, he has done it out of the surplus of the year. Having committed one financial crime in the year 1909 he proposes to make atonement for it by committing another of a similar character.
Further, fearing that the surplus for this year might be so big that he might be compelled by very shame to apply some of it to debt reduction, he has, as far as I can make out from the figures, robbed the Old Sinking Fund of a further sum of from £2,000,000 to £3,000,000 by the delay which he caused in the collection of Income Tax and Super-tax. Therefore, he has taken this large sum to use as income in the year 1911 instead of letting it go to swell the surplus with which we are dealing now. Therefore we can see the total efforts of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to reduce this enormous debt, which might well have appalled a less courageous Minister. He has reduced the amount for the service of the debt by £3,500,000. He has taken £2,500,000 from the Sinking Fund to meet new expenditure. He is going to pay back £2,000,000 of this, and he is going to find that sum by robbing the Old Sinking Fund. Therefore I think one can calculate that the total effort of the Chancellor of the Exchequer towards the reduction of debt and the strengthening of our national
2416
credit is that he has applied at least £10,000,000 less to the reduction of debt during the time, he has been, in office than would have been the case if a more prudent and sound financial policy had been adopted. I think it is rather a serious thing when it is done by a Minister of the Government that is pledged to economy, and by a Member of a Government which under a former Chancellor of the Exchequer—the present Prime Minister—had taken very efficient steps towards the reduction of our capital liabilities. We have heard something this afternoon about the fall in the price of Consols. There are some people who affect great alarm at the fall in these securities. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is not one of them. Perhaps it would be better for the safety of the country if he had been. A great deal has been said by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Leicester and others to the effect that the fall of Consols was attributable to the fact that other securities have been opened to trustee investment. I quite admit that, and that Consols must have fallen from the high position which they held in the year 1898 and onwards. There are an enormous number of securities now for investment of undoubted safety, paying 3 and 4 per cent., in which you can invest trustee funds. Therefore Consols must fall.
The bottom of the whole question is that the price of Consols must in the long run depend upon the activity of the Government. If the Government is not going to give a proper and adequate support to Consols, no scheme which can be devised can possibly bring them up to their proper level, and put the credit of the country in the safe condition from the point of view of national needs. I should like the House to consider this fall in the price of Consols, taken in regard to the possibility of a national crisis, and the possibility of the Government having to go into the market and borrow a very large sum of money.
6.0 P.M.
During the summer, we are told, we passed through a very great crisis. Fortunately that crisis passed off well. Supposing it had not. Supposing that at this moment we had been engaged in the terrible ordeal of a European war. The Government, I suppose, would have had to borrow a considerable sum. Consols at the moment I refer to stood at about 77. I do not think there is any man, whatever experience he may have had in the City, who can possibly tell to what depths Consols might not have fallen if

2417
the Government had had to raise a big loan. I quite agree, of course, that if the Government had a large wave of popular enthusiasm behind them the money would have been found at a cheaper rate than perhaps mere financial considerations would dictate. Even so, this money could not possibly have been raised except at a most ghastly cost, which would mean extra taxation for the people of this country. If we had had a crisis of this sort the people who at present do not care for or study the finances of the country would—if they had to pay extra taxation—have done so. They would perhaps then have realised the reckless financial policy that the right hon. Gentleman is pursuing. There is one aspect of Consols which has not been alluded to to-night, which is, to my mind, far more serious than their low-ness of price. That is the weakness of the market. After all, though I admit that a low price is a serious thing for individuals, for the State the weakness of a market is a far more important consideration. It was our boast a few years ago that Consols were not only the best security in the whole world, but that they were also almost as negotiable as a Bank of England note. Nobody can say that about Consols at this moment.
We used to say that you could go into the Consol market and sell half a million or a million of Consols without it having any serious effect upon the price. Anyone who knows anything about the city knows very well that now you cannot sell a hundred thousand without causing a very serious depression. What then would be the result if you went into the market to borrow £50,000,000? Nobody can tell what the price might be under those conditions. What is the reason for this weakness in our premier security? It seems to me that it has come about something like this: Owing to the policy of the Chancellor of the Exchequer which I have tried to outline in regard to the Sinking Fund; owing to the speeches of himself and of his supporters, and the blatant way they have gone about the country saying that anything which the Government wished to do could be paid for, "there is no difficulty about that." These things have depressed credit and depressed the price of Consols. They have brought Consols down so low that the great banks, the great financial institutions, and the great insurance companies have spent hundreds of thousands in writing down their Government securities. This is a process
2418
which has brought ruin to at least two of our great banks. These were not the banks of the great railways, and the great capitalists; they were essentially banks which catered for poor men, and therefore could not be run on strictly proper financial principles. These banks were ruined, and other institutions had to spend very large sums in writing down Government, securities. Finally, I think they got tired of this process and sold out, and put the money to reserve into foreign Government securities, and short-term Exchequer Bonds and Treasury Bills, which the Chancellor of the Exchequer has issued in such prodigious quantities.
What is the result of this? You have not got big holders of large blocks of Consols; therefore Consols are weakly held, and not so capable as they were of meeting any great national strain which might be put upon them. I do not think that even the Chancellor's policy of debt reduction would be so bad if he had left the taxation of the country at a level at which it could easily be raised in case of a national crisis. I do not think that is the case, as I think it must be admitted, in spite of the remarks of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Blackburn, that our Income Tax, which used to be regarded as our standby in case of war, is at present at a war level. Further, the Death Duties are now at a figure at which I think it can be shown that they constitute a serious national debt. I am not speaking as a politician. I am speaking on behalf of those who have to live under the effects of these things.
My hon. Friend the Member for Brentford has said something of the effect of these Death Duties in driving capital abroad. I think it is interesting to know that between 1893 and 1899 identified incomes from abroad increased by 8 per cent. From 1905 to 1910 identified incomes increased by 41 per cent. The fact of the increase shows a capital sum invested abroad of £680,000,000, or a capital equal to the total capital liabilities of the State. We know that the Prime Minister thinks this efflux of capital abroad is a good thing. I quite admit that it is a very good thing if we can satisfy ourselves that it is only surplus capital. If the Chancellor of the Exchequer can show me that I am quite ready to say that his finance is excellent. But can anybody say so who looks at the state of the labour market, who knows the difficulty which there is in raising money for industrial undertakings at home, and—what is a far more serious

2419
difficulty—in raising money to expand existing industries? Reviewing these facts, will anyone tell me that a large part of that £680,000,000 could not well be employed in many of the industries of this country? When you see, with this difficulty, foreign loans coming out every day; loans of many millions being subscribed, one, two, and three times over, can anybody say that the policy of the Chancellor of the Exchequer is right [HON. MEMBERS: "What is the price of these loans?" "What interests do they pay?"] I quite agree that the interest very often of the foreign loans is higher—[HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear"]—quite so, but I am one of those old-fashioned people who think that the credit of this country ought to make up, as it used to do, for the increase of price which the foreign investment has to give.
There are two further reasons to which I venture to say the present price of Consols are due. There are the high Death Duties, which themselves constitute a serious national debt. The raising of the Death Duties to their present enormous sum tends further to depreciate our premier security, because every year it means that very large sums have to be taken out of Consols and paid over to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I think everybody will admit that the Death Duties are a tax upon capital to the amount of £20,000,000 a year or more. How can the industries of this country continue to be successfully carried on if such an enormous annual sum is taken away from the capital upon which they depend? The only justification for this capital tax is that the money derived from it should be expended, not as income, but in reducing the capital liabilities of this country. To show that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has not quite followed out this maxim, I think that certain figures may be of interest to the House. As I have said, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in the People's Budget, raided the New Sinking Fund for the reduction of debt by three and a-half millions. At the same time, so far as I can gather, he also increased the Death Duties by about four millions. That is to say, he reduced the amount which he could annually set aside to repay the capital liabilities of the State by three and a half millions, and increased the capital taxation by an almost exactly similar sum. I quite agree that prudent finance is not a very good text for the sermons which the Chancellor of the Exchequer
2420
likes to preach. I quite admit that lavish expenditure is a far more vote-catching proposition.
Raids upon the Sinking Fund people do not feel at the moment, whereas they would feel, and in all probability would resent, any extra taxation. But surely the Chancellor of the Exchequer must realise the terrible risk he is running in case this country should ever have a very serious drain upon our national finances. It seems to me of great importance that a great country should be run in good times so as to make some provision for bad times. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has followed exactly the opposite policy. In time of peace his taxation is on a war level, and in a time of prosperity he is taking money to finance his various legislative schemes which should be used to strengthen our financial position. At this moment he has got the opportunity of earning the gratitude of future generations by a prudent financial policy. Instead of that he is taking the directly opposite course. Ever since he has held his present high position he has been engaged in mortgaging the future financial stability of this country. This policy may be successful for a moment, and it may obtain for him very great temporary popularity. The right hon. Gentleman furnishes the electorate with such sensational legislation that they have no time for such details as have been mentioned to-night. The time may come when our financial stability will be a question of life or death to us. Then I believe the people will realise the meaning of this reckless policy. The popularity that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has got now will be as nothing to the unpopularity which will come upon him then, because, in order to help his party to gain a party triumph, he has neglected the first duty of anyone in his position—that is, to see that, in spite of all temptation, he should keep the finances of this country and the national credit committed to his charge in a strong and sound position.
Mr. M'CURDY: I am sure hon. Members on this side of the House will agree with a very great deal which was said by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Blackburn (Mr. Snowden) in the speech which he has delivered this afternoon. We feel just as much as the hon. Member does the desirability from every point of view of decreasing the expenditure which is forced upon the Government in late years. We appreciate the sincerity of conviction and

2421
singleness of purpose with which the hon. Member has placed before this House some startling measures of finance which he would recommend in the interests of the working classes. We on these benches differ with the hon. Gentleman's methods, but we agree entirely with his objects. No doubt if the hon. Member for Blackburn had control over the finances of this country he would budget in a manner much more startling and sensational than the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but perhaps the result would not be so lasting. We also are endeavouring to raise and improve the social position of the working classes of this country, but by steps we believe to be more sure and certain. There was only one thing in the speech of the hon. Member for Blackburn to which I object. I was sorry to hear him giving a somewhat summary notice to quit to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and I assure the Chancellor of the Exchequer that his services are very much appreciated, and I hope the hon. Member for Blackburn may see his way to reconsider his position.
I rose really for the purpose of asking the Chancellor of the Exchequer to consider the position of new Members of this House like myself with regard to the Finance Bill, the Third Reading of which we are now discussing. It was said by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Worcester (Mr. Austen Chamberlain), I think with perfect truth, that the Budget of 1909 was a Budget which involved on tirely new principles of taxation, and which purported to carry out these principles by very complicated machinery. So far as Members like myself, who only entered the House of Commons in the first days of 1910, are concerned, we have had up to the present time no opportunity of any full discussion of these very difficult problems and this very complicated machinery. When we entered the House of Commons in January, 1910, the Budget was not a subject which we felt free to discuss on the ordinary lines of party politics. The Budget was then the very bone of our contention with the House of Lords, and our contention was that it was a House of Commons Budget, right or wrong, and we were not going to weaken our constitutional attack against the House of Lords by any unnecessary discussion of the Budget at that time. The next opportunity that arose was when we had to deal with the Revenue Bill, and at that time we all deplored the fact that
2422
the Chancellor of the Exchequer was absent, and that his absence robbed that discussion of much of its reality.
Now for the third time this Finance Bill comes up, and in three days the whole matter is disposed of. Some twenty-five or thirty pages of Amendments have to be disposed of in that time, and it is not physically possible for all or even a small part of them to be adequately discussed, and the only thing that surprised me about it is that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Worcester should have thought he has a right to get up and to complain in this matter. My complaint is far more against right hon. Gentlemen opposite than against the Members of His Majesty's Government. What we are suffering from and what this House is suffering from is the absence of an Opposition. It is the duty of an Opposition to obtain from the Government of the day adequate time to discuss matters of this kind, and for the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Worcester to get up and solemnly, and with great indignation, complain of the conduct of the Government in not giving proper time for the discussion of this Finance Bill is very extraordinary in view of the fact that to the astonishment of private Members on both sides of the House, we discovered two days ago that this limiting of the Debate was, to use an expression which I hope is not un-parliamentary, a job arranged between the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Worcester and the Government. [HON. MEMBERS: "No, no."] Hon. Members say "No, no," but I am merely repeating what was said in the House a little time ago, namely, that the discussion of this Finance Bill and this Budget was settled by agreement between the representatives of the Front Benches on each side, and that being so, I say, so far as the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Worcester is concerned, he has no right to complain. We were not parties to the matter, and I therefore ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer to consider the fact that, so far as Members of his own side are concerned, as well as Members upon the other side of the House, there is a genuine anxiety lest there may prove to be defects in the complicated machinery set up by the Finance Act of 1909.
Some of us feel anxiety as to whether the Clauses of that Act, so difficult to construe, really carry out the intentions of the authors of that Act as expressed upon the floor of this House in the Debates of

