§ Mr. BRIDGEMANI do not rise continue this discussion, because although perhaps I know something about it, I do not think it would be right for me to take part in it, as it obviously might lead to misapprehension. I rise to call attention to the great dissatisfaction that prevails among the ratepayers of the country at the way in which the Road Board is discharging its duties. The matter is of great importance to those who, like myself, represent rural constituencies and very heavily burdened ratepayers. I should like to say at once that I do not complain in any way of the zeal or the energy of the eminent gentlemen who form the Road Board, still less of the staff that works 1908 under them, but it is the policy of the Road Board of which I wish to complain. The ratepayers were led to expect great things. In the famous Budget speech of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1909, the right hon. Gentleman said:—
He (the local ratepayer) is entitled to consideration in respect of the increased expenditure imposed upon him. … It has almost become a great social question; for the municipalities are at the end of their resources, and their work is almost at a standstill in many of these areas because they cannot afford to spend what is absolutely necessary on their own development. The local ratepayer has been promised consideration by successive Governments and he is surely entitled to get it. I think I can safely say more: the financial proposals which I shall lay before the House will enable me to make good that promise.When we were discussing this question a little later on, 1909, the Chancellor said the amount which this Road Board Fund was going to give to the rural ratepayers would be as much as 4d. in the £. I am sure he will agree that anyone who heard his speech would have drawn the inference which I drew from it. He said:—We are raising £600,000 to improve roads. All that involves great relief to agricultural land and what is the amount of that relief? I have reckoned it up and I am prepared to substantiate the figures. It is a moderate estimate to say that there will be a relief of at least 4d. in the £ on the rates on agricultural land.About a week afterwards, I think in answer to Lord Morpeth, he said that that speech was meant to include relief from old age pensions. Immediately after the quotation I have just read he said:—In addition to that the pensions at present borne by the rural landowners are either being taken oft altogether or partly taken off in consequence of the five shillings,and so on. Then, "besides that there will be the agricultural development." So that I think anyone who heard his speech or reads it now in the Official Report would have understood that he meant to say that the Road Board Fund alone would relieve the ratepayer by 4d. He explained afterwards that what he meant, whether he said it or not, was that all these various kinds of relief—the old age pensions and the Road Board—would relieve the rural ratepayer by 4d. in the £. I have put two or three questions to him during the course of this Session, and he has not been able to show that even these figures are correct. I have the answers which were given on these particular points. He said the assessable value of all extra Metropolitan areas in England was £106,000,000. Therefore he is assuming that these road improvements have only been beneficial to the people in the agricultural districts. That I entirely deny. In fact, it would have been much more beneficial to the people who live in the 1909 towns than to those who live in the country, and therefore the rateable value of the whole country ought to have been taken in making this calculation, and not only the rateable value of the rural districts through which the roads run. These roads are used by people who go from town to town very much more than by the local farmers and other people, and if they were only used by the local farmers it would not require this enormous amount of expense. Then he said, to try and justify this fourpence—If the average value of the total Grants, namely £426,000, made by the Road Board, or awaiting further details for completion, is spread over the whole area represented by the above assessable value,that would mean 1d. in the £. That would be 1d. instead of 4d. It ought not to be spread over that minor area but over the whole country, in which case it would only amount to Ml. The money actually spent by the Road Board in the two years of which we have any record, and of which I have the report here, is only about £254,000, that is, up to the end of March, 1912, so that what you have actually spent in the only two years of which we have any official record is £254,000, or £127,000 per year, and this on his own calculation reduces the benefit to the rates, if there was any at all, to a third of a penny, even if we only take the rural districts into consideration. As regards the old age pension relief, which is not part of my point to-day, instead of the 4d. produced by these two, with this 1d., which ought to be a third of a id., it only brought the whole thing up to 2½d. What I want to know is, first of all, why has the Road Board been bottling up their money in this extraordinary way. They had two years to work, and all they have actually spent at the end of two years out of a total income of £2,000,000—all they have given in Grants to the local authorities has been £250,000, and they have kept in hand something like £1,800,000. What is the advantage of piling up all this money? It is true they have indicated, as it is called, Grants amounting, I think, to £1,051,648, but indicating Grants does not mean that they are likely to have to be spent in a particular year, and by the end of this financial year they would have an additional £1,100,000 of income with which to meet requirements which have been passed, and in fact they would have a large amount of money