Commons Sitting of 2 June 1913

Preamble
The House met at a Quarter before Three of the clock, Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair.
High Court of Justice (King's Bench Division).—The Treasurer of the Household (Captain Guest) reported His Majesty's Answer to the humble Address of the 27th day of May last, as followeth:—
I have received your Address praying that, in pursuance of the first section of The Supreme Court of Judicature Act, 1910, an additional Judge may be appointed to the High Court of Justice in the King's Bench Division thereof, and I will issue directions in accordance with your desire.

PRIVATE BUSINESS.
Private Bills [Lords] (Standing Orders not previously inquired into complied with),—Mr. SPEAKER laid upon the Table Report from one of the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, That, in the case of the following Bill, originating in the Lords, and referred on the First Reading thereof, the Standing Orders not previously inquired into, and which are applicable thereto, have been complied with, namely:—
Hove Corporation Bill [Lords].
Ordered, That the Bill be read a second time.
Private Bill Petitions [Lords] (Standing Orders not complied with),—Mr. SPEAKER laid upon the Table Report from one of the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, That, in the case of the Petition for the following Bill, originating in the Lords, the Standing Orders have not been complied with, namely:—
Watney, Combe, Reid, and Company.
Ordered, That the Report be referred to the Select Committee on Standing Orders.
Provisional Order Bills (No Standing Orders applicable),—Mr. SPEAKER laid upon the Table Report from one of the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, That, in the case of the following Bills, referred on the First Reading thereof,
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no Standing Orders are applicable, namely:—
Ribble Fisheries Provisional Order Bill.
Local Government Provisional Orders (No. 8) Bill.
Ordered, That the Bills be read a second time To-morrow.
Provisional Order Bills (Standing Orders applicable thereto complied with),—Mr. SPEAKER laid upon the Table Report from one of the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills, That, in the case of the following Bills, referred on the First Reading thereof, the Standing Orders which are applicable thereto have been complied with, namely:—

Local Government Provisional Orders (No. 9) Bill.

Local Government Provisional Orders (No. 10) Bill.

Local Government Provisional Order (No. 11) Bill.

Local Government Provisional Order (No. 12) Bill.

Electric Lighting Provisional Orders (No. 5) Bill.

Local Government (Ireland) Provisional Orders (No. 2) Bill.

Tramways Provisional Orders Bill.

Pier and Harbour Provisional Orders (No. 1) Bill.

Pier and Harbour Provisional Orders (No. 2) Bill.

Gas and Water Provisional Orders (No. 2) Bill.

Ordered, That the Bills be read a second time To-morrow.
Derby Corporation Bill,
Read the third time, and passed.
Lymm Urban District Council Bill,
As amended, considered; to be read the third time.
Barry Railway Bill [Lords],
Cambrian Railways Bill [Lords],
Read a second time, and committed.
Cardiff Railway Bill [Lords],
Halkyn District Mines Drainage Bill [Lords],
To be read a second time To-morrow.
Llantrisant Gas Bill [Lords],
London Electric Railway Bill [Lords],
Metropolitan District Railway Bill [Lords],
Read a second time, and committed.
Oxford University (St. Edmund Hall and Gatcombe Rectory) Bill [Lords],
To be read a second time To-morrow.
Porthcawl and District Gas Bill [Lords],
West Hampshire Water Bill [Lords],
Wimbledon and Sutton Railway Bill [Lords],
Read a second time, and committed.
Metropolitan Electric Tramways (Railless Traction) Bill (by Order),
Dundee Boundaries Bill (by Order),
Read the third time, and passed.
Trade Boards Act Provisional Orders Bill,
Order for Second Reading read.
Mr. MALCOLM: Can the Second Reading be taken of a Bill which is not yet deposited in the Vote Office?
The PRESIDENT of the BOARD of TRADE (Mr. Buxton): It has been printed and circulated some time.
Second Reading deferred till Wednesday next (4th June).

IRISH LAND ACT, 1909.
Copy presented of Treasury Rule, dated 27th May, 1913, amending Rule 9 (1) of The Irish Land (Finance) Rules, 1913 [by Act]; to lie upon the Table.
TRADE REPORTS (ANNUAL SERIES).
Copies presented of Diplomatic and Consular Reports, Annual Series, Nos. 5066, 5067, 5069, 5071, 5076, 5078, and 5085 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
BIRTHS, DEATHS, AND MARRIAGES (SCOTLAND).
Copy presented of the Fifty-eighth Annual Report on the Births, Deaths, and Marriages in Scotland for 1912 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
MINING ROYALTIES (SCOTLAND).
Return presented relative thereto [ordered 1st January, 1913; Mr. Dundas White]; to lie upon the Table, and to be printed. [No. 142.]

SHOPS ACT, 1912.
Copies presented of Orders made by the Secretary for Scotland, dated 29th May, under the Act, affecting Shops in the burghs of Inverness and Renfrew [by Act]; to lie upon the Table.
Copies presented of Orders made by Councils of the boroughs of Cheltenham, Darlington, Worcester, and Workington (2), and confirmed by the Secretary of State for the Home Department under the Act [by Act]; to lie upon the Table.

COAL SHIPMENTS.
Copy presented of Tables, giving details as to Shipments of Coal Abroad, Coastwise, and as Bunkers, from each part of the United Kingdom for each quarter of the years 1911 and 1912 [by Command]; to lie upon the Table.
LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL (GENERAL POWERS) BILL.
Copy presented of Report of the Attorney-General on the Bill [presented pursuant to Standing Order 175 a]; referred to the Committee on the Bill.
WESTMINSTER HOSPITAL BILL.
Copy presented of Report of the Attorney-General on the Bill [presented pursuant to Standing Order 175 a]; referred to the Committee on the Bill.
ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS.

  Imprisonment of W. Waddell (San Garves).
  Mr. BARNESasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he will make representations to the Chilian authorities respecting the continued imprisonment of William Waddell, at San Garves, notwithstanding his acquittal on charges brought against him; and if he will demand his release?
  The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Mr. Acland): On learning of Waddell's imprisonment

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  His Majesty Chargé d' Affaires at Santiago at once asked for an inquiry into the circumstances and for the prisoner's release and passage home. Waddell was released on 7th May, and embarked at Coronel on the 21st on board the "Oriana" for England.

  Labourers Repatriated (San Thomé and Principé).
  Mr. HOAREasked how many of the contract labourers that have been repatriated from San Thomé and Principé during the last year have received any bonus in money; and, if so, to what amount?
  Mr. ACLAND: I am endeavouring to obtain details of the amount of the bonuses paid to repatriated labourers since the first quarter of 1912 for which period the amount was £535 among forty-seven labourers.
  Sir J. D. REES: Under what treaty or engagement with the Portuguese Government is His Majesty's Government entitled to demand these details?
  Mr. ACLAND: It is not a question of demanding. The Portuguese Government have supplied us with figures in these matters, and I think we are perfectly justified in having some interest in a matter of this kind.
  Mr. HOAREasked whether any locations have been set aside on the mainland for contract labourers repatriated from San Thoméand Principlé
  Mr. ACLAND: I understand that land has been set aside to provide for the settlement of repatriated labourers, but that so far the labourers who have been offered the choice of remaining on one of these settlements have preferred to be sent back at once to their homes in the interior.

  Foot-and-Mouth Disease (France).
  Mr. STANIERasked the President of the Board of Agriculture whether the foot-and-mouth disease outbreaks in France at the present time are greater or less than they were at this time in 1911 and 1912, respectively?
  The PRESIDENT of the BOARD of AGRICULTURE (Mr. Runciman): According to my information, foot-and-mouth disease was at least as prevalent in France during the first four mouths of this year as during the corresponding period of last
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  year, and considerably more so than in 1911. Owing to an alteration last year in the official method of tabulating outbreaks it is not possible to give exact comparative figures.

  Tomato and Cucumber Crops (Pests).
  Mr. ROWLANDSasked the President of the Board of Agriculture whether he can say how many local authorities are taking action to deal, if necessary, with the pests which, during recent years, have injuriously affected the tomato and cucumber crops?
  Mr. RUNCIMAN: I am making inquiries, and will communicate with my hon. Friend.

  Bee Disease Bill.
  Mr. CHARLES BATHURSTasked the President of the Board of Agriculture whether any deputation or deputations have waited upon him or upon the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board to express objections to the provisions of the Bee Disease Bill; if so, of whom such deputation or deputations were composed; and whether any sympathy was expressed on behalf of the Board with their representations?
  Mr. RUNCIMAN: In my unavoidable absence, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board recently received on my behalf a deputation consisting mainly of gentlemen who own a large number of hives, and, in some cases at any rate, make their living out of bee-keeping. I learn from a shorthand report of the proceedings that they were by no means opposed to legislation dealing with bee diseases; and their observations were directed, not against the objects of the Bill now before the House, but against abuses which in their opinion might arise in the administration of the duties imposed by the Bill upon the Board and local authorities. My Noble Friend's reply to the deputation was sympathetic. Although some of the fears expressed have little or no foundation, the Board fully recognise the necessity of proceeding with great caution, and they will give most careful consideration to all suggestions made by these experienced bee-keepers, whose knowledge and co-operation would be invaluable in the investigation and suppression of bee diseases.

  Weather Forecasts.
  Mr. C. BATHURSTasked if, as a result of a Grant for the purpose from the

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  Development Commissioners or otherwise, it is proposed to secure the wider distribution by telegraph, from the British Meteorological Office, of the daily weather forecasts, for the benefit of farmers during the coming hay and corn harvests; and, if so, how such forecasts will be made known and when the scheme will be put into operation?
  Mr. RUNCIMAN: So far as the Board are aware no arrangements have been made for the purpose mentioned.
  Mr. C. BATHURST: Is the right hon. Gentleman doing anything in this matter?
  Mr. RUNCIMAN: I think the matter has been discussed by the Development Commission, but I am not taking any action at present.

  Diseased Animals (Compensation).
  Mr. SAMUEL ROBERTSasked the President of the Board of Agriculture whether, in view of the importance of a healthy supply of butchers' meat and of the losses sustained by butchers and others, he will consider the advisability of extending the provisions of the Tuberculosis Order, 1913, as to compensation for apparently healthy animals which, when slaughtered for human food, prove to be suffering from tuberculosis?
  Mr. RUNCIMAN: The Board have no power to extend the provisions of the Tuberculosis Order in respect to payment of compensation so as to include animals other than those slaughtered by their direction under the Diseases of Animals Acts.
  Mr. S. ROBERTS: In view of the importance of this matter, will the right hon. Gentleman consider whether some legislation could be introduced to deal with it?
  Mr. RUNCIMAN: The powers exercised by the Board of Agriculture are exercised under the Diseases of Animals Act, which would not meet the point raised in the question of the hon. Member. I think he ought to address the question to the Local Government Board.
  Mr. C. BATHURST: Is there any administrative or logical reason why a similar Order should not be issued in relation to pigs?
  Mr. RUNCIMAN: I have not considered that.

  ROYAL NAVY.

    TORPEDO RANGE (PLYMOUTH SOUND).
    Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKEasked the First Lord of the Admiralty, whether he has received any petition from the coxswains and drivers employed in the torpedo range in Plymouth Sound; whether he is aware that these men's wages are below the wages of men doing similar work on dockyard duties; that the work of the torpedo range is dangerous and responsible; and whether, in view of the further facts that the cost of living has increased so much of late years that the purchasing power of wages has considerably diminished, and that these men have only received 1s. advance during the last eight years, he can see his way to place their wages on a level with men doing similar work on dockyard duties?
    The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the ADMIRALTY (Dr. Macnamara): The men in question are rated as skilled labourers employed as coxswains and drivers on the steam launches, attending the torpedo range, and a petition on their behalf was received at the hearing of the Devonport petitions. I cannot admit the contention that their wages are below the wages of men doing similar work in the dockyards. As skilled labourers, the scale of wages for these men is as follows: Probationary minimum for one year 23s. a week, ordinary minimum thereafter 24s., ordinary maximum 28s. Beyond this there is, for skilled labourers, a special rate, the maximum of which is 31s. So far these men have not participated in this rate. I am considering the question of their eligibility.
    Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKE: When does the right hon. Gentleman hope to be in a position to answer the petitions?
    Dr. MACNAMARA: The answers to the petitions will be communicated in due course, except where they have already been answered by concessions.

    ADMIRALTY CONTRACT (FAIR-WAGES CLAUSE).
    Mr. BARNESasked the Secretary to the Admiralty if the Isca Foundry, Newport, is on the list of Admiralty contractors; if he is aware that the firm is unfair both as to hours and wages; and will he see that this firm conform to current labour conditions for Admiralty work and also that they conform to current labour conditions as a condition to getting further contracts?
    Dr. MACNAMARA: The reply to the first part of the question is in the affirmative; to the second, no information is available at present; and to the third part, I have received a complaint from my hon. Friend and inquiry will be made.

    ARMED MERCHANTMEN.
    Sir W. BYLESasked the First Lord of the Admiralty how many merchant ships have now been supplied with guns by the Admiralty to defend them against their hypothetical enemies?
    The FIRST LORD of the ADMIRALTY (Mr. Churchill): Two ships.
    Sir W. BYLES: Have there been any naval engagements yet?
    Mr. CHURCHILL: No, Sir.

    ADMIRALTY CONTRACTORS.
    Mr. GOLDSTONEasked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether he will give the names of the firms which provide ships, guns, and gun-mountings for the Royal Navy; whether any, and, if so, which of these firms arc also interested as shareholders in foreign establishments for the equipment of foreign fleets; and whether such establishments in which British shareholders have substantial holdings would be able to supply foreign navies with equipment in the event of this country being involved in hostilities with such navies?
    Mr. CHURCHILL: It is contrary to the practice of the Admiralty to make known the names of firms on its contractors' lists. There is no precise official information available, at any rate in the Admiralty, as to the second and third parts two and three of the question.
    Mr. GOLDSTONE: Will the right hon. Gentleman take steps to inquire, and give the House the information asked for in parts two and three of the question?
    Mr. KING: Will the right hon. Gentleman reconsider the decision not to make known the names of these firms?
    Mr. CHURCHILL: The practice has been arrived at as the result of many years' Parliamentary supervision, and the reasons have on many occasions been given to the House. I shall be very glad to discuss this on a suitable occasion. So far as the second and third parts of the question are concerned, it is really going outside the regular work of the Admiralty, and is work for which we have not any
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    special facilities to inquire into the dealings of particular firms, or the relations between the shareholders and the various companies.
    Mr. KING: In view of the revelations in this connection, both at home and abroad, will the right hon. Gentleman reconsider the whole question of the position of these firms?
    Mr. CHURCHILL: I am not aware, so far as this country is concerned, of any revelations of a startling character; and I have not had put before me any accounts which would lead the Admiralty to embark on a new or a different policy in regard to the various contracting firms with which the Admiralty are dealing at the present time.

    MEDITERRANEAN SQUADRON.
    Sir JOHN LONSDALEasked how many of the four battle cruisers of the "Invincible" type which he announced in July last would be sent to the Mediterranean during the last winter have been actually sent; and what is the present "Dreadnought" strength of the Triple Alliance in the Mediterranean?
    Mr. CHURCHILL: Delays in the completion of the "Princess Royal" and the "Queen Mary," and the temporary absence of the "New Zealand," have somewhat retarded the formation of the Second Battle Cruiser Squadron in the Mediterranean. The "Inflexible" alone is there at present, the place of her consorts being temporarily filled, and more than filled, by five battleships of the "King Edward VII" class. There are three "Dreadnoughts" belonging to the Powers of the Triple Alliance now in the Mediterranean.
    Mr. FELLasked what battleships, cruisers, torpedo boats, and submarines belonging to this country are now in the Mediterranean, not including those stationed at Gibraltar?
    Mr. CHURCHILL: The figures desired by the hon. Member are as follows:—Five battleships, one battle cruiser, three cruisers, six light cruisers, ten destroyers, three submarines.

    CANADIAN "DREADNOUGHTS."
    Sir JOHN LONSDALEasked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether, in view of the fact that in the opinion of the Government the three Canadian "Dreadnoughts" are not additional to the whole-

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    world requirements of the British Empire, it is proposed, in the event of any delay in laying down these ships, to introduce Supplementary Estimates providing for the commencement of three additional vessels in the current year?
    Mr. CHURCHILL: The new situation which has arisen requires and will receive the attention of the Government.
    Sir J. LONSDALE: If these three vessels are not commenced this year, will not the Navy fall below the requirements of the Empire?
    Mr. CHURCHILL: Sir, I cannot add anything at present to the answer which I have given to the hon. Member.
    Mr. A. LEE: Can the right hon. Gentleman give us an idea when he is likely to be able to make his statement upon this very vital question?
    Mr. CHURCHILL: I do not like to commit myself, but I should hope that during the present month the point which is raised in this question will be the subject of a statement from this bench.
    Sir J. LONSDALE: Will the right hon. Gentleman produce Supplementary Estimates dealing with this question?
    Mr. CHURCHILL: We cannot go into the method of carrying out a policy which, as I have said, has yet to receive the attention of the Government.

  AIRCRAFT.

    MALTA.
    Mr. FELLasked what aeroplanes or dirigible airships or hydroplanes are now stationed at Malta; and if any garages or hangars for the use of such craft have been erected there or are proposed to be erected there?
    Mr. CHURCHILL: No aircraft or accommodation for aircraft have yet been provided at Malta; nor do I wish to make any statement as to what is proposed.

    Exchange Telegraph Company (Licence).
    Mr. SANDERSasked the Postmaster-General the terms of the licence granted by the Post Office to the Exchange Telegraph Company; and to what other companies a similar licence is granted?
    The POSTMASTER-GENERAL (Mr. Herbert Samuel): The Exchange Telegraph Company is licensed to distribute news from specified distributing offices by means of their printing telegraphs over wires erected by the company under the licence or rented from the Post Office, subject to payment by the company of a head royalty and a royalty in respect of each distributing office and each tape instrument. The Central News, Column Printing Company, Press Association, and Reuter's Telegram Company hold similar licences.

    Telephone Communication (Nottingham).
    Sir J. D. REESasked the Postmaster-General whether his attention has been called to the fact that a fire raged for over half an hour in the premises of Messrs. M. Jacoby and Company, at Day-brook, because it was found impossible to establish telephonic communication with the exchange at Nottingham, three miles away, in order to summon the fire exchange; that a message was ultimately got through on a private wire, whereby the motor fire-engines were obtained and the fire brought under control; whether he is aware that complaints are constant in Nottingham of the inefficiency of the telephone service since the Government assumed its management; and what steps he proposes to take to ensure the provision of an efficient service?
    Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL: My attention has been drawn to the facts in connection with the fire to which the hon. Member refers, and a searching investigation is now being made into the cause of the failure to effect communication. Apart from the disorganisation caused by the snowstorm in January, there is no indication of any diminution in the efficiency of the telephone service at Nottingham since the management was handed over to the Post Office.
    Sir J. D. REES: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the inefficiency of the service at Nottingham has reached such a pitch that a soft answer like that given in no degree turneth away wrath; and will the right hon. Gentleman improve that efficiency of the service in the interests of the business of a great city?
    Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL: I believe that I have received no complaints from Nottingham except those from the hon. Member himself across the floor of the House.

    Cork Post Office.
    Mr. MAURICE HEALYasked the Postmaster-General whether, in making the promotions coming into effect on the 1st proximo on the postal side of the Cork post office, he will take care that the claims of the senior qualified officers will receive the consideration due to them, and take care that no injustice is done to these officers; and whether the surveyor of the district will be instructed to make personal inquiry into the case of each officer concerned?
    Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL: In this, as in all cases of promotion in the Post Office, the claims and qualifications of all the eligible officers will receive full consideration. The surveyor makes the recommendation for promotion after reviewing the Qualifications of all the officers concerned.

    Postal Service (Army and Navy Men).
    Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKEasked the Postmaster-General whether ex-Army men possessing a second-class Army certificate are exempt from the Civil Service examination necessary to secure a position in the Post Office service; whether the same privilege is given to ex-naval men possessing a petty officer's educational certificate; and, if not, will he consider so amending the regulations as to give equal recognition to the two certificates?
    Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL: Candidates who possess second-class Army certificates of education may, at the discretion of the Civil Service Commissioners, be exempted from the educational examination for the situation of postman. A similar regulation does not exist in the case of ex-naval candidates possessing a petty officer's educational certificate, but I will consult the Admiralty and the Civil Service Commissioners as to the desirability of granting an exemption in these cases also.
    Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKE: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the educational requirements are identical in both cases?
    Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL: I have no doubt that is so.

    Post Office (Wages).
    Mr. POINTERasked the Postmaster-General whether it is proposed
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    shortly to introduce a revision at the South Eastern District Office, London, by which work hitherto performed by sorters on a maximum of 62s. a week is to be transferred to postmen in receipt of a maximum wage of 38s. a week; and whether, in harmony with the recognition of associations, the matter was discussed between the department and the association of the men concerned before arriving at a decision?
    Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL: The answer to the first part of the Question is in the negative, and the second part, therefore, does not arise.
    Mr. BARNESasked the Postmaster-General if the rate of 20s. per week for adult men temporarily employed by the Post Office has been continued only because of the recommendation of the Select Committee of 1907; and if he or anybody else has put the case for a higher rate to the Committee now sitting?
    Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL: The Select Committee of 1907 made no specific recommendation on the question of the payment of officers temporarily performing a full duty. The present practice of basing the payment on the nineteen year age pay settled by that Committee for the corresponding established class has been brought to the notice of the Committee now sitting by a representative of the Postmen's Federation.
    Mr. BARNES: Is there any probability of this wage being brought up to a decent living wage?
    Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL: I must await the Report of the Select Committee.
    Mr. BARNES: When does the right hon. Gentleman expect that Report?
    Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL: I believe the Committee are now engaged considering their Report, the evidence being concluded.
    Mr. FREDERICK HALL: Does the right hon. Gentleman think that 20s. a week for adults is a sufficient wage to be paid for the services rendered?
    Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL: The whole question of Post Office wages is now before the Select Committee. It should be remembered that these are not wages paid in London, and that they are only for temporary and casual services.

    Wellington Post Office.
    Mr. STANIERasked the Postmaster-General whether his attention has been called to the fact that a more suitable site for the new post office at Wellington, Salop, could be bought opposite the Charlton Hotel, in Wellington; and, as this is a site central and suitable, will he take this site into consideration for the new post office?
    Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL: The site in Walker Street for the proposed new post office at Wellington, Salop, was agreed to be purchased some months ago, and I regret it is too late to consider the question of acquiring any other site.
    Mr. STANIER: Has the right hon. Gentleman had any representations in regard to the great inconvenience to the rural dwellers?
    Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL: The next question will deal with that.
    Mr. BRIDGEMANasked the Postmaster-General what steps were taken to ascertain the wishes of the inhabitants of Wellington, Salop, before deciding to erect a new post office, and if he has received any representations that there is a desire to retain the use of the old office for telegraph or other purposes; and what he proposes to do in the matter?
    Mr. HERBERT SAMUEL: The representations made by the urban district council were fully considered before the site in Walker Street, Wellington, Salop, was acquired. I have received a letter dated 29th May urging the retention of an office in the vicinity of the present site after the new premises have been occupied, and I will carefully consider the suggestion.

    Imperial Heraldry (Scotland and Ireland).
    Mr. MacCALLUM SCOTTasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether the Petition of the St. Andrew's Societies of Edinburgh and Glasgow to His Majesty the King regarding the representation of the United Kingdom in matters of heraldry has been considered; and whether any action has been taken or will be taken to give Scotland and Ireland their due representation in all matters of heraldry?
    The SECRETARY of STATE for the HOME DEPARTMENT (Mr. McKenna): I have received the Petition referred to. A number of points relating to the limits of the jurisdiction of the various Officers of Arms have been referred to the Law Officers of the Three Kingdoms, and until I receive their opinion, I am scarcely in a position to come to any final decision as to the prayer of the Petition.

    Suffrage Demonstration (Disturbances in Victoria Park).
    Mr. WILLIAM THORNEasked the Secretary of State whether his attention has been drawn to the violence that took place in Victoria Park on the 25th ultimo in connection with a suffrage demonstration; whether he is aware that the police officers who attended the procession left the park and the meeting, with the result that the organisers of the meeting were practically unprotected; and whether he will give instructions for any such meeting in the future to be adequately protected?
    Mr. McKENNA: Victoria Park is under the control of the London County Council, by which it is policed. Ample arrangements were made by the Metropolitan Police, who were held in readiness at the park gates, to intervene if their assistance were required.
    Mr. W. THORNE: Is it not a fact that on this occasion one of the vans used as a platform was wheeled right out of the park into the road, and will the right hon. Gentleman see that in the future proper protection is given to peaceful citizens the same as the right hon. Gentleman himself expects when addressing a meeting in Newport?
    Mr. McKENNA: The policing of the park is a matter for the London County Council, and not the Home Office.
    Mr. W. THORNE: Is it not a fact that the London County Council have no control of the police at all?
    Mr. McKENNA: The London County Council are responsible for the policing of the park; the Metropolitan Police are responsible outside the park, and they were in readiness.
    Mr. W. THORNE: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the only power the London County Council have is to engage the park keepers?
    Mr. McKENNA: I cannot agree with my hon. Friend.
    Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKE: When you call another question Mr. Speaker, is it in order for an hon. Member to continue asking supplementary questions in relation to the former question?
    Mr. SPEAKER: I have known irregularities to occur.

    Reformatory and Industrial Schools Management.
    Mr. SNOWDENasked if the Committee appointed about three years ago to inquire into the management of reformatory and industrial schools is still sitting; and, if so, has it any intention of reporting; and when may the Report be expected?
    Mr. McKENNA: I have received the Report of this Committee, which was appointed in March, 1911. The Report will be published this week.

    Release of Prisoner.
    Mr. SNOWDENasked for what reason Edward Buckton Cargill, who was sentenced to nine months' imprisonment last February for serious offences against girls, has been released from prison; if he has been temporarily released under the Prisoners Temporary Release Act; and, if he has been released on grounds of ill-health, will he say who certified that it was necessary that he should be removed from prison?
    Mr. McKENNA: This prisoner was released on medical grounds. His condition was critical. In advising his release, I acted on the report of the medical officer of the prison and of a consultant called in by the Prison Commissioners at my request. His condition not being due wholly or in part to his own conduct in prison, the Prisoners (Temporary Discharge for Ill-health) Act did not apply.
    Mr. SNOWDEN: That is to say the un-served part of the sentence has been abandoned altogether, or will he be called upon to serve it at any future time?
    Mr. McKENNA: The course taken in this case is precisely the same as that in all similar cases. It was reported to me that the prisoner's condition was critical and that he was in imminent danger of death, and that in no circumstances could he live long, and following the ordinary practice
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    in this case, as in other cases in similar circumstances, the prisoner was released.
    Mr. ARTHUR LEE: Will the right hon. Gentleman say what portion of the sentence was served, and has he any statement as to whether the prisoner is now restored to health?
    Mr. McKENNA: I said the prisoner was suffering from a mortal disease. Ten weeks of the sentence of nine months was, I think, served.

    Houses of Parliament Police (Pay During Recess).
    Mr. POINTERasked (1) how many police were withdrawn from the Houses of Parliament during the Whitsuntide Recess; what duties did they perform during the Adjournment; whether any of the Sessional police were employed at the Houses of Parliament during that period; if so, whether 1s. per day was stopped in these cases, either for the eighteen days or any portion of that time; and (2) why the Sessional staff of police attached to the Houses of Parliament were stopped 1s. per day for eighteen days during the Whitsuntide Adjournment; whether the allowance has ever been stopped before, when the Easter and Whitsuntide Adjournment has been less than twenty-one days, and, if so, when; and upon whose recommendation it was stopped?
    Mr. McKENNA: My hon. Friend appears to be under a misapprehension. The men belonging to the Sessional staff receive their full ordinary pay at all times; but while the House is actually sitting they receive an additional allowance of 1s. a day, which ceases automatically in ordinary course when the House is not sitting. An exception, however, has been made in the case of a short recess, but such an exception cannot properly be allowed when the recess is a long one. In 1910, for instance, the allowance was not continued during the long recess in May. During the recess the Sessional staff of police are employed on other police duties, and often act as substitutes for officers who may be on leave. Some of the staff who have been taking the place of officers entitled permanently to the special allowance of 1s. a day have themselves been receiving that allowance.
    Mr. POINTER: Can a definite answer be given to that part of the question which asks whether on any previous occasion when the recess was less than twenty-one

    573
    days the 1s. per day extra was stopped, and whether the late inspector of police in this House promised on the occasion of the late King's death that it would never be stopped under twenty-one days?
    Mr. McKENNA: I am not aware of that, and I do not think the inspector had any authority to make a promise of the kind. With regard to the other point, I am unable to say whether there is any record of any of the allowances being stopped under twenty-one days or eighteen days. I cannot trace that there was any recess of that precise period, the usual recess being for a much a shorter time, and, as I have already explained, during the short recess it is not stopped, but is always stopped when the recess is of any considerable length.
    Mr. POINTER: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that it is always practically fourteen days, and on this occasion it was eighteen days?
    Mr. McKENNA: No, Sir. I believe it is not usually fourteen days, but ten or twelve days. I do not remember a case of eighteen days except on this particular occasion.

    Conviction of Heinrich Grosse.
    Mr. KINGasked whether Heinrich Grosse, who in February, 1912, was sentenced at Winchester to three years' penal servitude, is a German subject; and whether it is intended to release him before his sentence is completed?
    Mr. McKENNA: The answer to the first part of the question is in the affirmative. With regard to the second part, I can add nothing at present to the answer which I gave the hon. Member last Thursday.
    Mr. KING: Is it exercising the attention, immediately and at present, of the right hon. Gentleman?
    Mr. McKENNA: Yes, it is exercising my attention and the attention of the Foreign Secretary immediately and at present.