2423
1909 and also on the platforms in the country. Some of us feel serious doubt as to whether their complicated machinery, when brought fully into play, will work quite fairly, as the draftsmen hoped they would work. Reference was made to-day to the Richmond case, and we are under some anxiety as to whether the Richmond case may not be the precursor of a number of Richmond cases that may arise if the machinery is not overhauled. We must bear in mind, with regard to the Richmond case, that it must have come with great surprise to find that a house purchased for £500, and upon which £100 was spent, and valued for Estate Duty for £500, when sold for that sum could be made subject to Increment Duty amounting to the entire annual rent. If that is so, there is some ground for anxiety as to whether the Clauses of the Act out of which a result of that kind is possible may not lead to similar undesirable and indefensible results in other cases when they are more widely applied. Upon this point I want hon. Members of this side to remember that at present there have been very few cases in which the whole transaction as regards the collection of Increment Duty has been carried through under the Act. I believe I am right in saying that according to the latest information available not more than £2,000 has been collected for Increment Value Duty, and, if in that small collection there are one or two cases calculated to give us pause, a strong case is made out for some investigation into this machinery before it is applied on a wholesale scale.
One other point on which we should have an opportunity given us for discussing the Budget, and that is to see whether it is not possible to simplify the provisions of the Act, because it must be admitted by all of us that it is desirable that the taxpayers of this country not only should pay taxes which are fair and just, but that they should, if they so desire, be in a position to satisfy themselves upon that scare. I do not think many Members on this side realise how extraordinarily complicated is the machinery set up under this Act for the purpose of assessing Increment Value Taxes. Do hon. Members realise that in order to determine what amount of duty is payable, say, upon that Richmond house, which sold for £500, no less than thirteen distinct valuations, each requiring expert knowledge, have to be made under the Act, and that when the thirteen valuations have been made then
2424
an arbitrary figure is called in to make up the formula upon which the tax is collected? These are points on which I support the plea of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Worcester that the Chancellor of the Exchequer should at the earliest convenient time give us a full opportunity of looking into the working of the machinery of this Act. There is one other ground, and a very strong one, upon which I do appeal to Members on this side of the House. I think it was John Stuart Mill who laid down the proposition that unearned increment, not as to 20 per cent. but as to 100 per cent., belonged to the community, to whose growth enterprise and expenditure unearned increment is due. A tax on unearned increment scientifically ascertained, beyond any doubt or cavil, is a tax that is capable of expansion in time of need without injustice to anyone. An Income Tax of 4s. in the £ upon casual profits masquerading under the name of an Increment Tax is a very unsound basis indeed upon which anyone may hope to build for future Budgets, and it is because I desire to see the basis of these Land Taxes, and, above all, of these Increment Taxes, made so broad and certain that they never shall be overturned by future Governments, and because I desire to see them made especially capable of bearing the burdens of any additional taxation which for the purposes of social reform it may be necessary to put upon them, that I desire this Act should be overhauled, and if there are defects let us get them removed while it is in our power and make the Act the perfect instrument which its authors intended it to be.
Mr. PRETYMAN: I think we all listened with very great interest to the speech delivered by the hon. Gentleman opposite. I cannot help contrasting his practical condemnation of Unearned Increment Duty as it exists with his commendation of that duty in its theoretical application as to all unearned increment. I do not think anybody in this House upon either side would object to a tax on unearned increment if such a tax were possible to be obtained on all kinds of property. But that is not practical, and the hon. Gentleman's speech proves it. Here we have, as the result of the united and collected wisdom of this House expended day and night for many months an effort to impose a fair Increment Value Duty upon land which was the one object hon. Members opposite invariably held out as quite different to everything else, and as likely to give us all

2425
we could obtain; and the hon. Gentleman opposite, with all his enthusiasm for the Chancellor of the Exchequer and all his enthusiasm for Increment Value Duty, finds himself compelled as a practical man to get up and condemn the result of our labours root and branch. I am speaking upon matters within my own knowledge when I say that he is not alone in that opinion. I do not believe that there is one practical man on the opposite side of the House supporting the Liberal party who understands and knows the effect of the working of this taxation who will not be ready to get up and use the same kind of language as the hon. Member opposite has used. After all, if this House were a debating society, then, I think, such theories of taxation as those advanced by the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Snowden) would be of the greatest value. But we are not a debating society, although I am not quite so sure that we are not becoming a debating society in some sense; but, at any rate, our duty is not to be a debating society, because we have upon us the responsibility of placing actual practical burdens upon the people of this country. Surely it is not our duty to the country to impose taxation which is nothing more nor less than an experiment as a kind of test whether the theories of the hon. Member for Blackburn will work or not in practice. That is all this means. The Chancellor of the Exchequer will not get up and say that these Land Taxes are the considered proposals of the permanent officials of this country, who are the right hon. Gentleman's responsible advisers. Will the right hon. Gentleman tell us that they really represent the considered, thought out, practical policy of practical men, practical in the sense of their knowledge of the management of land or of finance. They are neither one nor the other. These taxes are simply an attempt to carry out in practice the impossible theories of the hon. Member for Blackburn and his Friends, and where we blame the Chancellor of the Exchequer is that he has imposed upon this country this experiment, which like all experiments, should be tried in the first case on a small scale.
The result of imposing this experiment is the revelation which we have had an opportunity of studying in the recent report of the Commisioners of Inland Revenue. Let us for a moment examine what has been the realised results of this experiment. The first thing was the issue of Form IV. We have the figures in the
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Report of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue showing that the cost of issuing Form IV. was £174,000. That is the first item on the debit side. The valuation upon which this revenue is to be based and the cost of its collection have involved, according to the latest information from the Treasury Bench, the appointment of 2,300 officials at a cost of £325,000 a year. That is item No. 2. In addition to that there are other considerable sums for attendant expenses, and these items amount altogether to something exceeding £500,000 of direct expenditure out of the taxation levied on all other kinds of property for the purpose of carrying out this experiment. That is only the beginning of the cost. What is the position of the individuals who are threatened with this form of taxation? All those who have been served with Form IV., of which 10,500,000 have been issued, have either been obliged to let the thing go or take their chance with results which have been pretty well exposed in Debate. In every case where an owner considered it his duty to examine the effect of the service of this Form he has had to employ professional advice, for which he has had to pay. There is the enormous cost of professional advice directly caused to owners of property in this way. One case came to my notice of an estate in bankruptcy where the trustee in bankruptcy had to go before a judge in chambers and had to obtain an order on that estate in bankruptcy to incur an expenditure of £200 in order to obtain professional advice to enable him to fill up Form IV. May I ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer when he replies to tell us what course the Government propose to take in that respect. The next item of expenditure is the largest of all, and it has been incurred as a consequence of the realisation of the Chancellor of the Exchequer's expressed hopes that this legislation would cheapen land. Nothing was more eagerly put forward from the benches opposite than the golden hope uttered on Radical platforms that the land of the country was to be cheapened. Consols have been cheapened, and land has been cheapened, but it is reserved for the Chancellor of the Exchequer and his Friends to boast of having cheapened land. What has been cheapened by this taxation is mainly the small house property of this country, which has fallen in value something like 20 per cent., as far as we can judge by the mere passing of this Act.
Mr. KELLAWAY: Hear, hear.
Mr. PRETYMAN: The hon. Gentleman opposite cheers that statement.
Mr. KELLAWAY: Certainly I do. I will cheer anything that will lower rents.
Mr. PRETYMAN: The hon. Member cannot believe, and it seems to pass his comprehension, that you can at one and the same time pass legislation so vicious that it will reduce the value of the land and at the same time increase rents. That is practically the effect of this legislation. You have cheapened the land, and the hon. Member opposite admits it. Land has had its value reduced. Look at the effect of these proposals on house property and the building trade. Building is largely done upon credit, and anybody who wants to borrow money now to develop land or acquire property has to pay 1 per cent. more for the money. The whole structure of land development is carried out upon credit. Let me show the hon. Member opposite how his hopes will fail of realisation. Land has been cheapened, and what has happened? Houses are worth less to the present owner because he has got to pay this burden, partly of taxation, partly of attendant expenses, and partly of depreciation. It simply means that a part of the value of this property has been transferred to the State and a part has been wasted. But the general effect remains the same, as far as the rent is concerned. The occupier will still have to pay the same, only part of what he pays as rent will not go to the owner as before, but it will go in two directions—partly to the State and partly in waste. The building operations of the speculative builder have been stopped by the passage of this legislation, for he can no longer profitably borrow money for purposes of building development. What happens? The speculative builder disappears from the scene, and only those houses are built which are actually required. Hon. Gentlemen opposite often talk about the effect of a tariff upon the consumer, but this Bill is a triff upon the building trade. It is a duty upon everybody who builds a house. In this case who represents the consumer? Why the person who occupies the house. The next stage will be that the speculative builder will reopen his operations when rents have sufficiently gone up to restore to him the profits which he formerly made. That is an unbroken chain of absolute argument as to what must happen. Therefore the hon. Gentleman opposite may be very proud that he and his Friends have invented a method
2428
of taxation which can cheapen or injure land. If the hon. Gentleman wants to cheapen things he can do it by injuring them. If you want to cheapen horses you only need to lame them, and then they will not be worth much to anybody. You may cheapen land, Consols, or anything else in this way. There is nothing to boast about in it, and it is reserved for the hon. Member opposite and his Friends to be-proud of such action. The consequences of it are loss to the present owner, loss to the future owner, and loss to the community from every point of view from which you put it. I think I have now fairly completed my case on the debit side, and I think I have shown that the cost of this form of experimental taxation is rather a heavy one.
Let us come now to the credit side. The actual result on the credit side is £15,900. I suppose I cannot omit from this calculation a good many thousands or hundreds of thousands of misguided votes which have come to the hon. Gentlemen opposite. I do not know whether that may be taken on the credit side, but on the financial side there is no more than £15,900. When that is pointed out the answer given to us is, "Wait a minute, we are going to get a basis of taxation by this valuation which is going to be of enormous future value. We are going upon this to graft a new system of rates and taxes from which all the money required by the citizens of this country for social reform is going to be drawn." Let us examine that a little more closely. An interesting figure was given in answer to a question stating that of the completed valuations no less than 36,300 are minus quantities. I do not want to enter into the Debate which took place yesterday upon the question of a minus quantity except from this point of view, that I think the ingenuity of hon. Members below the Gangway and the Chancellor of the Exchequer will be taxed to explain to the House how rates and taxes are going to be obtained by a system of assessment of a minus quantity. If such an immense proportion of the assessments which this form of valuation is going to produce are minus quantities it is quite obvious that as a future basis of taxation it is worse than useless. Let us examine this question from another point of view. When a valuation is to form a basis for future rating or taxation it must be levied on all property upon an even basis.
Let us see whether that takes place in this case. Let me give just two instances,

2429
not single cases of this or that house, but cases governing immense areas of property and affecting the whole character of valuation. Let us go to Lancashire and take small house property in Lancashire. It will be found that an immense proportion of it is let on two systems. Part of it is let on what is called the chief rent system, where the freehold is vested in the householder, and a mere annual charge is paid to the ground landlord. It is a perpetual tenure in which the freehold of the property, nominally, vests in the householder. You have another class of property, also covering a great area in Lancashire. It is let on 999 years' leases, and, technically, the freehold vests in the ground landlord, and the 999 years' charge is a ground rent. Under this remarkable piece of legislation the rent charged is a deduction, and the ground rent is not. What happens? Let us take the case of an ordinary block of houses in a town, and let us suppose the full site value of those houses is, on the average, £100. Suppose those houses are let on a chief rent tenure, and suppose that chief rent to be £5 per house. It is quite a common case. That, at twenty years' purchase, is £100. That is a deduction from the full site value, and it brings out the assessable site value of those houses at nothing. Then lake another block of exactly similar houses paying rent for 999 years instead of for ever. There there is not a deduction, and you have the assessable site value brought out at £100. How are you going to find a basis of taxation to cover Lancashire when you have houses exactly similar in every respect in appearance in value and in the annual charge made, and when in one case the assessable site value is brought out at £100 and in the other case at nothing?
Mr. WEDGWOOD: By taking the full site value.
Mr. PRETYMAN: That is a new proposal. If you are going to take the full site value, why do you go to all this expense to arrive at the assessable site value? Let us take the county of Lincoln. You have in the county of Lincoln three areas practically covering the whole of the county. You have the northern half of the county where the agricultural land is divided by quick-set hedges; you have another portion of the county where it is divided by stone walls; and you have the fen district, where the fields are divided by dykes. Under this system you value all agricultural land, and where there are
2430
quick-set hedges there is a reduction, but where there are stone walls and dykes there is no deduction at all. Therefore, you have in one county agricultural land valued at a lower figure than all the rest because it is divided by quick-set hedges instead of by stone walls and dykes, which, as a matter of fact, are much more expensive to construct. This assessment or valuation as a sound basis of future taxation or rates really falls to the ground. There is another reason upon which I need not enlarge,' and that is the under-valuation which has taken place. That under-valuation has been general. In some cases there may have been over-valuation. The valuation itself is unreliable, it is discredited, and there is not a single soul in the country who thinks it is of any importance to him except hon. Gentlemen opposite, who are living in a fool's paradise and who look correspondingly happy. There is really nothing more remarkable than the change in the attitude of the Liberal party on this question. About two years ago, when this legislation was in the hey-day of its promise, we had it on every Radical platform, and we had nearly enough of it in this House, but now it is put back to the very last day of the Session, and we hear little or nothing about it on Liberal platforms. [An HON. MEMBER: "YOU will hear of it again."] I am sure the reception of hon. Gentlemen who support these Land Taxes will not be quite as favourable as it has been in the past. People are beginning now to find out the practical result, and the ruined builder and the harassed householder will not receive hon. Gentlemen quite so favourably as when they talked of the rich, refreshing fruit which was about to fall to them.
I will say one word as to the effect of the recent decision of the Courts as to Forms IV. and VIII. Forms IV. and VIII. have been in their present form condemned by the Courts, and I think we have a right to ask the right hon. Gentleman what course he proposes to take in regard to them. Perhaps he will tell us now whether he has made up his mind whether he will pay the cost of the plaintiffs in those two eases. I think he has now had sufficient time to tell us. He knows perfectly well that the form in which those actions had to be brought technically exempts the Crown from the payments of the costs. He told us at the time he should not shelter himself under that technicality, and I know perfectly well he will deal with the matter in a fair spirit. I do not press