to spare. What is the advantage of this policy of piling up money instead of spending it as everyone hoped it would be 1910 spent for the benefit of the poorer districts where it is hard to raise a highway rate, and where the roads required a good deal more attention than they do in the richer districts?Then again, a very great reason for compliant is that this Grant has never been made except on condition that the local ratepayers spend a lot more themselves to meet it. It has never been given, except in very rare occasions, unless subject to that condition. I know in my own county it was decided last year by the Road Board, apart from other expenditure on roads in the county, that £22,000 odd was necessary. Of this £10,000 was computed to be the net cost of the extra improvements which would not have been done except by the orders of the Road Board, as a condition of their Grant. Over £10,000 had to be spent, and the Grant received was £7,500. Next year I think the similar figures were £7,820 for the net cost of the extra improvements, and the Grant was £3,800—rather less than half. That is not a saving to the ratepayers. That is causing the ratepayers to spend more money. You say, "you may have £7,500 if you will spend £2,500 more." You say, "you may have £3,800 if you will spend £4,000 yourself." I do not call that saving to the ratepayers. You might just as well say to your wife that you would give her £2 for a new hat and therefore she would save whatever she would otherwise have spent on that hat. But when she went to choose that hat, you would say, "You must not have this £2 hat, you have to buy a hat which will cost £4 in order to please us, and you will have to spend the other £2 out of your own money, because the only hat you can have is a £4 hat." That is the kind of generosity to the ratepayers which you have carried out by the policy of the Road Board. It is very much resented, because it was always supposed that at any rate the poorer counties would be given Grants for the improvement of their roads without being required to spend at any rate extra money themselves beyond what they would naturally have done. I admit that when the Road Board was instituted it was said that most of the improvements should be done for the benefit of motorists from whom the money was largely, almost entirely, derived. Because I am too poor to own a motor myself, I have no fault to find with those who are better off and are able to use them. I do not mind their having better roads if they are prepared to pay anything 1911 like a proper proportion of the cost which they entail. But not only are you spending, by this policy, the motorists' money on the roads, but you are making the ratepayers spend money, not for what they want, but for what the motorists want, and the motorists are getting it both ways.
Supposing this Road Board had never been formed, the local authorities would have had in the ordinary course of events the additional motor and carriage licences. That I understand in these two years amounts to £834,000. The Board have spent £250,000 in Grants during that period. Therefore the local authorities are over £500,000 worse off by the formation of the Road Board, at present at any rate, than they would have been if you had allowed them to go on taking the whole of the motor and carriage licences and spending it in the way that they thought most useful. Therefore it seems to me perfectly clear that the local authorities have very great ground for complaint. They would have been better off, so far at any rate, if this Road Board Fund had never been formed. They would have had the money spent in their own area, they would not have been subject to the dictation of people from London, and they would not have been obliged to put forward extra money themselves to meet these required improvements. I hope the Government will seriously take into consideration the very great dissatisfaction that is being felt. In looking through the Reports of the Road Board, which I have read very carefully, it appears to me that a large amount of Grants have been spent on the main roads connecting town and town—largely roads near great centres.
§ Mr. BRIDGEMANYou only have to look at the Report to see some of these great main roads out of London. The Bath Road, for instance, the great North Road, and other roads which lead from London to the other great towns in the country, have been the ones which have received the largest amount of Grant. What has happened is that that benefit is to motorists only and not, as we were led to suppose, to the poor districts, which can only levy small rates and whose roads as a rule are very much more difficult to keep in order than the roads in other parts of the country. There is a Departmental Committee now sitting upon the question 1912 of local taxation, and I hope the Government will ask them to take into consideration what is a very widespread feeling about the expenditure of the Road Board, and to see whether it is not possible to spend this money, not so much in the interest of the scorchers who go along the main roads—I mean the great trunk roads—as in the interest of those who have to find the money, who use the local roads, and who were led to expect that they would get very considerable relief by the institution of the Road Board. They have got accustomed to the Chancellor of the Exchequer's figures, and perhaps now they would not think so much about a promise of relief to the rates which has never been fulfilled. At the time it was made they had expectations, and they were not so much accustomed to being disappointed. I am certain that there is a very great feeling in the country about it, and I beg the Government, not only in their own interest, but in the interest of the country at large and of the great county councils, to seriously take this matter into consideration and realise the amount of feeling that exists.