    Finnish Pilots.
    Mr. KINGasked whether a number of Finnish pilots have resigned their duties and their places have been filled by inexperienced men, many recruited from the Caspian Sea, and that in consequence there has been difficulty and delay in shipping reaching Finnish ports; whether he can give any explanation of this state of affairs; whether it is likely to continue;
    574
    and whether he has approached the Russian Government on the subject?
    Mr. ACLAND: The answer to the first part of the question is, generally speaking, in the affirmative, but no complaints as to the effects on shipping have been received for over a year. As to the last portion of the question I would refer the hon. Member to the answer which was returned on the 26th March, 1912, to the hon. Member for Stirling Burghs to the effect that there are no grounds which justify representations to the Russian Government.

    British Columbia Peaches.
    Sir CLEMENT KINLOCH COOKEasked the number of cans of British Columbia peaches imported into this country for 1912?
    The PRESIDENT of the BOARD of TRADE (Mr. Buxton): Imports of canned peaches into the United Kingdom are not separately distinguished in the official Returns from imports of other canned fruits, and consignments from British Columbia are not separately distinguished from consignments from other parts of the Dominion of Canada. The information desired by the hon. Member is not, therefore, available. The total imports from Canada in 1912 of canned and bottled fruit of all kinds amounted to 27,660 cwts.

    Load Line.
    Sir C. KINLOCH-COOKEasked what steps, if any, have been taken to ascertain the views of the officers and men who work the ships of the mercantile marine with regard to the question of load line; whether a Committee of experts has been appointed to inquire into the subject generally and, if so, will he give the names and qualifications of these experts; will he also say whether, if such a Committee has been appointed or is to be appointed, the Government intend the inquiry to be an open inquiry; and, if not, will he give the Government reasons for excluding the Press, seeing the public interest that is taken in the question and the national importance of the issue involved?
    Mr. BUXTON: I have appointed a Committee of experts to advise on the question of load line, and full opportunity will be given for officers and seamen to put their views before it. I will send the hon. Member a copy of the terms of reference and the names and qualifications of the members. With regard to the points

    575
    raised in the concluding sentences of the question, I would refer the hon. Member to the reply I gave to the hon. and gallant Member for Southampton on the 28th May. I am sending the hon. Member a copy of that reply.
    Mr. F. HALL: Will the right hon. Gentleman consider the necessity of putting a representative of Lloyd's upon that Committee?
    Mr. BUXTON: Lloyd's Register will be represented.

    Railway Rates.
    Mr. C. BATHURSTasked the right hon. Gentleman if he will state whether the Clause in the Railways (No. 1) Bill of last Session which provided for a cheaper and less cumbrous tribunal for hearing traders' grievances than the Railway and Canal Commission was omitted from the Railways (No. 2) Bill owing to the opposition of the railway companies, or, if not, for what reason; and whether, seeing that an application to the Commission is, owing to its expense, a luxury of the rich, and that consequently farmers and the smaller traders have no remedy whatever against unfair treatment by the railway companies, the Government will forthwith introduce legislation for their adequate protection?
    Mr. BUXTON: The sole reason for the omission of this and several other Clauses of the first Railways Bill of last. Session was that owing to want of time it was found necessary to confine the legislation of last Session to the single object of carrying out the Government pledge to the railway companies. No representations were made to me by the railway companies in respect of Clause 14 of the first Bill, which dealt with the cheapening of the procedure. I may add that there is no necessity for a farmer or small trader to take individual proceedings before the Railway and Canal Commission, as under Section 7 of the Railway and Canal Traffic Act, 1888, any association of traders or freighters or chamber of commerce or agriculture that may obtain a certificate from the Board of Trade that it is a proper body to make a complaint can institute such proceedings. I have already stated that time will not permit the reintroduction this Session of the first Bill of last year.

    Board of Trade (Appointment of Second Secretary).
    Mr. F. HALLasked if the right hon. Gentleman will state on whose advice the recent appointment of a Second Secretary to the Board of Trade was made; if, in addition to the Secretaries to the Board, there is an Assistant-Secretary for each important branch; what are the circumstances which made the appointment of an additional secretary necessary; how long Mr. G. S. Barnes has been in the service of the Board; what position did he occupy before entering the service; on whose recommendation he was appointed originally; and whether such appointment was the result of competition of any kind?
    Mr. BUXTON: The work of the Board of Trade has developed and increased so much of late years that it had become essential to relieve the Permanent Secretary of part of the work which now falls upon him by the appointment of a Second Secretary. The decision was reached after careful consideration of the whole question by the Permanent Secretary and myself in consultation with the Treasury. The Permanent Secretary in the ordinary course, as head of the Department, made his recommendation to me as to the most suitable person for the post; and, after considering all the circumstances of the case, I concurred in his recommendation. Mr. Barnes, whom I have appointed to the post, is senior, as head of the Department, by over four years to all the other heads of Departments in the Board of Trade, including the Assistant-Secretaries. He has been for twenty years in the service of the Board, and for nine years head of a Department, which ranks with an Assistant-Secretaryship. Mr. Barnes' original appointment in the Board of Trade service in 1893 was that of a Second Official Receiver, which was not a post filled by open competition. Previous to that he was a practising barrister of ten years' standing. He was appointed Second Official Receiver by Mr. Mundella, then President. He was subsequently appointed Senior Official Receiver in 1896 by Mr. Ritchie; and in 1904 Mr. Gerald Balfour appointed him head of the Companies Department. I may add that, while Mr. Barnes' responsibilities and work will be increased by his appointment as Second Secretary, his salary remains the same as before. As President, I am, of course, solely responsible for the appointment, and I do not think that anyone acquainted with the circumstances will

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    doubt the expediency of the creation of the new post or the fitness of the officer appointed thereto.

  NATIONAL INSURANCE ACT.

    REFUND APPLICATION FORMS.
    Mr. JOYNSON-HICKSasked the Secretary to the Treasury if he will state when he proposes to issue the forms of application for refund under Section 94 of the National Insurance Act; and whether he is aware that the delay in issue is causing inconvenience to large employers of labour?
    The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD of TRADE (Mr. Robertson): An explanatory memorandum is about to be issued, stating the particulars that will be required from employers applying for refunds under Section 94. Copies of this memorandum and forms of application will shortly be obtainable at Labour Exchanges and other local offices of the Unemployment Fund. As these applications cannot be made before 15th July, I do not think that the inconvenience apprehended by the hon. Member will arise.
    Mr. JOYNSON-HICKS: Does the hon. Member merely mean that they will be issued, and is he aware that the same answer has been given now for the past twelve months?
    Mr. ROBERTSON: I do not see how the answer could have been given for the past twelve months under the Act.
    Mr. JOYNSON-HICKS: Is the hon. Member aware that twelve months ago it was stated that this matter was under consideration?
    Mr. ROBERTSON: That can scarcely so in regard to refund application forms.

    AMENDING BILL.
    Mr. GODFREY LOCKER-LAMPSONasked whether the forthcoming National Insurance Act amending Bill will be a comprehensive measure dealing with Amendments that the working of the Act has shown to be advisable, or whether, it will merely be a Bill to enable the Government to tide over certain temporary financial difficulties?
    The PRIME MINISTER (Mr. Asquith): I am not prepared to anticipate the terms of the Bill.
    Mr. G. LOCKER-LAMPSON: Is the Prime Minister aware that practically the whole friendly society world is expecting a comprehensive Bill?
    The PRIME MINISTER: I am afraid I do not know.
    Sir J. D. REES: Will the right hon. Gentleman in this Bill reconsider the question of compulsion?
    The PRIME MINISTER: I am not prepared, as I have said, to anticipate the terms of the Bill. It is most unusual either for questions to be asked or answers to be given because the Bill has not yet been introduced.

    COUNTY AND COUNTY BOROUGH INSURANCE COMMITTEES.
    Mr. G. LOCKER-LAMPSONasked the Prime Minister whether he will afford an opportunity to Members of this House of expressing their views on the English Regulations governing the appointment and election of county and county borough insurance committees under the National Insurance Act?
    The FINANCIAL SECRETARY to the TREASURY (Mr. Masterman): The Regulations, which were made after consultation with the Advisory Committee, and subsequently to the discussion in the House on the Scottish Regulations (which differ from them in some respects), were laid on 5th May, and discussion could have been taken on them on any Parliamentary day since then before or after the adjournment for the recess. The elections are now proceeding; the last day on which societies desiring to nominate candidates could lodge applications for nomination forms was 27th May (now past); societies entitled to direct appointments have already in some cases sent in their appointments (the last day for receiving which is 9th June).

    CONSETT TRADES COUNCIL.
    Mr. THOMAS RICHARDSONasked whether, owing to delay on the part of the National Insurance Commissioners in providing the necessary information, the Consett Trades Council were unable to nominate any members for the district committee; and whether care will be taken in the forthcoming arrangements for the setting up of the committees to secure that bodies representative of the various interests will have sufficient time to make their nominations?
    Mr. MASTERMAN: The Trades Council have no power to nominate members of the district committee. In reply to a letter received from the Trades Council, the Commissioners suggested that the council should communicate with the insurance committee. The reply to the second part of the question, which appears to relate to the election of representatives of insured persons on the insurance committees, is in the affirmative.

    REPORT ON WORKING OF ACT.
    Mr. JAMES HOGGEasked the Financial Secretary to the Treasury (1) when he intends to issue a Report on the working of the National Insurance Act; and whether there is to be a separate Report for Scotland; and (2) whether the Report on the working of the National Insurance Act which is being prepared will be ready prior to the introduction of any amending legislation?
    Mr. MASTERMAN: I hope to present to Parliament the Reports of the Insurance Commissioners on the administration of the Act within a few days. The Report will be a single volume covering the operations of the Joint Committee and the several Commissions; but I am arranging for the Reports of each of the National Commissions to be available in separate volumes.

    MATERNITY BENEFIT.
    Mr. MacCALLUM SCOTTasked whether an unmarried mother who goes to a hospital for her confinement and who has to pay a fee for admission to the hospital can have the amount of that fee refunded to her out of the maternity benefit?
    Mr. MASTERMAN: Yes, Sir. If the sum that would have been due as maternity benefit had the woman not entered a hospital is not applied for the relief or maintenance of the woman's dependants, or paid direct to the hospital under an agreement previously concluded to pay for her treatment, it is payable to the woman herself when she leaves the hospital, either in kind or in instalments, or in a lump sum as the society may determine, and such money may be available for repayment of the fee for admission.
    Mr. F. HALLasked if in the case of maternity benefit, if both parents are insured persons, 60s. is paid for each child born?
    Mr. MASTERMAN: If both parents are insured persons 30s. is, under the ordinary conditions, payable as maternity benefit in respect of the husband's insurance, while his wife is ordinarily entitled to sickness benefit at the rate of 7s. 6d. a week from the fourth day of being rendered incapable of work.
    Mr. F. HALL: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the official candidate at the Newmarket election stated that in such cases 60s. would be paid? Did the right hon. Gentleman take the necessary steps to have that statement corrected before the day of polling?
    Mr. MASTERMAN: I did not see the statement. I should think that it generally expressed what is true. As in ordinary cases the woman would be entitled to such benefit for weeks before she goes back to work, and in that case 60s. would be paid.
    Mr. WORTHINGTON-EVANS: Is it not the fact that if the contribution is in arrear, the benefit may be reduced from 7s. 6d. to 5s.?
    Mr. MASTERMAN: No one could be in arrear for a sufficient period at the present time.

    INSURANCE COMMITTEES (ADMISSION OF PRESS).
    Mr. MacCALLUM SCOTTasked the Financial Secretary to the Treasury whether his attention has been called to the decision of the Berwickshire Insurance Committee to exclude the Press from its meetings; whether the Insurance Commissioners have considered the fact that the insurance committees consist of persons elected to represent various interests, and that if the Press is excluded from the meetings it will be impossible for the insured persons who elected the members of the committees to know whether their representatives are acting in accordance with their wishes or not; and whether, in view of the importance of publicity in this matter, the Commissioners will make regulations which will secure the admission of the Press to meetings of the committees?
    Mr. MASTERMAN:I have seen a newspaper report of the decision to which my hon. Friend refers. I am informed that the committee have made arrangements to supply an official report of their proceedings to the Press. The Scottish Commissioners have not issued any regulations

    581
    on this subject. I may say, however, that the English Commissioners, in reply to questions on this subject, have suggested that the provisions of the Local Authorities (Admission of the Press to Meetings) Act, 1908, should be treated as applicable to meetings of insurance committees.

    SICKNESS AND MATERNITY BENEFIT.
    Mr. G. LOCKER-LAMPSONasked at what time sickness benefit terminates in favour of maternity benefit; whether, when an employed woman is approaching her confinement and is certified a month before confinement to be incapable of work, she is entitled to sickness benefit, and up to how long before confinement; and whether such a woman ceasing work one week only before her confinement would receive sickness benefit?
    Mr. MASTERMAN: An employed married woman is entitled to sickness benefit under the ordinary conditions while she is incapable of work through illness resulting from pregnancy, in addition to the maternity benefit payable in respect of her own or her husband's insurance, and without regard to the date at which that benefit is due. Sickness benefit is payable from the fourth day of her being rendered incapable of work by illness, and is payable while she so remains incapable, both before and after confinement.

    MEDICAL AND SANATORIUM BENEFIT.
    Mr. G. LOCKER-LAMPSONasked whether a woman engaged in home duties and fearing the approach of ill-health may do a day's work in a shop or laundry and so come under the National Insurance Act and secure medical and sanatorium benefit; whether there is, in practice, anything to stop her acting in this manner; and whether she could sign the usual form of application for membership of an approved society and, being accepted, receive in due course medical and sanatorium benefit, though in fact she may have designed this procedure in order to get such benefits by the payment of only one or two contributions?
    Mr. MASTERMAN: The answer to the first part of the question is in the negative. As I stated, in answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Derbyshire on the 27th March, a person whose normal occupation is not employment within the meaning of the National Insurance Act ceases to be insured, and to be entitled to benefits on ceasing to be employed. As regards
    582
    the second part of the question, an applicant for membership of an approved society is required to give particulars of his occupation and the method of payment for it, and to sign a statement that he is qualified to be an insured person. A false statement in the form of application would justify the society in expelling a person who had been admitted to membership on the strength of it. A false statement knowingly made for the purpose of obtaining benefit would render the person liable to penalties.

    DOCTORS' REMUNERATION.
    Colonel WESTONasked the Financial Secretary to the Treasury whether the regulations contained in Memorandum 159/J.C., issued by the Insurance Commissioners, involve deductions from the amount guaranteed to medical practitioners for each insured person; and, if so, whether the consent of the doctors has been obtained to such deductions; and, if not, what steps does he propose to take for the purpose of providing the minimum capitation fee guaranteed to the doctors by Section 22 of the explanatory statement issued by the Commissioners in December, 1912?
    Mr. MASTERMAN: As I stated, in reply to the hon. Member for Nottingham on the 8th May, a doctor is entitled under his contract with the insurance committee to be credited with a sum of 7s. in respect of each insured person for whose treatment he is responsible during the whole year. It follows that a deduction must be made from this sum in respect of every insured person for whom he ceases to be responsible during any portion of that year, in order to pay the doctor who is in fact responsible for his treatment during that period.

    IRISH SEAMEN.
    Major M'CALMONTasked whether Irish seamen who are members of Irish societies are compulsorily insured at the higher English rates when serving on ships registered at English or Scotch ports; whether their own Irish societies get the benefits of the increased contributions; and whether they receive medical benefits at their homes?
    Mr. MASTERMAN: The rate of contribution payable in respect of Irishmen serving in ships registered in the United Kingdom is unaffected by the country in which they are registered. An Irish seaman who has a permanent place of resi-

    583
    dence in Ireland and is a member of a society approved for operation in Ireland, pays contributions at the lower rates applicable in Ireland, and is not entitled to medical benefit. Other Irishmen serving in the mercantile marine pay the same rates of contribution and are entitled to the same benefits as English, Scotch, or Welsh sailors.
    Major M'CALMONT: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the instructions of societies in Ireland are that men serving on ships registered at English or Scotch ports are to pay the higher rate?
    Mr. MASTERMAN: No, I am not aware of it. If the hon. and gallant Member knows anything which he thinks is an infringement of the Act, I shall be very glad to look into it.

    FISHERMEN.
    Mr. FELLasked if there is any means by which an insured fisherman who has had to seek medical aid from a panel doctor when engaged in fishing round the coast, and who has had to pay the doctor's charges, can obtain repayment of such sums as he may have had to pay both for medical attendance and for drugs?
    Mr. MASTERMAN: As I stated in answer to the hon. Member on the 29th ultimo, arrangements have been made whereby fishermen can obtain medical attendance and treatment free of cost at any port in the United Kingdom. There is no necessity therefore for them to pay doctors' fees themselves, and consequently there is no provision for repayment.
    Mr. FELL: May I ask if some more simple method cannot be arranged by which these men can get medical aid at these ports without having to refer to their own port or to the doctor?
    Mr. MASTERMAN: If the hon. Gentleman has any suggestion in his mind I shall be very glad to consider it.

    AGED INSURED PERSONS.
    Mr. G. LOCKER-LAMPSONasked the Financial Secretary to the Treasury whether persons retiring from their employment on Pension after the age of sixty-five, after contributing regularly for twenty years, would be entitled, under the arrear regulations, to over twelve months'
    584
    more insurance free; and, if so, seeing that it is impossible for societies at once to decide that such persons have permanently ceased to be employed, as they may do some little work at any time, he will take steps to secure that such persons shall receive sick or disablement benefits if their societies refuse to give them benefits?
    Mr. MASTERMAN: I am advised that if persons retiring from their original employment on pension intend to seek other employment, they would be entitled to continue to be employed contributors. If, in fact, they remain unemployed beyond twelve months, they can continue as employed contributors if their society is satisfied that their unemployment is due to inability to obtain employment, and is not due to their ceasing permanently to be employed. In the meantime their benefits would be subject to the provisions of Section 10 of the Act as to arrears, but no arrears accrue in respect of employed contributors during the first year of the Act's operation, and they would in no case be completely suspended from all benefits for the year in question. I assume that the hon. Member refers to twenty years' contributions in respect of the pensions and not under the Act, as in the latter case the question would not become a practical one till 1932, that is subsequent to the extension of benefits which will follow the redemption of the reserve value.

    MEDICAL INSTITUTES.
    Mr. WORTHINGTON-EVANSasked the Secretary to the Treasury whether insurance committees have power to allocate members who have not selected a doctor to medical institutes; and whether such allocation is being made by the Wolverhampton Insurance Committee with the consent of the Insurance Commissioners?
    Mr. MASTERMAN: The answer to the first part of the question is in the negative, and no such proposals have been submitted to the Commissioners by the Wolverhampton Insurance Committee.
    Mr. WORTHINGTON-EVANSasked whether payments have been withheld from medical institutes for medical benefit till recently; whether only 1s. 3d. per head is being paid for the quarter as against 1s. 9d. to the committees for the panel doctors; whether many unnecessary forms have had to be signed by the patients at

    585
    the institutes; and for what reason these difficulties are put in the way of the institutes?
    Mr. MASTERMAN: Payments have been made in all cases in which the institute has been able to give the insurance committee and the Commissioners a reasonable assurance that it will be able to fulfil the conditions of medical benefit. The amount payable per member is not necessarily 1s. 9d. per quarter, but such sum, not exceeding 1s. 9d. per quarter, as is actually expended in providing medical attendance and treatment, and the amount of the advance payments must be limited accordingly pending evidence as to the expenses actually incurred. Where there is satisfactory evidence that more than 1s. 3d. has been expended, more than 1s. 3d. has been paid. The answer to the third part of the question is in the negative, and the fourth part does not arise.
    Mr. WING: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that these medical institutions are being bludgeoned out of existence by the regulations of the Insurance Commissions, and that when the Insurance Bill was passing through this House the Home Secretary promised equal treatment for medical institutions as for doctors on the panel which is not given at present?
    Mr. MASTERMAN: I think if the hon. Gentleman looks into the matter he will see that that pledge has been fully carried out and that medical institutes are receiving for medical attention and treatment to insured persons exactly the same amount as doctors on the panels.

    SOLDIERS CARDS.
    Mr. WORTHINGTON-EVANSasked the Secretary to the Treasury whether he is aware that the delay in returning to the societies soldiers' cards in Class B is preventing them from completing their accounts; and whether it is possible to return immediately all the cards for the first quarter and expedite the return of the cards for the second quarter?
    Mr. MASTERMAN: A large number of soldiers' cards have been received by the Commissioners, chiefly from foreign stations. Where sufficient information is given on the card to indicate the society to which the soldier belongs, the card is sent to the society. All such cards for the first quarter and most of those for the second quarter have already been disposed of. The Commissioners have also
    586
    received a large number of cards for the first quarter and a smaller number for the second quarter not bearing the name of any society. There is reason to believe that many of these cards were surrendered by men who have subsequently joined societies within the prescribed time, which, for men serving abroad on 15th December, does not expire until 30th June next. A circular was therefore issued in November, 1912, inviting societies to apply for any soldiers' cards wanted by them which have been forwarded to the Corn-mission. The cards so applied for are being disposed of as applications are received. I am considering what further steps can be taken to ascertain which of these cards belong to soldiers who have joined societies, and to dispose of them accordingly.
    Mr. WORTHINGTON-EVANS: Can the right hon. Gentleman say what will happen if the stamps on the cards are not paid up by the societies?
    Mr. MASTERMAN: I should like to have notice of that question.

    SURPLUS MEDICAL FUNDS.
    Mr. F. HALLasked the Secretary to the Treasury whether any proposal has been put forward by insurance committees to distribute among doctors on the panels, for which such committees are responsible, the surplus funds for medical services; if such a course would be in compliance with the National Insurance Act or regulations made thereunder; if he can state the present total amount of such surpluses; and whether any proportion represents the contributions in respect of persons who have not chosen a panel doctor although they may have required medical attendance since booming contributors?
    Mr. MASTERMAN: The hon. Gentleman is under a misapprehension. There is no surplus in the fund for medical benefit. The agreements entered into by the doctors on the panel of every insurance committee provide that the whole of the funds available for the medical treatment of insured persons under the arrangements made by the insurance committee shall be divided among the doctors who have entered into such agreements.
    Mr. WORTHINGTON-EVANS: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there is said to be a sum of £30,000 or over unclaimed to the credit of the London Insurance Committee? What is going to be done with it?
    Mr. MASTERMAN: If it is stated, it must be a considerable misstatement. No money can be unclaimed, because all the money has to go to the doctors on the panel.

    Site Value.
    Mr. CHARLES ROBERTSasked the Secretary to the Treasury, whether, when substituted site value is asked for under Section 2 (3) of the Finance (1909–10) Act, 1910, the Inland Revenue, in all cases where a number of claims are involved, can arrange for the inspection of the deeds at the office or place of business of the person who makes the claim, instead of requiring that the deeds of the property should be carried about for inspection at the local district valuation offices of the Inland Revenue?
    Mr. MASTERMAN: While every endeavour is made to meet the convenience of the public in the production of deeds, I regret that it is not possible to make a general arrangement of the nature indicated by the hon. Member.

    British Armament Companies.
    Mr. KINGasked the Prime Minister whether he is aware that British armament companies doing work on contract for the Government have a total share capital of 31½ millions, and on more than half their share capital paid dividends of not less than 10 per cent.; that these companies have in several cases established works abroad where armaments are made for foreign Powers, and that many ships of war and armaments are made in this country for other countries that may become hostile to Great Britain; and whether, having regard to the financial interest which these companies have in making foreign Powers a more formidable menace, in certain events, to our national safety, he will institute an inquiry into the undertakings of these armament companies in order to determine whether the present system of contracting with them is in the national interest?
    The PRIME MINISTER: I am unable to verify the figures given in the first part of the question, in the absence of a list of the companies which my hon. Friend has included, but I dare say they may be accurate. I know of no sufficient reason for instituting such an inquiry as my hon. Friend suggests.
    Mr. KING: Has the right hon. Gentleman been noticing certain revelations
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    which have been made during his absence abroad, and, if not, will he take an early opportunity of inquiring into this matter in the light of the Press disclosures?
    The PRIME MINISTER: I do not know at all what revelations the hon. Member refers to.

    Navy Oil Contracts.
    Mr. GEORGE TERRELLasked whether the right hon. Gentleman has been informed by any past or present Members of the Government, and, if any, which, that they are or have been directly or indirectly interested in any oil companies or concerns which hold or have tendered for contracts for the supply of oil for the Navy?
    The PRIME MINISTER: It is no part of my duty to inform myself, or of the duty of my colleagues to inform me, of the private investments of Members of the Government. It is the duty of every Minister who has to advise or take action at any stage in regard to a contract affecting the public service, if he has any pecuniary interest direct or indirect in its subject matter, to disclose the fact spontaneously and at once. I have no reason to doubt that this duty has been and will be adequately discharged.

    London University (Bloomsbury Site).
    Mr. MacCALLUM SCOTTasked whether in view of the Report of the Royal Commission appointed to inquire into the scheme of London University, he is now in a position to state what effect, if any, will be given to the proposal to acquire for the purposes of a new building the site in Bloomsbury in possession of the Duke of Bedford for which a sum of £375,000 has been asked?
    The PRIME MINISTER: As I stated in reply to questions on the 24th July and the 19th November last, this is a matter as to which neither I nor the Government have any information.

    Right of Way Bill.
    Sir WILLIAM BYLESasked whether the right hon. Gentleman can see his way to grant facilities for the Right of Way Bill which has come down from the House of Lords and has more than once had the approval of this House; and if he will consider whether the Government could now take over the work of protecting the interests and property of the public, which

    589
    has been voluntarily done for nearly fifty years by the Commons and Footpaths Preservation Society?
    Sir W. BYLES: Before the right hon. Gentleman answers my question may I explain that a mistake has been made in my question? The Right of Way Bill has not come down from the House of Lords this Session, but in a previous Session. Perhaps the Prime Minister will answer the second part of my question?
    The PRIME MINISTER: The Government are favourably disposed towards this Bill and will endeavour to help its passage if it has the general consent of the House. The suggestion made in the latter part of the question will be considered.

    Government Bills.
    Mr. GEORGE TERRELLasked the Prime Minister whether, in connection with the Committee stage of the Government of Ireland Bill, the Government propose to allow the vote of the Committee to be taken on Amendments which, if carried, may limit or alter the operation of the Bill, or whether the Committee stage is for all practical purposes to be abandoned, and Members are not to have the opportunity of giving effect to changes of opinion which may have taken place since the Bill was last before the House?
    Mr. CASSELasked whether, in view of the proposal to take the Second Readings of the Government of Ireland Bill, the Established Church (Wales) Bill, and the Temperance (Scotland) Bill successively without interruption because of the Committee stages of those Bills, the Government have now decided to give a substantial Committee stage to any of these Bills?
    The PRIME MINISTER: I must refer the hon. Members to what I said on the 7th ultimo, when the present intentions of the Government with regard to this stage of the Bill were clearly stated.
    Mr. G. TERRELL: Will the Prime Minister state definitely what his intentions are in regard to the Committee stages?
    The PRIME MINISTER: I have stated them quite definitely.

    National Defences.
    Mr. HUNTasked the Prime Minister whether, in view of the fact that the
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    question of invasion is now under investigation by a Sub-committee of the Committee of Imperial Defence, he can see his way to preventing Members of the Government from prejudicing the question by making statements to the effect that the invasion of this country was an inconceivable possibility?
    The PRIME MINISTER: I am not aware of any such statements.
    Mr. HUNT: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the Colonial Secretary, in a speech he made on 3rd May, said that the invasion of this country was an inconceivable possibility, and, if he has not seen it, may I have the honour of sending it to the right hon. Gentleman, and may I be allowed to put my question down again when he has seen it?
    The PRIME MINISTER: Yes, I shall be glad if the hon. Gentleman will furnish me with it.

    Government of Ireland. Bill.
    Mr. HUNTasked whether the right hon. Gentleman's attention has been called to the fact that, if the Government of Ireland Bill is forced into law without the people being given a chance of deciding whether they are in favour of it or not, it will mean not only civil war in. Ireland, but also the open hostility of many British officers and of men of all classes in this country; and can he say what he proposes to do to avert so serious a calamity and the consequent dangers of attack from abroad?
    The PRIME MINISTER: This question is based on hypotheses which the hon. Member cannot expect me to accept or within the limits of an answer to discuss.
    Mr. HUNT: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he is still certain of that full support of the people of the United Kingdom, without which he gave us to understand that no such legislation could pass?
    The PRIME MINISTER: I have no reason to express any doubt as to any opinion I have already given.
    Mr. BONAR LAW: Is the right hon. Gentleman of opinion that by-elections form no guide as to the opinion of the country?
    The PRIME MINISTER: I am talking about the Government of Ireland Bill, to

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    which, so far as I know—I speak after looking at these things from a distance—no attention has been given at recent by-elections.
    Mr. G. LOCKER-LAMPSONasked whether the right hon. Gentleman will publish a financial memorandum, on the lines of that issued last year, to accompany the Government of Ireland Bill, so as to show the financial arrangements of the Bill on the basis of the Estimates of the present year?
    The PRIME MINISTER: A memorandum based on the approximate figures for 1912–13 was circulated this morning, Cd. 6844, but I will consider whether the further publication desired by the hon. Member would be useful.

    Empire Day.
    Mr. HUNTasked whether the right hon. Gentleman's attention has been called to the general observance of Empire Day in this country and in other parts of the Empire; whether His Majesty's Ministers have now obtained information of the reasons for celebrating Empire Day; and whether in future he can say if the Government will recognise it officially?
    The PRIME MINISTER: I have nothing to add to the replies which, I gave on this subject on 1st May and 8th May last.
    Mr. HUNT: Is it not a fact that Empire Day is officially recognised in the great Dominions of the Crown and yet is not recognised in this country?
    The PRIME MINISTER: On the whole it has been the opinion of successive Governments in this country that the most convenient day for these kind of celebrations is the anniversary of the King's birthday.