2431
the matter upon him except to ask him whether he has made up his mind whether he will appeal or not. Of course, if he has not made up his mind, he cannot give us an answer, but I hope by now he has been able to do so. What is the position at present in that matter? Supposing the action taken by the Valuation Department had been taken by a private individual, what would be the position of the injured party? Under a threat of a fine of £50, a demand was made for certain information with all the authority of a Government Department behind it. It is now declared by the Courts that threat was invalid, and that the information need not have been supplied.
What is the remedy of the subject that has been so treated? Had he been so treated by a private individual—I speak under reserve, because I am not a lawyer, and I may be corrected if I am wrong—he would have had a right to proceed against the individual who had injured him, and to obtain damages. I mean where he could show injury. In cases where he could show he had been damaged by that action he would have had a right to claim that those damages should be refunded to him. He cannot do so against the Crown, because of the theory that the Crown can do no wrong. Take the case I quoted just now, the case of a trustee in bankruptcy who, in order to fill up Form IV., had to go to a judge in chambers to obtain an order to spend £200. Had that action been taken by a private individual, an action for damages would have lain, and he would have been able to have got the money refunded to him. At any rate, I think there would have been a primâ facie case, but, on the theory that the Crown can do no wrong, no action will lie. I do think the right hon. Gentleman is morally bound to put those individuals who have been put to this expense and to this trouble and from whom information has been wrongly obtained in this position. He ought to return those forms where the information has been illegally obtained under threat, and he ought to refund to the individual any expense he has been put to in giving that information. Perhaps he will tell us what action he proposes to take.
I wish to make one more point with regard to this matter of taxing land, and it is on a more general basis. Surely this House, or any legislative body, imposing taxation must realise if you are going to impose taxation on any particular form
2432
of property; it ought to be property which is increasing in value, and which will have an additional growing capacity to bear the burden placed upon it. Is that the case in regard to land? Here we have the very illuminating Report of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue, and there are three tables in their report to which I would like to call the attention of the House. The first is on page 35, where details are given of the gross capital value of property subject to Death Duties, and the particular class of property on which these duties fall is building land. It is a very remarkable fact that in the first five years of the years which are here given—the last ten years from 1900 down to 1910–11—the average value of building land upon which Death Duties was paid was about £1,500,000. It began to drop even before this Act was passed. The Liberal Government had been in office three years, and it shared the general fall in credit of all kinds of security. All kinds of securities, except foreign investments, had naturally fallen. There is a very obvious reason for that, and I can hardly add anything to the admirable speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Mills). Home securities and Consols used to fetch more in proportion to their yield, because of their additional security; and the achievement of the right hon. Gentleman apposite is that he has reduced the security of those investments to at least on a par level with other investments abroad yielding a larger interest. The security which has felt that influence more than any other kind of security is the land of this country, and, of course, its value has been correspondingly depreciated. Its value has gone down from £1,500,000 to only £772,828 last year. That is not definite proof. I do not want to take it any further than the figures go, because Death Duties do vary in quantity in different years, but where you have a general and continuous fall of this character it, at any rate, points to a considerable decline. Let me go to another figure even more remarkable. On page 107 you will find a distribution of gross profits of Income Tax as between land, houses, and other kinds of property, and you will find that between 1900 and the present time the capital value of land in this country assessed for Income Tax fell from £52,636,000 to £51,910,000.
Mr. WEDGWOOD: Is that agricultural land?
7.0 P.M.
Mr. PRETYMAN: No, all land apart from houses, and yet the hon. Member and

2433
his Friends proposes that shall bear the whole of the taxation—it is to be taken off the houses—when you have a wasting and declining value which has fallen from £52,000,000 to the figure I have stated. When you contrast with them the table calculated by my hon. Friend behind me as to the way in which foreign investments in the same period have increased from sixty millions sterling to ninety-three millions sterling I think you will see which is the more proper subject for taxation in this country. Here you have land falling in value throughout the country and saddled with an undue share of the rates and taxes which have to be borne, while the enormously increasing body of foreign investments does not touch that burden with the tip of its fingers. In conclusion, I should like to say one word on the speech of the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Snowden). The hon. Member objected to indirect taxation on the ground that no man who had no more than was necessary for his daily existence ought to be taxed. I agree with that, and I think the whole House also agrees. There is no desire to tax any man who has no more than sufficient for his daily existence. But then the hon. Member went on to add that direct taxation fell upon him as well, because however much it might be nominally levied on the richer classes a large proportion must inevitably fall on the poorer classes. May I point out how it is that a man who has no more than enough for his existence pays the direct taxation which falls upon him. He pays it in rent. Take the rent of a small house in a town at 8s. per week. Four shillings of that represents the burden which falls on the occupier of that house, and not more than 4s. out of the 8s. will go to the man who has provided the house for him.
I venture to say a more objectionable form of taxation than that is impossible, so far as regards a man who has no more than enough for his existence. I say that for two reasons. In the first place, he docs not know he is paying any more than he does in indirect taxation, and perhaps not quite so much, because he knows that the indirect taxation goes to the State. But in the other case he is told by many politicians that it is all rent, and that it is being taken by the greedy landlords, therefore this individual who has no more than sufficient for his existence is paying nominally 8s. a week as rent, but 4s. of it is really a national burden which is placed on his back. He is the prey of politicians
2434
who are full of theory, but who do not really understand practice. He falls an easy prey to them, and he votes for measures which only increase the burden that comes upon himself. My second reason is that the burden is absolutely inelastic. I consider that the burden which falls upon a poor man should have elasticity. He is liable to ups and downs, and when he has a set back it should be possible for him by some little self denial to tide over his difficulties and get on to the up-grade again. But unfortunately he has an inelastic rent.
Sir A. MARKHAM: How is the 4s. made up?
Mr. PRETYMAN: Rates and taxes paid out of the rent. When your rates amount to 10s. or 12s. in the £ I do not think that the 4s. estimate is very far out. It is the poor man who pays the 4s., and he has to pay it to the uttermost farthing or his wife and family will lose the roof from over their heads. There is no elasticity in any shape or form. It is the worst form of taxation that can be imposed on a poor man. I maintain that this form of taxation, which is nominally a tax on the rich, is really on the rent of the house in which the poor man lives, and you are placing the burden not on the rich man who apparently bears it, but on the poor man who cannot afford it, and you are putting it in the very worst form in which it can be possibly placed on him. That is my main objection to this form of taxation which has fortunately become a little less popular than it was. On national grounds, and for the good of those who occupy small houses—the main portion of the population of this country—I shall not rest until this form of taxation is erased from the Statute Book.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: First of all I should like to say I hope the hon. Gentle man the Member for Chelmsford (Mr. Pretyman) did not imagine that I was complaining of the length at which he was addressing the House. No one in the House has a better right to speak on the Land Taxes, and, however radically I may differ from his views, I am bound to admit he has taken a good deal of trouble over the question and has a right to express his opinions here on the subject. He concluded his speech with a very remarkable and far-reaching doctrine. As I understood it his theory is that any tax you put on the landlord has eventually to be paid by the tenant. If that is the case

2435
the sooner we introduce legislation to make that impossible the better. The hon. Gentleman surely does not mean to suggest that Schedule A falls on the tenant. That is a Property Tax. It is paid by the landlord, and by the Act of Parliament which imposes it it is expressly indicated it should not be deducted from the tenant or exacted from him in any form. I should be very surprised to hear that it is borne by the tenant at the present moment. I agree that the apparent incidence of taxation is not always the real incidence.
I should like to say one word, before I come to broader arguments, on the question of Form IV. The hon. Gentleman has fallen into an error into which a good many critics have fallen, when he assumes that the decision of the Court, or rather the effect of that decision is to render Form IV. invalid. That was not the decision of the Court at all. The Court decided two points. The first was that—I am putting it roughly—where you served your notice at such a time that you could not comply with the demand contained in Form IV. to supply the information within thirty days it was invalid. If it was dated the 9th August, and stated that, within thirty days certain information must be supplied subject to a penalty of £50, and if the notice was served on the 13th and could not be complied with in the time, then it became invalid. That is what happened in that individual case. The notice was dated the 9th August; it was not served until some days later; it was impossible for it to be complied with, and, therefore, it was declared invalid. But that has nothing to do with the validity of the form itself. It ought never to have been served days after the date which appeared on the face of it. That question I shall have to bear in mind when I come to a decision, which the Treasury will have to come to, as to costs.
The second decision was this, that where the occupier is also the owner there is no right to ask him what the annual value of the property is. But that is a question which is put in every form which is filled up, I believe, under the Metropolitan Assessments Act. It has been filled up by every owner and occupier in London for the last thirty or forty years. It was put into this form, but it has been decided by the Court that there is no right to ask for the information where the owner is also the occupier. The only question that really went to the root of the
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validity of Form IV. was decided by the Court in favour of the Crown. Therefore the assumption that it is decided that Form IV. was invalid is absolutely inaccurate. I come now to the question put to me with regard to costs. I understand the Law Officers of the Crown are now considering whether or not there shall be an appeal, and this I will say at once, that if the Law Officers decide not to appeal I certainly think the Crown ought to bear the costs.
Mr. CASSEL: In both eases?
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: I certainly think the Crown should be in the same position as other parties and bear the costs of the successful litigant, and if it is decided not to appeal I, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, will give my decisions in that direction. But the hon. Gentleman went on to talk about damages. Really there were no damages in that case. What happens? Form IV. had to be filled up by the party it referred to, and he deemed it necessary to go to the Court in order to get instructions how to fill it up. The only thing that happens will be that a Form IV. properly dated and omitting just that one question out of, I forget how many, will be served on him, and he will still have to go to the Court in exactly the same sort of way. He will not be damnified in the slightest degree. I do not think there is a case for damages. There is a case to ask the Crown to pay the costs if we decide not to proceed with the appeal. So much for the question of Form IV.
I now come to the general questions raised by the hon. Gentleman on the provisions of the Land Act. The case he made was also made very ably by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Northampton (Mr. M'Curdy). It was a case for simplification. I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman realises quite what his plea amounts to. Of course my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mr. Wedgwood) never ceased to warn me that every concession made in the course of the Budget Debate in response to the eloquent appeal of the hon. Member for Chelmsford would result in complicating our taxation instead of simplifying it. I must say that this is true. Yet the hon. Gentleman claims advantage from his own wrong-doing. First he appealed to me to make concessions, and he put his claim in such a very appealing way and tone that I could not resist him. Concession after concession was made, and there is not one of those concessions which has not caused

2437
us trouble, and which has not complicated the machinery. What is still more, much of it has had the effect of delaying the collection of taxes. I will only point out one case to prove that. It is in connection with the concession made with regard to the Undeveloped Land Tax. It was agreed that until agricultural tenancies had come to an end we were not to start the Undeveloped Land Tax. We were not to do so, at any rate, until twelve months' notice had expired. That period will not be reached until some time next year. Most of the land is either land upon which £100 has been spent in making roads, curbs, and drains, or it is land which is used for agricultural purposes, and the concession meant that until the year had expired the taxes were not to be collected. The hon. Gentleman, having wrung that concession out of the Government, now turns round and says, "See the result of your Land Taxes." It is hardly fair to me, but it is a very solemn warning to me and to every succeeding Chancellor of the Exchequer with too soft a heart to resist the appeals of the hon. Gentleman in future. That is why at the present moment we are not collecting, even when we have the valuations completed, our income in respect of the halfpenny tax, simply because these tenancies have not expired, and we are therefore not in a position until next year to begin to get at the effect, as it were, of this Undeveloped Land Tax.
I come to the second point. There is the difficulty with regard to the unearned increment. The hon. Gentleman says, "What have you got out of it?" With regard to the unearned increment, we made it perfectly clear that, in our judgment, it was a tax which you would not get much from for years to come, because you were beginning with a datum line. I can quote from a speech delivered by the Prime Minister in regard to valuation in which he emphatically stated that, with regard to the whole of the Land Taxes, for a year or two the yield would be comparatively small, and that we were simply laying down a basis of taxation for the future. I have two quotations from the Prime Minister pointing that out, and he justified it by reference to what Mr. Gladstone did in connection with the Succession Duty. Mr. Gladstone introduced the Succession Duty in 1853, and he pointed out that very little could be expected from it in the course of the first year, and that he was simply laying the foundation of a
2438
tax that would be productive in future. What happened there? Mr. Gladstone's expectations were falsified. For the first year or two he did not get half as much as he expected. But what has happened since? It has been one of the most productive taxes in this country. The same thing applies to our taxes. Here, again, the hon. Gentleman has taken advantage of a concession. With the Increment Value Duty you begin with a datum line. You say the value of land at such and such a date is, say, £100; if it is sold at £110 there is an increment of £10. The fault that we have not got much in rests a great deal with what the hon. Gentleman got out of the Government. He got a concession that the increment should only begin after you have added 10 per cent. on to the increase, so that you have to wait, not merely for an increase in the value, but until you have an increase which is over that 10 per cent. What is the result? That for the first year, or the first two or three years, you cannot expect to get much out of your Increment Duty.
I put the right hon. Gentleman for East Worcestershire (Mr. Austen Chamberlain) to a test last year. The Government, in the Bill of 1909, gave half the Land Taxes to the municipalities. Last year they gave them £300,000 a year certain, instead of a prospective half of £600,000. What did the right hon. Gentleman say? He said, "Don't you do it, you are selling your birthright for a mess of pottage. This is a bad bargain. You take my advice. You stick to your half of the Land Taxes." And I agreed with him. It was very sound advice. Let him get any municipality in the kingdom to say now that they will commute their portion of the Land Taxes for half a million or even a million for the next ten years. I doubt whether he will be able to effect that bargain. Certainly, if you try to buy out their rights altogether, they would not look at it for a moment. He knows perfectly well, in spite of all his criticism, in spite of the fact that in the first years we cannot hope to get much—the valuation is incomplete, you must allow the value of land to develop—that this is a basis of a taxation that is going to be very productive, not merely to the revenue of the municipalities, but to the Imperial Exchequer as well. It has turned out to be successful in Germany. I have a great hope of the increase in the value of land in spite of it, rather than in the somewhat dubious prophecies of the hon. Member for Chelmsford.