§ Mr. MACPHERSONI would like to thank the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Bridge-man) for raising in the House what I conceive to be a most important subject. I wish my right hon. Friend had been present the other day when a very influential deputation came down from Scotland representing all the counties in the North to make representations to Sir George Gibb and the Road Board on this subject. I need hardly say that the Road Board received the deputation very cordially, but that was really all the distance we got. I speak for one of the poorest counties in Scotland, Ross and Cromarty, and I think I am voicing the sentiment of the deputies from all the other counties in the North. We all expected that the Road Board would give Grants to help the rates in the poorer counties in the North and other parts of the country. What are the facts? As the hon. Member for the Oswestry Division pointed out, instead of helping us, it seemed to militate against us. The only condition on which we can get money from the Road Board is that we expend money ourselves. What are the-facts? There are some districts in my own Constituency where the rates are over 20s. in the £, and now, because of the enormous increase of motor traffic from England, attracted by the scenery, by sport, and by the air, what do we find? We find that the 1913 roads up there need an enormous amount to keep them in a proper state of repair, otherwise motorists, tourists, and people with sporting tendencies, will not be attracted into any of those constituencies. I do say that the Road Board ought to revise its method of distributing the fund at its disposal. The Highland counties of Scotland have always been treated, so far as Government Grants are concerned, with special consideration, and we think the reason for treating them in that way is that the people up there are very poor indeed.
The road rate in all the counties in the north is going up by leaps and bounds, and if this sort of thing continues, it will be impossible for the people to improve the roads or do anything to make life pleasanter so far as tourists and others are concerned. The roads there were formed in the old days for the convenience of the native people. They were formed to be suitable and convenient for the carriage of cattle, and to allow the farmer's gig or pony trap to travel comfortably from his farm into the neighbouring town. What happens now? These roads are used for two months in the year by all sorts of motor vehicles from the south. I believe the percentage increase bas been enormous in the last two or three years, and it turns out that the poor people who built these roads for themselves to suit themselves now find that the roads are being used for vehicles they did not contemplate when the roads were built. They have got to bear the increase in the cost of repairing the roads in order to keep them up. I do say that the time has now come—and I feel sure that I am speaking for all the counties in the North—for my right hon. Friend to give the attitude I adopt every possible consideration. There may be difficulties in connection with the distribution of the fund, but they must be got over, for things cannot go on as they are doing now. I appeal for special consideration for the Highland counties, and I feel that T shall not appeal in vain. T ask him now to promise on behalf of the Government that he will give instructions to the Road Board to take into consideration the special case of the Highlands of Scotland.