    Great Britain and Germany.
    Mr. KINGasked the Prime Minister whether he is aware that allegations have been made, both in Germany and this country, that certain commercial companies and certain individuals connected with them, including certain Members of this House, have lent themselves to spreading alarmist and false information about armaments with the aim of obtaining lucrative business; and what action he proposes to take?
    Mr. JOYNSON-HICKS: On a point of Order. May I ask you, Sir, whether an hon. Member is entitled to put down a question in this House seriously reflecting, by implication, upon the honour of some of its Members without at least giving the names of those Members?
    Mr. SPEAKER: I have not the slightest idea to what this refers.
    Mr. JOYNSON-HICKS: Nor have I, Mr. Speaker.
    The PRIME MINISTER: We have nothing to do with what takes place in regard to these matters in Germany. So far as this country is concerned, I am not aware of any allegations which call for any inquiry.

    Civil Service Appointments.
    Mr. F. HALLasked the Prime Minister if he will consider the advisability of providing that no person who is related, directly or indirectly, to a Member of either House of Parliament shall be eligible for appointment in the Civil Service except as the result of competitive examination?
    The PRIME MINISTER: I am not prepared to make any such rule. In the case of all appointments the public interest is the governing consideration.
    Mr. SWIFT MacNEILL: Could the right hon. Gentleman kindly say whether the test of a rigorous competitive examination was applied to the Prime Ministerial relatives who packed the late Cabinet?
    The PRIME MINISTER: I do not wish to go into that; but to apply the test of a competitive examination rigorously and universally would be to exclude from the public service many of its most eminent members.
    Mr. SWIFT MacNEILL: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the late Cabinet was as full of relatives as Noah's Ark itself?

    Education Statistics (England and Wales).
    Mr. KINGasked the Financial Secretary to the Treasury whether he can explain the delay in printing and circulating the Return on Education (England and Wales) Statistics, laid upon the Table of the House on 6th May and not yet circulated?
    The PRESIDENT of the BOARD of EDUCATION (Mr. J. A. Pease): The Return was published on Saturday. The printing and necessary checking of the proof of a Return of this kind takes some time.
    Mr. KING: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that twenty-five days were occupied in printing and correcting this very short Return?

    Road Board (Tar-Spraying).
    Major M'CALMONTasked whether a Road Board Grant, applied for by the Larne Urban District Council through the Antrim County Council in January, 1912, for the purpose of tar-spraying work for the 1912 season, was not approved until November; whether any reply has yet been sent to the application of this council made in November last for a Grant towards a new road to relieve summer congestion and lessen danger; if so, on what date and to what effect; and whether these applications can be more expeditiously dealt with?
    Mr. MASTERMAN: No such application was received by the Road Board in January, 1912. The Board received from the Antrim County Council on the 19th September, 1912, an application for a Grant towards several works in the county which included expenditures on surface tarring in Larne. The Board required additional information to enable them to deal with the application. This was received on 31st October 1912, and a Grant was made to the county council on the 16th November, 1912. No application has been received on behalf of the Lame Urban District Council for a Grant towards "a new road to relieve summer congestion and lessen danger," but on the 12th November last inquiries were made by the Larne Urban District Council as to the procedure for making such an application. These inquiries were replied to on the 14th November last and since then no further communication has been received by the Board.

    Poor Law Relief (Eastern District).
    Mr. W. THORNEasked the President of the Local Government Board whether he has noticed that the table sent by the Poor Law inspector, Mr. G. Harvey, to the unions of the Eastern district only gave the cost of outdoor relief and indoor maintenance in those unions; whether he Will ask Mr. Harvey to supplement this by
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    giving either the cost of the items of indoor relief not included in indoor maintenance or the total cost of poor relief; whether other inspectors have from time to time given similar imperfect statistics; whether this has frequently led to the cost of in-maintenance being quoted, even by experienced persons, as the cost of indoor relief; and whether he will arrange that in future the inspectors shall either give the full cost of indoor relief or the total cost of relief, or else publish no more tables at the public expense?
    The PRESIDENT of the LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. Burns): The Returns to which my hon. Friend refers are Returns which the inspector has circulated for many years among the unions within his district. Their object is to enable certain statistical items relating to the relief of the poor to be compared and contrasted. I understand they have been found useful for this purpose.

    Lewisham Infirmary (Medical Superintendent).
    Mr. W. THORNEasked whether Dr. Toogood is a full-time officer of the Lewisham guardians as medical superintendent of the Lewisham infirmary; if the doctor in question is employed by an insurance company to examine workpeople in connection with cases under the Workmen's Compensation Act, and has an office in the borough of West Ham; and whether the Local Government Board sanction the practice of full-time medical officers devoting the Sabbath to business for insurance companies?
    Mr. BURNS: According to my information Dr. Toogood is not required to devote his whole time to his duties under the board of guardians.

ORDERS OF THE DAY.
  NEW MEMBER SWORN.
  Collingwood George Clements Hamilton, Esquire, for the County of Chester (Altrincham Division).
BILL PRESENTED.
  CRIMINAL APPEAL ACT (1907) AMENDMENT BILL.
  "To amend the Criminal Appeal Act, 1907." Presented by Sir Davin BRYNMOR JONES; supported by Sir Alfred Cripps, Sir Frederick Low, Mr. Fenwick, Mr. Hume-Williams, Mr. Pollock, Mr. Mooney, and Mr. Edgar Jones; to be read a second time upon Friday, 13th June, and to be printed. [Bill 187.]

FINANCE BILL.
Order for Second Reading read.
Mr. CASSEL: May I ask your ruling on a question, of which I have given notice, as to the title of this Bill, which is in a very unusual form? The question which arises is whether the title, as drawn, will preclude hon. Members from moving Amendments on the general provisions of the Income Tax Clause in Committee on this Bill. The words which have given rise to some misapprehension on that point are these:—
"To apply with respect to Income Tax (including Super-tax) and the annual value of property the like provisions as were applied in the last preceding year."
These words are not, I think, in the title of any Finance Bill hitherto passed, not even in the days when the Income Tax was imposed alone in a single Act. The Income Tax Act of 1860, which continued the provisions of previous Acts with regard to Income Tax, had as its title—
"An Act for granting to His Majesty Duties on Profits arising from Property, Professions, Trades, and Offices."
I wish to ask if it would be out of order, in a Bill with a title such as this one has, to move such an Amendment, for instance, as that a husband shall not be liable for his wife's Income Tax? If you rule that the title would not preclude that, or similar Amendments being made in Committee, I shall be satisfied so far as the point I am raising is concerned.
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But if the title does preclude such Amendments, then it raises a serious question with regard to the rights and privileges of Members of this house. What would the position then be? It would be that by merely changing the form of the title of a Bill the Government could come forward in this House and propose to impose taxes on the subject, and at the same time deprive not only the Opposition, but the whole House of Commons of the right of getting amended any hardship which the course of administration of the tax in previous years has revealed. It would be in a position to come forward and say, "We are going to impose Income Tax, but the House of Commons shall have no right to say that any hardship that may have been found to exist in a previous year shall be altered in any way whatever." That would be a constitutional change of the gravest importance, and one with reference to which we ask your protection. I moved the Amendment to which I have referred, by way of example, on the Financial Resolution, and you then ruled—and I bowed to your ruling—that the proper time to move it was on the Committee stage—which I take to be the Committee stage of Bill on which the Resolution was founded. After that ruling the Government proceeded to draw the title to the Bill in such a way as to make it impossible for me on the Committee stage to move that Amendment. In these circumstances I look to you, Sir, far protection, and to secure for me the opportunity to move the Amendment which, according to your ruling, I moved at a stage which was not the proper one. If I had had the chance of moving it, then, and it had been carried, the Government could not have drawn the title in the form in which they have now drawn it. I may be told that this must be done upon the Revenue Bill, but with reference to that I submit to you that if that is to be the guide for this year and future years, the subject ought not to be driven to some Other Bill than the Bill which imposes the tax. What guarantee have we that the Revenue Bill will be passed? It is possible that the present Government may not be in office. Even if it is passed, it would be passed at a date later than the date upon which the Finance Bill would be passed, so that there would be a period of time during which the subject would be subjected to the tax and still subject to the very hardship which it was the object of my Amendment to remove. That period of hardship at all events would intervene.

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Moreover, the Revenue Bill could not mend it, for this Bill is for the particular year in question, and would have already imposed the tax, and the Revenue Bill would only take effect with regard to future years. In any case I submit that there is no certainty about the Revenue Bill, and that the subject ought to have the right of having grievances rectified by the same Act which imposes the tax. In these circumstances, I ask you to call upon the Government, if the effect of the title is what I suggest it to be, to withdraw this Bill, and to introduce a Bill in proper constitutional form.
Mr. SPEAKER: I think the hon. and learned Member attaches too much importance to the title of the Bill. The title is only a summary of the contents. The valid and enacting words are those contained in the different Clauses of the Bill. The hon. Member is entitled under the Standing Orders to move any Amendments which are relevant to the contents of the Bill. I will read the Standing Order; it is No. 34:—
"It shall be an Instruction to all Committees of the Whole House to which Bills may be committed, that they have power to make such Amendments therein as they shall think fit, provided they be relevant to the subject-matter of the Bill."
If, therefore, the hon. Member's Amendments are relevant to the subject-matter of the Bill as contained in Clauses 1, 2, and 3, then he will be entitled to move them. If they are not relevant, he will not be permitted to move them. The Standing Order goes on to say:—
"But that if any such Amendments shall not be within the title of the Bill they do amend the title accordingly, and do report the same specially to the House."
So that if the hon. and learned Member can persuade the Chairman of Ways and Means that his Amendments are relevant to the subject-matter of the Bill, and if he can persuade the Committee to accept them, then he can amend the title. I am afraid that I cannot give him any further assistance in that. I do not think I ought to take upon myself a duty which is by custom and authority placed upon the Chairman of Ways and Means, namely, to decide what Amendments are relevant and what Amendments are not relevant to the subject-matter of the Bill.
Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: In order that I may be quite clear as to the scope of your ruling, Sir, am I right in understanding you to decide that if an Amendment be relevant to the Clauses of the Bill, it is not out of order merely because it goes beyond the scope of the title?
Mr. SPEAKER: That is so. I think that follows from the Standing Order. If the Amendment is relevant and the House accept it, then it is open to the Committee and an Instruction to the Committee, that they shall make the title of the Bill such as be a summary of the Bill as it finally goes through Committee.
Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."—[Mr. Lloyd George.]
Mr. HEWINS: I have no intention of raising large questions of general principle as regards the general policy of the Government, for very good reasons. In the first place, I understand from the discussion in the House, to which I have listened, that the minds of the Government are absolutely closed as regards the fiscal policy of the country, that they are completely satisfied with the unfair combination of indirect and direct taxation we have at the present time, and that they think the fiscal system we now have, including the preposterous rates of duties in force to-day, represents the final goal of economic development. Perhaps in the future the Chancellor of the Exchequer may suggest some fresh developments in land taxation or other forms of taxation, but I take it that there is no intention to vary the principle of the fiscal system we have in operation at the present moment under his guidance. In the second place, I do not raise these large questions because the Government have themselves—I suppose in the heat and strength of the convictions they hold—placed almost insuperable difficulties in the way of any change for the benefit of the great mass of the people to be undertaken by themselves. Under the Amendment they accepted upon the Provisional Collection of Taxes Bill with regard to indirect duties, I imagine it would be extremely difficult for them to rearrange the taxation, for the simple reason that they could not accept the large views of policy we entertain upon this side of the House. Since they came in they have, on several occasions, hampered the fiscal autonomy of

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this country. The practice the Government introduced of not consulting the House at all with regard to the Anglo-Japanese Treaty was such that it would be extremely difficult for them to add to the duties on certain imported articles. That being so, we must take this Finance Bill as it is, with all its imperfections, and I am going to confine my observations to trying to get from the Chancellor of the Exchequer some exposition of the reasons by which he justifies the taxation on the great masses of the people. In passing, I should like to make one very humble suggestion. In view of the constitutional legislation that has been forced upon the country by the Government, is it not time that we abandoned some of the archaic phrases in the Finance Bill? For instance, the Preamble says:—
"We…have freely and voluntarily resolved to give the grant unto Your Majesty the several duties hereinafter mentioned."
4.0 P.M.
It is not a question of our giving or granting our own property, but the property of other people, who are not represented at all in either House. I take another case. "This is to be enacted by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal." The Government does not propose to ask the consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal. It is not necessary. It is a mere archaic survival. Why does not the Chancellor of the Exchequer take that phrase out altogether? He is very fond of facing facts. Let him face this fact.
I come now to the actual provisions of the Bill. Clause I imposes the Tea Duty. Why is the Chancellor of the Exchequer so enamoured of the Tea Duty? I remember reading a great speech by an American statesman delivered some years ago in which he contrasted in eloquent language the method adopted by most countries in the arrangement of the duties they put on with the method adopted by this country. He imagined a Finance Committee sitting, and considering what duties they would put on, and the article he took for special illustration was this article of tea. It is perfectly certain that if you put a duty on tea the people who will pay it are the working classes. I do not wish to raise these large questions of general policy. I only give that as an illustration. First of all, the rate of duty is preposterously high. Every time a
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housewife purchases a pound of tea she hands over 5d. on the counter to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Chancellor of the Exchequer expresses great sympathy with the poor. That is a very large sum. They cannot afford it. Moreover, that 5d. is bound to react upon every other trade in the country, because it restricts the demand of the working classes for a large number of other articles. The payment of large Tea Duties like that is not Free Trade. Duties of that kind were originally suggested by Free Trade writers because it was thought: proper that the consuming classes should pay a certain amount, upon their luxuries. Tea is no longer a luxury.
I take another aspect of this question, which really does not raise any great controversial question. The duties on articles which the working classes are bound to pay afford a basis for all large statesmanlike schemes in regard to Empire matters. I should like to know what possible economic objection the Chancellor of the Exchequer can have towards reducing taxation by exempting these goods front taxation. It is purely a domestic question so far as the Empire is concerned. In all our treaty relations these questions of the relations of our Dominions with other countries are regarded as internal questions. When you can confer a benefit on the great consuming classes of the country by exemption from taxation this particular article, why on earth do you not do it? What is the economic objection? I have had occasion at different times to go into the views of economists, but I cannot recall any passage or any principles which stand in the way of the adoption of this perfectly practical proposal. I suggest that the Chancellor of the Exchequer is not acting up to what I may call Liberal records. The Liberal record is certainly in favour of reducing the burden of taxation on the necessities of life. Why does he not do it in regard to tea? If he cannot reduce the Tea Duty, why does he not look back on the old experiment we had in English legislation when we graduated it? I am not able to express an opinion right off as to how far any method of graduation of that kind might be possible, but still we have had graduation, and I should like the right hon. Gentleman to consider how far it will be Possible, under modern conditions, to give relief to the poorest classes by graduating the duties. I do not wish to be dogmatic about it or to adopt a controversial tone. I merely

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wish to put before the Chancellor of the Exchequer how far, even from their point of view, without seriously modifying the general fiscal system, they can approach these great problems which affect the working classes, which affect Imperial problems, and which we certainly wish to see solved in some way or another. So far as I know, the Free Trade argument would be wholly in favour of doing something to the Tea Duty to remove existing difficulties, but I am persuaded of this, that if you search right through the writings of great economists, who really supply the basis of the argument of the Free Trade movement, they would condemn our existing food taxes almost unanimously. The fact is that these great Free Trade economists were not academic. They were perfectly willing to look at things in a practical way. There is one principle which is closely bound up with the theory, that you should not burden the necessaries of life of the working classes of this kind where it is perfectly certain that you will bring great hardship upon the people concerned.
Then I come to direct taxes. I do not know what the result of the Chancellor's Land Inquiry may be, but we also on this side of the House have had occasion to look very carefully into the existing land system and our experience undoubtedly is that the present system of direct taxes as we have it now—I am not talking about statistics, but from the evidence we can collect by talking to people—is helping to destroy one class of the community who we very particularly wish to retain. Let the Chancellor of the Exchequer work his sweet will in regard to the great financial millionaires. Let him concentrate all the eloquence at his command on the virtues or vices, whichever way he regards them, of the great financial millionaires. I want to know what is his quarrel with the great middle class. Why is he adopting a system of direct taxes which is steadily carrying forward the process of elimination of the very class we want to keep in the country? I should have thought if there was one thing one could complain of above all others in the country districts it is the way in which during the Free Trade era, certainly during the last sixty years, more or less, the smaller class of landed proprietors has gradually diminished. I have had to live a good deal in country districts, and there has been a marvellous change in my time, and this steady de-
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velopment of direct taxation of the kind the Chancellor of the Exchequer has made himself responsible for is putting no obstacle whatever in the way of millionaires, but is steadily eliminating a class of the community which has done useful work, which we require in the community, and which supports every good work. Could he not see his way to some modification of the system of direct taxes which would give distinct encouragement to the agricultural classes of the community in particular? Right through this period which we are reviewing, in dealing with this question, this country has become steadily more and more dependent upon outside sources of supply. About sixty years ago we supported something like 90. per cent. of the population. About the year this Government came into power the proportion was something like 10 percent., and in spite of the fact that particular classes in rural districts have undoubtedly made a certain amount of money, that process has steadily gone forward since the Government came into power, and we support a smaller proportion by home produce now than when the. Government came in.
Quite apart from any general abstract views we may have upon agriculture, I suggest to the Chancellor of the Exchequer that that is an appalling situation in the heart of the Empire. Even if we put a penalty upon inefficiency I would consider that, but if he could encourage, by some method, in his direct taxation system the brains and the enterprise of the middle classes in the rural districts to take up agriculture as a practical pursuit, working for all it was worth, he would confer a great benefit on the country. At present what he is doing is to eliminate the small man. During the tenure of office of the present Government I could give, if necessary, the names of a large number of such small men who have been eliminated by the impossibility of facing the financial burden. I cannot help thinking that that is contrary to the proper economy of the country. I should not be in favour of relieving extremely wealthy men from what they can afford to pay. They should pay in proportion to their ability, but I think there is something wrong in the series of figures which the Chancellor of the Exchequer is responsible for in regard to the finance of the country in the last seven years. The increase of revenue which we have had, and which he congratulates himself upon, has come

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almost entirely from direct taxes. With regard to the very classes we wish to retain, especially in the rural districts, those taxes have reached the point of confiscation. I do not suppose he would desire to eliminate that particular class. I do not agree with the present fiscal system and should like to substitute another for it. But while we have that system, at any rate let the Chancellor of the Exchequer follow it out. Let him, if I may say so, expand his genius, and not confine himself to the question of revenue. Let him think of these matters in the way of statesmanship, and try to use the existing system in such a way as to promote those socio-political purposes which I have indicated, and to strengthen the country, not by putting fresh burdens upon the people, but by exemption. The burdens are too high already, and we want them taken off instead of put on. I am sure, if the Chancellor of the Exchequer would only listen to my appeal and act in that spirit, then the constructive measures which his genius would invent would no doubt fall into line with the other measures which we have invariably criticised in the sense I have indicated.
Mr. DAVID MASON: The hon. Gentleman (Mr. Hewins) has made a very interesting speech. He told us that such taxes as the Tea Tax absorb a big payment by the working classes from which large sums of money arc drawn, and then in the latter part of his speech he told us that he was a supporter of another fiscal system. We on this side are at a loss to understand how, in view of the argument he has advanced with respect to money coming out of the pockets of the working classes, he can reconcile his advocacy of the other system with that, because we believe that those who advocate a change in our fiscal policy contend that the foreigner pays the taxes.
Mr. HEWINS: The Tea Duty.
Mr. D. MASON: We have always believed that hon. Members opposite advance the argument that fiscal duties are paid by the foreigner.[An HON. MEMBER: "Which duties?"] All fiscal dutes. [An HON. MEMBER: "No."] We have always contended that the consumer pays the duty. The hon. Member is quite right when he states that the duties take very large sums of money from the consumer. If he can show any duty which he would put on and which the foreigner would
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pay, we would be very glad to know of it. If he adheres to the contention which he stated in the early part of his speech that these duties take large sums of money from the working class, we cannot see how the putting on of fiscal duties would derive revenue from the foreigner. Of course, the consumer pays the duty, and the important admission which the hon. Gentleman has made is one which we have made a note of. I would like to refer to the general discussion and to the previous Debate. On that occasion I ventured to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he could show on what grounds, or state what authorities he could give, for his estimate that the prospective deficit of £7,500,000 would be made up by increased revenue in the current year, and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for East Worcestershire (Mr. Austen Chamberlain) agreed with that request on my part. I have seen nothing since to alter the opinion which I then ventured to express. It is true, of course, that since that discussion took place we have peace in the Balkan Peninsula. That point was referred to by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and he anticipated that when peace took place we might expect a great development in that part of the world. Although we rejoice that peace has been brought about, and although on both sides of the House we congratulate the Government, and especially the Foreign Secretary, for the distinguished part they have played in bringing about peace, still I, for my part, cannot quite see that the establishment of peace there justifies the right hon. Gentleman in his sanguine estimate that we are going to derive immediate benefit from that part of the world.
The CHANCELLOR of the EXCHEQUER (Mr. Lloyd George)indicated dissent.
Mr. D. MASON: I think if the right hon. Gentleman refers to the speech he will find that I am correct.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: On the contrary, my hon. Friend has misunderstood me. What I said was that undoubtedly the restoration of peace would go a very great length for the continuance of good trade, but I went further than that and said that we would not derive benefit front those quarters. I meant generally throughout the world.
Mr. D. MASON: I am glad of that interruption, because it still further confirms my contention that with the restoration of

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peace we might look with the right hon. Gentleman to a considerable drain upon the capital resources of the world to make good the tremendous loss and devastation which have taken place in those regions. I said then that if peace should occur we should have to look for added calls upon the capital resources of the world to make good the loss. The right hon. Gentleman has admitted that there has been considerable loss. It will mean a great drain upon the capital resources of the world. Many of those engaged in finance will confirm what I state when I say that we are suffering from great stringency in the money market. I then pointed out that that surely was a matter which should be considered by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in framing his Estimates, and that the probability was that loans would not be so easily subscribed this year as in former years. Many hon. Members will bear me out when I say that some of the recent loan issues have been failures in the sense that they have not been successfully floated on the money market. I think that all goes to show that the estimate that this £7,500,000 deficit will be made up in the current year is too sanguine. I should like the right hon. Gentleman to be good enough to give us some of the authorities to which he referred, because. I have been quite at a loss to find any authority to justify us in expecting such a prosperous time during the period we are now entering upon. Though I should be sorry to be correct in my estimate—I mean that I have no wish to be a prophet of evil—I must admit that T do not see what justification there is, with the evidence before us, for the estimate that you are going to get £7,500,000 by writing up Excise, Customs, and so forth, and arriving at the balance in that way.
We are at present, of course, engaged in a great and colossal trade. There is trade prosperity all over the world, and if that is to continue, and possibly expand, it will have to be financed. We are also aware that there has been an added call upon the resources of the world, not only by the restoration of peace and the making good of the devastation caused in the Balkan regions, but by the vast and increasing demand for loans. Capital in large amounts is now to be called for by Continental nations for the purposes of armaments. France proposes a loan of £40,000,000. Germany will follow suit, and Russia probably will come forward with increased demands. I do submit that
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these are considerations which we should bear in mind, because this is not merely a matter that affects our own national expenditure alone. We are affected, capital being a fluid matter, by the excessive demands on the part of Continental nations, and also by the excessive demands en the part of other countries. I should like to quote here what a distinguished financier says in regard to this very matter. M. Neymerck says:—
"On every side Governments are acting as if war would break out to-morrow among the Great Powers and plunge Europe in blood and fire.… The tremendous sacrifices which nations are imposing on themselves to increase their military forces in time of peace will long weigh, it is to be feared, on the money market; and a slackening up of economic activity may come on us without money rates going down much.'
I think that also confirms what I have stated. In view of those facts, we are not justified in estimating that the vast expansion of trade which has been going on during previous years is likely to continue. It is well-known that vast trade depends, like the wheels of industry, on the oil which lubricates it. This extensive trade demands the free flow of capital, and where will you find anyone who will state that there is a free flow of capital at present? On the contrary, there is great stringency of capital. That is not confined to this country. You find the same thing in France, Germany, and the United States. The other clay a leading railroad in America went into the hands of the receiver. So far as I know it was a good railway, but it had a large amount of short term notes falling due, and the bankers were unable to renew them. That is only perhaps a straw, but it shows how the wind is blowing. It is an indication that the high rates now ruling for money are having their effect. Not long ago a first-class Power had to pay 6½ per cent. for temporary accommodation. That is rather an indication which points that we should take warning from what happened.
Sir F. BANBURY: What Power?
Mr. D. MASON: It was Austria which, when borrowing for mobilisation, had to pay an amount equal to 6½ per cent. That shows how stringent capital is at the present time, and it surely should weigh with us. Having regard to that fact, we are not justified in assuming that the vast national revenue derived from expanding trade is likely to be carried on during this year. I hope, however, that this may be worthy of the consideration of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Govern-

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ment. I would like, if I may, at this stage to offer some remarks with regard to the position of the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. He enjoys a peculiar power at the present time. He has been successful in recreating the Concert of Europe. It is to the Concert of Europe, of course, that we must look for the cessation of what has been called this sterilising expenditure. It is only, I believe, through mutual reductions of armaments that we may hope for some cessation of this expenditure. I think the Chancellor of the Exchequer would go so far with me in this respect that, while not agreeing with my action in moving reductions, he would be happy to see reductions if there was no further necessity for the expenditure—if there was some mutual action taken by the great Powers of Europe to bring about some cessation in this really horrible expenditure. I do not suggest for a moment that we should abolish the British Navy or not have adequate defences, but we have to cut our coat according to our cloth, and we have to remember that this is an international matter. The right hon. Gentleman has a unique opportunity. He has, I believe, the confidence of the Concert of Europe, and he can express in council with the Concert of Europe the wish of this House and other Houses in France, Germany, and throughout the world. We have, I believe, already responded to the proposals of the United States to take certain steps before there could be any possibility of dispute, and this, I believe, would be also responded to by other countries. But we want more. We want some practical step taken by the responsible Government in conjunction with the other Powers. I, for one, believe that the right hon. Gentleman the Foreign Secretary has the ability and the power to take some action along these lines. Apart from that, I would impress on the House and the Chancellor of the Exchequer that it behoves us to have regard to our financial reserve as well as to our national defence. We should not jeopardise our Budget or the possibility of balancing our accounts by assuming a sanguine estimate of the position which I do not think the facts entitle us to take. Therefore I hope that the Chancellor of the Exchequer will give some consideration to these proposals, and perhaps something may be done along the lines which I have ventured to suggest by the Secretary for Foreign Affairs to bring
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about the happy consummation which we desire.
Mr. HENRY TERRELL: It is indeed somewhat remarkable, after all the Debates on the fiscal question in this House, that the hon. Member should have made the suggestion which he did as to the attitude on this side of the House in reference to the Tea Duty. If the hon. Member had taken the trouble to read the arguments of his opponents, he would see that no suggestion such as he indicated has ever been made. That is not remarkable when one remembers the confusion of ideas that prevails on the other side regarding the Tea Duty. In 1906, when the present Government came into office, the Tea Duty was 6d. per pound. In the first year they reduced it to 5d. In 1910 we, on this side, proposed a further reduction by d. We were met by the argument of the then Financial Secretary to the Treasury in these terms, to which I call the attention of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He said:—
"Unfortunately for the hon. Gentleman this Debate has taken place not for the first time in this House, and it has been agreed by every Chancellor of t he Exchequer that I can recall, and by every Government that I can remember, that it is not the slightest good from the point of view of the consumer to take a single penny off tea. If you take only a penny, off the whole of the profit goes not to the consumer, but either to tie purchaser or to the middleman who is dealing with the commodity."
That was in 1910. Soon after that the House will remember we had a General Election. Then for the, purposes of the General Election the Secretary to the Admiralty wrote a book, which, no doubt, the Chancellor of the Exchequer has read, "Tariff Reform for the Working Man," which was intended to give the working classes some idea of fiscal questions, especially Tariff Reform. Bearing in mind the argument of the Financial Secretary that a penny in the pound does not benefit the consumer at all, when addressing the working man for the purpose of an election, the Secretary to the Admiralty says at page 65 of this book:—
"What has been the policy of the Radical food taxers? They came into a financially embarrassed heritage in 1906. This notwithstanding in 1906–7 they reduced the duty on tea from 6d. to 5d. a 1b. That means a relief to the consumer year by year of £1,120,000."
When you can find the two right hon. Gentlemen opposite coming to such diametrically opposite conclusions, one saying in this House that the consumer does not get the benefit of a reduction of in the pound, and the other saying in the country, when wanting votes, that in the pound gives the consumer a benefit of £1,120,000