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He says "you will ruin the building trade. There is nothing being done in the building trade. The speculative building trade is at an end, and you will get no building of houses at all except as there is a demand." I am not so sure that it is altogether a bad thing that you should make your supply fit your demand. But it is very remarkable that the building trade should be destroyed and that the unemployment in the building trade has gone down. I will give figures for that. When the Budget of 1909 was I brought in, the building trade was very bad. The unemployment then was something like 10 per cent. From the moment the Budget was brought in, with the hopes that it contained, the unemployment steadily went down, until in October of this year it was only 3.1 per cent., instead of being 10 per cent., as in 1909.
Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: Has the right hon. Gentleman got the total figures of the numbers employed? There is a very great reduction.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: I notice that the figures of the Board of Trade are always quite good enough to quote if they show an increase in unemployment, but the moment there is a decrease in unemployment these figures are no good at all. Then the only figures which are fit to be quoted are those of the Tariff Reform League. [An HON. MEMBER: "The 'Daily Mail.' "] I remember perfectly well how the figures were quoted at that time. It is not merely the figures of unemployment, but if the right hon. Gentleman will look at the monthly reports of the Board of Trade, obtained not merely from the trade unions but from the leading firms and the labour correspondents throughout the country in these various trades, he will find that they show a steady improvement year after year since then in the building trade. All this talk about the Budget having ruined the building trade has no foundation whatever, except in the imagination of the Land Union. So much for all that. In spite of all that has been said, anyone listening to the hon. Member for Chelmsford would imagine that the whole machinery of land valuation had broken down, and that there was no hope at all except in the abolition or, in what I should prefer, simplification as was suggested by my hon. Friend and upon which I hope the hon. Member for Chelmsford will ponder. Really, I believe that the Land Union is
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in league with the Single Tax Union. I believe there is a secret treaty between the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Mr. Wedgwood) and the hon. Member for Chelmsford. I cannot explain it upon any other basis. The hon. Member for Chelmsford is really working for simplification as hard as he can, and when he achieves it, the Chancellor of the Exchequer of that day will have to bring in a Bill for the simplification of the Land Taxes and the restoration of the much simpler and much more effective original proposals that the Government put before the House of Commons. That will be part, of the triumph of the Land Union.
In spite of all these complications, what has happened? We only began our valuation work this year. Of course the Budget was late through no fault of ours. I do not want to enter into that controversial matter. You had first of all to employ your men and your clerks, and you had to organise the whole machinery. You had to circulate millions of forms, you had to get in the replies to those forms. The machinery of valuation really only began about twelve months ago. What has happened? We have already had provisional valuations made and served upon the parties in 1,500,000 cases. How many appeals have we had? Only eight-six. These are not with regard to large properties. Since the eighty-six appeals were served, twenty-five of them have already been withdrawn. That does not really look as if it were a great cumbrous machine that had hopelessly broken down. That is the beginning of the valuation. Year by year it will be accelerated. There will be a simplification. The machinery will, of course, be improved, and I hope some of the criticisms the hon. Member for Chelmsford has been making for some time will bear fruit, and that we shall be able to accelerate collection and improve the efficiency of this valuation machinery. It would be unfair to him not to express my gratitude to him for the assistance he has given me. I do not believe that the valuation will be completed much later than the period indicated by the Prime Minister when he introduced the valuation proposals in the Budget of 1909. When it is accomplished it will be a very great piece of work. It will be of enormous value, not merely for the taxation we imposed under the Budget of 1909–10, but for the reconsideration of the problem of local as well as Imperial taxation. I say that, to whoever has to deal with that problem,

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whether it is the right hon. Gentlemen opposite or ourselves.
You cannot ignore the enormous task which is being accomplished by these valuers. Of course, when you have a gigantic task of this kind, when you have to value some 10,000,000 items, naturally you get here and there a case which is not a very satisfactory one. Is that not true of every business? How can you get 10,000,000 transactions put through without any breakdown, without somebody perpetrating a mistake, or serving a notice two days after time, or putting something in he ought not to? That would be as much as asking that the three or four hundred valuers should be superhuman. The progress that has been made I think is very satisfactory when all the circumstances are taken into account. It is said "it has cost you three or four hundred thouand pounds a year. Look at what you are getting out of it." Is that a fair way to put it? A valuation is something which is made and done with until you come round to the next valuation. I believe that the last valuation of the whole of the kingdom was made about 700 years ago. This is a valuation which I think will last for some time, although I do not say it will last so long as that. But it will last for some years. It is surely a capital expenditure, and it is not fair to say "it is costing you three or four hundred thousand pounds and you are getting nothing out of it." It is costing £2,000,000 to have done with it, It is well worth the money, whatever the settlement of local taxation is going to be. What was the difficulty which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Strand Division (Mr. Walter Long) saw when he came to consider the question of local taxation? His difficulty was one entirely of re-valuation. This is the only country in the world where you have not got something in the nature of a national survey, and even if you had not got these taxes emanating from it, it would be absolutely necessary to have a valuation of this kind in order to know exactly what your position is.
That is all I have to say about the Land Taxes, except as to the way they bear upon the Estate Duties. Official valuation makes a difference of between £400,000 and £500,000 a year to the Estate Duties, and that you have an efficient staff of valuers who can check the valuation. I can give some very remarkable figures as to what it really means in some cases. I have a long
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list of cases here. This is the sort of thing that we never could have checked before. I will give two cases where the valuation has gone up from 25 per cent. to 136 per cent. In one case the original value, as given by the owner, is £73,926. Valuers were sent down from the valuation staff and checked it, and, finally, I think it was agreed upon at £175,000—an increase of £101,000. That is an increase of 163 per cent. In the next case there was an increase of 185 per cent. in the valuation, so that it is already beginning to bear fruit. We have received in the increased income from the Death Duties alone, without altering any principles of valuation, more than the cost of the valuation, although it is a capital expenditure. As I pointed out, that is no injustice to the men who have to pay, but quite the reverse. The injustice was to the men who gave honest returns. They paid to the full, but those who did not return the full value were getting off their fair share, and whenever there is a deficiency the honest men have to make it up.
The right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Austen Chamberlain) suggested that the time has come for an inquiry. I am not closing my mind to the question of an inquiry. You must have an inquiry sooner or later. This is quite a new proposal. It is a new method of taxation. The valuation of the whole of the land of this country is a very important matter, and it is perfectly fair that there should be an inquiry. You do not want an inquiry which will take the valuers away from their duties at too early a stage. I am not now arguing against an immediate inquiry, but I should like to consider whether it would not be better to go on a little longer, until you have settled a few increment value cases and others, before you institute an inquiry. I think an inquiry would be very useful. I am not going to predict what would happen except to say that I am not so sure that the hon. Member (Mr. Pretyman) will be very happy at this inquiry having been granted, because, unless I am mistaken, the inquiry will be very largely on the lines suggested by the hon. Member (Mr. Chiozza Money). If anything, it will point to the direction of what he called simplification rather than the direction of further complicating the matter by the sort of concessions which have been indicated.
Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: We will risk the result. What we want to know is whether the valuation is just.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: That is very important. It is of first-class importance that you should have a valuation which will command the general confidence of the community. I do not mean merely the partisans on either side. You ought to have a valuation which will satisfy the general sense of fair play and justice. That is very important, and it is desirable at a fairly early stage to have an inquiry into the way in which the valuation has proceeded. The hon. Member (Mr. Mills) made a very interesting speech, which gave great satisfaction even to those who could not accept his criticism, and even to the victim of his criticisms, because it was an admirable speech exceedingly well delivered. His theory was that Consols had gone down very largely because we were not paying off debt. This criticism has been heard so often that I suppose hon. Gentlemen must believe it. This year we are providing £10,500,000 for the payment of debt. When did the right hon. Gentleman ever do that? If he will only compare the record of the Government of which he was a member—there were no doubt difficulties—he will find they cannot compare with the effort made by the present Government to reduce debt. Let us take the period preceding the South African War. The Unionist Government redeemed debt by £5,850,000 a year. That is the net reduction. During the four years from 1899 to 1902–3 they raised for war purposes £162,000,000, and they raised for capital liabilities £5,000,000 a year. They redeemed only £5,300,000, so that, apart from the war debt, they added during these four years almost £1,000,000 to the debt of this country. During the last three years of office the Unionist Government made a net reduction of only £3,100,000 a year. Let us look at this Government, which I am told is putting down the price of Consols by not paying off debt. During the five years which the present Government has been in office they have made a net reduction of £11,300,000 a year. In all, up to November of this year, they had paid off debt to the amount of £75,000,000, and before the end of this financial year that will have come to £80,000,000 altogether. I am not asking the right hon. Gentleman whether his Government did anything of the kind because they simply put it up, but I ask him to name any Government of modern times that has ever reduced the indebtedness of the country by anything approaching that figure. Whatever the hon. Gentleman's views may be about the reduction
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of Consols, at any rate they have nothing whatever to do with the fact that we are not redeeming debt. In regard to the Old Sinking Fund, we have done very much better. Listening to hon. Members you might assume that they had always used the Old Sinking Fund to pay off debt. As a matter of fact, they have had 74 per cent. of the Old Sinking Fund applied to other purposes. We have applied 80 per cent. of it for the purpose of reducing debt, so that, even on these figures, our efforts compare very favourably with those of the right hon. Gentleman and his Friends.
Then the right hon. Gentleman came to another point on which I sympathised with everything he said, and I am sure he will not disagree with one thing I say. He quoted some speeches I made below the Gangway when I criticised him, and he says now I am in a position to carry out economies. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is not in a position to carry out economies. There is only one body which can carry out economies, and that is the House of Commons. The Chancellor of the Exchequer may make an effort, he may fight for economy, but there is only one body which can achieve economy, and that is the House of Commons, and the House of Commons does not. During recent years the pressure of the House of Commons has been rather in favour of expenditure than of economy. The right hon. Gentleman said our expenditure had gone up. So it has. But I thought the answer of the hon. Member (Mr. Snowden) was complete. How has it gone up? It is really no use talking about the increase of the Civil Service. It may or may not be right, it may or may not be extravagant, but that is a comparatively small portion of the increased expenditure. It would not have been necessary for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to put on a single tax, however trivial, in order to meet the increase in the cost of the Civil Service. The increase in expenditure has been in two directions, social reform and armaments, and they are pretty equally divided. I ask the right hon. Gentleman where he would economise? It is no use saying to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, "Look at the state of the finances when you came to the Exchequer, and you will see you are now spending £20,000,000 or £30,000,000 more than you were spending then." That is not the point. I am not spending a penny piece more than the House of Commons not merely sanctioned, but pressed

2445
upon me, and all I have done here is to try and persuade the House of Commons not to spend more.
On the Old Age Pensions Bill the only fight was to prevent the House of Commons as a whole adding £14,000,000 here, £500,000 there, and even £20,000,000 in a lump. That was the proposal to bring down the age from seventy to sixty-live, and I had to fight it, not always with very much help from the right hon. Gentleman, though he did better than his Friends, because he has an old rooted sense of responsibility from having been a Chancellor of the Exchequer. When we came to the Insurance Bill, I never bad a proposal from any Member on either side to reduce the contribution of the State, though I can remember fifty or one hundred which would increase the liability of the State, and one of the very last Divisions we had was one for taking off a penny. The hon. Member (Mr. Snowden) is consistent. He believes in taxes on principle. That comes from his training. I remember perfectly well when it was pro posed to take a penny off the workman's contribution. Everyone knew what that meant. They knew that the Government could not face the bankruptcy of the scheme, and that they would have to get it out of the national coffers, and hon. Members opposite voted for it, although they knew they were adding almost another penny to the Income Tax. What is the good of talking to the Chancellor of the Exchequer under these conditions, when he has been trying for months to keep down expenditure? I think I am entitled to ask the right hon. Gentleman and hon. Members behind him which of these items of expenditure would they get rid of.
Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: The right hon. Gentleman specifically challenges me again. I tell him that my complaint is in regard to two measures of legislation of which he has spoken. I am not one of those who have urged the Chancellor of the Exchequer to increase the cost to the State of the Insurance Bill. My criticisms of that Bill were of a different kind. What I urged upon the Government was that the old age pension scheme should have been a contributory scheme. That would have lessened the burden on the State. The other side of my criticism was that at the time they were introducing the new burden of old age pensions they had no right to be abolishing taxes.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: Surely not abolishing taxes does not diminish the burden on the State. Let me meet the other point. The right hon. Gentleman says, in regard to old age pensions, "I suggested that you should bring in a contributory scheme." Let us see what that means. If old age pensions had been given under a contributory system, it would not have been 4d. I would have had to ask the workman to contribute but 8d., and it would not have been 3d. I would have had to ask the employers to contribute, but probably 5d. When I asked for contributions of 4d. and 3d. what help did I get from the right hon. Gentleman opposite? If I did not get much help from him when I asked for 4d. and 3d., I think that is an indication that if I had accepted his suggestion it would have ended in disaster, which hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite would have helped to negotiate. It could not have been done. If you had got the old age pensions scheme on a contributory basis it would not have got any further, because of the amount of the contribution. You could not have increased it. The contributory scheme of insurance we brought in is an effort made by me to prevent increased charges on the State, and it is an enormous effort, but the reception it has got from those who pressed it upon us does not encourage Chancellors of the Exchequer to repeat it. Therefore, although I fully agree with him that national expenditure ought to be faced and seriously considered by Members on both sides of the House, it is not enough to say that the Government should resist schemes which impose new burdens on the State. You must also have an Opposition to resist the temptation to take advantage of the action of the Government in following that unpopular course. Economy is not popular. It is a very difficult thing to effect. Wherever you attempt to cut down expenditure, you first of all come across interests in the country, and you have to resist demands which are popular. It can only be done by something in the nature of House of Commons examination. The House as a whole must look into the national expenditure to see that it is reduced where it is extravagant, to see that the money is only spent where you get full value for it, and also to see that the policy of the country is of a character that does not render an increase inevitable.
Question, "That the Bill be now read the third time," put, and agreed to.
Bill read the third time, and passed.