§ Mr. MASTERMANThe speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Ross and Cromarty, in particular, and in part the speech of the hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Bridgeman), I think depend upon a mis- 1914 apprehension which it is important that I should clear up. I am speaking at this moment for an individual and a body over whom I have no authority, and for whose policy I have no right to speak. The hon. Gentleman opposite attacked the Chancellor of the Exchequer for certain estimates and figures which he had given in the course of debate, and in question and answer. It is a necessity under which Debate is conducted on such a day as this that my right hon. Friend is prevented from giving the courtesy of a direct reply to such a direct challenge. I think he will understand that, and recognise the necessity that when another subject comes up later on in the day the Chancellor of the Exchequer will be compelled to speak upon it. He is unable, therefore, owing to the Rules of Order, to trespass against these rules by addressing the House now. I will not deal in detail with the figures given by the hon. Gentleman opposite. What is more important is the misapprehension underlying the appeal—the very moderate and reasonable appeal—made by the hon. Member for Ross and Cromarty. When this House constructed the Development and Road Board Act the House definitely established the principle that money which could only be liberated by Grants of the Development Commissioners or the Road Board should not be under the control either of the Treasury or anyone responsible to this House. They deliberately established that principle just in order that such appeals should not be made as that made by my hon. Friend the Member for Ross and Cromarty. They recognised and very carefully emphasised—and this was specially done by the Noble Lord the Member for Hitchin (Lord R. Cecil) in Committee—that it was a very difficult position when Grants of public money were being given, and when there was a possibility under this new system of pressure being put upon a Minister or upon the Government, to give these Grants to specific areas. They therefore established, and this House endorsed, the principle which is now embodied in the Act itself, that so far as the giving or the recommendation of Grants from the Road Board was concerned the responsibility should be on the Road Board, and not on the Government. In consequence of that it would be altogether outside the intention of Parliament, as embodied in that Act, if I made any kind of representation, either to Sir George Gibb or the Road Board, as to the policy with respect to these special Grants.
1915 On the other hand, I fully recognise that such questions as have now been brought before the House are undoubtedly questions which should be brought before the House, and although I cannot justify the policy of the Road Board, because it is not my duty to do so, I think there is nothing in the policy of the Board I would not be prepared to justify if I were responsible. Still I can make one or two statements in reply to the criticisms of the hon. Gentleman opposite in connection with their work. The hon. Gentleman seemed to indicate, first, that the Road Board was solely confining its Grants to the doing of work, or the giving of money for doing work, which would not have been done by the ordinary road authorities under any circumstances; and, secondly, that the Eoad Board was only using money which, if it had not possessed it, would be possessed by the local authorities for use in connection with the roads. Both of these statements, if I may say so, are not correct.
§ Mr. BRIDGEMANI did not say so.
§ Mr. MASTERMANI come first to the point that the Road Board Grants—I mean the bulk of the Grants—given, and those indicated, or those now under negotiation, are dealing not so much with improvements in connection with new construction, or with what was emphasised a good deal in the Debates on the Road Board, the widening and improvement of curves and corners, especially in the interest of motorists, but with actual improvements of the road crusts themselves. When the hon. Gentleman says that if there was no Road Board, no money would have to be spent by the local authorities on these improvements, he is surely not speaking with considered judgment on the matter.
§ Mr. BRIDGEMANI do not think the right hon. Gentleman has properly apprehended what I said. What I was referring to was the additional cost entirely—the additional cost in respect of the composition of the material put on the roads which is required by the Road Board, and which is not required by the local authorities. The money that is being granted by the Road Board is being granted for the road crusts on the condition that the roads are made of certain material, which is much more expensive than that which was used before, and therefore I say the Board re- 1916 quire additional expenditure on the part of the local authorities which otherwise would not have been incurred.
§ Mr. MASTERMANThat is just where I venture to join issue with the hon. Gentleman. The requirement for this additional expenditure was not owing to any exalted standard of efficiency laid down by the Road Board. It is a requirement of the new traffic which would have to be met by the local authorities if no Road Board existed. The condition of the traffic is the same, and the Road Board was called in to assist in the transition from one kind of traffic to the other, and I assert that at least a very large proportion of these improvements would have to be carried out in order to meet the requirements of the new traffic if there had been no Road Board at all.
§ Mr. BRIDGEMANIn my own county £22,000 is the general cost, £10,000 of which is what is required for additional improvement. It was only the £10,000 that I was talking about. The other £12,000 would naturally have been spent if the county had been left alone.
§ Mr. MASTERMANI submit that either now or in the immediate future that £10,000 would have had to be spent if the county roads were to be kept up in connection with this new vehicular traffic. In those circumstances it is not fair to say that the Road Board is forcing the county to do work which otherwise it would not do. The hon. Gentleman has made an interesting comparison in connection with the purchase of a new hat for his wife, that if he gave £2 for the purchase of a new hat and then he insisted on her purchasing a £4 hat, that it was not a lucrative transaction as far as she was concerned. Surely that depends on whether the hat was needed or not.