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a year, it is not surprising that the hon. Member for Coventry does not appreciate the incidence of taxation, as suggested on this side of the House.
I do not propose to say anything further in regard to tea, but I will ask the House to bear with me while I call attention to the position in regard to Income Tax. Income Tax depends on a number of Acts. The law on the subject, it is no exaggeration to say, is absolutely chaotic. There are between thirty and forty different Statutes to be consulted if you want to understand the law of Income Tax, and when you have consulted all these Statutes, I do not think that any man would get up and say that he understands really what the law is. When we remember that the principal Statutes are practically taken from a very old Statute which was framed at the time when the income was derived from comparatively few sources, and when the state of trade was very different to what it is to-day, it is not surprising that it has become difficult to apply such an ancient Act as that, over 100 years old, to the conditions prevailing to-day. To-day the incidence of the Income Tax bears very harshly upon those who ought to be treated gently by the Revenue, and allows to escape altogether many who derive considerable profits which ought to be taxed. I will take one instance of that. A man who derives his income from the exercise of his individual skill and talent has to pay Income Tax upon every bit of profit which he derives from the exercise of that skill and talent, whereas, a man whose income is not wholly derived from his own personal skill is able to establish a business and accumulate a considerable amount of the fruit of his labour, which is wholly free from Income Tax. Take as a concrete illustration the case of two men embarking in unlike businesses, one an artist whose income would be wholly derived from the exercise of his personal skill and the other a man in any business you please, say a solicitor.
The two men carry on their avocations equally successfully. Assume that they carry on those avocations for thirty years and make a considerable profit, say £3,000 or £4,000 a year. At the end of the thirty years the artist has paid Income Tax upon the whole fruit of his labour. Every bit of the fruit of his labour is represented by income and is taxed. The solicitor has in the establishment of his business capitalised a good deal of the fruit of his labour in the shape of goodwill of his business. The result
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is that when the artist has to give up practice of his art he has nothing left except the accumulations of his income which have paid Income Tax. The solicitor, on the other hand, can sell the goodwill of his business for three or four years' purchase, and in the case which I have put, in which there was an income of £3,000 or £4,000 a year, he can sell the goodwill for £10,000 or £12,000, and on that £12,000 which represents the accumulation or capitalisation of the fruit of his labour he has paid not a penny of tax. It cannot be right that the one man should pay income tax on every particle of the fruit of his labours and that the other man can capitalise a considerable part of it and not pay a farthing on it to the State. I can take a stronger case than that. We know very well that in the City of London there is a large number of people who do not carry on the business of underwriting, but who constantly underwrite certain blocks of shares which are issued. Sometimes these men make considerable profits. These profits do not come under Schedule D as to the profits of their business, as the underwriting is a casual venture on these issues from time to time, and consequently no Income Tax is paid on these profits, which do not come into account at all. [An HON. MEMBER: "Why not?"] It is because these men do not carry on the business of underwriting. If you look at the decisions, which are clear, you will see that unless you carry on the business of underwriter, any casual profit made by the casual dealing as an underwriter is not a profit which is taxable under Schedule D.
Take a case which is stronger still, the case of men who do not carry on the business of company promoters or financiers, who often carry on totally different businesses, but who get from time to time it may be a mining claim or a concession or some kind of patent, or something of that kind, for which they have paid £1,000 or £2,000. They place it in the hands of a company promoter. He promotes a company. They get back their £2,000 in cash and a large lot of shares, which they sell for a considerable amount. On all these profits they do not pay Income Tax, as they do not carry on the business of financiers, but they put the whole of it into their pockets. Is it fair that a man like the artist should have his whole income taxed, while others such as those whom I have described should be able to make considerable profit and escape all payment of Income Tax? Of course, the

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artist might underwrite, I agree, but if so, like every other person, he ought to pay Income Tax upon the profit which he obtained. Take another instance, which is a celebrated instance now—the Chancellor of the Exchequer will remember it. One gentleman made a considerable profit of £500 in three days by the permanent investment of nothing. There was no Income Tax upon that £500. He put the money in his pocket and did not pay any Increment Duty or any duty of any kind upon it. It was all profit which he put in his pocket and on which he paid nothing to the country. Surely it cannot be right that men should be able to make very large profits and escape all taxation in respect of them! If you want to increase the proceeds of such a tax the first thing to do would be to get in these profits and make them amenable to taxation, and not to let all these large sums go free of Income Tax, while taxing these other men on everything which they earn as a result of their labours.
I should like to know, if you take all the great fortunes which have been made in the floating of South African mines by the persons who have obtained concessions, or claims in South Africa, and who have made huge fortunes, whether they have been brought within the Income Tax. Those fortunes are accumulated profits. How much of those profits has been made liable to Income Tax? A very small fraction indeed. Yet a man has been able to make an enormous fortune by accumulating profits in this way, and, because he does not happen to carry on the business of or call himself a company promoter or financier, he has not paid a farthing of Income Tax on that fortune. I submit to the Chancellor of the Exchequer that this is one respect in which the law of Income Tax requires very great amendment. Men who make these fortunes ought to come under the law of Income Tax, while men who make their incomes by their skill ought to be treated more lightly in the matter of Income Tax than the men who simply make these great profits in connection with enterprises which, after all, are not of very great value to the State as a general rule. Let me pass to another branch of the law relating to Income Tax, and that is the methods of administration. I think the methods followed in the administration of the Income Tax require to be very materially amended in order to coincide with our ideas of justice. A man
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has to make his return to Income Tax in the ordinary form. There are Commissioners whose duty it is to examine the return and to assess the man. If the surveyor of taxes imagines that the man who has made the return has given one which is not accurate, it may be through ignorance or negligence, or any other reason, or even intentionally, what does he do? He simply goes to the assessors and gets them to make what is called an additional first assessment. They put in whatever they please. As a matter of common practice in those cases, when the surveyor suspects that a man has omitted some source of income from his returns, they put in a very big figure as an additional first assessment.
The result is that the man has to pay the tax on that large additional figure or he must appeal. If he appeals to the general Commissioners, what is his position? The general Commissioners are usually men in the same locality as the appellant—they are always men of the same locality except in the City of London; they are very often men who are engaged in a trade similar to that of the man who has been assessed. If the man wants to appeal against this additional assessment, he must either go to the general Commissioners or the Special Commissioners. If he goes to the general Commissioners, they are entitled, not directly—because the State does not give them any such power—but indirectly to compel a man to produce all his books relating to his business. There are cases and I can refer to instances—where men do not wish to expose their business affairs in all their details to the Commissioners or the surveyor. The man makes his return. They have put on a very large additional assessment. He submits to it, and pays it, although it is vastly excessive. Next year they increase it again, and then the man can submit no longer to the assessment, and he is compelled to appeal. He appeals to the Commissioners, who are entitled to investigate, and do investigate, his books and all his private dealings. His whole business is laid bare. Many men will pay a great deal rather than submit to an inquisitorial examination of their whole business, especially by men of their own locality, and in many cases by men carrying on the same trade. What seems to me a further iniquity in this matter is, that the surveyor is the person who opposes the appellant, and he is the person who complains of the insufficiency of the return made by the man. In 99 cases

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out of 100 the Commissioners who are the judges know little, or very little indeed, about Income Tax law; there are few people who know much about it.
The Commissioners are guided to a great extent by the surveyor. When they have heard the case, and heard the surveyor, the appellant, and all the witnesses, they retire to consider their decision, and the surveyor goes with them. When they are considering in private, under the Statute as it exists at present, the surveyor is entitled to go into the room with the assessors, and the arguments he uses there the appellant is unable to hear and therefore unable to answer. Nobody knows what they are. That, I submit, is most unfair, and is contrary to our sense of justice. First of all, the men who are judges may be opponents or competitors of the appellant, and they may be men carrying on their business in the same locality; yet he has to bare the whole of his business to the tribunal so constituted. They can indirectly compel him to produce all his books and all the details of his business, while the surveyor, his opponent in the litigation, can go into the private room with them when they retire to decide the appeal. There is another appeal. The man may, if he chooses, appeal to the Special Commissioners. The expense of an appeal to the Special Commissioners is very great. These Special Commissioners are after all simply the nominees of the Inland Revenue Department. They are men, I say at once, who desire to do justice; I do not say that they do not desire to do justice; but hon. Members can well understand that, being officers of the Inland Revenue Department and brought up and trained in that department, their sympathies, their feelings and their minds are all in favour of the department, and against the appellant. These are the persons who are to act as judges. They are not men trained as lawyers; they are not men who have had any experience in the conduct of this sort of questions; they simply go there as officials of the Inland Revenue to hear a case which involves questions of the utmost complexity and abstruse points of law. These gentlemen, having regard to the magnitude of the businesses they have got to deal with, are absolutely underpaid. Generally they receive very small salaries. When you consider the magnitude of the matters with which they have to deal, it will be seen that they are not fitted for the duties
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imposed upon them. They are not trained to the judicial office; they have not had experience of the administration of justice, yet they have to determine, and finally determine, the most important and complicated questions of law and of fact.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: May I ask the hon. and learned Gentleman what his suggestion would be?
Mr. TERRELL: My suggestion, in the first instance would be that this whole question of the Income Tax, the law relating to the Income Tax, and the administration of the Income Tax, should be overhauled by a Select Committtee, or, at any rate, by some competent body. Nowadays the Income Tax has become practically a permanent tax. Although, of course, it is an annual tax for constitutional purposes, yet it has, as we all know, become practically a permanent tax; and when you consider the enormous difficulties and complexities of legislation on the subject, and consider that the legislation was framed at a time when the present system of business was unknown, I submit that it is time the whole system was overhauled. The law should be simplified so that any man can understand it. A proper tribunal should be set up composed of men accustomed to deal with such questions as well as with questions of law. The person aggrieved should have a right of appeal to the ordinary Courts of Law, so that when he comes to pay an enormous sum, such as some men have to pay in the way of Income Tax, he may be able to have decided by the highest judicial tribunal in the land the amount which he has to pay and the income in respect of which he has to pay. I venture, respectfully, to suggest that that is what ought to be done when the opportunity arises. If a Select Committee were appointed to investigate this whole matter, I am perfectly certain that the result would be that you would be able to have a codification of the law, so that it could be put before the public-in a clear and simple manner. You would be able to establish a real and adequate tribunal for the purpose of considering and deciding all these great questions of Income Tax, and you would by that means, I am perfectly certain, very vastly increase the amount which is payable every year to Income Tax.
5.0 P.M.
Mr. EDWARD WOOD: My hon. and learned Friend has given us a very interesting speech in relation to the law of

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Income Tax which should hardly fail to impress the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the House. I do not intend to follow him along that path, and the fact that there are thirty Acts relating to Income Tax does not encourage one to do so. I rise for the purpose of calling the right hon. Gentleman's attention to a point which is a more narrow one, and it is one on which, when it was last discussed, the right hon. Gentleman said he hoped to make some definite statement. The Chancellor of the Exchequer will remember that in 1909 the question of the Income Tax in relation to agricultural land was discussed, and the right lion. Gentleman then stated that he was fully convinced of the injustice involved, and proceeded to make various suggestions for the amelioration of the injustice which were to be afterwards crystallised into law. The owners of agricultural land have, in the matter of Income Tax, a distinct grievance. They are assessed, it is true, with allowances and deductions upon income which passes through their hands only in the most formal manner, and is replaced to the benefit of the estate from which it is drawn. That is a fact which will not be challenged, and it was recognised as long ago as 1894 by the then Chancellor of the Exchequer (Sir William Harcourt) to the extent of giving some small rebate on condition that it was used for repairs and maintenance. When the grievance was put to the right hon. Gentleman he went so far, I think, as to say that he would be quite prepared, if possible, to examine the facts, to remove their case from Schedule A to Schedule D. I think that was the reply to a deputation from the Central Land Association. Continuing, he said that that was extremely difficult for various reasons. It would mean, he said, a considerable loss of revenue, and in the next place—
"It would involve examining the accounts of every estate in the Kingdom—it would practically involve an annual audit of every estate."
At the time I was not in the House, and I presume that that seemed a rather conclusive argument, but to those who have any experience of the manner in which the rebate is now given under Form 99 it is known that that almost involves an annual audit of all the estates which claim rebate. I hardly can see that any duty that would be involved in the transference would be much more complicated than
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that required Under the system by which the right hon. Gentleman has now been good enough to give rebate. He went on to say this, that it was not possible to make the transference to Schedule D:—
"But we propose that on a declaration of the landowner, accompanied by general figures, which can be examined by the Inland Revenue if they think it necessary in any given case, that he is spending more, a further deduction shall be made up to 25 per cent."
He added that the Government had set aside £500,000 for this purpose, and—
"If £500,000 is not altogether disposed of by this concession the Government will probably be in a position, at any rate next year, to increase the maximum. If there is any surplus we propose to increase the maximum of those who are spending more than 25 per cent."
In September, 1909, that statement was repeated and emphasised when the new Clause was discussed in the House in the following terms:—
"It must for the first year be experimental—next year we may have something to spare and we may increase the allowance, may be up to 30 per cent., if the £500,000 runs to that extent, to the improving landlord."
Surely out of that one or two points emerge with comparative clearness, and one is that £500,000 was to be set aside for this purpose. I know that the right hon. Gentleman quarrels with the words "set aside." I think we need have no quarrel with the words. Whatever words he used, it is clear he was prepared to pay claims up to the extent of £500,000.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: Hear, hear.
Mr. WOOD: This also emerges clearly, that if the whole of that £500,000 was not claimed in any one year the right hon. Gentleman pledged himself and his Government that they would in the following year extend the maximum allowance, always supposing that the £500,000 was not exceeded. It is a matter of great disappointment, I think, to all those who are interested in this question that the sums paid under the allowance the right hon. Gentleman gave, of an extra twelfth in the case of houses and an extra eighth in the case of land, have been up to the present rather small and comparatively trivial. The figures have been given before, and the fact remains that in each of the years for which we have figures there has been an enormous balance left unclaimed out of the £500,000 which the right hon. Gentleman says he was prepared to give. There are four or five reasons for that known to those who are in the least familiar with estate management, and the difficulties involved in the form of claims by which the rebate has to be obtained. In the first place, it is a matter of extreme difficulty

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for small owners who do not keep a large office or extremely accurately kept books to be able to comply with the provisions demanded in Form 99 with the exact information and vouchers and ability to show exactly where the expense has been incurred, in what corner of the estate. The man who has not up to the present time been in the habit of keeping what I might almost term scientific estate books will have great difficulty in filling that form. I think there is another reason, and that is that up to the present time a great number of landowners are unfamiliar with the mere fact that this rebate is obtainable. I think that is perfectly true.
The right hon. Gentleman is, I think, to blame, because during the last four years he has kept the landowners so busily employed in filling up Form IV. that they had not time to look around and see what the benefits were. There are, I venture to say, also a great many of the landowning classes of this country who have become rather suspicious of the right hon. Gentleman, that, like the men of Troy, they fear him even when he brings gifts. If the right hon. Gentleman, when he begins the land campaign in the course of the next month or two, would be good enough to preface all his remarks on public plat forms by saying that there is this rebate payable, I am sure he would be doing a good service to the cause he has at heart, and in the interests of land generally. The reason I ask the attention of the right hon. Gentleman to this subject at this moment is this. We have been told before that it was not possible to fulfil the pledge of extending the maximum allowance, although the £500,000 was not nearly claimed because, we were told, more claims might come in, and that the right hon. Gentleman did not yet know where he was, and that in short it was too soon to judge. The right hon. Gentleman, in August, 1912, stated however:—
"It is impossible for us to make any further statement at the present time. We shall be in a position to know by the time of the next financial statement what the claims will be."
The right hon. Gentleman can now, I presume, make a statement of some kind to show us where he stands with regard to this matter, because those claims have to be made within three years, and, I think I am right in saying, the three years during which the claims must be in are up by the present time. Therefore the right hon. Gentleman can, if he will, tell us how he stands at the end of the first triennial period. While I am on the question of three years I would like to make
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reference to a matter in connection with it. At the present time it is necessary in each return you make to fill up a rather complicated form, Schedule II. I should like to know whether in the case of an owner who makes his returns once in three years if it would be sufficient to fill up the names of each holding, etc., once instead of three times. I think that would be a practical saving, if the conditions arc the same. Assuming they were the same, I think it should be adequate to fill up the form once instead of having to write the same information three times. I would also like to ask is this system, after three or four years' working, a satisfactory one? I cannot myself think that any system is satisfactory under which you start by saying, "the extent of the proportion of your income on which we will give you rebate is unfixed, but what is fixed is the sum that we are prepared to devote to this purpose." Thus you never know what proportion you are going to get until the end of the three years. I cannot think that that is satisfactory either to the Treasury or the individuals concerned. I do not suppose the right hen. Gentleman will say, although I should be very pleased if he did, at the end of the three years to those who have claimed this rebate, "I have got something like a million pounds to spare for this matter, therefore if you can bring your expenditure up say, to 40 per cent. of your income from agricultural land, then you can have rebate of Income Tax as far as the million pounds goes all the way back for the three years." If the right hon. Gentleman is prepared to say he means that, then a large portion of my criticism will be misdirected, but I shall be surprised if he does. If he does not I cannot help feeling that the method itself is unsatisfactory. You would not dream, for example, of working your Poor Law relief upon a hypothetical notion of the number of people supposed in the year to claim relief. The whole thing would break down and would be absolutely unworkable. I do not think the system is any more satisfactory in this case to which I am referring than in that.
As the right hon. Gentleman invites suggestions, may I suggest that he should return to what is still with him a Utopian idea and transfer this class of property as it ought to be into Schedule D which, incidentally, would have the result, to which I know he aspires, of being able to discriminate with even greater accuracy

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between the good landlord who improves and the bad landlord who merely spends. Either do that or else arrive in your mind by calculations, which the right hon. Gentleman is in a better position to make than any of us, as to what is the utmost sum you are prepared to devote to it and then grant your exemption on the fullest and most generous terms you can on that basis. Either of those methods would get rid of what is a doubtful element at the present time. You are not now clear of the basis and you only know you cannot grant beyond a certain sum. You do not know how far that sum of money will take you. We hear a good deal at the moment about the various difficulties in which the countryside is involved, and we hear various remedies suggested for them. I would say this, in so far as housing, for example, in country districts is aggravated by old houses and cottages being allowed to fall either into disuse or not being repaired or replaced it is increased because agricultural landlords, who have no other means except their agricultural rents to spend upon what after all is an unremunerative undertaking, are at the same time charged Income Tax on money they never receive. I do not want to discourage the right hon. Gentleman from more drastic remedies, but I should be glad if he would at the same time consider this very simple remedy of relieving from Income Tax the money spent in one sense on solving or preventing the aggravation of the housing difficulty. If the right hon. Gentleman considers these points, he will see that I am not putting them forward simply in the interests of landlords, as some hon. Members opposite might think. The matter has a wider application than that; I really nut the suggestions forward as one who sees how the system works. Therefore, speaking on behalf of myself and many other hon. Members who are interested in the matter, I hope the right hon. Gentleman will be able to make a satisfactory statement in reply to the points I have raised.
Mr. WALTER REA: I wish to support the plea of the hon. and learned Member for Gloucester (Mr. H. Terrell) in favour of some inquiry into the actual incidence of the working of the Income Tax at the present time. I cannot quite agree with every word that fell from the hon. and learned Member, particularly when he dealt with the fiscal question, but no doubt there are
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some grievances which are felt by all parties in the State in regard to the administration of the Income Tax. So long as the Income Tax was supposed to be temporary and was small in amount, people put up with a great many of these difficulties and did not make much trouble about them; but now that it is perfectly well-known that the Income Tax is to remain as a permanent tax, and, as I hope, is to become rather altered in character, and heavier instead of lighter on a certain number of incomes, it is necessary that we should put our house in order. Some very great hardships occur. In particular I have had my attention called to the hardships which occur in connection with appeals to the income Tax Commissioners. It is a very great grievance when a local man has to appeal to his neighbours and disclose his income to those who may be his rivals in trade. I know of one case where a man had to appeal to the wholesale dealer who supplied him with goods and the local bank manager; and, as he was appealing with a view to showing how little business he was able to do, his credit was withdrawn by the wholesale trader, the bank manager in consequence refused him an overdraft, and the man's business was ruined. That cannot be the intention of the law. Like the hon. and learned Member opposite, I have no particular solution of the difficulty to put forward, but I have not the same fear that he has of the Special Commissioners, who, after all, although they may be underpaid as he suggests, are none the less skilled men and might be increased in number. I submit, however, that it is time that we should make some general survey of the question, and put the whole matter upon a footing on which it can be understood without reference to numerous Acts of Parliament which none of us can follow or understand.
A further grievance which might be inquired into is that of the trader who employs wasting assets. He may be the owner of a mill or of machinery or of a ship which depreciates in the course of time because it either wears out or becomes obsolete, and he has the greatest difficulty in persuading the Income Tax authorities that any reasonable depreciation ought to be allowed. There seems to be no general rule laid down to govern this matter. Perhaps, from the nature of the case, it is impossible that there should be. If that be so, it is all the more necessary that there should be sympathetic

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treatment by the authorities responsible for the collection of Income Tax, and that they should not set up a standard which leads the whole commercial community to believe that the Income Tax authorities are the enemy. When that occurs, there is always the risk that even the average honest business man may feel that he is acting meritoriously in doing the Income Tax authorities. I think that considerable ill-feeling and difficulty would be overcome without any great loss of revenue if the suggested inquiry tried to devise some means of solving the problems which face the officials who have to do with allowances in connection with wasting assets. A further point which might very well be referred to the suggested inquiry is whether it is not possible in sonic way to mitigate the admitted hardship suffered by those who pay Income Tax upon small unearned incomes—that is to say, such people as the widow who has a small sum left her with which she has to educate her children. As this may be considered a special subject of mine with which I have wearied the House before, I will not dwell upon it. I simply admit it as one of the many subjects which might very well be included in the terms of reference to the suggested Commission. I was glad that the Chancellor of the Exchequer turned a sympathetic ear to the suggestion, because this is not in the least a matter of party politics, but one in which any offer that he may make would be received with thankfulness in all quarters of the House. The hon. and learned Member for Gloucester suggested that there might be a possibility of increasing the Income Tax by taxing what are technically described as capital profits due to underwriting shares and so forth. That no doubt, is a very proper subject for inquiry, but I would warn the hon. and learned Member that there are two sides to that question. If you once begin taxing such increments of capital, you must at the same time be prepared to allow very large sums off the Income Tax for decrements of capital and for losses on investments, in connection with which no allowance is made at present. That, however, is more properly a matter for investigation by the suggested Committee than for discussion on the floor of the House. I heartily approve of the hon. and learned Member's suggestion that there should be an inquiry, and I hope that the Chancellor of the Exchequer will see his way to accede to his request.
Sir F. BANBURY: I am sorry the hon. and learned Member for Gloucester is not in his place, because while I agree with everything he said about the incidence of the Tea Duty and the apparent want of comprehension in the minds of hon. Members opposite as to the actual results of Tariff Reform, I cannot say that I agree with him in the majority of his remarks in reference to the Income Tax. My hon. and learned Friend seemed to consider it a very great hardship that a man is not able to sell the goodwill in connection with advantages with which he may be endowed by nature. But that is the fact with every personal business. If you happen to be endowed in a particular direction, and people come to you for advice, you cannot say, "I have sold my advice to someone else, and you had better go to them." That happens in a great number of businesses. On the other hand, a business like Maple's or Shoolbred's can be started and turned into a company, and a large sum realised for the goodwill. That is the fortune of war. The same thing applies to a barrister or arbitrator he cannot sell his business when he retires. But if I had been so fortunate as to be gifted with the peculiar faculties which would have made me either a great lawyer or a great artist, I should have been content to thank God that I had been given those faculties, and I should not have tried to extend the iniquities and the inquisitions of the Income Tax Acts to people who had not been so fortunately gifted, but who, by dint of hard work and much more unpleasant dealings, had managed to create a great business which they were able to sell and pass the proceeds on to their, children. The suggestion of the hon. and learned Member would increase the inquisitorial nature of the tax. Every time any person desired to retire from his business there would be a discussion as to how much of the goodwill arose from the fact that he had not spent all his income during the years he had been working, but had devoted it to the factory or business, and the question would have to be settled whether it was income or capital. I think myself that the Income Tax is a bad tax. Of course it is a tax of which we cannot get rid, but, at any rate, we should do our best to make it as easy as possible to collect, and in no way endeavour to put into the hands of the Commissioners the power to make further inquisitions. With regard to underwriting, I do not believe that the ordinary person in business does much of it. If he did, I think the net

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result would be loss, and therefore he would not be liable to Income Tax. That, at any rate, is my experience; the hon. and learned Member may have been more fortunate. I think the profits on underwriting are very much exaggerated, and that in many cases, especially in the last two or three years, the result has not been very satisfactory.
My hon. Friend (Mr. E. Wood) has made some interesting observations upon the offer made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer four or five years ago to owners of landed property in regard to the rebate of Income Tax. My hon. Friend said that a considerable number of people had not availed themselves of the offer because they were naturally suspicious of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He also said that many of the smaller landowners had not large estate offices, and therefore found it very difficult to give the figures required to obtain the rebate. I believe that that is the real reason. Suppose you are the owner of a small property of, say, two or three thousand acres, and you have not a regular estate office; perhaps you employ an agent who is also an agent for other people in the neighbourhood, and you keep a considerable part of the books yourself; it is very difficult to distinguish the exact amount which might be taken for repairs and that which might be taken as capital expenditure. In all probability you have have only a small estate staff. Some of the carpenters and masons will have been doing work in the house and work in the stables. It is very difficult to separate the work done for yourself and the work done purely and simply for the estate. I know an instance where there was undoubtedly a considerable sum of money spent every year upon repairs, over and above the 25 per cent. allowed by the Income Tax Commissioners. The agent of the property, who was also employed by other landowners, very kindly offered to take out the figures. The landowner said, "Well, it was not part of your duties when I first made the arrangement by which you became my agent, and as I do not feel inclined to increase your salary, I do not think it is fair to ask you to take this additional work; I do not feel that I have the time to devote to it—especially I believe in the particular case to which I refer—although there may be a further percentage deducted and a swing of about £10 or £15 a year expected." I believe
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there are a great many similar cases to that, and I think that is one of the reasons why the offer of the Chancellor of the Exchequer has not been accepted to any very great extent, not because there are no grounds for demanding a rebate, but because the forms to be filled up are such that it would take so much time that the thing would not be worth doing.
What ought to be done I think is as my hon. Friend said, to assess income upon the actual amount received; then the sense of injustice which undoubtedly prevails at the present moment, would disappear, proper accounts could be kept, a proper amount would be received by the State, and a proper amount would be paid by the individual concerned. The hon. Member for Coventry seemed to cast considerable doubt upon whether the Chancellor of the Exchequer would realise his expectations as to income this year. The hon. Member spoke about the stringency of money at the present time. He seemed to be under the impression that money was so stringent that trade would suffer in consequence. No doubt there has been during the last two or three years a much greater demand for money, and higher rates have been obtained—much more than we have been accustomed to in the previous ten or fifteen years. Still, actually at the present moment there has been rather a, set-back in that direction, for money is at a lower rate than for some little time past. Personally I do not think this will last. I think we shall—I agree with the hon. Member to this extent—during the next few months, possibly during the next year or two, see a considerable demand for money. I do not myself anticipate that it is going to be so stringent that it will have the effect of stopping industrial enterprise, or acting as a very serious check upon industrial enterprise in the country. I do not myself believe—and I am only expressing my own opinion, because, after all, it is mere guesswork—that you are going to have much higher rates for money in the next eighteen months than in the past eighteen months. Whether or not, however, the hones of the Chancellor of the Exchequer are going to be realised is another matter. After all, it is only speculation. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has opportunities for arriving at some decision as to whether or not the trade of the country during the next few months is or is not going to continue as prosperous as it has been which are

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denied to the ordinary Member. I should be very sorry to attempt to prophesy or to give any opinion as to what the future course of trade is likely to be. On the other hand, I have met during the last few months several persons who are qualified to give an opinion, and their unanimous opinion is that we are at the present time at high-water mark, and that, though the tide has not perhaps begun to recede, that probably it will recede after a while.
That is rather my own opinion, and I am rather doubtful whether the Chancellor of the Exchequer will find that his very sanguine Estimates will be borne out. But I should not like to express any very strong opinion upon that, because I think the Chancellor of the Exchequer has much better means of ascertaining these facts than I have. I should like to say this: I presume the Chancellor realises that he has taken a very serious responsibility upon himself in bringing forward the Budget in the way he has brought it forward this year, and though, if he is successful, no doubt a considerable number of people will say, "What a clever man; how glad we are that he has not put any further taxation upon us!" on the other hand, if his schemes fail, the position may be very serious. It certainly will be very awkward for the Chancellor of the Exchequer himself and for his particular party. I do not say that I attach very much importance to the latter. But, looking at the matter for the moment from the national point of view—from which, I think, finance ought to be looked at—I must say I feel anxious as to what the future is going to give us.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hereford made sonic very interesting remarks earlier in the afternoon upon the effect of direct taxation. There is, I understand, an Amendment to be moved later in regard to the effects of direct and indirect taxation. I do not wish to anticipate any remarks I have to make upon that Amendment if I am fortunate enough again to catch the eye of Mr. Speaker. But it does open up a very serious question, and one which is, I think, germane to the question under discussion—that is, how far we are justified in relying so much upon direct taxes as we do at the present time. By direct taxes I mean specially the Income Tax and the Death Duties. My hon. Friend the Member for Hereford pointed out that a very large number of people, whom we called the middle-class landed class, were being
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driven out of their land by the taxation which has been put upon them. I do not think it is altogether so much the taxation of the present as the fear of future taxation which has something to do with this. What I really think—I do not know whether my hon. Friend will agree with me here—is that a great deal to do with it is that the class of man who is content to live upon a small property in the country and take a great interest in the methods of working, either because he is fond of country life or because that particular property has been in his family for a great many generations, is getting afraid to invest his capital in the enterprise, which gives him a very very small return for his money, because he thinks he may be taxed out of existence at any moment. My hon. Friend says it is a very serious position, and though I have not any hope that any words I shall say will influence either the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Financial Secretary, or any hon. Member on the other side of the House, I do hope that they will pay some attention to the words of my hon. Friend, and that those who were not fortunate enough to be in the House at the time will read his observations in to-morrow's OFFICIAL REPORT.
Before I sit down I should like to say one or two words bearing upon the great misfortune, or rather the great evil, which is being caused by the continuation of a large Income Tax and large Death Duties. Practically the Income Tax and the Death Duties are one and the same thing. One speaks about an Income Tax of Is. 2d. and a Super-tax of 6d., making 1s. 8d., but one leaves out of consideration altogether the effect of the Death Duties, which are only a deferred form of Income Tax. A great number of hon. Members opposite say, "I should be very glad if I had £5,000 a year to pay the Super-tax; I should not think anything of it." A similar sort of argument might be used if the Chancellor of the Exchequer or the Financial Secretary were to say to me, "I will make you a present of £1,000,000 if you will return me £100,000. My reply to that would be that I would be very glad to do it, because the net result would be that I should have £900,000. In like manner it might be argued that a man with £5,000 would be very glad to pay the 6d. Super-tax. It is an absurd argument. The way you should look at the matter is: whether it is good for the country that there should be so large an Income Tax