TELEPHONE TRANSFER AMENDMENT BILL.
Considered in Committee; reported without Amendment; to be read the third time to-morrow (Thursday).
NAVAL DISCIPLINE (DOMINION NAVAL FORCES) BILL.
Considered in Committee and reported without Amendment. Bill read the third time, and passed.
COPYRIGHT BILL.
Lords Amendments considered, and agreed to.
MARITIME CONVENTIONS BILL. [Lords.]
Read a second lime and committed to a Committee of the Whole House for tomorrow (Thursday).
PUBLIC ROADS (IRELAND) BILL.
Lords Amendments considered, and agreed to.

APPELLATE JURISDICTION BILL [Lords].
Order for Second Reading read.
Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."
Mr. WATT: My hon. Friend the Member for East St. Pancras (Mr. Martin) intended to move that this Bill be read a second time this day three months, but, apparently on account of the early finish of the discussion on the Finance Bill, he has been taken unawares, and is not present to propose the Amendment. Therefore I rise to move, as an Amendment, to leave out the word "now," and, at the end of the Question, to add the words "upon this day three months."
8.0 P.M.
My first objection to this Bill is that it is practically a Money Bill, and, notwithstanding an Act passed by this House
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some months ago preventing the House of Lords from either rejecting or amending a Money Bill, we have the Government introducing this measure into the House of Lords, thus giving them the power of amending or rejecting if they so chose. That is, however, a minor point, although it had to be explained in the Upper House and practically apologised for by the Lord Chancellor and Viscount Haldane. But I object to this measure on its merits. The first Clause provides that judicial sittings of the House of Lords and the Judicial Committee shall not take place at the same time. Practically that is the primary, if not the only, object of the measure, but that power exists already in the Lord Chancellor's hands, because he can so arrange the sittings of these Courts as to secure that they shall not take place at the same time. But Clause 2 is the kernel of the Bill. Under it an opportunity is to be taken, by bringing about this arrangement as to not sitting at the same time, to institute two new Lords of Appeal, and in Clause 3 we have the arrangement that the salaries are to be £5,000 a year, with a pension of £3,500 after a service of fifteen years. There is no necessity for two new Lords of Appeal to be appointed. Already there are twenty-six judges who are eligible to sit in these two Courts, and the work done by these judges is not very large. Last year there were only 178 cases before the two Courts—100 in the House of Lords from the United Kingdom, and 78 in the Privy Council. Though we have twenty-six judges who can be called upon to try these 178 cases the Government tell us that is not sufficient. Some of these judges are very seldom drawn on. I have received from the Attorney-General particulars of the various attendances of these judges, and some of them have only been called on nine, ten, eleven, or twelve times in the course of a year to act in either of these particular Courts. Instead of appointing two new judges Lords of Appeal, as suggested in this Bill, these distinguished gentlemen might be called upon more often than ten or twelve times in the course of a year. They are not overworked. I cannot for the life of me conceive why the Government take the opportunity of appointing two new Law Lords to fulfil these arduous duties, and it is because of the absolute want of necessity of such appointments that I move this Motion.
Mr. MARTIN: I beg to second the Amendment.
I am in sympathy with the first Clause in this Bill. I understand that the Government are asking the House to pass this Bill in compliance with an arrangement made at the Colonial Conference which took place last summer. But the first Clause of this Bill, it will be found, will afford all that the Colonies asked for in connection with this matter. The complaint made was that there were not enough judges very often sitting in the Privy Council to hear appeals from the Colonies. It was felt, for instance, in Australia, where I think there are six judges sitting in the highest Court of Appeal, and in Canada, where I also think there are six judges sitting in the Court of Appeal, that it was not very satisfactory to have the judgment of these Courts reversed by, perhaps, three judges, or scarcely ever more than four, sitting in the Privy Council. It is abundantly plain, from the discussions at the Colonial Conference, that the suggestions made with regard to the Privy Council were not made in any hostile spirit, but rather with a view to improve the appellate tribunal—which is eminently satisfactory, certainly to Canada, and, I believe, to the other dominions from which appeals come—the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. The proposition put forward at the Conference, I think by Australia, on which the principal discussion took place, was a proposal to have only one Court of Appeal, to amalgamate the House of Lords and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, so that there should be one Court, and one Court only, which would hear appeals from the United Kingdom and the highest Courts of all the different Colonies.
The Government, while not controverting that idea, but I think rather approving of it, were unable to give full effect to it, but they proposed to make certain modifications which would go far in that direction, and the representatives of the Colonies were satisfied with the proposal made by the Government. It was no part of the proposal of the Colonial representatives that this country should pay £10,000 a year more for two new judges. That proposal came entirely from, the Government, and was accepted by the Colonies for the simple reason that it did not make any difference to them how much it cost this country, if the Government wished to have more
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judges. So far as the Colonies were concerned, judging from the verbatim report of the discussion, what they wanted was that the Judicial Committee should be a larger one. The reason that in the past the Judicial Committee has been a Court, sometimes with three and generally with four judges, arose entirely from the fact that the same judges, with one or two exceptions, sit in the Judicial Committee, and are also judges in the House of Lords; and as it has been the practice for the House of Lords and the Judicial Committee to sit at the same time there has not been usually the number of regular judges to supply both Courts with more than three or four judges. The first Clause of this Bill entirely cures that difficulty, because it provides that the House of Lords and the Judicial Committee shall hold their sittings at different times. The result is that the whole force available in the House of Lords is available for the sittings of the Privy Council.
The Colonies would be quite satisfied if there were in the Privy Council as many judges as sit in the Colonial Court from which the appeals come. That is in no case more than six. Surely the Government cannot say, while they have in the House of Lords available to sit in the Privy Council at least fourteen judges, without counting at all any of these learned Gentlemen to whom my hon. Friend has referred, and who are not looked upon as regular judges in the Court, that there can be any difficulty at any time in seeing that six of these judges shall be available for a sitting in the Privy Council. If there be any difficulty, there is a large number of judges who have the right to sit in the Privy Council who hold other judicial offices in the country who could always be called upon, so that there never could be any trouble whatever in getting a Court satisfactory to the Colonies consisting of six judges. What is the reason that in these circumstances the Government ask for the appointment of two new Law Lords? They may say that the Colonies ask for it. I say that is not so. What the Colonies asked was a very different thing, simply to have one Court of Appeal. The Government said, "We will submit a scheme to you," but no Colonial representative asked that there should be additional judges appointed. It is well known that both in the House of Lords and in the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council there are no arrears of business. The business is right up to date. All the judgments have been

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delivered except possibly in one or two cases which may have been argued within the past few weeks. We had a proposal last year to appoint two new judges in the King's Bench Division. The reason of it was that the division was some four or five hundred cases in arrear, but the promise was given that no additional judges should be appointed to the King's Bench Division until the number had been reduced by resignation or death. The appointment of these two judges, with that undertaking given, made it plain that the Government would not for a moment have suggested the appointment of additional judges to the King's Bench unless it had been absolutely necessary in the public interest to dispose of the arrears of work. When Mr. Justice Grantham died the other day the Government made no appointment, and another vacancy will have to be caused, by death or resignation, before another judge can be appointed. How can any Member of this House, pledged to economy, as are all Liberal and Labour Members, vote to throw away £10,000 per annum for the salaries of two additional Law Lords? Ten thousand pounds represents a capital sum of about £334,000, which is about the sum that was devoted the other day in India to education in the coming year, and which has been referred to as a great act on the part of the Government; yet, at this late day of the Session, we are asked to throw away what nearly represents that capital expenditure without a single reason of any kind being given, except the reason that this had been arranged with the Colonial Conference.
I think I have shown very clearly and distinctly that there was no such arrangement at all, and that the Colonies did not ask for it or suggest it in any way. We know perfectly well that once these two new judges are appointed the number will never be reduced. These judges will become members of the House of Lords in addition to the four Law Lords who now sit there. That means a permanent addition to our expenditure. We, as Liberals, are pledged to economy; the Government are pledged to economy; and how can we vote for this proposal? Hon. Gentlemen on the other side of the House have been engaged in the Debate on the Budget Bill, and they have criticised very strongly the action of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, showing how ruthlessly pledges with regard to economy given when in opposition have been violated. What do they think of economy of this kind? They
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cannot at one part of the day be talking about economy, and then a few hours later for ever put a charge on the revenue of this country of ten thousand pounds. Apart from this proposal to appoint two additional judges, for which I see no reason whatever, I am very glad indeed that the Government have introduced this Bill. I would like to point out to the Attorney-General one or two perhaps rather small matters connected with the Judicial Committee. One great difficulty—I did not see it mentioned in the Colonial Conference—has reference to a grievance connected with the Colonies. It is that cases for argument in the Privy Council are not fixed. It seems to me that the Government might well make some arrangement by which an appeal brought from the Colonies should have its date for hearing fixed two or three months ahead. It is growing more customary, as the appeals involve larger amounts than they did in former years, for eminent counsel to come from Canada or other Colonies to argue these appeals. It will be understood, of course, that only men who are eminent at the Bar are retained in these appeals, and their time is very valuable indeed.
It is a very heavy charge on litigants in Canada to have to pay these eminent counsel for long trips to this country. The journey is a short one. In six days you can land in London from Toronto, which is the principal city for this litigation in Canada. If the date of the hearing were fixed, counsel could come over to this country for a few days, could stop long enough to argue his case, and could then get back to his work in the Colony. There is another matter to which I should like to call the attention of the Attorney-General. I do not understand myself how it is that English counsel have a right to practise in the Privy Council in connection with Colonial appeals. I am not making that observation with any wish to prevent English counsel from practising there, or from being engaged in those appeals But I do not understand exactly how it is that they have this right to appear in Colonial appeals. It is admitted that the House of Lords and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council are to all intents and purposes one Imperial Court of Appeal, because the same judges sit in both the House of Lords and in the Judicial Committee. How is it that English and Scotch counsel can appear in Colonial cases before the Privy Council, while a Colonial counsel cannot appear before the

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House of Lords? I think there is wide scope for our Imperialistic Friends on this side or the other side of the House to do something with regard to this anomaly, which precludes counsel from the Colonies from appearing before the House of Lords.
The ATTORNEY-GENERAL (Sir Rufus Isaacs): I am sorry to interrupt my hon. Friend, but if he is going to elaborate his argument in regard to this point, I should like to know whether it has any reference to the Bill.
Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER (Mr. Whitley): I do not think it has. The hon. Member can make a passing reference to the matter, but he ought not to develop his argument at any great length.
Mr. MARTIN: I do not intend to develop it at any great length. It seems to me that we are dealing with the Privy Council procedure, because there is another point, which is not in the Bill at all, on which an arrangement has been made, and it is that, instead of the Privy Council giving one reasoned judgment, each member of it shall hereafter give a judgment. We are dealing with the relation of the Privy Council to the Colonies, and I do not think it is out of order to point out anomalies which may exist. I ask what right English counsel have to appear in the Privy Council with regard to Colonial cases.
Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER: I allowed the hon. Member to make his statements, but now he is asking for a reply that involves a debate I could not allow.
Mr. MARTIN: I propose to move an Amendment in Committee which will raise this point so that I shall not deal further with it now. The question is a question of economy and whether an expenditure of £10,000 is justifiable or at all necessary in order to meet the matters which have been raised by the Colonies. I have shown, I think, conclusively, that there are fourteen judges who sit every day and who can be depended upon to make up a Court of at least six members which would suit all the Colonial representations. Under those circumstances, I think that every Liberal and every Labour Member who votes for this proposal renders himself liable to the charges which were hurled across the floor of the House to-day against the Liberal party for its failure to carry out its promise of economy in administration.
Sir RUFUS ISAACS: I think that there is a considerable amount of misconception both in the mind of my hon. Friend who moved the rejection and in the mind of my hon. and learned Friend, who spoke with some knowledge of what took place in these proceedings with reference to the number of judges who are, to use the expression of my hon. and learned Friend, bound to sit as judges. Their argument is on the basis that there is a large number of judges who are under obligation to sit on the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council and in the House of Lords. That is really a complete misconception. I appreciate how it has arisen and I will tell you how. There are only four Law Lords in existence who are appointed under the Appellate Jurisdiction Act. They are presided over by the Lord Chancellor, so that there are altogether only five who are bound to sit, and are in duly bound to attend in the House of Lords, or as the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, for the purpose of deciding cases which come before them. There is a large number of gentlemen who held, or are holding, high judicial office, and who are entitled to sit in the Judicial Committee, though they are not available for service every day. Take, for example, Lord Haldane. He is not available every day to sit on the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, although he can on special occasions sit, and has sat, and is ready to sit whenever he can. In the same way the Lord Chief Justice of England, the President of the Court of Sessions may sit, and also the President of the Probate, Divorce, and Admiralty Division may sit in the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council as a holder of high judicial office, but he has his daily work, and it is quite impossible for him to sit in the Judicial Committee on the day when he has his ordinary regular work. In the King's Bench, in the case of the Lord Chief Justice, and in the Provate, Divorce, and Admiralty Division the work would fall into arrears, and you would require to have more judges. They do sit when there is some special occasion which makes it desirable that their presence should be required in the hearing of particular cases.
Mr. MARTIN: None of those judges are included in my number.
Sir RUFUS ISAACS: They are enumerated by the hon. Member who moved in the number he referred to, because I know he had before him the number I gave him of