§ Mr. BRIDGEMANIf she did not want a £2 hat.
§ Mr. MASTERMANThere is not the slightest doubt—I will not say always at the exact moment when the work is being done—but sooner or later the work for which the Road Board now are giving Grants to the local authorities would have to be dealt with by the local authorities themselves. In that way without the slightest doubt the money is being given for saving the rates, unless they kept the roads in their own districts so completely fallen into decay as to be behind any possible standard at which they main- 1917 tained them for so many years. Then the hon. Gentleman asked why the money has not been spent. I have certain figures on this which may interest him. The total amount received by the Road Board up to last month was £2,748,000; of that £1,200,000 has been practically allocated in Grants. £459,000 has been allocated in loans, and in addition to that amount the Board have intimated by general circulars their readiness to make Grants to the aggregate amount of £1,050,000; and now they will consider applications to enable them to settle in detail the work to which this money should be applied.
§ Mr. BRIDGEMANThat is in addition to what is already indicated?
§ Mr. MASTERMANYes, in addition. The total commitments amount to £2,347,000 in Grants and £459,000 in loans. Those are the total commitments, either of money which has been promised and accepted by local authorities for work in hand or money for which negotiations have been opened by the local authority for work for which the Road Board offers to make a Grant under certain conditions, and for which therefore, if the Grant is accepted, the money is applicable. The hon. Member asks why more money has not been spent. There are two main reasons. First, the schemes have not gone through with the rapidity which was expected, and there has been a great deal of negotiation even as to the schemes that have gone through. Money is being advanced as the schemes progress, and money will not be advanced until the schemes have progressed from time to time by agreement with the local authorities. The second reason is of some importance, and I am glad to have the opportunity of calling the attention of the House to it. The Act which constituted the Road Board and the Development Fund very definitely gave instructions as to the method by which money should be advanced. Section 18 of the Act of 1909, which was welcomed, I think, at the time as one of the most important of all the new suggestions with which these funds were established, provided that the Grants given by the Development Commissioners and the Road Board should be used, except in cases of great urgency, in helping to standardise the ordinary demand for employment outside. There is a very great demand that Government work, as far as it can be, should be used to standardise outside employment, not to advance Government 1918 work, which has not great urgency behind it, in times of great trade booms where-workers can find plenty of work outside and, on the other hand, to put Government work in hand when the outside market shrinks and a large number of persons would have been thrown out of work but for the Government work. The Road Board have all through decided to work in conformity with that decision of Parliament. We have been passing through a time of enormous boom in trade. During the last few months there have been practically no unemployed at all. They anticipated, as we all have to anticipate, a time when the number of employed in outside trade will diminish, and when there will be a demand for employment by this particular kind of more or less unskilled work which the Road Board and the local authorities can meet, and they hope to be able, partly in accumulations and partly in short term loans which will be repaid, to accumulate before the bad time comes a reserve of something like £1,000,000, which they can then use to standardise the outside market under conditions laid down by Parliament in Clause 18. I think that the hon. Gentleman will agree that that is a sound and sensible policy.
§ Mr. BRIDGEMANIt is not made a condition.
§ Mr. MASTERMANNo condition is made in the Grants which are given at present. This is short term loans, and the money is not yet allocated, but where the money is allocated the local authority, I understand, go forward with the work without that condition. That is a partial explanation of what the hon. Member called bottling up the money. The hon. Gentlemen behind me and-the hon. Gentlemen opposite protested against the demand from the local authority for some contribution towards this work of improvement. The Road Board, whether rightly or wrongly it is not for me to say, personally I think rightly, but on their own responsibility and not on Government responsibility, have not given Grants except with some contribution from the local authorities themselves, but they give a very large proportion of the Grant—I think in ordinary cases 75 per cent., and in some cases higher.
§ Mr. BRIDGEMANFifty per sent, in ordinary cases and sometimes 75 per cent.
§ Mr. MASTERMANThe information which I have is to the effect that it is generally about 75 per cent., and the figure which the hon. Gentleman gave me for his own county was 75 per cent.