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placed upon incomes, and, secondly, whether it is just. I remember my right hon. Friend and colleague (Mr. Balfour) some years ago saying that what we were suffering from in this country was not that there were too many rich men, but that there were too few. Hon. Members opposite are doing everything they can to discourage men from becoming rich, in effect saying, "Whether or not we will take your money in various forms of taxation," especially in the form of Income Tax, Super-tax, and Death Duties.
That is all very well, but it must be remembered that that policy can have but two effects. It has had this effect that the small landowners in the country have been driven out of their estates. You may get some one in their place who is not of English birth, and the result of that is that that gentleman being of great astuteness sees to it that he does not pay the taxes at all, or only in a minor degree; an the net effect of what takes place is that the last person that you should let off is let off, and the person that you want to let off suffers. I trust the Financial Secretary has followed the few remarks I have made, and that he will endeavour to see whether or not there can be some rearrangement both in the Death Duties and in the Income Tax. I know that is a very unpopular thing to say. Hon. Members who represent the Labour party will not, I think, agree, but I think it would be well for them to consider whether it would not be in their own interest to adopt such a course as I suggest., because the more employers there are and the more prosperous the better it is for labour. Would it not be well that by the alleviation of these enormous duties capital should be induced to embark upon enterprise and so more people be employed in England I should like for a moment to revert again to some remarks I made a little while ago, I think upon one of the Resolutions, and that is the very serious position that we should be placed in if we should be at war, when we have such a high Income Tax and such high Death Duties. I said then—and I hope the House will excuse me if I repeat myself—that the Income Tax used to be considered our reserve in time of war. I have heard nobody in this House contradict that, and it is the fact that we have always relied first upon the Income Tax as our war chest when we have been at war, and, secondly, upon our power of borrowing money at a low rate of interest.
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We certainly cannot borrow money at a low rate of interest at the present moment.
I do not want to-day to go into the old controversies as to the price of Consols and the relative fall between English securities and the securities of foreign countries. Something was said upon that point on one of the Resolutions, and I was really astonished to hear an hon. Member opposite who endeavoured to make out that this country compared favourably upon that point with other countries. I do not think that is so. I think the reverse is the case, but whether that is so or not there is no question we cannot borrow money at so low a rate of interest as in the past. I do not really know what would happen if the Chancellor of the Exchequer had to borrow £100,000,000 upon Consols at the present moment. I think he could not do it. I think it is likely he would have to pay such a high rate as has not been paid certainly for the last fifty years in this country. Probably you would have to go back to the days of the Crimean war. Before the Crimean war the Three per Cent. Stock stood at a little over a hundred. It certainly does not now. That is a very serious consideration, and should not be lost sight of. Income Tax stands at over 3s. in the £ when you include Super-tax and Death Duties—my hon. Friend says it is much higher, but I wish to be on the safe side—and I would point out that in time of stress it is the rich people who would have to be depended upon for Income Tax, and, therefore, the fact that it is now so very high would make that very difficult. I may be asked what is my solution. My answer is I am not the Chancellor of the Exchequer, nor do I belong to the party upon the other side of the House, and, therefore, it is for the right hon. Gentleman and his friends to find a solution of what I think is a very serious question. I am sorry the Chancellor of the Exchequer is not in the House, because I think this question is one which deserves serious consideration. I trust the Financial Secretary will be good enough to repeat the purport of my few remarks to the right hon. Gentleman, and I hope the seed will not fall upon sterile ground.
Sir JOHN SPEAR: As a Commissioner of Income Tax of a good many years' standing, I desire to say a word or two in support of the appeal of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Gloucester. It has become very apparent that the

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present system is defective and extremely irritating in its character. It is difficult to suggest a remedy, I am aware, but I think sufficient discontent exists to induce the Chancellor of the Exchequer to give effect to the proposal of my hon. and learned Friend, and to appoint a Select Committee to consider the question. We know that it often happens that a surveyor of taxes does greatly increase the assessment returns of individual traders. It may be in some instances there is ground for his suspicion that the returns are not adequate, but I venture to say that the increases over and above the returns are often very unfair and cause great irritation, and militates very much against the efficient and successful collection of Income Tax. I cannot help thinking that some system ought to be devised where, if the surveyor of taxes deems it necessary to increase the valuation returns of an individual trader, before he makes that increase he should bring the matter before the local Commissioners and confer with them as to the probability of the insufficiency of the assessment returns. I think by that plan much irritation will be avoided, and the difficulty and annoyance which exists to traders in bringing their books before the Commissioners and exposing their financial position would be to some extent, at any rate, mitigated or got over. It is extremely annoying for a trader to have to reveal his financial position in detail before men who may be, in some cases, his competitors in business, and who, at any rate, may get a knowledge of the circumstances surrounding that man's business, and I think it would be very helpful to secure the full collection of Income Tax which is honestly due and also to avoid the demand of unjust levies on people in a position according to the law to pay. We know that many of the traders do not keep their accounts sufficiently clear to reveal their actual financial position. I know that is the fault of the traders, but it is a difficult matter, and if the Commissioners were brought into consultation with the surveyor before the increased levy was made I think equity would prevail to a larger extent than at present, and very much annoyance to the individual trader would be avoided. I agree also with my hon. and learned Friend in thinking that there ought to be no different treatment as between the surveyor of taxes and the appellant, but that when the case is put before the Commissioners both should remain to hear
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the discussion or both should retire. I cannot help thinking it is giving the surveyor of taxes an unfair advantage over the appellant, after the case is fully discussed, that he should have a further opportunity of presenting his side of the case. I believe surveyors of taxes desire to do what is just. I admit the difficulty of the position, and I think the state of the laws rather aggravates that position and the grievance and injustice to the payer of Income Tax. I support the appeal for the appointment of a Select Committee, so that Income Tax can be collected in a way that will not cause so much irritation and so much annoyance to the private traders and yet result in the Exchequer receiving what is justly due to it from this source of revenue. There was another point mentioned as regards the rebate given for the expenses of management of landed property. I am quite prepared to admit that the Chancellor of the Exchequer made a liberal suggestion when he proposed to give back 25 per cent. of rebate of the Income Tax where expenditure to that amount has been made, but it is extremely difficult on small estates especially to keep an account which will make clear that certain expenditure has been made on that part of the property, and hence the opportunity has not been taken advantage of so much as it should have been, because no doubt certain things have happened which have brought about a sense of lack of security on land which has curtailed expenditure and repairs on which might be justly claimed the rebate of 25 per cent. But apart from that point, I put it to the Financial Secretary that there is one great grievance with reference to the assessment of Income Tax, and that is the rebate on cottages is not at all adequate to the actual cost of the repairs, with the result that this is acting, and has acted, as one of the regrettable deterrent influences in the provision of cottages for the working classes. We know that as an economic expenditure of money it is not profitable, and it is aggravated by the present attitude of the Government upon the question. Directly that a man builds cottages, instead of investing his money abroad, he has at once to pay the rate for local rating and for Income Tax, whereas if he invested his money in foreign securities he would not contribute one farthing to local circumstances, although he is resident and enjoys the advantages, though he takes his money

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from foreign securities. We feel that it is a deterrent to the provision of more cottages or the keeping of present cottages in a better state of repair than at the present time. I hope the Chancellor of the Exchequer will keep that in view. I can assure him, speaking in some degree as an agriculturist and a resident in a rural district, we are not indifferent to the claims of the working classes for better housing. We are anxious to promote it. All we ask is the co-operation of the Government and the removal of unjust grievances which should be an object both sides are anxious to obtain.
I regret that there is no provision made in the Budget for increasing the Grant to local authorities in carrying out the administrative work placed in our hands. We have been asking the Chancellor of the Exchequer for years to give increased Grants from the Imperial Exchequer towards the cost of education and main roads, and we are very greatly disappointed that in this Budget there is no such provision made. As administrators of the law we maintain we are contributing to the welfare of the people as well as the State is, but we cannot administer a law efficiently unless we have funds to carry out the work as we are directed to do. The present system presses so heavily upon local authorities that they feel it is almost impossible to make further demands on the rates to get money to carry out further developments in the work of local administration. I know the Chancellor of the Exchequer has told us again and again that there is a Local Taxation Committee sitting, and that he hopes before long there will be a report from that Committee, and then something will be done. The right hon. Gentleman recognises the justice of our claim, but we have been waiting and appealing now for years for some increased Grant from the Imperial Exchequer towards the cost of those local services which are indeed national in their character, and it is most unfair that local ratepayers would have to contribute constantly increasing burdens to this class of work, and we submit the right hon. Gentleman is acting unjustly to the ratepayers and to the administrators of the law in the localities by neglecting to see that the State contributes a fair share towards the increased cost of those local works which are so essential to the well being of the people.
6.0 P.M.
I ask the right hon. Gentleman to consider the advisability of appointing a
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Select Committee to see if the system of collecting and assessing the Income Tax cannot be made less offensive to the contributors of that tax and less likely to cause that irritation and resentment which at present exists. My view is that before a surveyor of taxes refuses to accept the return made by an individual trader, and before he increases that return he should bring the matter before the local Commissioners, who have considerable knowledge of the circumstances of the case, so that he may thereby avoid any unjust or any increased demand over and above that which the trader may have returned. We must consider that every trader is an honest man until he has been proved dishonest. It is an insult to a tradesman to have his word doubted in this way, and this ought not to be lightly done by the Surveyor of Taxes. If the Surveyor of Taxes feels that some increase ought to be made at least he might consult the local Commissioners before taking that step. I think the whole question of the collection and assessment of the Income Tax demands consideration. I know it is a most unpleasant business and it is extremely difficult to do justice between man and man in these matters. I know that the money has to be collected, we all desire that it should be done on just and fair lines, but that is not what is being done at the present time. I think a case has been made out for the appointment of a Select Committee. With reference to the deductions and rebatements of Income Tax on cottages, I know that what is being done in regard to this question is militating against the provision of cottages. I hope the Chancellor of the Exchequer will see the justice of making a Grant-in-Aid of the cost of education and the main roads. At present it is most difficult for administrators to do their work with a due regard to the interests of sanitary and educational progress and the maintenance of good roads because of the increasing burden on the ratepayers, which is driving people out of the country and making it impossible for small traders to carry on their business with any prospect of earning a livelihood.
Sir GEORGE YOUNGER: I wish to raise a point about the Super-tax. The Super-tax form is rather peculiarly worded and it states that the receipt is given for the money "on account" of the Super-tax for the year. If the words "on

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account" mean payment for the year, I have no fault to find, but if they mean what they are held to mean in ordinary business life then I find very serious fault with this form. Either the return should be accepted definitely or it should be substantiated by inquiry. If it is found to be an honest return then they ought to be given a clear receipt. This method means that the revenue officials are deliberately keeping open the matter by that form of words, so that if they think fit they can reopen the question of the assessment in future years. I think that it is a gratuitous insult to a man who has sent in his return. The right hon. Gentleman has issued a, White Paper explaining his statement about the Spirit Duty, and explaining that the tax has been a highly successful one in respect to the reduced quantity of spirits sold and the increase in the revenue. That was given by the right hon. Gentleman as a statement of fact, but it was a purely conjectural statement. The Chancellor of the Exchequer assumes certain things, and then brings out those figures which are net facts in any sense of the word, and I think he ought to qualify those words. So far from their having been an increase of £5,000,000 in the Spirit Duty, there has been a loss of £600,000 to the revenue on the figures contained in the Blue Book, and the statement now issued was based upon conjecture and not upon the facts.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: The Debate, as far as I have heard it, has been a very interesting and a very practical one, and some very admirable speeches have been delivered which will be, I am sure, a real contribution to our consideration of the finances of this country and our methods of raising the revenue. The hon. Member opposite has asked me two questions, but I am afraid I am not in a position to answer at this moment the queries he has put to me. With regard to the question put to me by the hon. Baronet the Member for Ayr Burghs (Sir G. Younger) about the Super-tax, I can assure him that there is no idea of the kind he has suggested. Even in the form of words quoted, the powers are only exercised in the case of any withholding of any portion of the income, and there is no hidden meaning or purpose in the words which have been quoted on the part of those responsible for the collection of the Super-tax. The hon. Member for Tavistock (Sir J. Spear) put two questions to me, one in reference to Imperial Grants for local pur-
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poses, a tremendous issue which he invites me to discuss. I quite agree that there is no more important question for the consideration of the House, but we had a very full debate earlier in the year, and at the present moment I could not throw any more light upon it than I did then. We shall not be in a position to deal with the question this year, and it is only one out of several urgent problems which are waiting to be dealt with. I hope it will be possible for some Chancellor of the Exchequer to do something more at no distant date than deliver the kind of speeches he is forced to deliver when he has to speak upon the very important problem of local and Imperial finances.
A discussion was initiated by the hon. Member for Gloucester (Mr. H. Terrell) in a very able speech, in which he dealt with this method of collecting and assessing the Income Tax at the present moment. The hon. and learned Member suggested a Select Committee to enter into the whole of that question. He further stated that there are a good many anomalies at the present time, and he was followed by the hon. Member for Scarborough (Mr. W. Russell Rea), who also took that view and pressed upon the consideration of the House the suggestion that there should be a Select Committee to inquire into the whole question. As the hon. and learned Member knows very well, several Committees have been appointed from time to time to consider kindred questions in reference to the collection of Income Tax. As a result of some of these Committees improvements have been effected in the law, but, on the whole, I cannot say that they have resulted in throwing any very considerable light upon the best method of assessing and collecting the Income Tax. I feel sure that if the hon. Member who raised this point pursues his inquiries further into the realm of practical experience he would find that these inquiries would be of very little service from a revenue point of view. In his illustrations of the artist, the solicitor, and the business man he is, of course, quoting extreme cases, but the moment he assumes that the artist is making £2,000 or £3,000 a year purely out of his art he is also assuming that the others are also making a profit out of it. That is not the experience of those who know anything about it, whereas the hon. Member has preferred to call them all into account and charge a profit on all the items he mentioned. I should like to know whether he is

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prepared, on the other hand, to allow a deduction for losses incurred.
Those are the circumstances which weigh with the Income Tax Commissioners, and I am not sure, from the point of view of the revenue, that much would inure out of the alteration of that principle which has been suggested. Take underwriting. An underwriter may make huge profits, and I agree they ought to be charged in the income of the year as far as he is concerned. I am certain that there is a good deal of income which escapes under these various headings, but I am doubtful whether it is possible to alter this. There is a good deal of revenue escapes legitimate taxation within the four corners of the present Income Tax Acts under these various headings. When I come to the first suggestion which the hon. Member made with regard to District Commissioners I thought there was a great deal in what he said. I have always thought that it was very hard that men trading in a given district should be compelled to submit their accounts to their trade rivals. That is one of the most unsatisfactory parts of the working of the machinery of the Income Tax, and no doubt many men prefer to pay almost an unfair Income Tax to submitting their private accounts to examination, not merely by their trade rivals, but even to their neighbours in a sparsely populated district. No doubt in many of these cases the taxpayer who is assessed too highly rather than appeal and have to go through the process of submitting his ledgers to an examination by people in the same trade would infinitely prefer, unless it is a grossly extravagant amount, to pay a little more than he should be legitimately be called upon to pay. I am sure that when there is an alteration in the machinery of the Income Tax the question of District Commissioners ought to be very carefully reconsidered.
I am not at all sure that the present system is a beneficial one to the revenue. I am very doubtful about it. I think that a good deal of revenue escapes. I will not say that it is the fault of the District Commissioners altogether, but I am certain with, I will not say a more impartial tribunal, but with a tribunal which would not have any local bias or personal bias, a purely official tribunal, that whereas now there are some men who are overtaxed, there are a good many men who are under-taxed who would probably be brought into
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the net. I should very much like to see that question considered by a Committee. I will not say a Committee of the House of Commons, because a Committee of the House of Commons the moment the House rises cannot sit, and there is an end to its proceedings, and you have to reappoint it. It is also desirable that you should get some outside men to sit on these Committees to assist in the investigations. I should myself prefer a Committee appointed by the Department, and upon which you would have business men who are not sitting in this House, as well as Members of this House. I will consider the suggestion made by the hon. Member; it is a very valuable one. I think it is very desirable that we should have evidence as to the way the Income Tax Acts are working, as to the way the Income Tax machinery is working, and as to whether there is not some tribunal which might be more efficient and which, I will not say, might be more impartial, but which would be free from suspicion of partiality, and which would act more fairly as between individuals as well as to the revenue itself. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Herefordshire (Mr. Hewins) opened this discussion in a suggestive speech. Seeing he is one who has considered these problems very carefully and given a good deal of thought to them, I was rather struck by his general attitude towards all the taxes of this country. He first of all objected to the taxation which fell upon the working classes. He said, "Here you are putting fivepence per 1b. on tea, and it comes largely out of the pockets of the working classes." Then he came to the middle classes, and objected to taxing them.
Mr. HEWINS: I referred to the intermediate class of landowners.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: Yes, and he objected to taxing them because, he said, you are eliminating them. He wants to take the burdens off. Where is he going to put the burdens on? There is really only one way of taking burdens off the taxpayers and that is by reducing expenditure. You may reshuffle your taxes and take them off one shoulder and put them on another; you may lighten the burdens on one class, but, if you do, unless you reduce the expenditure, you are bound to increase the burdens on another class. You cannot avoid that. It is very easy to say to one class, "Here, your burdens are too heavy. They ought to be lightened.

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You are paying too much on tea and sugar." "You, landowners, are paying too much on your land." "You, the middle classes, are paying too much Income Tax." But, unless you reduce the expenditure, you have got to get the money out of some class in this country. The hon. Gentleman did not put it quite in this form, but what he really said was, "Why do you not tax millionaires?" He did not object to that at all. I am the last man in the world to object to the taxation of the very rich in this country, but, if he will only look at the sources of revenue, he will find that if he confined his taxation to the very rich he would not be able to raise his revenue.
Mr. HEWINS: I did not suggest that.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: Therefore, if you want to raise your revenue in this country, you have got to have it distributed over all classes, and what you want to do is to see that it is distributed fairly over them all, and that no class is unfairly taxed in proportion to the rest. The hon. Member wants to take the burdens off the working classes; he wants to reduce the burdens on the middle classes; and he would also reduce the burdens on the landowners.
Mr. HEWINS: I was objecting to the particular kind of tax which the right hon. Gentleman puts on, and I want to know his reasons for those taxes.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: The hon. Gentleman did not tell me to which particular tax he objected. Is it the Income Tax?
Mr. HEWINS: I want to know, for instance, about the Tea Duty.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: The Tea Duty is not a very heavy burden on the intermediate class of landowners, and I do not think it really disturbs the balances of the great financial magnates to whom the hon. Member referred. Therefore, I do not think it is the Tea Duty. I should like to know to which tax he objects. Is it the Income Tax? Is it the Death Duties? He did not indicate, in his very thoughtful and suggestive speech, to which particular tax he objects; he merely entered his general protest against taxes at large. There is only one way of reducing the burden of taxation and that is by reducing the expenditure, and no suggestion has come either from him or any of his hon. Friends which would involve any reduction in the expenditure of this country. On the contrary, the suggestions which I have heard
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even this afternoon are all suggestions for increasing the expenditure. The hon. Gentleman the Member for the Tavistock Division (Sir J. Spear) ended his speech, as he began it, by suggesting an increased Treasury Grant in aid of local taxation, and there have been other suggestions which have been made, not merely in this House but outside, all in the direction of increasing expenditure. We are at the present moment pressed for more "Dreadnoughts," and, I think, to adopt conscription. Whatever merits there may be in conscription, I am perfectly certain that it is not going to be cheaper. We have also been asked to give Treasury Grants for roads and for rural cottages. They are all suggestions for increasing the expenditure, and, if you are going to have increased expenditure, you are bound to have increased taxation on somebody. I heartily agree with what the hon. Member said about rural life. He did not give any particulars, but I think lie did indicate the general direction in which taxation could assist. He suggested that a man who was really doing his duty—he was referring to landowners—should not be penalised by taxation, but that so far as you could you should adjust taxation in such a way as rather to encourage the man who was doing his duty. I have always advocated that. This is where extremes meet. I can see hon. Friends of mine who have been preaching that doctrine all over the country. They want to so arrange local taxation that you do not penalise the man who improves his property. That is their doctrine, and now they have such high sanction and authority they will be doubly encouraged, I am sure, in that campaign.
I agree with another hon. Member in the speech he delivered. He entered into particulars and referred to the case of cottages. He said that the landowner who had not much money to spare could not expend a considerable proportion of his income upon repairing cottages and they fell out of repair, with the result that there was a shortage of cottages in rural areas. He put it to the House that you ought not to make it still more difficult for him to do so by taxing him for something which is not income, but which is expenditure which he incurs in the interests of the community. I entirely agree with him there. I accept the principle which was laid down by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Herefordshire and by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Ripon (Mr. E. Wood), and I had thought that by the

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proposals that were incorporated in the Budget of 1909–10 we should have encouraged expenditure of this kind to the extent of £500,000. I am not to blame and the Government is not to blame because that £500,000 has not been expended. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Herefordshire was one of a deputation that first brought the matter to my notice. He, and the hon. Member for Wiltshire (Mr. C. Bathurst), and Lord Onslow introduced a deputation on behalf of landowners, and they made what I thought was a very strong case indeed. They submitted accounts for certain estates, and their case was that whereas a maximum of 12½ per cent. is allowed in respect of repairs and money that is spent for the improvement of the property, some landowners spend 30, 40, and 50 per cent. and even more upon repairing their properties, upon drainage, and upon other things which it is supremely in the interests of the community should be done and should be encouraged in the rural districts. I was rather alarmed when they told me that the vast majority of landowners of England expend at least 25 per cent., and a good many much more, but I could not at that stage, when I had to raise the sum of £16,000,000 to meet a deficiency, see my way to provide more than £500,000 for the purpose of meeting a claim which I thought was a just one. I moved an Amendment to the 1909 Budget, which enabled landowners to claim up to 25 per cent. on the income from rent in respect of any expenditure on cottages or general repairs. The money simply passes through the landlord's hands and is not income at all. I fixed on 25 per cent. because it was just as much as I could see my way to allow at that time. I was very much surprised at the small number of claims sent in. The landlords simply had to prove that they had spent the money. That was only a fair condition, and under Schedule D every tradesman has to make similar proof. In the first year only £5,000 had to be paid out in respect of remissions for repairs, etc. In 1911–12 the remissions amounted to £49,000, and in 1912–13 to £68,000.
I do not think there was any cause for complaint as to the conditions. We really imposed no conditions which are not imposed on every trader and every professional man in the country, and if the hon. Gentleman opposite can point out anything unfair in the conditions with regard
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to proof I can only say I shall be very glad to consider it. Why were not more claims put forward? I think the hon. Gentleman pretty fairly stated the case when he said one reason was that a good many landlords knew nothing about it. Unfortunately they have been concentrating their efforts on things which matter very much less to them personally. The agricultural landlord has concentrated himself a good deal upon the Undeveloped Land Tax and the Increment Tax, which really did not concern him. A good deal of alarm has been expressed, and there has been much exaggeration in regard to the matter. There are certain organisations, which I need not name, that are devoting their time to spreading panic and alarm amongst the rural landowners in regard to things which do not concern them in the slightest degree, except generally as citizens of this country, and if they devoted one-tenth of the time to telling the agricultural landowner what he can get under the Bill the landowners might have been better off than they now are to the extent of £400,000. Indeed, I would advise the landowners to send in a bill to the hon. Member for Chelmsford in respect of the losses they have sustained within the last few years in this regard. The hon. Gentleman has admitted that the claims had not been made because the landowners did not know that they should be made. That is probably accurate. They have a most morbid suspicion of the Government in general, and of me in particular, and when they were told that there were £500,000 they could have if they would only prove their expenditure on cottages and reprairs, instead of sending in their bills they said, "It cannot be true. He is Limehousing again. This is only another promise, and there is nothing in it." The fault rests, perhaps, not so much with the landowners as with their agents, who ought to have known better—especially those who are of my profession. They, at any rate, ought to have known that they had only to send in a claim and to prove it in the ordinary course, and then they would get 12½ per cent. reduction, in addition to the 12½ per cent. made before.
Mr. PRETYMAN: It was one-sixth before, not one-eighth. I do not want to enter into the controversial side of the question, but I should like to point out it was one-sixth on cottages and one-eighth on land. May I add that the reason why, I believe, the claims were not made in greater numbers is this: Although the

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returns asked for were not really complicated—I admit that, and I admit everything the right hon. Gentleman has said in regard to the offer made and the consequence which it would have had—yet they looked complicated, and the evidence which has reached me is that a large number of landowners did not understand the form issued and did not think that they could comply with it. I would suggest that the return should be put in a form more simple and more easily understood.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: The hon. Gentleman might issue another pamphlet. I have no doubt at all as to what happened This document came to these gentlemen enabling them to make a claim. They said, "Here is another Form IV.," and they just threw it into the wastepaper basket, not realising that they were thereby throwing a cheque into the fire. That is really what happened. Comments are superfluous. Here we have a form admittedly simple, and the hon. Gentleman says that men whose business it is to deal with the land could not understand it, although it would bring them in £500,000 a year. It is a remarkable comment on the way in which land is managed in this country. I was talking to a great landowner the other day who has sent in his claim, and he tells me that there are other provisions, with regard to Death Duties and so on, and if landowners would only apply their minds, or force their agents to apply their minds, to the question, they would get a good many more remissions than they do at present. That may or may not be the case. All I can say is that under Schedule A, a sum of £500,000 was set aside. It was there to meet claims if they materialised. I understood the Member for Ripon (Mr. Edward Wood) to suggest that we should substitute Schedule D. But I would very much prefer to see my own plan tried first of all. It has not been given a trial at present, and I do not see why I should take a step which would revolutionise the whole method of taxation in respect of land when the landowners themselves up to the present have not taken the trouble to prove their claims even to the 25 per cent. I think the Government are entitled to say, "You can have the 25 per cent. deducted if you can prove the expenditure; if you can show that you are spending your rents on improving the cottages and draining and developing the land." It is the duty of the House of Commons to encourage that, and no Chancellor of the
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Exchequer of any party would have difficulty, I imagine, in getting more money for the purpose if he could show an expenditure which justifies a still greater remission.
Mr. BRIDGEMAN: Is there any reason why a further rebate should not be given to those landlords who have understood and made the return, and who have proved that they have spent more than the 25 per cent.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: I think there is a good deal to be said for that point of view. Inasmuch as the £500,000 has not been spent, I do not see there would be any reason against raising the percentage. I will certainly give further consideration to that point. If the hon. Gentleman will put down an Amendment to that effect, I will see what can be done in the course of the Debates on this Bill.
Mr. E. WOOD: Would it not be possible to act on the suggestion I made and let one return cover a period of three years? It would mean a serious saving of labour.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: I am not quite convinced that that is a practical suggestion. In any business these claims have to be put in in each year. The amount spent in one year is not the amount spent in another year. In one year more might be spent on cottages and less on drains. In one year, too, a good deal might be spent on farm buildings and less in the following year. I should have thought it was impossible to make any fair claim for one year to represent three years. But I will consider the suggestion made by the hon. Gentleman, and if he has any further ideas to advance on the point perhaps he will communicate them to me. I was sorry I did not hear the speech of the hon. Baronet the Member for the City of London. It took the form of a general growl, so far as I can decipher the notes made of it by my right hon. Friend the Financial Secretary to the Treasury. Does the hon. Baronet say that that does not fairly represent what he said?
Sir F. BANBURY: It would not be in order for me to repeat my speech.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: The only part of the hon. Baronet's speech—beyond his remarks dealing with Income Tax, with which I have already dealt—upon which I should like to say a word was that in which he referred to the trade of this country. He was more or less in agree-

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ment with my hon. Friend (Mr. David Mason), that I took a rather optimistic view of the outlook, and that on the whole I was too sanguine in my estimate of what was going to happen in the course of the current year. It is a very difficult thing for us to prognosticate what will happen in regard to trade. I certainly would not like to dogmatise. What I gave in my Budget Statement was purely a summary of hundreds of reports I had received from all parts of the country. It was not that I had consulted any single individual, because I had hundreds of reports from every part of the country, and they all came to the same thing. They said that so far as this year was concerned the outlook was one of abounding prosperity. It is a thing that can only be tested by experience, although that prophecy has been fortified by the facts. My hon. Friend challenged my Estimates. Will he tell me what part of my Estimates is incorrect?
Mr. D. MASON: I think the whole Estimate is wrong. The right hon. Gentleman estimated for £7,500,000—that he would get £1,000,000 on Excise, £1,500,000 on Customs, and so on. I did not single out any particular item. I think his general survey and his estimating the revenue to produce £7,500,000 more is too sanguine. Did the right hon. Gentleman include in his calculations the increases in France and Germany which have taken place?
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: The general financial position was thoroughly well known in this country at that moment. The question I put to my hon. Friend and which I put to hon. Gentlemen opposite on the Budget Resolutions was, What part of the Estimate is challenged? My hon. Friend says I shall fail on every one of them, that I shall not get my Customs—Tea, Tobacco, Beer, Spirits, Income Tax, Death Duties and Stamps—and that I shall be short in all these. That is his view, but it is not the view taken by my critics on the other side.
Mr. D. MASON: The, right hon. Gentleman is hardly fair to me. I did not say that on every single item he would be short, but I certainly do hold that his estimate generally is a mistaken one. It would be absurd for us to say on which particular item out of the whole Budget he would be short.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: I cannot carry on an argument with my hon. Friend. I
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am quite willing to give way if he wants to correct any mistake I may make with regard to his speech. When the Chancellor of the Exchequer makes his estimate he cannot do it in a general sort of way. He has got to descend to particulars, and ask his officials how much each item will produce, how much beer will produce, how much tobacco will produce, and how much spirits will produce. He cannot go to them and say, "Generally, things are looking all right, and we will just jam on £7,000,000." I can assure my hon. Friend that that is not the way it is done, and that when he comes to prepare his Budget he will find that he will have to descend and get a soul which is not above these little particulars. I should like to know which of these estimates is supposed to be exaggerated. The hon. Baronet dealt with the Income Tax. Does he think that estimate is exaggerated?
Sir G. YOUNGER: There is a lot of it left uncollected.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: The hon. Baronet knows a good deal about the Income Tax. He is a very shrewd observer. There is an appreciable increase in the Income Tax. I am disposed to ask the hon. Baronet if he thinks I shall not get my Death Duties?
Sir G. YOUNGER: I never said that. Some of them are also uncollected.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: With the canniness of his race the hon. Baronet will not say. I think he might distribute some of his caution to my hon. Friend who lives a good deal south of the Tweed. There has been an increase on beer, spirits, tea, and tobacco. I should like to know which of these estimates is challenged. If anyone is disposed to challenge them, before he gets up I would advise him privately to look at the Returns received up to the present. He will find that even at the present moment Customs and Excise are about £600,000 above last year, which is a very considerable increase in that period of time. As for trade, I do not know what information the hon. Baronet (Sir F. Banbury) has. I can only give him the information which comes to me. No Chancellor of the Exchequer endeavours to give his personal opinion upon a matter of such importance. He is bound to consult such authorities as are at his disposal.
Sir F. BANBURY: The right Gentleman was not here when I spoke. I said that