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those who are entitled to sit in the Judicial Committee. There are others who are entitled to sit either in the House of Lords or in the Judicial Committe, but who are not bound to sit. They are retired judges, who are entitled to their pensions, and who are under no obligation to sit either in the one house or the other as judges. You may take, for example, the instance of a very distinguished judge, who constantly does sit. He is at a very advanced age, although, I agree, very vigorous. I mean Lord Halsbury. He is always ready to give his services, but he is under no obligation whatever to sit. When he does sit it is on request; but he may, if he likes, never sit at all. He has the reason which quite justifies him in not sitting—that he is not a paid judge of the tribunal. With regard to the others, they are retired judges, available as judges who have held high judicial office.
Mr. MARTIN: Last Session, when Lord Mersey was transferred to the Lords, if I remember aright, the Premier told us that he at least would be available to sit in the House of Lords and in the Privy Council.
Sir RUFUS ISAACS: I remember what the hon. and learned Gentleman is referring to, but I do not think that that is quite what took place. He retired, as perhaps the House will remember, on account of health. He said that so long as he was able, and when he was able, he would give his services, and he has no doubt given his services. On the other hand, he is under no obligation to sit either in the Judicial Committee or the House of Lords. The reason of the introduction of this Bill is, as has been pointed out by my hon. and learned Friend, in order to carry out a desire expressed by the Imperial Conference. I do not mean by that that they said they wanted two new Law Lords. What they have said and do desire is a stronger Court, and a Court composed of more judges, for the very excellent reasons which were given by my hon. and learned Friend.
Mr. WATT: Was it not the case that it was asked that New Zealand should appoint a judge and pay for the judge?
Sir RUFUS ISAACS: That was proposed, but it did not find favour with the rest of the dominions. There were many difficulties connected with that. Some thought it might be that Australia might
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not like a New Zealand judge, or Canada might not like to have its cases decided by an Australian or New Zealand judge, and that proposal fell to the ground. What we are dealing with here is a very important matter for the Empire. What we desire to do is to lay the foundations of a great Imperial Court that is to be the supreme Court of Appeal for the whole Empire, and what is desired is to strengthen that Court so that we may give confidence to our Dominions-over-the-Seas and to the Crown Colonics whose appeals come to our Court over here. If we can get, as we wish, the appointment of two new Law Lords, it will put us in this position, that we shall have always available six Law Lords who will be under obligations, and who will have to sit so long as there is work there to do in order that they may go through the list and finish it. If you have six Law Lords who are bound to sit arrangements could be made as suggested by the hon. and learned Member, the force of whose point—that distinguished lawyers coming over here from Canada and elsewhere should know on what date they will have to come—I quite appreciate, and think is very important. It goes a long way to help you to carry that out if we are enabled to form the Court we desire here, because if we have a number of Law Lords under obligation to sit, then you can regulate your list for some time ahead, and say what cases you will take when the Court sits. If the Court is to be left in the position it is now in—that is to say, that it does not know when it can be formed, since there are only four Law Lords with the Lord Chancellor, who has often other work to do, and is not available—then the consequence is you cannot make arrangements ahead for both of your Courts to sit, and it is either the House of Lords or the Judicial Committee who has to sit.
There is this further point, that you want a Court composed of more than four judges for the purpose of hearing appeals. As my hon. and learned Friend has rightly said, the Dominions are very anxious to have a Court composed of more judges than at present sit. I would call his attention to the first Clause of the Bill, of which he approved, but I do not think he paid sufficient attention to certain words in it, namely, that the Court shall, so far as practicable, be arranged in such a manner as not to sit simultaneously. That is to say, the object is that you should be able to have your judges sitting either in the House of Lords or in the Judicial Committee. But when you have pressure of

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work you will have to sub-divide the judges, so that some sit in the Judicial Committee and some sit in the House of Lords. You cannot possibly do that at present. You cannot rely on being able to make the arrangements necessary unless you have six Law Lords always under obligation to sit. That is the real object of introducing this Bill. It carries out an arrangement arrived at by the Imperial Conference last June. If we can do what we desire, if the House approves of this Bill, which will enable us to do it, the consequences will be very important, because the appeals to the King in Council are undoubtedly a very valuable link between us and our Dominions overseas, a link which I am sure everyone would be sorry to see disappear. It is important, if you are to strengthen that link, that you should give confidence to the Dominions, and that when they come to our Courts here they should be satisfied that they get the best hearing they possibly can from the Court best constituted.
Reference has been made by my hon. Friends to economy. I think they treated us a little harshly. We have been exposed to criticism on the ground that it was proposed in the House of Lords that the salary, of the Law Lords should be reduced; that is to say, that the Law Lords now to be appointed should receive instead of £6,000 as hitherto, only £5,000 a year, and that all future appointments of Law Lords are to be at the rate of £5,000 instead of £6,000 a year with pensions reduced proportionately. As a result of that it will not be a very long term of years before we shall be getting all the benefits of this proposal—we shall have two new Law Lords and a Court composed of six judges—and it will not be costing the country any more. My hon. and learned Friends also said that we appointed two new judges last year. That is quite true. But the appointment of those two judges was for a totally different purpose, a purpose which has been, or is being effected. I am not sure that I should be right in saying that it has been effected. Those judges were appointed for the purpose of reducing arrears in the King's Bench Division. The friends of economy and efficiency will remember that the Lord Chancellor held out for some considerable time against that proposition, and only fell in with it after there had been an inquiry by a Joint Committee, who made recommendations with which he agreed.
Mr. WATT: Is not the number of judges in the King's Bench Division automatically to come back to the lower figure? That is not so in this case.
Sir RUFUS ISAACS: There is this difference between the two. In the case of the King's Bench Division the judges were appointed because the work was in arrears, and the appointment of the two judges was necessary to clear off those arrears. This House insisted, quite rightly, I think, that if those arrears were cleared off the two new judges should not be appointed when vacancies occurred, except under the special conditions laid down in the Act. The present proposal is not for the purpose of clearing off arrears, and no time can be looked forward to when these judges will not be required. On the contrary, my view is that if we get these new Law Lords, their services and the services of the other Law Lords, will be in greater request than hitherto, because more appeals will come to them, and the whole of the work will increase rather than diminish. In this case there is no question of getting rid of arrears. It is not for the purpose of getting rid of arrears that we want the two Law Lords appointed. It is to constitute a Court. The Lord Chancellor rightly stated, and claimed the credit to which he is entitled in respect of it, that both these Courts are not in arrears. My hon. Friends should bear in mind that he is an advocate of this Bill, and desires the appointment of these new Law Lords. No one will suggest that he is not in favour of both the economical and the efficient administration of justice. I submit, therefore, that there is very good reason indeed why these two new Law Lords should be appointed. If this Bill passes we shall have taken a very important step towards strengthening the link between us and our Dominions-over-Seas by giving them greater confidence in the administration of justice in the appeals which come to this country.
Mr. MORTON: It is to my mind an extraordinary state of things that the Government should, without any explanation whatever, have attempted to smuggle through a Bill of this sort at the fag-end of the Session. We have, at much inconvenience and trouble to ourselves, supported the Government in all that we understood was to be the programme for the Autumn Session. We never supposed that at the last moment a Bill of this sort was to be smuggled through without explanation or proper discussion. The bulk

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of the Members of the House are away. As far as I can gather from his speech, the Attorney-General is not much in favour of this Bill. I suppose he would say that it is in the brief, and therefore he supports it. He has told us that two judges were appointed to the King's Bench Division last year because the work was in arrear, and he is asking us now to appoint two new judges for the Court of Appeal because the work is not in arrear. That is an extraordinary state of things, but, of course, it is in the brief, and the Attorney-General cannot help it. We have had it stated, and I think really proved, that these judges are not wanted. The Lord Chancellor stated distinctly in the Debate in another place that there were no arrears? Why do you want, these new judges if there are no arrears? The Lord Chancellor did not introduce the Bill. That task was left to Lord Haldane, the War Minister. I suppose that, as there are no arrears, he wants these judges for fighting purposes. As far as we have heard anything about this Appeal Court, what is really wanted, and what our Colonial friends want, is a real Supreme Court of Appeal for the Empire in which the House of Lords should have no place whatever. In 1873 Mr. Disraeli abolished the House of Lords as far as this Court was concerned, but they were strong enough to upset the arrangement three years later and to revive the system, which has since gone on.
The great point I desire to make is that these judges are not wanted. It is a pure waste of money. It is absolute nonsense to tell us that you want to do it because by and by you will reduce salaries all round. We do not want to go in for this increase at all. What I think we reformers say in regard to these Courts is that we do not want to touch this Court of Appeal until we get it completely reformed, and as Mr. Disraeli wanted to reform it—to take it away from the House of Lords altogether. I believe that is the view of the Lord Chancellor. I do not know that he exactly said as much, but he practically said it. So did Lord Haldane. But they seem to think they might do the thing in this way. If anybody can argue that the appointment of two new judges to the present Court will have anything to do with abolishing that particular Court altogether—well, I cannot understand it. I should have thought the best way would have been to reduce the present number of judges. Then you will get
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a reform, perhaps, which everybody admits ought to take place. The Attorney-General spoke about some of these Noble Lords who are not obliged to attend. So far as I remember, we give them very large pensions for the express, purpose that they should attend.
Practically the ex-Lord Chancellor—when there is an ex-Lord Chancellor—is given a very high pension so that his services can be available. Therefore I do not agree with the Attorney-General that these people can take their pensions and do no work. It was intended that all these Noble Lords should do something. I do think that the Government ought not to have gone on with this matter now. We shall want considerable time in Committee to consider Amendments, and we have not very much time to give to these Amendments. It is certainly not fair, after our professions of economy, that any such sum of money for these salaries should be voted until the Liberal party in this House have a proper opportunity of considering the matter. I have no hesitation at all in saying distinctly to whoever is in charge of this Debate that the Government is not acting fairly towards the Liberal party. We ought to have had a proper time and opportunity to consider this matter in a reasonable and proper way. There is no sort of demand for urgency, and the Government might have well left this, as they have left much better Bills, over to the next Session. I do hope the Government, as it is practically impossible for them to get this Bill through, will even now withdraw from this present position, and allow us in a proper and efficient manner to consider what ought not to be a party matter at all. I am sure we have not got an opportunity this Session to consider it. I do, therefore, appeal to the Government to act fairly to the Liberal party, who day and night have supported the Government in their many other measures. I must say that it is very unfeeling of them, and very unfair, that this is left to the eleventh hour of the Session to attempt to smuggle through a Bill of this sort.
Mr. WEDGWOOD: I only rise in order to attempt to elucidate the views of hon. Gentlemen opposite. We know that ever since the Liberal party have been in power one of the chief cries of hon. Gentlemen opposite has been that we have been creating jobs. Whether or not they can justify that I will not say. But it has been here and in the country one of their main

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complaints against the Liberal Government that measure after measure has been brought in which would create new jobs. Now here we have at the tail-end of the Session a measure brought in which creates two very fine jobs of £5,000 a year. I want to know what the views of hon. Gentlemen opposite are on this particular Bill. I am bound to say that I am not very hopeful in view of the presence of a particular Member on the Front Bench (Mr. F. E. Smith), for the right hon. Gentleman, I am afrand, is not exactly "the" Member from whom one would expect sympathy with Radicals in this particular measure. After all, lawyers hang together under all circumstances. I am afraid that we here shall see the Leader of the Tory party, and I expect their followers too, walking into the- Government Lobby in support of this Bill, and against any attempt to prevent these two particular jobs being created. The prognostications are bad in this regard, and will, I am afraid, only too surely prove to be true. I think we might have some words from the right hon. Gentleman telling us what the views of the Conservative party are on this particular Bill. The country at large will be interested to know what the views of hon. Gentlemen opposite are, and the country has a right to expect that the Conservative view will be freely put forward, so that the Press can understand how much value to set upon the bitter complaint about the creation of posts, particularly heavy salaried posts of this sort.
The Radical point of view is perfectly simple and perfectly straightforward. We object to the creation of these two new posts of £5,000 a year. We object to them almost as much as we object to the arithmetic of the Attorney-General. The right hon. Gentleman pointed out that we were really going to save money, because the appointment of future Lords of Appeal were going to be £5,000 instead of £6,000. My schooldays study of the arithmetical method called "practice" taught me that six judges at £5,000 a year does amount to more than four judges at £6,000 a year; in fact, that there is a loss on that transaction of £6,000 a year. Even the saving mentioned will only take place in the dim and distant future, when all of us taxpayers are dead. What is the real state of affairs? There are no arrears for either the House of Lords or the Privy Council. There is no prospect of any additional work, Therefore you are simply meeting a need which does not exist by appointing these two judges. You have at present a
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chance that both of these Courts, the House of Lords and the Privy Council, may be sitting at the same time. Under the first Clause of this Bill you are doing away with that. You are preventing them sitting simultaneously. Therefore you are making it actually easier for existing judges to meet the litigation.
Yet you come before us at the tail end of the Session with a measure such as this to create judges for whom there is no need, and under circumstances which make their need and the demand for them even less than it has hitherto been. I do think it is monstrous that the Liberal Government should bring forward a measure like this—that has come down from the House of Lords—the Tory Chamber—and endeavour to force it through this House on one of the last days of the Session, when they have sacrificed measure after measure for which there was a demand in the country, and from the Liberal party. I can only hope that if this Bill is to be pressed through that it will be after very strict investigation in Committee, and very serious Amendment. The House will remember that last year two extra judges for the King's Bench were appointed. We begged and prayed that the appointments should be made to end at a certain age, or that the judges should be appointed to retire at a certain age. Both of these conditions were refused. We did gain a concession that a number of judgeships should lapse as soon as any of the judges retired or die. In this case I understand there is no hope whatever of getting these two extra unnecessary judges cut out. But surely we might make an effort to get the appointments made at a reasonable age, so that we shall not have Judges of Appeal appointed at a very advanced age at which they are unable to do the work satisfactorily. We might, too, have some condition inserted in their engagement that their retirement at seventy should become compulsory in order to make way for younger men. Either of these conditions will make this Bill more palatable. As it stands, I can only say that I think every Radical should remember his pledges for economy to his constituents and oppose the creation of these jobs, and vote against the Bill on Second Reading, so that it can be amended in Committee.
Mr. F. E. SMITH: I do not profess to be able to judge how far the hon. Gentleman who has just sat down is entitled to speak on behalf of those whom he described in compendious language as "the Radical