§ Mr. BRIDGEMANFor one year, then 50 per cent, another.
§ Mr. MASTERMANThe House will probably consider that they have rightly determined that it is a very bad plan to give Grants to be administered and paid out by other persons over whom you have only indirect control without giving them some responsibility for it. Every system which has hitherto been adopted in giving Grants from a central to a local authority has always asked for contributions from the local authority in order that they might see that the work was necessary and was done as economically as possible. Beyond that there is also the very great demand, which there is and will be in the immediate future, for work in the improvement of the roads which, until the Road Board was introduced, would have fallen entirely on the local authorities. I think, therefore, that it is only right that the local authorities should pay at least one-fourth o£ that amount, as otherwise they might have had to pay the whole of it. As far as the agricultural districts are concerned, when we get the analysis in connection with the amount which has been allocated from time to time, I think the saving will be found to be very much more than fourpence in the £, because, although the hon. Gentleman declared that the roads were mainly for the use of motor traffic passing through the county area, until the Road Board was established the full responsibility for those roads was on the county areas themselves, and this was one of the facts which induced the Government to institute this Road Board Fund. The last point which I have to answer is in reference to the income of the Road Board. The hon. Member gave us to understand that he thought the county authorities were really no better off since the Road Board was established, because all the money or the greater part of it would have come to them if no Road Board had been constructed.
§ Mr. BRIDGEMANThe increase due to motor traffic.
§ Mr. MASTERMANThat increase would not have come to the people who really need it. One of the reasons that the fund 1920 was necessary was because of the continued diminution of the carriage licences. Those local authorities were feeling the pressure for the upkeep of the roads used by motorists from other districts owing to the increase of motor traffic due to the growing of the motor industry, but as regards the income of the Road Board, even supposing the local authorities obtained the whole of the carriage and motor licences, including the increase in motor licences, it would have amounted to not much more than one-third of the total income which is reecived by the Road Board, and is being spent or will be spent on the roads themselves. The income received from carriage licences is £977,000 in the aggregate since the Road Board was established, and from Motor Spirit Duty, which is a new duty, which the local authority never got, it is £1,700,000. Therefore, the great bulk, as the hon. Gentleman will see, is due to new taxation, which will now be given very largely to the relief of the work which otherwise the local authorities would have had to perform. Lastly, I have been asked whether the Departmental Committee on Local and Imperial Taxation has taken this subject into account. The reference to the Departmental Committee was settled several months ago. I do not think that the hon. Member would desire any alterations to be made in that reference, but it may encourage him to know that I do happen to know that this is one of the subjects which they consider very vital, especially in connection with the main roads, in connection with the whole controversy as to local and Imperial taxation, and I hope that when the Report is published the hon. Member will see that full consideration has been given to the question.
§ Mr. KELLAWAYIs the right hon. Gentleman in a position to tell the House whether there is any change in the policy as regards Grants to London, and, if so, whether the Grants are to be to the London County Council or to the borough councils for road improvements or road making?
§ Mr. MASTERMANIf my hon. Friend would be good enough to put down a question after the Recess, I shall be able to give a more satisfactory answer than I can give at present.
§ Mr. MORRELLI rise to a point of Order. I understood that the hon. Member (Sir J. D. Rees) intended to raise the subject of Persia. He has informed me 1921 that owing to the fact that he himself gave notice to call attention to the state of Persia he would be unable to deal with it in this Debate. As I understand that the object of what is called the Blocking Motion was to prevent anyone else from forestalling a Member who had given such a notice by raising the question before he had time to do so, therefore I want respectfully to ask your ruling, whether a Member is blocked by his own Motion and prevented from dealing with the question which he has given notice of his intention to discuss at the first opportunity that arises. I understand that the hon. Member is still willing and anxious to discuss Persia, if allowed to do so.
§ Sir J. D. REESI ask if this point has not been before the House before? I remember a case in which it was held that a Member was blocked by his own Motion, whether that would be or not in my favour.
§ Mr. SPEAKERI think it is a case of the engineer hoist by his own petard.