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he had sources of information which were not at my disposal, therefore I ventured to make the few remarks I made with great reluctance.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: It would be a very reckless thing indeed for a Chancellor of the Exchequer to express an opinion upon a question of that kind, upon which he could not possibly know more than anybody else, unless his information were official and obtained from sources which are at his disposal. This year I took more trouble than usual, for the simple reason that there was a general opinion that perhaps we had reached the crest of the wave, and I wanted to know what was the opinion of business authorities as to the prospects of the coming year. No one knows what is going to happen with regard to next year, but so far as this year is concerned, almost without exception the men consulted were of opinion that trade was going to be good. Each was speaking for his own particular branch of industry, and said that trade was going to be good for the rest of the year. Therefore, I was justified in depicting a glowing year. In my speech I said that there would be a considerable sum of money sunk in repairing the ravages of war.
Mr. D. MASON: No; I have the right hon. Gentleman's speech here.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: If I did not say so, he has taught me that this afternoon. I agree with him. I hope he will not quarrel with me about that, and that he will not change his mind the moment I tell him I agree with him. Undoubtedly the moment that peace is established capital is sunk in repairing the ravages of war. I certainly had that in my mind when I surveyed the general position. You cannot have a great war and the destruction of the resources of a country without having to spend considerable sums of money in repairing them. It is a great mistake to assume that it is only the country which is engaged in war, which is engaged in the work of reparation. We discovered that in the Russo-Japanese War. It was not merely the war in South Africa of which we had to bear the brunt, but there was the destruction of capital, and money had to be sunk in reparation work. Undoubtedly the Russo-Japanese War had a very bad effect for a short time upon all the productive industries of the world. This war has not been quite so serious a business as the Russo-Japanese War in actual extent, but it has been a serious
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business, and money has been spent in Eastern Europe in arming for possible contingencies. All this has to be made up. My advice is that such is the prosperity of the country, and such are the resources of all the countries, accumulated more especially during the last few years of peace, that all that will be simply overwhelmed in the deluge of prosperity, and that, at any rate for this year, we can depend upon trade being exceptionally good. The last unemployment returns are very remarkable. They show the lowest figures of unemployment this country has ever seen. I am very glad to say that even in the building trade it is lower than this country has seen for years. It has come down from something like 10 per cent. in April, 1909, to, I think, 3 per cent. last month. That shows a very considerable improvement in the conditions of labour. We have still a small percentage of unemployment, but at the same time the prosperity of the country is such as has never been witnessed before. My advice is that that will continue. It is something over which to rejoice. I should like to make the heart of my hon. Friend rejoice, and to be able to persuade him that the country is not really so badly off, and that the prospects are not so gloomy as his speech would indicate.
7.0 P.M.
Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: The Chancellor of the Exchequer has made a very interesting if a somewhat discursive reply to a Debate which has been equally interesting and equally discursive. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has dealt, with great good humour and very considerable good will, with the business criticisms coming from many of my hon. Friends in regard to our system of taxation or our methods of collecting it. The right hon. Gentleman only lost his geniality when he came to deal with the critic upon his own side of the House. I observe that while the Chancellor of the Exchequer will stand a great deal from us, he is very impatient of any hon. Gentleman on that side of the House who ventures to express an opinion that all is not perfect even while we have such an admirable Minister of Finance. I confess, if it is any comfort to the hon. Member for Coventry (Mr. D. Mason), that I stand in the same box with himself. I, too, would venture to express the opinion that the Chancellor of the Exchequer was over-sanguine in his Estimates, and I feel myself no more called upon than the hon. Member for Coventry to place my finger

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on a particular Estimate and say, "Here you are taking so many thousands or hundreds of thousands too much," in order to justify the general criticism I have made. I am content to base my criticism on the language held by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. It may be, and I know it is sometimes the case, that the Chancellor's actions are wiser than his language. It is not always the case. There are some people who talk very wisely and act very foolishly. But if we are to judge of the way in which the Chancellor frames his Estimates by the language which he uses, I say he budgeted in a condition of hopefulness such as becomes reckless in a man with the responsibility which he carries. It may be that in fact he was very much more cautious than he tells us he was. He tells us that having heard the information and the advice of his officials, he saw that there were various contingencies, any one of which might turn out well or might turn out ill. Did he say, as he fairly might have done, "I shall strike an average; I shall suppose that some of these things will turn out well for me and some ill"? Not at all. If we are to trust his language, he betted that every chance would turn out in his favour, that everywhere where there was an opportunity of things being either better or worse, they would be better, and accordingly, to use the language which he himself used only a few moments ago, the Budget is framed upon the assumption that we are all going to be overwhelmed by an unparalleled deluge of prosperity.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: I never said that. I was referring to those countries in the East, and the loss which would be sustained as the result of the war and the cost of repairing it. I said that would be a loss which would be overwhelming. I explained that the loss was not great in comparison with other wars waged either by us or by Japan.
Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: I certainly do not want to attribute more importance to particular phrases of the Chancellor of the Exchequer than they are meant to carry, but if he looks at the observations he made in answer to the hon. Member (Mr. D. Mason), or if he will look again at his Budget speech, he will see that to anyone coming to the consideration of his Budget figures only with such information as he himself has supplied to us, we are driven to the conclusion by his own statement that everywhere where there is
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a possibility of things being better or worse he has budgeted on the assumption that they will be at their best. I say that is rash under the circumstances of this year. I desire to be as cautious as the hon. Baronet (Sir F. Banbury). Though I do not pretend to put my resources against those which are available to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, I am bound to say, upon such inquiries as I have made, that I cannot find this universal feeling in trading circles that the trade of this year is going to be better than the trade of last, that we have not got to the top of the boom, that we have not reached the zenith of this wave of prosperity. I cannot get these reports from the manufacturers and traders with whom I have consulted, and if the Chancellor of the Exchequer has been basing his Budget on that, I still remain of opinion that he is unduly sanguine.
With that observation on the general Budget Statement, on which I have to remember that I have already made two speeches, and on which, therefore, I am not anxious to say anything more, I go to one or two matters comparatively of detail, but still of very great importance which have been raised in the course of this Debate. Let me deal first of all with those questions which concern land, and among them let me go first to the question of the allowance made to landlords for repairs. I share the surprise of the Chancellor of the Exchequer that so little advantage has been taken of it, though I never believed that the claims would amount to anything like the figures which he originally estimated. In the first place, I think we have gone long enough to justify the appeal made by the hon. Member (Mr. E. Wood) and the hon. Member (Mr. Bridgeman), who interpolated an observation to which the right hon. Gentleman promised a not unfriendly consideration. I think, having regard to the slowness of the general mass of landowners to use the new right conferred upon them, the time has come when the Chancellor of the Exchequer ought to give the full relief to those who go to the, trouble of proving their right. Even last year that question was raised, and the right hon. Gentleman then said that the claims had just begun to come in with such rapidity that he thought his money would be used up. I am not suggesting that the Chancellor of the Exchequer was not speaking on good information, or in perfect good faith.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGEmade an observation which was inaudible.
Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: The total claims for the year rose only from £40,000 to some £60,000.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: From £49,000 to £68,000.
Mr. AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: They did rise, but still they are well within the figure of £500,000 which the Chancellor of the Exchequer allowed three years ago, and he might safely give those who prove their case that full relief to which they proved themselves entitled without arbitrarily limiting it by a percentage. He should bear in mind that this is not a question of relieving someone of tax which is due from him. It is relieving someone of tax with which he has been charged on the assumption that his income was bigger than it is, and, as the Chancellor of the Exchequer has admitted, we have not really the slightest moral claim to take it from that particular class of taxpayers, because in taking it from them we place them at a disadvantage with men of equal means and equal wealth, deriving their revenue from other sources.
Then I come to the return. The right hon. Gentleman could not resist a fling at my hon. Friend (Mr. Pretyman). My hon. Friend will not mind that. After all, a Chancellor of the Exchequer cannot be expected to love the Land Union, which is giving him a great deal of trouble and which has wrung from him by persistent agitation concessions which but for the Land Union we should not have had, and the promise of further concessions from which we should be still wholly removed but for their exertions. But the Chancellor of the Exchequer knows that my hon. Friend takes a great deal of trouble when he makes speeches on this matter, and I think he knows that when my hon. Friend makes suggestions they are not foolish. They may be from the point of view of the Chancellor of the Exchequer right or wrong, but my hon. Friend on this subject does not talk nonsense. [Laughter.] I do not wish unduly to bring blushes to his face, but since the House laughs I must say that is more than I could say for all of them. With regard to this return which the revenue authorities require, I wonder whether the Chancellor of the Exchequer could get up now, or with such rapid reference to his advisers under the Gallery as is possible to a Minister, and tell the House what return the landlord
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has to make and what he has not. I doubt it, and I doubt, if he had a copy of the return placed in his hand, whether he could say offhand or without consultation with his authorities what they require the landlord to fill in. I listened to the hon. Member (Mr. E. Wood), and I think he is under the impression that the Inland Revenue require something which my hon. Friend (Mr. Pretyman) said they do not require. The Inland Revenue require, as I understand, that you should fill in in your return every separate tenement to which your claim has reference, but they do not require that you should split up your claim for the relief claimed amongst these different tenants or property. My hon. Friend obviously thought that was their requirement. I went into a land agent's office in connection with other legislation of the right hon. Gentleman, and I happened to find the land agent filling up the returns on a claim for exemption for a property of which I know something, not very far off, and he was complaining of the vast amount of work he was required to do and of the very arbitrary division of the total amount of his claim between the different portions of the property out of which the claim arose which he was obliged to make in order to satisfy the Inland Revenue. If the Inland Revenue do not require it, if all that they require the landlord to state is the total amount of the expenditure which he has incurred, and then to define the property on which it has been incurred, your return would be very much simplified and rendered very much easier for the landlord to fill in. You require the landlord at present to separate the amount which he has spent on cottage and house property, and the amount he has spent on the land. That was necessary in the old times, when the percentage of allowance varied according as the money was spent on the land or on house property, but I cannot see any advantage in requiring them to do that from the moment that you undertake to allow all that is spent up to the limit of what is proved. Surely you could very much simplify this return. If all you want is the total claim for relief, and the property for which it is required can be ascertained by reference to the rate book, if you could do that, you could certainly allow what the hon. Member asked for, that is that the clerical work should be done once in three years, or should remain to be carried forward by a simple reference as long as the property remains

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unchanged. This is not a matter which it is very easy to put clearly across the floor of the House, but my object is to suggest to the Chancellor of the Exchequer that if he would confer with my hon. Friends or put the Inland Revenue into communication with them, I really think he might simplify the return, and enable the landlords to make their claim more easily, and he might bring home to them the relief which he very rightly desires to have the credit of having offered.
Then hon. Members raised the question of the general administration of the Income Tax, of the allowances which are made, and of the question of an inquiry into those allowances, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer invited me to express an opinion on the subject. When I was Chancellor of the Exchequer I appointed one of the numerous Committees to which he referred. It was presided over by the late Lord Ritchie, the present President of the Board of Trade was a member, together with Sir Henry Primrose, then chairman of the Board of Inland Revenue, and Mr. Cosmo Bonsor, formerly a Member of the House, one of the Commissioners of Income Tax for the City of London. There were a couple of other gentlemen on the Committee. The Committee were asked to report if any changes were desirable as to the prevention of fraud and evasion, the allowances made in respect of depreciation of assets charged to capital, the profits under Schedule G, the average profits of three years, and the rules and regulations governing the recovery by taxpayers of over payments they may have made. On the whole the Committee disappointed me by recommending so little change. They declared at the outset that, speaking generally, they desired to place on record recognition that the system of collecting taxes on the whole represented the minimum of friction and the maximum of result. Though they recommended some little changes, I was unable to carry them through, but in the main they were adopted by the present Prime Minister when Chancellor of the Exchequer, and they were partly embodied in an Act. They did not recommend any very large changes.
I would not discourage the Chancellor of the Exchequer from having a fresh inquiry if he thought it desirable. I am not sure that that Committee said the last word, but I think anybody who wishes to criticise the allowances for depreciation and the treatment of wasting
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assets, such as were alluded to by the hon. Gentleman opposite, should refer to the report of the Committee. They would see that the question is a very difficult one. As the Chancellor of the Exchequer said, you may take extreme cases, and your argument will appear conclusive, but as you come nearer together with the cases and fine off the separate and distinctive features, it is extraordinarily difficult to know where to draw the line without leaving old anomalies still in existence or creating new ones. I believe in regard to collection that the most effective method of efficiently collecting taxes when they are due, is to enforce, as widely as you can, the requirement that the taxpayer should make a return. I quite agree that there are a great many people who will never make a dishonest return, but will not think it necessary to correct an insufficient assessment. I think I am one of those people myself. If I were put in that position, I really do not know that I should feel it necessary to write to the authority which assessed me and say, "Gentlemen, you have under-estimated my liability." But on the other hand, I hope I should not knowingly set my hand, under any temptation, to a return which I knew was false. There is a great deal of income which escapes taxation, though it is much less than it used to be. It escapes because those who are responsible for the assessments do not know the income that is being made. That is the case where there is a growing business, and where a man has not altered his style of life in proportion as his income has grown. In these cases the assessors are unable to judge whether the old rates of assessment are right or not. The Chancellor of the Exchequer spoke of the District Commissioners. I have listened to the complaints made in regard to these Commissioners. I perfectly understand the objections which many people have—and very sound objections they are—to carry their affairs before local gentlemen who may most honourably observe the obligations of secrecy which rest upon them, but to whom as neighbours, not necessarily as competitors, though they may be competitors, or it may be creditors, they do not care to disclose the exact position of their affairs. Of course, they have the alternative of coming to the Income Tax Commissioners. That is not convenient for all.
I think you will have to consider very carefully before you change the system of

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having District Commissioners. I have got an idea for which I can give no very solid ground on the spur of the moment that the House has discussed and debated very seriously, the question of District Commissioners more than once, and that a serious attempt has been made by individuals in the House to change the system. But when that has occurred, and when it has appeared likely that a change might take place, then a strong revolt has arisen against more paid officials interfering in our affairs, and against placing the taxpayers at their mercy, and although the District Commissioners may be unpopular so long as the present system exists, they begin to become popular when you propose to put others in their place. I do not say that it may not be the right thing to do, but I advise the Chancellor of the Exchequer not to commit himself rashly to a change of that kind. It is necessary to have the support of public opinion in order to make the change successful.
In dealing with some of the criticisms of our present Income Tax law rather than administration, the Chancellor of the Exchequer propounded to Gentlemen sitting on both sides of the House a question which is worth considering. He said, "If you are going to insist upon taxing such-and-such a form of income as profits, are you prepared to allow for losses when, instead of a profit, these transactions, speculations, or whatever they may be, result in loss?" I was interested to hear the Chancellor of the Exchequer put forward that argument, apparently thinking that the Treasury, where it recognises profits and takes a share of them, must be prepared to recognise losses, and, if not to pay a share, at any rate to give a man credit for his losses. Why is that only so in regard to income? Why should it not apply with regard to the Land Taxes? That is an argument with which, when the Land Taxes were discussed, we were very familiar, but there the Chancellor of the Exchequer insisted that wherever a man made a profit the revenue was to have a share, but if he made a loss he was to write it off as best he could. I invite the Chancellor of the Exchequer to apply this principle of correlative profits and losses to the Land Taxes in the Revenue Bill which he is going to introduce. If a man buys certain land, and then sells a certain portion of it at a profit, the Chancellor of the Exchequer is going to take his share of the profit, but when the man sells a portion of the land at a loss, the right hon. Gentle-
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man does not allow him to deduct that loss, and to pay only on the balance of profit. On the Chancellor of the Exchequer's own argument addressed to the House to-day he ought to allow for the loss, and many of us have long thought so. The Revenue Bill has not yet been introduced, and I invite him to set that straight in the Bill he is going to introduce, and to make his legislation consistent with his argument.
I do not wish to go, any more than the hon. Member for Hereford (Mr. Hewins), into the whole question of our fiscal system. My hon. Friend made a very interesting and thoughtful speech. I do not think it is easy to answer, and I am not surprised that the Chancellor of the Exchequer was not inclined to try. I agree with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and I have never pretended anything else here or elsewhere, that every class of our community ought to contribute to the common expenditure. I go further and say that the expenditure is rising so rapidly, and that so large a proportion of the new expenditure is directly, and even exclusively, for the benefit of the poorer classes that this is not the right time to reduce the contributions which they make. The Chancellor of the Exchequer will see that in taking that line I am not trying for any cheap clap-trap advantage in the criticism in which I follow my hon. Friend in regard to the Tea Duty. If you want to change your fiscal system, I do not know that you could find a better means of raising revenue from working men than such taxes as you now propose, but is it no objection that the Tea Tax bears such a large ad valorem proportion to the article on which it falls? I think it is. Is it not an objection that your revenue is collected from so few taxes? After all, these taxes are kept at a high point to meet the normal expenditure. Is not that an objection when you consider the almost limitless liability that might fall on the country at any moment in the case of a European convulsion, and the fiscal as well as other exertions which you would have to make for national defence?
I regard it as a grave matter that the taxes we have are so few, because, owing to the amount of our expenditure, we are bound to keep these taxes at so high a point that the elasticity of our system is, therefore, grievously impaired, and there would be difficulty to meet sudden emergencies from sensible increases. Of course, it is a commonplace to say that all

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taxation is undesirable. So much is it a commonplace that I think it is said almost too broadly, and with too little qualification. Substantially taxation is a thing which we have because it is necessary, and not because we think it is desirable in itself. But is that any reason for excluding, when you are settling the taxes you will impose, all other considerations except that of money from your purview? Nobody thinks so. When the Chancellor of the Exchequer put a third or a fourth on the Whisky Duty—I think it was 3s. 4d. a gallon—he did it because he wanted money, but when he did not get money, as was the case at first, he was equally proud of his Spirit Tax. It is the taxes which do not produce money that the Chancellor of the Exchequer seems always to be proud of. He really cared more for the new Spirit Duty when it produced little or no money than he has ever cared about it since money came in. He cared about it for non-fiscal reasons. He thought it promoted the sobriety of the people, and undoubtedly one of the reasons why we have treated the liquor taxes differently from others is because we wish that they should promote sobriety. If it is legitimate to use a tax to promote sobriety, if it is legitimate to use another tax to promote what the Chancellor thinks is the proper use of a man's land, does that exhaust the objects for which we are entitled to use taxes, and why should you cling so exclusively as you now do in your Customs Duties to taxes which cannot produce any advantage except a purely fiscal one? Admittedly, whatever our thoughts on the fiscal question, the consumer has got to pay the whole of this enormous duty. The consumer has got to pay the whole of the Sugar Duty practically at present, unless beet sugar growing develops here and you continue to allow it to exist without a corresponding excise. The consumer has to pay at present the whole of the Tobacco Duties. I have heard the Financial Secretary say that in the case of the Tea Duty it all goes into the Treasury and that you get your full 5d., but is that all that the consumer pays?
Does all that the consumer pays go into the Treasury? Of course, it does not. That is part of your case in regard to every other duty, but you cannot see that it holds good with reference to the Tea Duty. It is not true to say that what distinguishes your Customs Duty from
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ours is that all which the consumer pays goes into the Treasury. It does not. What is the difference between the duty on an article which we cannot produce, and where therefore the consumer has to pay the whole of it, where the whole amount of the duty is necessarily added to the price, and such duties as we have proposed on articles which we can produce? The difference is that in the latter case you cannot add the whole of the difference to the price. I would not delay the House for a moment with a discussion of these questions if it were not for the astonishment aroused at this time of day by the reception given to the observations of my hon. Friend the Member for Hereford by hon. Members on the other side of the House. He spoke of the tax being paid by the consumer, and we heard Gentlemen on those benches murmuring, "what a strange doctrine for a Tariff Reformer." Why, it is the doctrine we have preached ever since we were Tariff Reformers. Who ever said otherwise? If you tax an article which you cannot produce yourself, of course you raise the price of the article by the amount of the tax and by the profits that the dealer has to put on the amount by which he is out of pocket between the time he pays the duty and the time he realises the sale of the commodity. Do you suggest that because that is true of an article which you cannot produce yourself, therefore it is true of an article which you can produce yourself? The question is decided by the proportion which the untaxed supply bears W the taxed supply, and by the power of expansion and elasticity which there is in the untaxed supply, and you cannot square the facts which are patent to you, if you would only look at them, with any other theory. Do you suppose that if you put a duty of 5s. a ton on coal we should all have to pay 5s. a ton more for English coal at the pit-mouth? No one supposes that, because we can supply ourselves fully. You will not contend that we should have to pay every duty.
The factor that decides is the relative proportion of the untaxed part to the taxed part and, above all, the power which you have to alter that relative proportion, if you have any power of expansion in your own country, so as to fill up any gap which is left by the supply from the foreign country decreasing. And with that expansion an ever decreasing part of the duty falls to be paid by your own

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people, and an ever increasing part has to be paid by the foreign exporter who still wishes to retain his market. Is not that the knowledge of our own Foreign Office? When a foreign nation proposes to raise its duties, do Chambers of Commerce wait upon the Foreign Office and beg the Secretary of State not to trouble about the rise in the French, or American, or Japanese tariff? Do they say, "It really does not matter to us, so do not worry. You have got other and more serious things to think about. All we have got to do is to raise our prices. They put on five dollars duty. We clap five dollars on to the price which we take out of the consumer and something else as well?" That is not what happens. What they say is, "We cannot retain the trade. The last time they raised the duty we were not able to raise the price in proportion. We are only just able to keep the trade now. If there is any further rise in duty we shall not be able to get it back in our price and we shall lose the trade." And we find instances again and again where, behind the high Protection, articles are sold more cheaply than you can buy them in a Free Trade country, where the protected country which, according to the theory, is supposed to destroy its enterprise and its power of cheap production by the cost of Protection, beats our own Free Trade producers in their own market. Take certain kinds of agricultural machinery on which there is a duty in the United States of America. That does not make them more costly in America than here. On the contrary, those American manufacturers, working under Protection, send those goods cheaper here than our manufacturers can produce them. It is not because our manufacturers are unenterprising or that our workmen are idle, but because of one factor which Gentlemen opposite will never take into account, which is the governing factor in regulating the cost of production at the present time.
The cost of production, in the great industrial works in which production is now mainly carried on, depends above all on the scale on which you produce and your success in keeping your factory or mill full of work. And if you can produce on a great scale and look forward to a steady and regular trade you do not need higher prices to encourage you to produce. You can make bigger profits by selling at lower prices. That is why there is dumping. That is why the protected interest, instead of having only their own market and
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failing to take a share in the exhort trade. have increased their export trade faster than ourselves. It is because under their fiscal system they have given to them, often under great mistakes, often under tariffs which I think are absurdly and ridiculously high, a security for their enterprise and a largeness of market which our people do not enjoy; that they have made progress out of proportion to ours, even at a moment when the Chancellor of the Exchequer is flattering himself, and rightly so, with the most prosperous trade. It is because we refuse to give similar assistance and security to our own people that they are handicapped in the competition of the world, and I, for one, share the views of the hon. Member for Hereford that there is no principle on which you can justify overloading a particular article of taxation like tea with these tremendous duties, or using your duties on alcohol to promote social objects quite apart from fiscal questions, and that position justifies, and more than justifies, the reform of our fiscal system, of which he is acknowledged to be one of the most skilful and most able champions.
Mr. SNOWDEN: I beg to move, as an Amendment, to leave out from the word "That" to the end of the Question, and to add the words "this House declines to assent to the Second Reading of a Bill which continues the system of taxing the food of the people, whereby the unfair proportion of taxation imposed upon the poorer classes is aggravated, instead of abolishing such injurious and indefensible forms of taxation and raising the necessary revenue by increasing the direct taxes on unearned incomes and large estates."
I do not rise for the purpose of adding to the appeal which has been made to the Chancellor of the Exchequer to make it easier for landowners to get the advantage of more generous concessions, and if there is £500,000 to give away I think that he will find overburdened taxpayers who are much more needy and much more deserving than members of the landowning class. Neither do I rise to express any opinion upon another matter that has occupied a great part of the discussion this afternoon, namely, as to whether the Chancellor of the Exchequer has been over-sanguine in the Estimates which he has formed as to the yield of revenue for the coming year. I think we may safely wait for something like nine months to see whether

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experience will justify his optimism or not. But if I did venture to express an opinion I should say that I am not inclined to think that that good fortune which has invariably attended the efforts of the right hon. Gentleman is likely to desert him now. Nor am I going to be led into a discussion of the question of Tariff Reform by the arguments used in the latter part of the speech of the right hon. Gentleman who has just sat down, though I note with interest the admission of the right hon. Gentleman and of the hon. Member who spoke earlier in the Debate that a tax upon a particular product takes a great deal more out of the pocket of the consumer than it brings into the revenue of the State. I rise for the purpose of urging the claims of a class of taxpayers who have so far received very little consideration in this Debate—that is the great mass of the working people, who, in my opinion, are paying a burden of taxation which is unfair, unjust, and very oppressive. The right hon. Gentleman estimates that he will receive during the current financial year from Customs and Excise a sum of £74,000,000. I think it is generally accepted as being a very fair estimate to assign four-fifths of the revenue from indirect taxation as the contribution made by the working classes of the country. It is usual in the term "working classes" to include that section of the people below the Income-Tax paying limit.
Four-fifths of £74,000,000 is, roughly, £60,000,000. If I were to include the relatively small proportion paid by this class of some duties and the profits of the Post Office, I shall be well within the mark when I say that the working people contribute to the Chancellor of the Exchequer's estimated revenue no less than £60,000,000. That works out at something like £6 13s. per family—say, £6 10s. This £3 10s. represents half-a-crown a week on the average paid in national taxation by the working people of this country. Take the food taxes alone, which gave a yield last financial year of a little over £10,000,000. That means that the working people are paying on the average 4s. 6d. per head in taxation upon food—that is 5d per family per week. But it has been admitted by the right hon. Gentleman and by the hon. Member who initiated this discussion this afternoon that it does not represent by any means the total burden which food taxation puts upon the wages
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and incomes of the working classes. It may be largely a matter of opinion—it certainly will be a matter of very intricate calculation, to say how much the Tea Duty at 5d. in the £ really takes out of the pockets of the consumer. But when one remembers the very large number of hands through which tea passes in the course of trade from the importer to the small retail grocer, I do not think I should be exaggerating when I say that the 5d. becomes 7d. before the packet of tea is finally handed across the counter by the retail trader to the consumer. Fivepence a week reduced in terms of the Income Tax means a considerable cost to a family with an income of £1 a week. It has been stated in this House that we have 2,000,000 families in this country whose total income in each case does not exceed £1 a week. Therefore the food taxes in at least 2,000,0000 of families in this country are reduced in the terms of Income Tax, 5d in the £, taking all indirect taxation.
Taking the case of a family with £1 a week to provide all the necessaries of life, 5d. a week, reduced in terms of the Income Tax, means half-a-crown in the £. You may say that 5d. a week is not very much to contribute towards the cost of and in return for all the advantages which families receive from the Government of the State; but 5d. a week means a great deal for a family with an income of £1 a week. It means that such a tax cannot be paid without depriving that family of something which is necessary to its physical health, not even to mention the material comfort of the family. Fivepence a week means the difference in the case of hundreds of thousands of families in this country between milk being provided for the infant children and the absence of milk. Of course, to take 5d. a week from an income of £1 a week is an infinitely heavier burden than to take a tax of £20 a week from the income of a man who has £500 a week. I very gratefully admit that there have been remissions of taxation since the Government assumed office some seven or eight years ago; but, in considering the matter, this point is very often ignored, and is always ignored in Liberal leaflets and in election speeches of Liberal candidates—I refer to the reduction of the Tea Duty and the remission of the Sugar Tax. That is not the point, however. It is not whether the tax upon tea is less in the 1b. than it was seven years ago; the point is, what is the total amount that is being paid through taxation by the working classes?