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party." I am sure I shall not convince him when I say that I do not for one moment contemplate myself, either in the present or in the future, occupying one of those judicial positions. I am well aware of the handsome tactical use he will make of any observations that I have to make upon the subject, but I do think that if he founded himself upon the language of the hon. Gentleman who spoke in front of him from his own side, he might well see that other considerations arise here and that this is essentially not a party question, and that such considerations may very usefully assist the House to arrive at a decision. This is undoubtedly not a party measure. The hon. Gentleman who has just sat down has asked that some expression of opinion should come from this side of the House on the proposed creation of salaried posts in relation to the point made by Conservatives in recent months as to the enormous addition of salaried officials created under the various Bills that have become law. The appointment of these two judges may be defensible or not; that is a debatable matter, proper for discussion; but whether it is defensible or not, the ground on which these appointments are made is distinct from, and not by any means the same ground, as that on which you justify or criticise the creation of 100 or 200 or 500 officials by such measures as the Insurance Bill and the Budget. Both of these may be right or they may be wrong, but the consideration by which you defend both are wholly different. The hon. Gentleman, I understood, contemplated with enthusiastic approval the creation of an army of officials involving the country in expenditure of hundreds of thousands of pounds in order to carry out the Land Clauses of the Budget, of which he is such an enthusiastic supporter. It may be right or it may be wrong, but whether that was right or wrong does not arise on this question.
9.0 P.M.
The proposal before the House now depends, obviously and necessarily, upon its own merits; and I was astonished that among the Gentlemen who spoke below the Gangway opposite no one who wished to press this particular economy upon the House attempted to deal with the central proposition upon which the Attorney-General founded himself. What were these propositions? The Privy Council hears appeals from all parts of the Empire. No one who has studied the recent development of the Empire and is concerned to maintain the great need for homogeneity
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in its institutions, which, after all, is one of the symptoms of modern Imperial development with which men of all parties sympathise, can fail to be struck by the circumstance that in the last ten years a distinct danger has disclosed itself, and that the outlying portions of the Empire publicly stated that in their judgment the Appellate Committee of the Privy Council is no longer satisfactory. Observe the difficulties which the Appellate Committee obviously has to deal with. You invite men who live in countries very remote geographically from us, under the guidance of laws in many cases not identical with ours, to undergo great inconvenience and to submit their jurisdiction to the review of Privy Council. If you are going to induce our Colonies to do that for any considerable period of time, it is quite certain you must give them a tribunal not only adequate for the purpose, but which they believe to be adequate for the purpose. Is any great public purpose served by maintaining the right of appeal in England? I think anyone who has given the matter even superficial attention will say no more useful element making for the consolidation of the Empire or the homogeneity of its institutions can be found than that of having India, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, and the rest of our Colonies from all corners of the Empire laying their appeals in this country. If that is an advantage, and I believe it is an advantage, not merely from the point of view of lawyers, but I believe it is a profound advantage from the point of view of the civilisation of the Empire, then this proposal and this right of appeal is well worth preserving. It is well worthy of the attention of the House to know that it has been most bitterly attacked, and in influential quarters, in the last ten years.
An Australian judge of some distinction about three years ago attacked the whole system of appeals to the Privy Council, and said that many litigants in Australia were seriously oppressed by the financial burdens of appeals to the Privy Council, and were greatly doubtful whether in the future it would be worth their while any longer to appeal to this Council. He advanced many arguments in favour of his view, and I particularly remember one. He said, "We have in Australia causes determined by Australian laws which do not always correspond with English laws, and it may be that an Appellate Tribunal of five members in Australia pronouncing

2465
upon a law which is very familiar to them are liable to find themselves overruled by a tribunal of four or even three judges in England," and he announced himself as very hostile to that state of things, that he greatly disliked the risk involved, and he expressed the belief that it was very unpopular in Australia. The answer made here to-night is, one speaker after another points out, that there are a large number of judges who can sit in the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council but who are not compelled to sit. But no answer was given to the observations of the Attorney-General. It is no good reckoning on the judges who can sit on the Privy Council. The number who can sit there if hon. Gentlemen will only look into it, is very few, and I do not think anyone would be astonished that it should be so. The plain fact is, it is not for that that judges are pensioned, they are not paid because their services may be available in the future.
Whether their pensions are adequate or whether they are expensive, all these pensions are paid for past services. You cannot run a tribunal at all by taking into account that some judge not compellable to serve can be counted upon to sit upon that tribunal upon which he is really not compelled to sit. If you make that necessary deduction from the Privy Council, the fact is you have four judges. The feeling was given expression to at the Colonial Conference that the Appellate Tribunal whose duty it is to pronounce upon appeals from the Colonies is very small, and you had the deliberate representation made by the Colonial Conference that this change should be made. [An HON. MEMBER: "NO."] The hon. Gentleman says "No," but in substance he is wrong, although in form he may be right. Undoubtedly the wish expressed at the Conference was that the Privy Council should be strengthened. Whatever case there might be for a readjustment between our Colonies and ourselves, there can be no objection to £10,000 being spent in this way in view of the fact that economy is being collaterally effected nearly covering that amount, and where the object is the consolidation of Imperial justice and strengthening a tribunal for the whole Empire. For those reasons I shall have no hesitation in supporting this proposal.
Mr. MUNRO-FERGUSON: It would be impossible to exaggerate the importance to the Empire of this Court of Appeal. I cannot say for the moment who sits in that
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Court, and therefore I can speak without any personal feeling in the matter. It has struck me as an onlooker that the Court suffered more from lack of quality than lack of quantity. If it is true that the work of the world is being too much conducted by worn-out men, in no part of our administration is that more true than on the bench from the Sheriff Court of Scotland to the Appeal Court of the Empire. I think also that the number of these great appointments is very high, and if these large retiring allowances are given in the case of an ex-Lord Chancellor they ought to carry with them the understanding that the work is done properly. I voted against the appointment of two additional judges last year, just as I voted against the increase of certain salaries in other great offices of the State in the previous year, because I think some of these great salaries have been re-arranged without due consideration and without coming sufficiently under the control of this House. While I attach great importance to the work of the Privy Councils of the Empire, I am not satisfied that these two additional posts are needed, and I do not think this rearrangement of salaries should be carried out without the very fullest control being exercised by this House. Under these circumstances I shall be obliged to vote against this proposal.
Mr. KING: I beg to move, "That the Debate be now adjourned." I make this Motion in the interests of the Government. After their very successful management of affairs through the whole of this arduous Session do not let the Government come a cropper at the end of the Session upon a matter like this. I make this Motion in order to give the Government more time to consider this question.
Mr. HODGE: I beg to second the Motion.
Sir RUFUS ISAACS: I hope the hon. Members will not persist in this Motion. As a matter of fact we have been waiting for some considerable time for the passage of this Bill and this is not a measure which has been sprung upon the House. This Bill has been upon the Order Paper for some time. I do not wish to have this question adjourned, because I am anxious we should get the Second Reading, and then any further questions can be raised during the Committee stage.
Mr. LANSBURY: I wish to support the Motion for the Adjournment of the Debate, because I think the House ought not at

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this period of the Session to discuss a Bill of such importance. In the case of a very tiny Bill which would have enabled the local authorities to feed the poor children the Government could not find time to discuss it. I really think it is quite a monstrous proposition to say that the House of Commons cannot find time to deal with a one-Clause Bill which does not bring forward any great principle in legislation, but simply gives local authorities power to do something which they want to do. Although this House cannot find time for a tiny Bill of that sort it can find time to discuss a large measure of this kind. At this juncture I am not going to discuss the merits or demerits of the Bill, for there will be an opportunity to do that if we do not carry the Motion for Adjournment of the Debate. If we adjourn this Debate now, we might bring on the other Bill I have mentioned and carry it through all its stages this evening. I think that would be an excellent way of using the time at our disposal now instead of discussing a Bill of this kind.
Sir HENRY DALZIEL: I should like to ask is there really any urgency for this measure to become law. Is there anything in the meantime that is intended to be done between now and the meeting of Parliament next year to necessitate that this Bill should now be passed. I think we ought to have an assurance on that point. This measure has been brought on somewhat unexpectedly, because the general expectation was that the Finance Bill would have occupied a considerable portion of the evening. I confess that I expected when this Bill came on that we should have a general discussion on the whole question of the relations of the Privy Council, the Appellate Court, and the House of Lords. I had intended to move an Amendment to the effect that the whole question of the judicial authority in cases of appeal should be separated entirely from the Second Chamber. Right hon. Gentlemen opposite have suffered politically from the fact that those Courts are so closely associated, and I have heard complaints from many hon. Members in this direction. The decision with regard to the Free Church of Scotland is a case in point, for that was a decision given in the House of Lords against the highest tribunal in Scotland. This is a very important and far-reaching matter, and those who take the view which I do that these appeals ought to be dissociated from the
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House of Lords ought, under more favourable circumstances, to have an opportunity of discussing the matter in all its details. If it is absolutely necessary for the Government to pass this measure now, they will be able to do so, no doubt, but there is a stronger feeling against this measure than is probably supposed. Only six notices are allowed to be put on the Paper, but had it been possible to put down twenty I am sure there would have been twenty put down. If the Government persevere with this matter, and if the adjournment is defeated and the Second Reading is carried, I think we are entitled to ask the Government to give us an assurance that this matter will not be discussed to-morrow night. It is too important to take at one or two o'clock in the morning, or anything like that. Therefore, I shall be sorry if they cannot see their way to adjourn the Debate. Seeing the importance of the matter, I say candidly, as a friend of the Government, they ought to adjourn it unless there is some extreme urgency. They cannot complain their Radical supporters have not been indulgent. Throughout the Session we have been silent. So far as the Radical section are concerned they are unanimously against this Bill. They may be right or they may be wrong, but, at all events, their view is worthy of consideration. Therefore, I would urge that the Government would be well advised, after a very successful day's legislation at this late period of the Session, unless there is some extreme urgency, to accept this Motion for Adjournment. After all, it is only a matter of six weeks, or very little more, before we meet again, and that ought to be taken into account. I am sure the Chancellor of the Exchequer will welcome any proposal which will postpone any additional charge upon the Treasury, and really in this matter we may count upon him as a friend. If he had only been below the Gangway I can almost imagine what his speech would have been.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: I have heard this Debate right through with a good deal of interest, and, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, I naturally sympathise with those who do their very best to diminish charges which are pressing heavily upon the shoulders of the State. My impression is that it is more or less, I will not say a bond or a bargain with the Colonies, but that it is in compliance substantially with wishes which they expressed, and I certainly would not like to take the responsibility of assenting to a Motion for

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adjournment which might, in effect, defeat what the Colonies pressed upon us without, at any rate, taking full counsel with my right hon. Friend the Colonial Secretary. My suggestion is that my hon. Friend should assent to the Second Reading of the Bill to-night, and I will represent to my right hon. Friend the views which have been expressed very strongly to-night. I think the request of the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy (Sir Henry Dalziel) is a perfectly fair one. It is that the discussion should come on at a time when there will be a full opportunity for everybody to express their opinions. I think I can, on behalf of the Government, undertake, to promise that, but I certainly could not accept, on behalf of the Government, the responsibility of accepting a Motion which would determine the fate of the Bill. It would be infinitely better if my hon. Friends would assent to the course I indicate. I would then consult with my right hon. Friend as to whether this is a request from the Colonies, because there is a difference of opinion between my hon. Friends (Mr. Watt and Mr. Martin) and my right hon. Friend the learned Attorney-General as to what is the real desire of the Colonies. My impression is that the Colonies are anxious for it. I should not like to express any view further upon it without consulting my right hon. Friend.
Mr. SANDERSON: Surely upon a question of this kind we must give considerable weight to the opinion of those who are in authority. It is very difficult for those who are not used to practising in our Law Courts to really appreciate the matter. We have had the learned Attorney-General standing up in the House of Commons and declaring, on his responsibility, that these two extra Lords in Ordinary are necessary for the due administration of the highest Court of the land, and that. I think, is an opinion well worthy of everybody's consideration. Speaking for myself, I should say those two extra Lords in Ordinary are absolutely necessary. I think all our Courts throughout the land ought to have some spare judges. The greatest cost and inconvenience are very often caused by one of the ordinary judges being ill and not able to attend, and, if you had a spare man who could take his place, a great deal of unnecessary cost and inconvenience would be saved. With regard to the question of delay, surely all those who are opposed to this proposal are ready to take part in the Debate. It is only twenty minutes
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past nine, and quite recently we have been used to sitting up till the small hours of the morning. Hon. Members opposite, I am sure, are not worn out, and can express their views for the next two hours. Why should we not discuss this matter now? It is really a matter of urgency. I think the Attorney-General has given good reason for discussing this at once. This is only the Second Reading, and the Government, I understand, do not propose to take the Committee stage to-night. Any matters hon. Members opposite want to raise can be raised on the Committee stage, and, if they are not in favour of the Bill, they can oppose it on the Third Reading.
Mr. MORTON: The hon. Member who has just sat down has forgotten the position altogether. There is no urgency about the matter at all. There are no arrears, and there is no demand from the Colonies for any of these appointments. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has really proved our case. He says he wants to consult his colleagues. Surely, if that is so, it is not fair to ask us to pass the Second Reading now. If we pass the Second Reading, he would have us in a corner. The proper way to carry out what he said is to adjourn the Debate now, so that he can consult his colleagues. It would be putting the cart before the horse if the Bill were read a second time, and he were to consult them afterwards. It is not fair either to his colleagues or to us. I do hope, notwithstanding the arrangement between the two Front Benches, which is always dangerous, and which always puts us "between the Devil and the deep blue sea," though which is the Devil in this case of course I do not know, the right hon. Gentleman will give way, not to the Opposition but to his own supporters. I should like to warn the Liberal Government against coalescing with the Opposition Benches in that way against their own party. The large majority of the Liberal Members here to-day are against this Bill going on. Whether they will be against it by and by if they have proper time to consider it, of course I cannot say, but there has been a very strong feeling expressed that nothing ought to be done until there has been a full opportunity of considering the whole thing. I hope the Government, after admitting they want time to consult their colleagues, will consent to this very mild proposal to adjourn the Debate. Of course, there is not much chance of this Bill getting through this Session. The

