LIVERPOOL AND HONG KONG MAIL SERVICE. (Hansard, 14 December 1911)

§ The FINANCIAL SECRETARY to the TREASURY (Mr. McKinnon Wood)
I beg to move, "That the Contract, dated the 11th day of November, 1911, between His Majesty's Postmaster-General and the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, for the conveyance of mails between Liverpool and Hong Kong" be approved.

§ Mr. HOLT
This is a matter of some importance, and I want a little explanation about it. This contract is a resuscitation of an old contract which was introduced, and the prolongation of a still older contract. It provides a mail service for £45,000, of which £25,000 is provided by the Canadian Government. This mail service is for a transit of 818 hours in summer, or thirty-four days; and 853 hours in winter, or thirty-six days. The contract provides for a service of from thirty-four to thirty-six days, whereas the mails go by Siberia in twenty-one days. We enter into a contract for a service of from thirty-four to thirty-six days, 2668 while the mails could go by another route in twenty-one days. I think there is a prima facie case for information. It is part of my business to receive letters from Hong Kong every week, and I know that the mails go and come via Siberia in twenty-one days. The mails go to and from Japan also via Siberia in from sixteen to eighteen days, and there is a corresponding reduction of time if sent by Canada. I shall be quite safe in saying that this contract has no interest for us at all as a contract for sending mails to Hong Kong, and it is not a contract which is needed—at all events, it would not be creditable to the Postmaster-General if it was—to send mails to Hong Kong.
There is a third route for sending mails to Hong Kong, and that is the route by Brindisi and Suez, used by people unable to use the Siberian route. If this contract is needed as one for a local service, then it is purely a question for the Canadian Government and for the Government of Hong Kong, who should be left to send their own local correspondence. I rather suspect that the real object of this con tract is found in Clause 11, which pro vides that the Government may use other steamers with a view to carrying mails between the United Kingdom and the Dominion of Canada, and I cannot help thinking that this contract, as far as it has any utility at all, is not a contract for sending mails from Liverpool to Hong Kong, but from Liverpool to Halifax or Quebec. It may be right to enter into a contract to send mails from Liverpool to Halifax or Quebec, but if you do that you have no right to call it a contract for sending mails from Liverpool to Hong Kong. If you want to send mails to Canada enter into a con tract for that purpose, and describe it as such. If that is the object there is plenty of competition on that route, and if the contract were offered to public tender we should know where we are. It is rather a suspicious circumstance that this con tract, without any public tender, is renewed from time to time for carrying mails via Canada from Liverpool to Hong Kong, and that there is only one possible tender, that of the Canadian and Pacific, for such a service. Therefore I do hope that the Secretary to the Treasury, who, I understand, is responsible for the con tract, will let us know exactly and fully what it is.

§ Mr. McKINNON WOOD
My hon. Friend spoke of this as being the prolongation 2669 of an older contract. It is the continuation of a contract that has existed since 1908. When he spoke of the prolongation of a still older contract I must point out that there is a considerable saving in this as compared with the older contract. We are now paying £45,000, of which the United Kingdom only pays £20,000, Canada paying £25,000. The older contract was for £60,000, and in that case Great Britain paid £45,000, so that as far as the contract that existed before 1908 is concerned, there is a very considerable saving in the new contract, which has lasted for three years, and which it is now proposed to renew for two years. My hon. Friend spoke as if the fact that the whole of the mails to Hong Kong go by other routes settled the whole question. But if the mails are sent by the Trans-Siberian Railway it is a very expensive route, and not a route by which parcels can economically be sent; and I believe parcels are not sent by that route, and that practically the whole of the parcels and the majority of the newspaper traffic go by the cheaper route or by Suez. A a matter of fact, though it is quite true that the bulk of the traffic may go by other routes, there is a considerable mail traffic by this route, because this service serves a great many intermediate ports—Halifax, Quebec, St. Johns, Vancouver, Yokohama, Nagasaki, and others. There is another feature of this contract, and that—it is profitable. The value of the mails is greater than the amount of money which is spent. I am certainly not able to give information as to the amount of the traffic as that can be given by the Postmaster-General, but from the point of view of the Treasury this is a very reasonable contract. The expenditure is more than covered by the value of the mails carried.