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As a matter of fact, an analysis of the revenue figures shows that the amount which is being paid in taxation by the working people of the country is very much higher to-day than it was when the Government assumed office. As a matter of fact, on the Estimates of the right hon. Gentleman, the working people have paid in taxation during the current financial year £11,000,000 more than they paid in the year before this Government took office. The statement has been made, and it was made in the speech of the hon. Member for Holmfirth (Mr. Sydney Arnold) a few weeks ago, a speech which excited the admiration of everybody who heard it, that the working classes have not paid for social reforms carried out by the Government during recent years. I beg to dispute that statement, and I will give two or three reasons in support of my refusal to accept it. In the first place, there has been this increase of £11,000,000 in the total amount of taxation contributed towards the £74,000,000, and on the proportion of four-fifths, an increase of £9,000,000 has been paid by the working classes since 1906–7. Then, again, I could support my objection to and refusal to accept the statement by the declarations of the Prime Minister and of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Prime Minister, in 1907, made a statement to the effect that he was not prepared to reduce the Sugar Tax altogether, because the working classes ought to pay something to the scheme of old age pensions. About that time I submitted to the House a leaflet which had been issued at a Liberal meeting and which said that a part of the Sugar Tax has been reserved because it was the opinion of the Liberal party that the working people ought to make some contribution towards the cost of old age pensions. If it had not been for this expenditure, this tax would probably have been remitted; therefore, in that sense the working classes are paying also. It is not fair, therefore, to say that the cost of financing these schemes of social reform, for which I repeat we are grateful to the extent to which they have conferred benefits on a deserving class of the community, is not being contributed to by the working classes.
Mr. SYDNEY ARNOLD: If the hon. Member will allow me, the statement I made was in this sense, that the remission of the duties on tea and on sugar exceeded all the new imposts under the Bridget of 1909 on tobacco and spirits.
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That cannot be denied. I presume the hon. Gentleman is including the license duties but that is wrong.
8.0 P.M.
Mr. SNOWDEN: Of course, I am. I think the Chancellor of the Exchequer has altered his opinions very much indeed in recent years in regard to the working classes and general taxation. I confess that at one time I had hopes that he would do something to relieve the portion of taxation which now falls upon the working classes, but I must further confess that I have no hones now. I believe that the Chancellor of the Exchequer holds that the present proportion of taxation between the rich and the working people is a fair one. Last year he seemed inclined to favour a direct tax upon working people by way of a substitute for some of the indirect taxation they have paid. But during the intervening months he appears to have changed his mind once more, and in a speech he made a week or two ago, he put forward certain objections to an Income Tax upon small incomes. Working class taxation as I have said, is altogether about £60,000,000 a year. Here we come to another aspect of the question which brought my hon. Friend to his feet. It may be asked what are the public services which might be described as services for the benefit of the working classes? There is education, for which about £19,000,000 are required this year; old age pensions take about £13,000,000, and there is the Insurance Act about £7,000,000. These together amount to £39,000,000. The working classes are contributing £60,000,000, and they are receiving benefit to the extent of £39,000,000. About £20,000,000 remain. My hon. Friend says there is the Army and Navy, but the Army and Navy do not exist to protect the working people—they do not exist for the benefit of the working people. Have we not been told a thousand times by the party opposite, that the German workers and the French workers are quite as well off as the working men in this country. Suppose we had an invasion by German aeroplanes, and they succeeded in imposing upon us in this country a German Government. Is there any man here who thinks that, as soon as the ravages of the invasion had been repaired the working classes of this country would be any worse off economically or socially under the German Government than under their own British Government to-day? I do not believe that there is a man here who thinks that.

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It would not be to their economic advantake to possess the country with the people in a bad economic condition. Are the Boer farmers in South Africa worse off to-day under British rule, since the invasion and conquest of their country, than they were when they governed themselves? No; the Army and Navy do not exist for the protection of the working people; and that was formerly recognised to be the case, because the maintenance of the Army and the cost of the defence of the country was formerly placed entirely on the landlord class. When the landlord class got more power, they used that power to shake off burdens from themselves on to the shoulders of the people. Beyond all question the national taxation paid by the working people is unfair and excessive, and the method by which it is raised is vicious and unjust. The arguments as to the system of indirect taxation are fairly well known. Those indirect taxes violate every canon of sound taxation. They do not tax a person in proportion to his ability to pay, and they are uncertain and unequal in their incidence. The system of indirect taxation does not tax a man according to the benefits he receives, but taxes him according to his personal tastes. Indirect taxation can always be avoided. Take our own taxes on sugar and tea and a few other minor taxes. It is not a very difficult thing for a man who does not pay Income Tax to avoid paying a single penny of contribution to the taxation of the country. A system of that sort cannot be defended on any canon of taxation. In the speech of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to which I have referred, in which he raised objection to an Income Tax on small incomes, he said he did not think it was right that a person who had political power should be exempt from taxation. I admit there is something in the argument, but that has not always been observed in the levying of taxation. At a time when the great body of the working classes of this country had no votes at all it was then that the heaviest part of taxation was laid upon them. Between, say, the Napoleonic wars and 1867, which was the time of the enfranchisement of the Working classes, three-fourths of the taxation of the country was raised by means of indirect taxation, and, therefore, mainly on the working people. I do not accept the right hon. Gentleman's statement that we ought to have no class of the
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community enjoying political power, and yet making no financial contributions to the State. I will give you one or two reasons why I do not agree with him. In the first place, I may say that the poor, even if they do not pay direct taxation, are paying a good part of the cost of the maintenance of the nation because the poor work and labour and create the wealth of the nation. Therefore they are paying the taxation out of the wealth which is being taken from them and which is paid by the idle rich. The idle rich are living upon the plunder of the industrious poor, and therefore the taxation of the idle rich is really a payment which has been made by the poor who have been exploited.
I will give the right hon. Gentleman another reason why it might be just to exempt the very poor from taxation altogether, and that is that the State has no right to tax any individual until it has ensured that the individual is able by honest labour, to maintain himself and those who are dependent upon him in a degree of physical efficiency, health and comfort. The individual is at greater liberty in a savage country to provide for himself than he is in a country like our own. There are no laws there standing between him and his right to exercise his labour in producing to supply his own needs and the needs of those who are dependent on him. In our own country people starve while the State taxes them in order to protect others in the enjoyment of property which has been taken from the labour of the poor people. Those I think are reasons which might in certain circumstances justify, in the interests of the general well being, the State in exempting altogether the very poorest part of our people from taxation. I believe it was the hon. Gentleman who started this Debate who pointed out that taxation upon the poor is a restriction upon income to the extent that it is bad for the general trade of the country. To an extent you increase the purchasing or the spending power of the poor if you relieve them of taxation, and thus, to that extent by doing so you would benefit the country and promote its welfare generally. May I call the attention of the right hon. Gentleman to words used by Mr. Gladstone on this very point. Speaking on the taxation of the very poor, Mr. Gladstone said:—
"Such a tax is in no small degree a deduction from the scanty store which is necessary to secure them, not the comforts but the prime necessaries of life."

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What they pay through Imperial taxation does not represent their total maintenance to the State. There is local taxation also, and local taxation is every year becoming as national taxation is, a heavier burden on the people of the country. There is a connection between the two things. Local taxation has been rising during recent years, and part of that increase is due to the fact that this House has been placing on the localities the financial responsibility for carrying out national and Imperial obligations. In spite of all the theories about the incidence of rates, I think nobody will dispute that the burden of local rates does fall very heavily upon the working people. If you want illustration of that, I cite to you what is happening in the city of Bradford. The rates there have just been increased by 6d. in the £, and the rents of cottage property in Bradford have been raised from threepence to sixpence per week, and that is, in the case of the maximum increase, an increase of 26s. on the cottages, and is being contributed by people a large proportion of whom have wages which are totally inadequate to provide them with the fullness of the necessaries of life. Once or twice I have been interrupted in the course of my observations, and I was asked the question whether I included the liquor taxation in estimating the amount of working-class taxation. Certainly. I am quite prepared to say that there are certain features of taxation upon liquor, and, though perhaps not quite to the same extent, but to some extent, as to the tax on tobacco, which disinguish them from taxes on food, like sugar, tea, and the like, but those are not economic differences; they are really moral and social differences. Whether you take taxation on drink or on tea, in each case it is equally a subtraction from a man's spending power in other directions.
There is this further point, Why do we tax liquor and tobacco? Perhaps until the present Chancellor of the Exchequer imposed a very heavy additional duty on spirits, no Chancellor of the Exchequer had ever before imposed a tax upon liquor for any other purpose than an economic object, that is the raising of revenue. Why was liquor selected? It was because men drink, and men do spend money on alcohol. According to the opinions now held by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in regard to the necessity of the working classes contributing to national taxation, suppose every working man in the country became
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teetotal, what would happen then? We should have the Chancellor of the Exchequer standing at the Table next year and proposing some other form of indirect taxation which would make the people, who hitherto had been contributing by the liquor contribution, contribute through a tax upon some other commodity which was in common use amongst the working classes. I do not agree at all with the view put forward by the ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer in regard to the advisability of a large number of taxes. I do not believe in a large number of taxes. I do not believe it is a sound method of taxation, and it certainly is not an economical method of raising national revenue. It may surprise some Members of the House if I were to make the confession that I do not believe in the tax on motor cars, although it is paid by rich people, nor do I believe in the tax on men servants, armorial bearings and the like, for this reason: that I want to tax, not the way in which a man spends part of his income, I do not want to tax tastes, whether of the poor or rich, but what I want to tax is his income, his means to pay, and not the way in which he spends a particular part of his income. I would abolish an enormous number of small taxes which we have at present. I would abolish, for instance, taxes upon occupation, such as auctioneers, game dealers' licences, the licence for patent medicines, registration and carriage licences and the like. Perhaps I would abolish, first of all, the tax upon motor spirit, because, if I may use the words of the Prime Minister with regard to it, "It is a tax on a raw material which is a necessity for a very important industry."
My main purpose in rising was to advocate the abolition of the taxes upon food, because, after all, we are practical men, and I know it would be impossible for any Chancellor of the Exchequer to remove all the £60,000,000 of taxation which is the working classes' present contribution. I rise for the purpose of demanding the repeal of the taxes upon food, and all that I have said about the viciousness of indirect taxation applies with accentuated strength and effect to the taxes on food. Nobody is in favour of the taxation of food. Not even the Unionist party at present is in favour of taxes on food, until the Leader of the Unionist party makes another speech, or until the next election. I am not going to say anything in denunciation of the taxes upon sugar and

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tea and the like, because those taxes have been denounced by every Member sitting on the Treasury Bench, and by none so eloquently as by the present Chancellor of the Exchequer, and always in language far more forcible and picturesque than I could command. Therefore I am going to denounce the Sugar and Tea Taxes out of the mouths of right hon. Gentlemen themselves. What did the Prime Minister say about this? He said, and this was not said when he was in a position of greater freedom and less responsibility when in Opposition, but said since he became a responsible Minister of the Crown:—
"The Sugar and Tea Duties, I agree, are grievous taxes which weigh heavily on the class of our population least able to bear the burden."
On another occasion the right hon. Gentleman said:—
"I entirely agree that the Sugar Tax is a bad tax, a tax which ought to be got rid of, and got rid of at the earliest possible moment."
That is six years ago, and again:—
"The tax is vicious in principle, burdensome in its incidence, unequal in its operation as between different classes and interests, and as such it ought not to form a permanent part of the fiscal machinery of the country."
From the Chancellor of the Exchequer you will find language more forcible and picturesque. He said:—
"I do not think that under these conditions they ought to continue a tax of that character as a permanent burden upon the people of the country. It adds a burden to the poorer classes of the people, because sugar is an essential part of their daily food, and if they cut it down very largely they diminish the comfort of the poorer classes of the community."
In order to put the matter shortly, I may say that, not only the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but I believe every Liberal who is now a Member of the Government, voted against the imposition of the Sugar Tax by the Unionist Government.
It being a Quarter-past Eight of the clock, and there being Private Business set down by direction of the Chairman of Ways and Means, under Standing Order No. 8, further proceeding was postponed without Question put.

PRIVATE BUSINESS.

  LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL (MONEY) BILL.— [By Order.]
  Order for Second Reading read.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."
  Mr. BOOTH: I hope the Deputy-Chairman of Ways and Means will forgive me for putting an inquiry to him in reference to this Bill. As I understand, this is an annual measure which roust come for the review of this House. Several questions occur to me in reading through the tables upon which I should like enlightenment, but I have decided that the wiser course would be to seek an explanation from Members connected with the county council itself rather than to raise those questions at this point. I take it that, while this House has a distinct right to review the finance of the London County Council when this Bill is presented, the object is not that we should have controversy upon the details of administration, particularly under Acts already sanctioned and powers already given, but that in any case of supreme importance and emergency there should be a right in this House to have the matter definitely raised and a discussion thereupon. I should like some clear indication from the Deputy-Chairman of Ways and Means as to what is the right of Members of this House in reference to this Bill every year. As I say, I think my best course would be, not to raise now a number of points which occur to me, but first of all to get an explanation in some other way, and then, if I think them important enough, to claim my right next year of having questions answered or information given to the House. It would, however, be for our convenience to have an indication as to how far our rights extend in reviewing the very important and numerous matters contained in the Bill and the accompanying tables.
  The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN of WAYS and MEANS (Mr. Maclean): I do not suppose that I shall make a rather complicated matter clear, but I will do my best. As I understand, these Bills of the London County Council, formerly of the Metropolitan Board of Works, used to be public Bills, but owing to the operation of Standing Order No. 194, which was framed in the year 1901, if these Bills comply with certain conditions there laid down they can be introduced as private Bills, as is done upon this occasion. One of those conditions is that the spending and the borrowing of the money of the London County Council shall be completed within a certain time, not later than the 30th September in each year. That makes it necessary that an annual Money Bill should be introduced. The rather complicated history of this matter was summed up by the

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  Act of 1912. The joint operation of that Act and of Standing Order No. 194 (a) (b) (c) (d) and (e), to which I refer my hon. Friend, make it necessary for the London County Council to come forward and present this Bill in the way they are now doing.
  Mr. CASSEL: As one of the Members whose names appear on the back of the Bill, perhaps I may say a word in reply to the hon. Member for Pontefract (Mr. Booth). The hon. Member was perfectly correct in saying that this House has a right to discuss any matter which comes before it. It would be impossible to suggest that the House should be asked to give a Second Reading to a Bill without having full liberty to discuss any question arising out of that Bill. At the same time, I think it is a right which the House would be advised to exercise sparingly, and only under conditions which render such a course necessary; because if this House, in addition to all its other duties, and having regard to the fact that business is already considerably congested, were to take upon itself to review din detail the whole of the financial proposals of the London County Council, and therefore to a large extent those of other local authorities, the congestion from which we are suffering would become very much worse. The hon. Member has not brought forward any specific points to which I can address myself; therefore I will content myself by saying that I fully recognise the right which he has claimed, but at the same time I consider it a right which the House ought to exercise sparingly.
  Captain JESSEL: I think we owe a debt of gratitude to the hon. Member for Pontefract for having brought this question to the notice of the House. I am glad to hear raised from that quarter the plea that the House of Commons should have some jurisdiction over the finance of a body such as the London County Council. This Bill is a legacy from the old Metropolitan Board of Works, brought up to date by the Act of 1912. The hon. Member has not brought forward any specific points, and, having obtained a decision from the Deputy-Chairman of Ways and Means, he has reserved his right to deal with any questions next year. I remember when we were on the other side of the House, and there was a Progressive majority on the London County Council, it was often said that the House of Commons had nothing to do with the finance of London or of the London County Council. We, however,
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  always contended that it had, and I am very glad that the hon. Member and his Friends now join us in substantiating that claim.
  Question put, and agreed to.
  Bill read a second time, and committed.

  LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL (GENERAL POWERS) BILL.
  Order for Second Reading read.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a second time."
  Mr. KING: I shall oppose this Bill, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, unless I get an assurance that the Instruction that I have put down on the Paper will be accepted. I am sorry that that Instruction has not been given as I think it ought to have been. I shall endeavour to show to the House that unless the assurance be given the Bill ought to be thrown out.
  Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER (Mr. Whitley): Perhaps the hon. Member has not seen the Memorandum distributed to Members of the House? If he looks at that he will see that his point has been met.
  Mr. KING: On a point of Order. I have seen the Memorandum, but it does not contain the name of any Member of the House of Commons. For all I know it may be an entirely unauthoritative Memorandum. I waited to see if anybody would rise, after the moving of this Bill, and give the assurance which I desire, and I have not had that given.
  Mr. WALTER GUINNESS: If it will shorten the proceedings I think I can give the hon. Member the assurance that he asks for.
  Mr. KING: I think I am entitled, having been called upon to show cause why I oppose this Bill, and why, unless I can get that assurance, that my Instruction should be accepted. I want very briefly to call the attention of the House to the fact that a proposal is made in this Bill by the London County Council to step in in advance of the Home Office. The Home Office has got under its consideration a set of regulations which it proposes to make to deal with the celluloid difficulty and the danger of manufacturing and storing celluloid. I consider it is entirely uncalled for that the City of London and the London County Council should bring proposals on this matter at all. If they will consider—
  Mr. GUINNESS: On a point of Order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. As these Clauses are withdrawn, and as I have expressed the intention of the promoters, is it in order for the hon. Member to go on?
  Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER: I cannot say that the hon. Member is out of order, but perhaps now he has had the assurance that he asks for it will satisfy him.
  Mr. KING: I am quite willing now that I have got a definite assurance not to proceed any further, but I must protest against this way of what appears to me, at any rate, to be trying to smuggle the Bill through, unless someone has been here on the watch.
  Question put, and agreed to.
  Bill read a second time, and committed.
  Mr. BRUNNER: I beg to move, "That it be an Instruction to the Committee to whom this Bill is referred to delete all Clauses having reference to the lands known as Latchmere allotments."
  In moving the Instruction standing in my name on the Paper, I do so on behalf of the Open Spaces Societies which have got the open spaces of London under their purview. They are the Commons and Footpaths Preservation Society, the Kyrle Society, and the London Playing Fields Committee. I move the matter here, because there is no locus standi that these societies can obtain upstairs. The public cannot brief counsel, and so I am bound to bring the matter forward in the House. The land to which this Motion refers, the Latchmere Allotments was originally common land. It was enclosed in 1832, and in 1900 Parliament allowed the Battersea Borough Council to buy and build upon it. If it had not been enclosed by Parliament it would have become a metropolitan common under the Metropolitan Commons Act, and could not have been built upon at all. The Act of 1900 allowed building on part of the land while the other was to be turned into a recreation ground. A subsequent Act was passed in 1905, permitting the Borough Council of Battersea to build on a further portion of the land, subject to a proviso that an equal area should be found within the Borough for the area given. That equivalent area has not been found. That is common ground between us.
  They say they cannot find such an area, but they have contributed £1,500 towards the purchase of a piece of land which is
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  just outside the borough—in fact which is adjacent to it. Looked at merely as a commercial transaction, the borough council of Battersea are getting 1¾ acres inside the borough to build upon, which land is worth about £3,000, and they are giving £1,500, which they consider an equivalent for a piece of land just outside. I do not think that is an equivalent. If you look at the whole matter it will be seen that Battersea has got inside the borough a piece of land worth thousands, which in my opinion they ought never to have had, and they are contributing £1;500 for a piece of land outside it. I think everybody will consider that Battersea is extremely lucky to get this piece of land. The public cannot properly be represented upstairs, but the House can order that anybody shall be heard before a Committee. If, therefore, I do not press this Motion to a Division, I hope the right hon. Gentleman, the President of the Local Government Board, who happens to be the Member for Battersea, and can speak on its behalf, will assure me that those on whose behalf I speak will have no opposition in our wish to appear before the Committee. I think I should further press him to make what I may call a quasi-Parliamentary bargain, which is that Battersea will consider that she is morally bound to contribute something further than £1,500 to open spaces in Battersea, or in the neighbourhood. I think that is the least that can be offered to the Open Spaces Societies. I do not wish to unduly press the right hon. Gentleman because he is the President of the Local Government Board, for we, who represent the Open Spaces Societies are very grateful to him for past favours—and I hope for favours to come—but I put my request to him and in the meantime move this Instruction pro forma.
  Mr. KING: I beg to second the Instruction.
  Mr. W. GUINNESS: The hon. Member who has moved this Instruction stated that the land upon which it is proposed to build is worth £3,000. I understand that that is a very extreme estimate. In a matter of this kind we have got- to distinguish between the value of the land—even accepting the hon. Member's figures for the moment—for building purposes and its value as open spaces. All that concerns the people of Battersea, I take it, is that they should have an open space, and they have got more than the equivalent of this open space by this gift of £1,500.

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  The total amounton which it is proposed to build is only one and three quarter acres, and taking the proportion of the total purchase money of the Royal Victoria Patriotic School, which is represented by the £1,500 granted by the Battersea Borough Council, it works out that that donation is responsible for the addition of two and a half acres to the air space of London. On the balance, therefore, the public is the gainer by three-quarters of an acre of air space. Housing is, I understand, badly wanted in Battersea, and the county council do not feel justified in delaying the matter any longer. It has been suspended for about eight years. The borough council have not been enabled to complete their housing scheme as they desire owing to the difficulty of finding this site. It is a great inconvenience to the people of Battersea. The hon. Member suggested that a locus should be given to the Open Spaces Societies to appear before the Select Committee. The London County Council, and I believe all local authorities, object on principle to this. The system of locus is laid down by the Standing Orders of this House. It is laid down for the convenience of all parties, and however much we may admire the activities of the Open Spaces Societies, on whose behalf the hon. Member spoke, we must feel that it is a dangerous practice to begin to give them a locus before Committees. After all, they are purely self-constituted bodies, and I take it that if once the door were opened to them it would be very difficult to draw a hard and fast line. That is, I understand, the view of the London County Council. Of course, it is more a matter for the Chairman of Ways and Means to speak upon than for me, and I hope that we shall have some guidance from the Chairman of Ways and Means, who is responsible for our procedure.
  The PRESIDENT of the LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD (Mr. Burns): The hon. Member who moved this Instruction has appealed to me less as President of the Local Government Board than as Member for Battersea to say a word upon this matter, and I most cheerfully respond to his appeal. Before I do so, may I congratulate him upon the good sense he has displayed in the interests of the Commons Preservation Society in not forcing his Motion to a Division? It would be the worst possible thing for the object which the Commons Preservation Society has at heart that they should in any way quarrel
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  with the London County Council, which is the statutory authority for securing and safeguarding open spaces in London. It is only fair to that great body to say that they have done an extraordinary amount of good in the last twenty-four years for the acquisition of parks, gardens, and open spaces, not only in the county of London, but outside, and I have never yet found anybody, however they might disagree with the general policy of the London County Council who did not clearly approve of their policy and conduct in this particular matter. He said he would not press his Motion to a Division, and in that he showed both ingenuity and wisdom after the satisfactory statement that has been made. The only thing I have to say in reply is this, that the Battersea Borough Council, in asking the county council to exempt them from the provisions of Section 54 of the Act of 1905, do so in the interests of a housing scheme that cannot be satisfactorily completed unless this exemption is given, and Parliament very properly put upon the London County Council the responsibility of keeping the Battersea Borough Council in order in this particular matter, and the county council says that if the Battersea Borough Council contributes an amount of money that would provide an equivalent area of open space adjoining the parish, the county council would assent to that gift of money being made and the exemption being granted, and the Battersea Borough Council have contributed £1,500 for one and a quarter acres in area for housing in their parish, and that £1,500 has been used to purchase, as the hon. Member who spoke on the other side has stated, nearly three acres of ground on land adjoining the parish, and which, up to 1900, was in the parish of Battersea, so that from the point of view of equivalent areas and cash contribution the ratepayers of London and the men, women, and children of London who use open spaces are considerable gainers by this transaction.
  The hon. Member further asks that, supposing he did not press his Motion, would I give some guarantee that in the securing of open spaces in or near the parish of Battersea the Battersea Borough Council would do their duty. In this, as in nearly every other matter, the district I have the honour to represent has been fair and generous to the rest of London, and I can assure my hon. Friend both the borough

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  council and the county council are losing no opportunity of providing, where practicable, another open space not very far from this particular district, and in the event of the Battersea Borough Council being called upon by public opinion and the county councils to fairly contribute to any other open space in or near their parish, or better still, perhaps, open spaces at Stepney, Rotherhithe, and Bermondsey, I assure him no effort will be lost upon my part, as the representative of that district, to see that. Battersea in the future behaves in this matter as fairly and generously as it is doing for London on this occasion. I thank the hon. Gentleman for his willingness to withdraw the Motion, and I think he shows great good sense in so doing. The hon. Member asked what about the locus of the Commons Society before the the Committee. As the House knows, that is not a matter that can be decided by any Minister, but so far as the Battersea Borough Council and the London County Council and I myself are concerned, given the authority of the House, we have no objection to the Commons Preservation Society appearing before the Committee upstairs.
  Captain JESSEL: I would remind the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Local Government Board that this is not the action he has always taken up on this question. As a rule, in this House we have seen him the gallant defender of open spaces. Only two years ago when there was a very similar request from another Metropolitan borough council to be allowed to build upon a small portion of ground he immediately came down to this House with all the authority of his office and said such a thing was impossible. Now, however, when the matter comes home to roost as it were in his own constituency of Battersea he is quite agreeable to allow this scheme to go through. I dare say there is a good deal to be said for it; perhaps his action denotes a little repentance on the part of the President of the Local Government Board, because latterly he has not shown himself as friendly disposed to housing schemes as we would wish and I suppose that is the reason he is now in favour of this scheme. I ask the right hon. Gentleman in all sincerity whether this is quite such a good case as he wishes to make out. I should also like to know how the Battersea Borough Council is to contribute this money. The right hon. Gentleman knows
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  quite well that it is very unlikely the Battersea Borough Council or any other borough council would be induced to subscribe to open spaces outside their own borough. This is not a new question. I well remember the speech the right hon. Gentleman made on a similar occasion as long ago as 1900. He then made a most amusing speech about dead cats being thrown into this allotment garden in Battersea. My only reason for rising is to point out the difference between the right hon. Gentleman's views on a matter affecting his own constituency and what he thinks when he appears as the champion of open spaces in this House.
  Mr. GOLDSMITH: The first notice of Motion on the Paper is to delete the Clauses having reference to the Latchmere allotments, but the second provides that there shall not be an exchange of land in relation to Parliament Hill Fields except upon the principle of equality of area. The hon. Member who moved the first Instruction speaks on behalf of the London County Council, but he has not said whether the London County Council are prepared to accept the second Instruction. I take it that they will not accept either the first or the second Motion. I would like to point out that Committees upstairs, and especially the Local Legislation Committee, are already very much overworked, and you do not want to increase the amount of work they are doing. Apparently from what has been said, it is not thought that the society have got a very good case, but I see no objection to allowing this society to appear before the Committee upstairs.
  Mr. POINTER: I think we ought to have the matter cleared up as to whether the London County Council or the Battersea Borough Council are going to oppose this proposal. The right hon. Gentleman's assurance does not square with the remarks made by the hon. Member opposite and the further remarks made by the hon. Gentleman who has just sat down. The cases referred to seem to me to be on a different footing altogether, because, if the Battersea Borough Council and the London County Council have such a strong case as they appear to present to this House, surely there is no need to shirk any investigation or representations that might be made by the societies mentioned! I hope the hon. Member will not withdraw his Instruction until he gets a satisfactory assurance on that point.
  Mr. BRUNNER: The London County Council are only agents in this matter. They have this proposal in their Bill at the request of the Battersea Borough Council, and if the representative for Battersea considers it right I think they should give way and allow this second Motion on the Paper to pass.
  Lord A. THYNNE: Shall I be in order in discussing the question of locus on this particular Instruction? I understand that my hon. Friend has given no undertaking with regard to accepting the second Instruction, and I understand also that the hon. Member opposite is prepared to withdraw the first Instruction unconditionally.
  Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER: The hon. Member can only move the second Instruction if the first one is withdrawn.
  Lord A. THYNNE: Shall we be in order in discussing the question of locus?
  Mr. DEPUTY-SPEAKER: The question as to whether locus should be allowed before the Committee has arisen, and I cannot say that it is out of order.
  Mr. BOOTH: I wish to move the second Instruction on the Paper.
  Mr. BRUNNER: I ask leave to withdraw my Motion.
  Motion, by leave, withdrawn.
  Mr. FLETCHER: I beg to move, "That it be an Instruction to the Committee on the Bill not to sanction an exchange of land in relation to Parliament Hill Fields except upon the principle of equality of area."
  This Instruction seems to me to be so popular in tone and so clear in principle that I am very much surprised that those in charge of the Bill have not already assured me that they will obey this Instruction. As they have not done so, I want very briefly to acquaint the House with the facts. The open space known as Parliament Hill Fields was acquired by the Metropolitan Board of Works in 1886 after a very severe effort, great pressure being put upon the late Earl of Mansfield to sell his property. They were acquired under the Act, which provides that all lawful means shall be taken to prevent any encroachment on the said estate, which was to be preserved as an open space. It is argued that Parliament passed the Bill
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  of 1886, and that therefore Parliament can alter it, but I submit that the London County Council have not stated any adequate reason for proposing to deprive the public of something between 5,000 and 6,000 square feet of land formerly dedicated to the public and enjoyed by them for over a quarter of a century. I submit that no such adequate reason has been stated and the exchange they suggest is unfair, because they should at least give an amount of land equal in area. When I say that no adequate reason has been given, I quote from the statement made on behalf of the promoters, which sets forth that the lands are equal in value. The Borough Council of Hampstead deny that, and they say that the public will be deprived of more than 5,000 square feet of land. They also say that the difference is insignificant in comparison with the total area of Parliament Hill Fields, which cover an area of 623 acres. I think that is a most fallacious argument, entirely unworthy of a body on which I have had the honour of sitting. They appear to argue that because 600 acres are dedicated to the public in that part of London, they are justified in taking away some portion of that large space. We know, from the very interesting speech made recently by the President of the Local Government Board, that 11 per cent. of the whole area of London is dedicated for ever to open spaces, parks, and gardens. That is, I believe, something like 6,000 and 7,000 acres in and around London has been so dedicated. That is no reason why the London County Council should take away a portion of that, and it is not consistent with the enthusiasm which is still being shown for acquiring open spaces recently by the opening of a public park at Beckenham and Colley Hill, near Reigate.
  I submit that that enthusiasm will be greatly damped and checked if the public get the idea that the London County Council has the power of snipping off little bits of land here and there. I am amazed that they should do this without any reason, or, as it seems to me, without any reason at all. They go on in their information to say that they propose to use both these spaces, and that they would be useful for bowling greens and lawn tennis, but there is not a word as to why they are taking a larger space and offering a smaller one. I submit that the London County Council, not on this occasion, but on several occasions, have not been what they should be, the Mother of Councils, and the supporter of the privileges of the