2471
Government are not acting very fairly to us in taking the Debate on this occasion, and I hope they will give way to Liberal Members and try and help us to help them to study economy.
Sir H. DALZIEL: If it is understood that the right hon. Gentleman will try to ascertain the general feeling of the House with regard to this matter, I think some of my Friends will be disposed to let the Second Reading go now.
Mr. MARTIN: I hope that the Motion for Adjournment will pass. It is suggested that an agreement was entered into at the Colonial Conference to appoint two judges. If that were so I would support the Government strongly, but I am satisfied, after reading a verbatim account of what occurred at the Conference that no such arrangement or suggestion was made. What the Colonies asked for was that there should be at least six judges in the Judicial Committee. By the first Clause of this Bill that is without doubt provided for. In spite of anything the Attorney-General has said there have been for years four judges sitting in the Privy Council and five in the House of Lords. Thus there have always been nine judges available out of a list of fourteen for the purposes of these two Courts. The Government have now arranged that the two Courts shall not sit at the same time, and under this new arrangement there will be ten judges available at all times for the purposes of hearing appeals.
Mr. F. E. SMITH: Are the remarks of the hon. Member relative to the Motion immediately before the House? That Motion is for the Adjournment of this Debate. Surely he is speaking on the merits of the Bill?
Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER: The Debate must be strictly confined to the question of Adjournment.
Mr. MARTIN: I understand that. I was trying to answer the argument put forward by the Chancellor of the Exchequer when he attempted to show that it was necessary to read the Bill a second time to-night. I say that is not the case. If this Bill never passed at all, and these two judges were not appointed, and if instead the arrangement made with the Colonies were carried out, it would be found that at all times there were sufficient judges to sit on the Judicial Committee of the Privy
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Council. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has told us that if this Motion for Adjournment is carried the Bill will be dead. Why should it not be killed? I know of no reason, and I hope therefore that the Motion for Adjournment will be carried.
Question, "That the Debate be now adjourned," put, and negatived.
Question again proposed, "That the word 'now' stand part of the Question."
Mr. POINTER: I listened very carefully indeed to the remarks of the Attorney-General, and to those made by the right hon. and learned Gentleman opposite. It appears to me that certain considerations which have been put forward were not attempted to be answered by them. One question was as to whether this particular form of dealing with the question is likely to bring anything in its train. I understand that the object of the Bill is to appoint two extra judges in order to cope with the work. What strikes me is, that we have no guarantee that the troubles we are now suffering from are not to be perpetuated. Our real difficulty is that we have a lot of old fossils sitting on the Bench whose powers have long since gone of dealing properly with the important questions which come before them for decision. I cannot help thinking that if the right hon. and learned Gentleman opposite and the right hon. and learned Member behind him were to be appointed to these posts, we might get someone who had this at least to commend them, that they are in full possession of their faculties. [HON. MEMBERS: "Withdraw."] I did not know it was an insult to suggest that hon. Gentlemen were in possession of all their faculties. If they think I am wrong I will withdraw the suggestion. Possibly, however, they were objecting to my suggestion that some of the gentlemen whom we are discussing to-night are not in possession of their faculties. That I submit cannot be gainsaid. We are quite able to form our opinion upon such matters when we look at the decisions which has been given, some of them without sense, rhyme, or reason.
Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER: I think this question should be discussed without making suggestions of that kind.
Mr. POINTER: I do not wish to transgress your ruling, but it does appear to me that my remarks are germane to the situation. The Government believe that

2473
they are making a, serious attempt to deal with something which is radically wrong, and what I am contending for is that, under this new arrangement, there will still be kept on these decrepit old men. I quite understand that remarks of this nature are not very palatable to certain gentlemen who are looking forward to occupying some of these positions, and who object to any suggestion that some day or other they, too, possibly, may become fit subjects for similar remarks. I say these things in all sincerity. I believe that the real way out of the difficulty, not only in regard to this matter, but in regard to judicial matters generally, is to see that judges of all kinds, whether in the Appeal Courts or elsewhere, are compelled to retire from active service before they have reached the stage to which I have referred. The Government has taken rather a mean advantage by bringing this Bill forward at the fag-end of the Session. They have done so under conditions which are very suspicious indeed. On Friday, when we were discussing a Bill of infinitely greater importance than this, we were told that more time could not possibly be given in order to better the conditions under which shop assistants labour. We now know that shop assistants cannot have consideration because two posts are to be created and fat livings are to be offered to certain gentlemen, and that without any certainty that, after the appointment, the judicial affairs of the land will be better conducted than at present. Therefore I am compelled, because I believe that we are not likely to get out of the deadlock we are in at present or to get any more satisfaction for our Colonial brethren across the sea in this matter, to vote against the Second Reading.
Mr. KING Mr. KING rose——
Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER: The hon. Gentleman has already spoken. The hon. Member moved the adjournment of the Debate. That is a speech which counts on the Question now before the House. He is not entitled to speak again.
Mr. LANSBURY: Does that count for me as well?
Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER: The hon. Member spoke on the adjournment, and he is entitled to speak again.
Mr. LANSBURY: I listened with great attention to the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Walton Division (Mr. F. E. Smith). It seemed to
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me that the result of his speech was this: that someone from the Colonies should be put on this Court to represent Colonial views. I hold a very strong opinion that this kind of question will not, and cannot ever be, properly settled until there is a really representative Imperial body sitting in London actually representative of the Colonies. This is one of those questions which really ought not be settled in this kind of way. The two men who are there, one from that bench and one from this bench, will, in my opinion, and I speak as a layman, if they have been presiding over Courts in this country, not have the necessary knowledge of Australian law and legal administration to satisfy gentlemen like the judge mentioned, who complained of the inability of our Appeal Court here to really understand the Australian point of view. That is the first objection I have to dealing with this question at all in this fashion. I am just as keen as anyone in this House for the unity of all parts of the British Dominions, and if I thought this was the way to help it, I should be enthusiastically in its favour. But there is another reason why I object to this proposition, that is that you are going to appoint two judges at £5,000 a year, and the method of appointing them is that they shall have served a certain length of time in other Courts, so that this is really a kind of pension arrangement for them. So far as I have read the Bill, there is no reason why younger men and men who have not sat in the Courts of England should not be appointed. I cannot help thinking that you are setting people like me rather a bad example when you appoint them after they have served fifteen years at £5,000 a year, and then say that the country is to pay them a pension of £3,500.
If the Bill is to go through at all I want the House to understand this, that to a man like me, who is continually called upon to vote for things which impose responsibilities on the workman to make provision for the time when he is not able to work and also for sickness and old age generally, it is rather extraordinary that we should continually have Bills of this kind before the House, under which well-paid servants of the State are not called upon to contribute towards making provision for themselves when they are no longer able to work, and under which you say that fifteen years' public service at £5,000 entitled a man to a pension of £3,500 a year. After this House has been

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discussing, as we have been discussing all this year, the provision for workmen, who are very poorly paid people indeed, I must vote against any Bill containing a proposal of this kind. There is another thing to which the Government should give heed. It is that we ought not to be asked to discuss this merely from the one point of view. Speaking as a layman, I have not enough information at present, and I have not heard from the speakers on the Front Bench—I say this with all respect to them—anything like sufficient reasons why it is absolutely necessary that this Bill should be pushed through in this fashion. I have not heard the statement of the hon. Member for St. Pancras (Mr. Martin), who knows as much about the Colonies as most Members in this House, controverted by anyone, namely, that the Colonies did not at the Imperial Conference ask that this particular method should be adopted. It seems to me that the Government are pushing this thing for some reason or another.
I regret to say something which, perhaps, will not please everyone. Before I came here I used to read in the newspapers that it was always a very dangerous thing when the two Front Benches agreed upon anything, and that the ordinary rank-and-filer in the House of Commons ought at once to sniff danger. I remember that Mr. Labouchere always used to take that view. This is an occasion on which the two Front Benches have agreed that something is to be done, and something which is to cost money. I have heard a good many speeches from the Front Opposition Bench and some speeches from the back benches about the enormities the Government are committing in creating a lot of well-paid posts in the labour exchanges. For this sum you can have any number of these 2½d. jobs. This only provides for a couple of men. I have not heard any right hon. or hon. Member opposite protest against it. It seems to me that the two Front Benches are agreeing to do something which, at any rate, will find two decent jobs for two decent lawyers in the country. I think that neither of the legal Gentlemen who have spoken really ought to have been allowed to speak on this question. The laymen in the House ought to have put this thing through, because we may, one of these days, wake up to find that the two Front Benches have agreed that the two right hon. Gentlemen are the best gentlemen to adorn these positions.
Dr. CHAPPLE: I hope the Government will not push this measure against the judgment of a great many of their own followers. New and large expenditure is very often embarked upon with too light a heart, and this is one of the instances. I think it is unfair to the Colonies to make them a lever in pressing this Bill. They have not demanded anything that involves expenditure. The request they have made could be satisfied without this expenditure. I think, moreover, it would be a very dangerous thing if the Government gave the impression to its followers that if they can get the support of the Opposition to any measure they will ignore their own followers. The complacency with which the Government Bench contemplates the opposition to this measure which their followers have given is apparently due to the fact that they can command the support of the Opposition. It would disorganise our loyalty entirely if, upon all those measures which the Government knew would command the support of the Opposition they could snap their fingers in the face of those who support them so loyally. I hope the Government are not prepared to run that risk by forcing the measure through at this hour of the Session. I appeal to the Government not to press this measure forward and not to depend upon the support of those who usually oppose them and ignore those who usually support them.
Question, "That the word 'now' stand part of the question," put, and agreed to.
Main Question, "That the Bill be now read a second time," put, and agreed to.
Bill read a second time, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House for To-morrow.

APPELLATE JURISDICTION [SALARIES, ETC.].
Committee to consider of authorising the payment out of the Consolidated Fund, of the Salaries and Pensions of any Lords of Appeal in Ordinary appointed under any Act of the present Session to make further provision with respect to the exercise by the House of Lords and the Privy Council of their Appellate-Jurisdiction (King's Recommendation signified), To-morrow. —[Mr. Gulland.]
Whereupon Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER., pursuant to the Order of the House of 24th October, proposed the Question, "That the House do now adjourn."

SLEEPING SICKNESS IN NYASA LAND.
Dr. CHAPPLE: I desire to call attention to the immediate importance of doing something drastic with regard to the spread of sleeping sickness in Nyasaland, and to the great waste of precious time that is involved in waiting for the Report of the Sleeping Sickness Commission, while this disease is spreading amongst the natives and the whites, and also amongst the domestic animals. I believe there is a remedy for this spread, and it should be taken at once. It would be useless for me to speak to-night if it were not possible for the Colonial Office to do something drastic, and to do it now in order to arrest the disease, and save the lives which are now being sacrificed. Sleeping sickness is spreading all over Nyasaland, and trypanosomiasis is spreading to the domestic animals, and killing them off. Sleeping sickness was introduced into the Congo so recently as about two years ago by the servant of a captain who went to the Congo. On his return he went to one of the lake towns, where there was no tsetse fly. He stayed there for some time, and went back to a place where there was palpalis tsetse fly, and shortly afterwards an epidemic of sleeping sickness started there. The fly known as glossina palpalis is the carrier of sleeping sickness in Uganda. A Boer general who fought against us in the war went recently into Nyasaland to hunt. He was bitten by the glossina morsitans in the neck, the neck suddenly swelled up, he contracted sleeping sickness, and he is now dead. Captain Hallam Hardy contracted sleeping sickness in Nyasaland and also died. A number of other whites and numerous natives have been dying there from sleeping sickness, and this statement is made in the official report which has just come to hand from Nyasaland:—
"The health of the native community has been quite satisfactory apart from the existence of sleeping sickness which has slowly extended during the last twelve months, in spite of every effort to arrest it."
Not only is this disease spreading in Nyasaland amongst the natives, but trypanosomiasis is spreading amongst the domestic animals. It does not occur amongst game, which are immune from the disease, but the domestic animals—the dog, the horse, the cow, and the goat, are afflicted with the disease and die off. It is fatal to them, but non-fatal to game. A herd of 200 cattle is now reduced to eighty, and a small herd of seven is reduced to two. The result is
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that as the cattle die off there is no milk, which is a necessary food amongst natives who suffer from alimentary diseases. There is no ploughing, because oxen which are needed for ploughing the cotton fields die off wherever the tsetse is found.
Notice taken that forty Members were not present. House counted, and forty Members not being present,
The House was adjourned at four minutes before Ten of the clock, till to-morrow (Thursday).