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  Hampstead Borough Council and other borough councils, but they have actually been threatening Hampstead with tramways and trackless trolley vehicles, both of them descriptions of traction which the Hampstead people and the Hampstead Borough Council, without any distinction of party whatever, loathe and detest. Now when the borough council came to them on a matter in which they are primarily interested, and ask for a locus standi to appear before the Committee, they actually refused until they were compelled by law to admit that they had a locus standi. I think that the public, when they know the facts, will feel a little alarm at the action of the London County Council in this matter. I appeal to those Members who have read it whether any Instruction ever proposed in this House was either so moderate in tone or so fair in principle, and I hope we shall have the assurance of the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. W. Guinness), who appears to be the advocate and leader of the London County Council in this matter, that they will grant this reasonable request. I need not argue that Hampstead Heath has never been regarded in the possession of Hampstead. It is the most popular open space all over London, and it is the most used by the poor in the North and East of London. When we remember that some 200,000 people, mostly of the poorer classes, enjoy their holidays on Hampstead Heath, I say that to take even a small portion of that valuable space without any reasonable cause being given is enough to awaken considerable alarm on the part of those numerous Londoners who value our open spaces and seek to add to them.
  Mr. BRUNNER: I have much pleasure in seconding the Motion. It seems to me to be purely a case of obstinacy on the part of the London County Council. There is absolutely no reason why they should not agree to this proposal, and I trust the House will compel them to do so.
  Mr. W. GUINNESS: The London County Council have asked to be allowed to make this exchange, because it will add to the convenience of access to Parliament Hill Fields. The hon. Member for Hampstead (Mr. Fletcher) urges that in these matters we should only be guided by considerations of area. I think that in this particular case we must also take into consideration the very great difficulty which there is at the present time in getting
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  access to this particular corner of Parliament Hill Fields from Highgate Road. This proposal did not originate with the education committee of the London County Council; it actually originated with the parks committee. It is true that the amount of land is one-ninth of an acre less than that which the education committee will receive back, but both parties to the exchange will have a much more convenient boundary. The hon. Member opposite (Mr. Brunner) said that it was mere obstinacy on the part of the London County Council not to carry out this suggestion. I should have thought that it was a reasonable proposal on the part of the London County Council to have rectangular sides and to carry all the lines of the boundaries beyond the angles of the new property. That is what they have done, and by that means they have cut off Parliament Hill Fields with straight sides. It is most desirable to avoid awkward angles in the matter of boundaries of this kind, and it is more convenient to have this exchange, as it will enable the entrance to Parliament Hill Fields to be closer to Highgate Hill Road.
  Mr. ROWLANDS: There is an entrance now from Highgate Road.
  Mr. W. GUINNESS: Not directly.
  Mr. ROWLANDS: I was there last night.
  9.0 P.M.
  Mr. W. GUINNESS: If the hon. Member will look at the plan, I think he will agree with what I am saying. The entrance to Parliament Hill Fields from Highgate Road now is by means of a path about 100 yards long. There is on the north-west side some private property, part of which is the existing training college and part of which is the new training college, and on the other side, the south side, there are cricket pitches, so that the public who want to get to Parliament Hill Fields have to walk along this narrow path. On Bank Holidays there is very great congestion and inconvenience on that path, and by means of this exchange the entrance into Parliament Hill Fields will be brought about fifty yards closer to Highgate Road. I think that in view of this extra convenience to the public who want to get into Parliament Hill Fields, the House will be well advised to reject this Instruction and to allow the Parks Committee to have this exchange of land which they

  705
  themselves have proposed. With all due respect to the hon. Member for Hampstead, we must in a matter of this sort, where there is so large an area, consider other questions than the exact area of land. We must consider the convenience of the boundary, and also the fact that the land which is going to be given over to the training college is not going to be built upon, but is going to be left as an open space.
  Mr. ROWLANDS: I look with very great fear on the action which the London County Council is taking in at all encroaching on that great reserve which we have in the north of London. When once you begin to take a small piece of public property you set a precedent, and some other part either of the Heath or of Golders Hill may be taken. We may have another proposal for taking another little corner, and we shall be told that a precedent was set in 1913 when an exchange took place in connection with the college and the entrance from Highgate Road to Parliament Hill Fields. I know the site as well as anyone, and I say that you have plenty of ground there except that you may want a little more playground. The hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. W. Guinness) says that you will get a wider path. It is pretty wide now.
  Mr. W. GUINNESS: No, a shorter path.
  Mr. ROWLANDS: What are you going to do with the flower beds? You have a gravel path and a nice set of flower beds on the lefthand side. You are going to abolish the greater portion of them, and I do not think you are going to give any benefit to the public, because when you get about halfway up the path it opens out, and with regard to the first cricket field, as a rule, during the busiest part of the season, some of the fences are taken down, and people can go immediately from this path into the field. What most seriously affects the House is this, that it should not give any power whatever to the county council to take one inch of public property in the form of open spaces without giving an equivalent for it. All they have to do is to round off the property of the new Training College, and they can leave us exactly what we have as regards public property. There is not too much open space there now, and it must be remembered that with the dense population which is growing up all around the Heath, and with the advantages afforded by the London tramways coming up the Highgate
  706
  Road, and also by the Tubes, the people flock to this part in shoals every Saturday and Sunday, and every Bank Holiday, so that every inch of the land is wanted. If the county council would devise some scheme to obtain land not now covered by houses and throw it into this open space, it would have the sympathy of all parties in the House. I would ask the representatives of the county council whether they cannot fall in with the request embodied in this Instruction, and leave us the entire space we now possess. It would not interfere with what they require in connection with the Training College. We do not want more gravel walks, and I certainly would like to know what they are going to do about the flower beds. We would prefer to keep the place in its natural condition.
  Mr. CASSEL: The open space dealt with by this Instruction is actually situated in the borough of St. Pancras, and, as one of the Parliamentary representatives of that borough, I should like to support the Instruction. I regret that on this occasion I do not see eye to eye with the London County Council, whose policy it is usually my privilege to support in this House. We cannot go into the details of this question here. I will not follow my hon. Friend opposite over the flower beds: that is a matter much better left to the Committee. But here we have a particular question of principle, and it is upon that principle that I wish to say a word. It is that the London County Council might do well to recognise and accept the principle that where there is an exchange—I quite agree that the exchange itself may be an advantage—but where there is an exchange there should be an area given equal to that of the open space which is taken. You cannot go into the question of value. It is rather a question of area. You might have a square yard of land equivalent in value to a hundred square yards situated elsewhere, and certainly, from the point of view of open spaces in London, it would be wise for the county council to accept the principle of area rather than of value. The representatives of the London County Council who are in charge of this Bill might have this case cited against them as a precedent in the future when they come forward to protect the public against encroachments. They are the guardians of the open spaces of London, and I feel that from their own point view it would be very unwise to resist the principle laid down in this Instruction. I have no doubt

  707
  that if any Member representing the county council were to intimate that they accepted the principle of an equivalent area it would not be considered necessary to press this Instruction to a Division. Cannot some hon. Member give us this assurance on behalf of the County Council?
  Mr. HARRIS: I think it should be made clear that this is not an attack on open spaces by the London County Council. This proposal comes from the Parks Committee of the Council, who must be presumed to know their own business and to have gone thoroughly into the matter. The Parks Committee want to make this exchange for the simple reason that they get distinct advantages. In the first place, they get the best bowling green in London and excellent lawn tennis courts. They also get much more convenient access to Parliament Hill Fields from the Highgate Road. These are all distinct advantages. The only objection to the proposal is that there is not complete equality of area in exchange. The reason is this, that the Education Committee of the Council cannot be expected to give greater value in land than they receive, as the only effect of making them do that would be to put a charge on the education rate for open spaces. I think it would be possible for the Parks Committee to exchange a certain number of sovereigns for an additional piece of land, and, possibly, if this matter is allowed to go to a Committee, that point will be considered. But it must be borne in mind that this land has been acquired for education purposes. It is wanted for the training college. I am not in a position to say whether the Parks Committee can give inch for inch for what they propose to take. I suggest that the matter should be allowed to go to the Committee without tying the hands of that body in any way. If they decide that an equal area ought to be given, I do not suppose that the London County Council will stand in the way of that. I hope that the House will not put any obstacle in the way of a proposal which is for the advantage of the Parks Committee.
  Mr. DICKINSON: I rise, not because this particular area of land happens to be in my constituency, but in order to reinforce the remarks of the hon. Member for West St. Pancras. I regard this as a rather serious breach of precedent. Many years ago, when the railway companies
  708
  appropriated a good deal of the open spaces in London for their purposes, the then London County Council laid down the principle that no company should take any area of land from an open space without giving in return an equivalent area. That principle has been acted upon from time to time, and this is the first occasion on which it has been proposed to depart from it. I hope that, whatever happens this evening, the county council will not succeed in carrying through the Committee its proposal on this particular point. So far as I can gather, looking at the plans, it seems perfectly feasible to give as much land as has been taken, and, therefore, I raise my voice in protest against the proposal now made.
  Sir F. BANBURY: I am in rather a difficult position. I have not the advantage of knowing the locality, and therefore cannot say whether flower beds or parks constitute the best solution of this question. I am also in rather a difficult position, because two of my hon. Friends are apparently against the Instruction and, two are for it. Therefore, I have to endeavour to exercise an impartial judgment between the arguments put forward by the hon. Member for Hampstead (Mr. Fletcher) and the hon. and learned Member for West St. Pancras (Mr. Cassel), and those of the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Walter Guinness) and the hon. Member for South Paddington (Mr. Harris). After listening to the arguments of those hon. Gentlemen and of the hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Dickinson), which at first rather made me feel inclined to vote against the Instruction, I have come to the conclusion that my hon. Friends the Member for Hampstead and the hon. and learned Member for West St. Pancras have put forward such powerful arguments that I shall be obliged to support them. What is the position? As I am absolutely impartial in the matter, I may rightly claim to be able to throw some light upon it. It appears that the borough council representing the locality are in favour of the Instruction and against the proposal of the London County Council. The people in the locality should have some voice in the matter. They may be right or wrong. In this instance I think they are right. At any rate they should have a preponderating voice in the matter, and apparently they say that this Instruction ought to be passed. That certainly influences me considerably. The hon. Member opposite (Mr. Dickinson) advocates the course that

  709
  is followed with regard to railway companies. It is the first time I have heard him take the case of the railway company and say that we ought to apply what is right for the railway companies in other matters. The hon. Gentleman cogently observed that if a railway company takes an open space it has to provide an equal open space, and he says that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, and that if it is right that the railway company should do such things, why should not the London County Council do them also. I welcome the hon. Gentleman's contribution to the Debate. I think he is quite right. I do not see why the London County Council should be put in a position superior to that of any other body, even such a body as the railway company. I turn to the notes which has been sent out by the London County Council against the Instruction. They say that the land to be taken is so much, and the land to be given is so much, and that the difference is not very considerable. They go on to say:—
  "The land to be appropriated will probably be utilised for lawn tennis courts for use in connection with the council's proposed training college at Highgate Road."
  That may be an excellent thing—I know nothing about the council's proposed training college of Highgate Road—but why should land appropriated to the public be taken for tennis courts in connection with the training college of Highgate Road? Their arguments in favour of their case totally demolish it. If they want tennis courts for use in connection with a proposed training college, I do not see why a training college should be provided with tennis courts at the expense of the public. If they want to play tennis, let them play tennis on their own account, without taking from the public that which belongs to them. I claim the support of the Labour party in this matter. I think in this case the doctrine of the majority will appeal to them. There are more people in London than in the training college at Highgate, and as they are in the majority the land ought to be left to them. Therefore the Labour party ought to vote for this Instruction. I hope I have shown excellent reasons why the London County Council should be opposed upon this matter. It has been suggested by the hon. Member for South Paddington that this matter should be left to the Committee. I have often in this House advocated leaving Committee points to the Committee, but this is not a Committee point. It is a question of principle. It
  710
  is a principle which has been advocated for many years on both sides of the House, namely, that when you have an open space you should not interfere with it. I do not see why the London County Council should come forward—I do not care which side is in power—and say, "Here is an open space, and because we want to have nice tennis courts for our training college we propose to appropriate some of that open space which belongs to the public." In these circumstances I have much pleasure in supporting the hon. and learned Member for West St. Pancras and the hon. Member for Hampstead.
  Lord ALEXANDER THYNNE: I am not surprised that the hon. Baronet should support this Instruction, because during the whole time I have been In the House I have never known him miss an opportunity to attack the London County Council. With regard to this particular Instruction I find myself in considerable difficulty. I am connected with and reside in a borough which takes a peculiar interest in the question of open spaces. That borough has been very badly treated by the Gentlemen on the Front Bench opposite in the matter of Regent's Park, Bedford College, and other sites of a similar nature. There is a strong feeling among everybody who resides in the borough on the subject of the sanctity of the principle of open spaces. If it were simply a question of the sanctity of that principle I should have supported the Instruction with regard to the Battersea Clause and with regard to the Hampstead Clause, but I also know the locality. I do not pretend to know it so well as the hon. Member for Dartford (Mr. Rowlands), who was there last night, but I do know it fairly well, and I cannot help feeling that this is rather a storm in a teacup. I ask the House to consider the area involved. The whole area involved is a plot of twenty-four yards square. The London County Council are upbraided by the hon. Member for Dartford for placing what he calls "the heritage of Hampstead Heath" in peril of jeopardy because in order to improve a path and decrease the amount of gravel path, which the hon. Member dislikes so much, and in order to obviate the necessity of women and children who used to go from Highgate Road to Parliament Fields being compelled to pass a somewhat malodorous public convenience they propose to sacrifice a small plot twenty-four yards square. I suggest that there is nothing in the objection, and

  711
  that it is a frivolous objection, and I hope the House will reject the Instruction and give us the Bill as we ask for it.
  Captain JESSEL: This particular plot of land happens to be in St. Pancras, but neither the hon. Member opposite, nor I, nor the hon. Member (Mr. Cassel) has received a word of protest from the Borough Council of St. Pancras at all, and if they have not brought their Members' attention to the matter I cannot see why the House should not allow it to go to Committee. After all, all this land belongs to the London County Council. In any case no open space will be taken away because both bits of land will be let as open spaces, and it is a real matter of adjustment for the Committee as to how much land should be given up. It is really a very small matter. The hon. Baronet (Sir F. Banbury) made fun of the lawn tennis courts for the Training College. The land to be transferred to the public also comprises an excellent bowling green and lawn tennis courts for the convenience of the public at large. This is really an extremely small matter and one for the Committee upstairs, and I hope the House will let it go there.
  Mr. GOLDSMITH: I should not have spoken if it had not been for the hon. and gallant Gentleman (Captain Jessel). He informed us that the county council are owners of this land. The county council are not the owners of the land. They are simply the trustees for the public. By the Hampstead Heath Enlargement Act they are to keep the land for ever, open, unenclosed, unbuilt upon. It is a question of
  principle. You are proposing to take away 6,000 square feet—not square yards.
  Lord A. THYNNE: I quoted not 6,000, but 562 square yards. There is a great deal of difference.
  Mr. GOLDSMITH: I understood the Noble Lord to say 6,000 square yards. I hope the hon. Member (Mr. W. Guinness) will see his way to accept the Motion, because all that the Instruction proposes is that the exchange should take place upon the principle of equality of area. If therefore you add another 6,000 square feet to the land taken away from this open space no doubt the terms of the Instruction will be complied with. The hon. Member said that the St. Pancras Borough Council did not object. I think the borough council which one always closely connects with Hampstead Heath, is the Hampstead Borough Council, and it strongly objects to this proposal. I remember we used to object to the policy of the county council because they did not pay sufficient regard to the desires of the borough councils. The party which is in power now has always paid attention to the desires of the borough councils. In this case certainly it is a local matter in which the opinion of the borough council ought to be consulted, and therefore I hope the House will agree to the Instruction.
  Question put, "That it be an Instruction to the Committee on the Bill not to sanction an exchange of land in relation to Parliament Hill Fields except upon the principle of equality of area."
  The House divided: Ayes, 190; Noes, 73.

  Division No. 95.]

  AYES.

  [9.31 p.m.

  Abraham, William (Dublin, Harbour)

  Cassel, Felix

  Ferens, Rt. Hon. Thomas Robinson

  Addison, Dr. Christopher

  Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor)

  Field, William

  Alden, Percy

  Chapple, Dr. William Allen

  Fitzgibbon, John

  Arnold, Sydney

  Clough, William

  Flavin, Michael Joseph

  Baldwin, Stanley

  Clynes, John R.

  Furness, Stephen

  Balfour, Sir Robert (Lanark)

  Condon, Thomas Joseph

  George, Rt. Hon. D. Lloyd

  Banbury, Sir Frederick George

  Cotton, William Francis

  Goddard, Sir Daniel Ford

  Barlow, Sir John Emmott (Somerset)

  Craik, Sir Henry

  Goldsmith, Frank

  Barran, Rowland Hurst (Leeds, N.)

  Crawshay-Williams, Eliot

  Goldstone, Frank

  Barton, William

  Crumley, Patrick

  Greenwood, Hamar (Sunderland)

  Beale, Sir William Phipson

  Cullinan, John

  Griffith, Ellis Jones

  Beauchamp, Sir Edward

  Davies, Ellis William (Eifion)

  Guest, Hon. Major C. H. C. (Pembroke)

  Benn, W. W. (T. Hamlets, St. George)

  Davies, Timothy (Lincs., Louth)

  Gulland, John William

  Black, Arthur W.

  Delany, William

  Gwynn, Stephen Lucius (Galway)

  Blair, Reginald

  Dickinson, W. H.

  Hackett, John

  Boland, John Plus

  Donelan, Captain A.

  Harcourt, Robert V. (Montrose)

  Booth, Frederick Handel

  Doris, William

  Harmsworth, Cecil (Luton, Beds)

  Bowerman, Charles W.

  Duffy, William J.

  Harvey, A. G. C. (Rochdale)

  Boyle, Daniel (Mayo, North)

  Duncan, J. Hastings (Yorks, Otley)

  Harvey, T. E. (Leeds, West)

  Boyton, James

  Esmonde, Dr. John (Tipperary, N.)

  Harvey, W. E. (Derbyshire, N.E.)

  Brady, Patrick Joseph

  Esmonde, Sir Thomas (Wexford, N.)

  Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth)

  Bryce, J. Annan

  Essex, Sir Richard Walter

  Hazleton, Richard

  Buckmaster, Stanley O.

  Esslemont, George Birnie

  Helme, Sir Norval Watson

  Burt, Rt. Hon. Thomas

  Farrell, James Patrick

  Higham, John Sharp

  Hinds, John

  Molloy, Michael

  Rowlands, James

  Hogge, James Myles

  Money, L. G. Chiozza

  Rowntree, Arnold

  Hohler, Gerald Fitzroy

  Morrell, Philip

  Runciman, Rt. Hon. Walter

  Holmes, Daniel Turner

  Morison, Hector

  Samuel, Rt. Hon. H. L. (Cleveland)

  Horne, E. (Surrey, Guildford)

  Muldoon, John

  Samuel, J. (Stockton-on-Tees)

  Howard, Hon. Geoffrey

  Munro, R.

  Scanlan, Thomas

  Hughes, Spencer Leigh

  Newton, Harry Kottingham

  Schwann, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles E.

  Illingworth, Percy H.

  Nield, Herbert

  Sheehy, David

  Isaacs, Rt. Hon. Sir Rufus

  Nolan, Joseph

  Simon, Rt. Hon. Sir John Allsebrook

  John, Edward Thomas

  O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)

  Smith, Albert (Lancs., Clitheroe)

  Jones, Edgar (Merthyr Tydvil)

  O'Connor, John (Kildare, N.)

  Smyth, Thomas F. (Leitrim)

  Jones, H. Haydn (Merioneth)

  O'Doherty, Philip

  Snowden, Philip

  Jones, J. Towyn (Carmarthen, East)

  O'Donnell, Thomas

  Spicer, Rt. Hon. Sir Albert

  Jones, Leif Stratten (Notts, Rushcliffe)

  O'Dowd, John

  Sutherland, John E.

  Jones, William (Carnarvonshire)

  O'Kelly, James (Roscommon, N.)

  Taylor, John W. (Durham)

  Jones, William S. Glyn- (Stepney)

  O'Shaughnessy, P. J.

  Taylor, Theodore C. (Radcliffe)

  Jowett, Frederick William

  O'Shee, James John

  Taylor, Thomas (Bolton)

  Joyce, Michael

  O'Sullivan, Timothy

  Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton)

  Kellaway, Frederick George

  Outhwaite, R. L.

  Trevelyan, Charles Philips

  Kelly, Edward

  Parker, James (Halifax)

  Verney, Sir Harry

  Kennedy, Vincent Paul

  Pearce, Robert (Staffs, Leek)

  Walton, Sir Joseph

  King, Joseph

  Peel, Lieut.-Colonel R. F.

  Wardle, George J.

  Law, Hugh A. (Donegal, W.)

  Phillips, John (Longford, S.)

  Waring, Walter

  Leach, Charles

  Pointer, Joseph

  Watt, Henry Anderson

  Levy, Sir Maurice

  Ponsonby, Arthur A. W. H.

  Webb, H.

  Lundon, Thomas

  Price, C. E. (Edinburgh, Central)

  White, J. Dundas (Glasgow, Tradeston)

  Lynch, A. A.

  Pringle, William M. R.

  White, Patrick (Meath, North)

  Macdonald, J. Ramsay (Leicester)

  Pryce-Jones, Colonel E.

  Whitehouse, John Howard

  MacDonald, J. M. (Falkirk Burghs)

  Radford, G. H.

  Whittaker, Rt. Hon. Sir Thomas P

  McGhee, Richard

  Rawlinson, John Frederick Peel

  Whyte, A, F. (Perth)

  MacNeill, J. G. Swift (Donegal, South)

  Rea, Rt. Hon, Russell (South Shields)

  Wiles, Thomas

  Macpherson, James Ian

  Rea, Walter Russell (Scarborough)

  Williams, J. (Glamorgan)

  MacVeagh, Jeremiah

  Reddy, Michael

  Willoughby, Major Hon. Claud

  M'Callum, Sir John M.

  Redmond, John E. (Waterford)

  Winfrey, Richard

  M'Laren, Hon. F.W.S. (Lincs., Spalding)

  Rendall, Athelstan

  Wing, Thomas

  Manfield, Harry

  Richardson, Albion (Peckham)

  Young, William (Perthshire, East)

  Markham, Sir Arthur Basil

  Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln)

  Yoxall, Sir James Henry

  Meagher, Michael

  Roberts, George H. (Norwich)

  Meehan, Francis E. (Leitrim, N.)

  Roberts, Sir J. H. (Denbighs)

  TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—Mr.

  Middlebrook, William

  Robertson, J. M. (Tyneside)

  Fletcher and Mr. Brunner,

  Millar, James Duncan

  Roe, Sir Thomas

  NOES.

  Baird, John Lawrence

  Grant, J. A.

  Redmond, William (Clare, E.)

  Barlow, Montague (Salford, South)

  Greig, Colonel J. W.

  Redmond, William Archer (Tyrone, E.)

  Barnes, George N.

  Gretton, John

  Roberts, S. (Sheffield, Ecclesall)

  Bathurst, Charles (Wilts, Wilton)

  Hamilton, G. C. (Altrincham)

  Robinson, Sidney

  Benn, Arthur Shirley (Plymouth)

  Hayden, John Patrick

  Russell, Rt. Hon. Thomas W.

  Bird, Alfred

  Hewins, William Albert Samuel

  Salter, Arthur Clavell

  Bridgeman, W. Clive

  Hodge, John

  Sanders, Robert Arthur

  Carlile, Sir Edward Hildred

  Hope, Harry (Bute)

  Smith, H, B. Lees (Northampton)

  Cautley, Harry Strother

  Hope, James Fitzalan (Sheffield)

  Spear, Sir John Ward

  Cawley, Sir Frederick (Prestwich)

  Houston, Robert Paterson

  Stanley, Hon. G. F. (Preston)

  Clancy, John Joseph

  Hunter, Sir Charles Rodk.

  Strauss, Arthur (Paddington, North)

  Compton-Rickett, Rt. Hon. Sir J.

  Jessel, Captain H. M.

  Sykes, Alan John (Ches., Knutsford)

  Cornwall, Sir Edwin A.

  Lambert, Richard (Wilts, Cricklade)

  Talbot, Lord Edmund

  Courthope, George Loyd

  Maclean, Donald

  Tennant, Harold John

  Crooks, William

  Macmaster, Donald

  Thomas, J. H.

  Dawes, J. A.

  Magnus, Sir Philip

  Thorne, William (West Ham)

  Denman, Hon. Richard Douglas

  Morrison-Bell, Capt. E. F. (Ashburton)

  Thynne, Lord A.

  Denison-Pender, J.

  Mount, William Arthur

  Walker, Colonel William Hall

  Denniss, E. R. B.

  Norton-Griffiths, J. (Wednesbury)

  Weigall, Captain A. G.

  Dixon, C. H.

  Nuttall, Harry

  Wheler, Granville C. H.

  Eyres-Monsell, Bolton M.

  O'Grady, James

  Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)

  Fell, Arthur

  O'Malley, William

  Yate, Colonel C. E.

  Fisher, Rt. Hon. W. Hayes

  Pease, Herbert Pike (Darlington)

  Fitzroy, Hon. Edward A.

  Pollock, Ernest Murray

  TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Mr.

  Gilmour, Captain J.

  Price, Sir Robert J. (Norfolk, E.)

  Walter Guinness and Mr. Harris.

  Glanville, H. J.

  Question put, and agreed to.

  Mr. KING: I beg to move, "That it be an Instruction to the Committee to whom the Bill is referred to delete Part II. relating to Cinematograph Films, Celluloid, and Dangerous Businesses."
  Mr. HIGHAM: I beg to second the Motion.
  Mr. BRUNNER: I beg to move, "That any Petition or Petitions of the Commons and Footpaths Preservation Society, the Kyrle Society, and the London Playing Fields Committee, praying to be heard against Clause 26 of the Bill and so much of the Preamble as relates thereto, presented Five clear days before the meeting of the Committee be referred to the

  715
  Committee; and that the Petitioners may be heard by themselves, their Counsel, and Agents on their respective Petitions against the Bill."
  It seems to me that as the county council are only agents in this matter they might accept the assurance of the President of the Local Government Board that there is no objection to these societies being allowed to be heard before the Committee.
  Sir HARRY VERNEYseconded the Motion.
  Mr. WALTER GUINNESS: The London County Council feel that it is a new and rather far-reaching principle which is proposed in this Instruction. They very naturally feel, and I think every local authority must feel, that it is very undesirable to increase the cost of Private Till legislation by protracting the proceedings in this way. Although they do not feel strongly about the matter in one way or another, I think an Instruction of this sort should only be accepted on the express recommendation of the Chairman of Ways and Means.
  The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN of WAYS and MEANS (Mr. Maclean): I do not propose to give any express approbation, but having given the Instruction careful consideration, I see no reason why the hon. Gentleman should not accept it.
  Lord A. THYNNE: This is not a question which concerns the London County Council
  alone. It establishes a precedent which will be of wide and far-reaching application, and it will doubtless be acted upon when other municipal bodies come before the House with measures of a similar character. You are going to allow representation before the Committee of self-constituted bodies which are in no sense representative of anything but themselves, and which rest on no democratic basis at all. You are going to allow gentlemen who compose themselves into a society to be represented by counsel in order that they may offer opposition to the borough council and the county council, which are elected upon a democratic basis and are of a democratic character. I submit, even if there is no objection at all to this course being adopted in the present instance, the House should be very chary in laying down a precedent which will undoubtedly be quoted in the case of other municipalities in time to come.
  Question put, "That any Petition or Petitions of the Commons and Footpaths Preservation Society, the Kyrle Society, and the London Playing Fields Committee, praying to be heard against Clause 26 of the Bill and so much of the Preamble as relates thereto, presented Five clear days before the meeting of the Committee be referred to the Committee; and that the Petitioners may be heard by themselves, their Counsel, and Agents on their respective Petitions against the Bill."
  The House divided: Ayes, 219; Noes, 53.

  Division No. 96.]

  AYES.

  [9.46 p.m

  Abraham, William (Dublin, Harbour)

  Cave, George

  Farrell, James Patrick

  Addison, Dr. Christopher

  Cawley, Sir Frederick (Prestwich)

  Ferens, Rt. Hon. Thomas Robinson

  Alden, Percy

  Cecil, Evelyn (Aston Manor)

  Field, William

  Arnold, Sydney

  Chapple, Dr. William Allen

  Fitzgibbon, John

  Baird, John Lawrence

  Clancy, John Joseph

  Flavin, Michael Joseph

  Baldwin, Stanley

  Clough, William

  Fletcher, John Samuel (Hampstead)

  Balfour, Sir Robert (Lanark)

  Clynes, John R.

  Furness, Stephen

  Banbury, Sir Frederick George

  Compton-Rickett, Rt. Hon. Sir J.

  Glanville, H. J.

  Barlow, Sir John Emmott (Somerset)

  Condon, Thomas Joseph

  Goddard, Sir Daniel Ford

  Barran, Rowland Hurst (Leeds, N.)

  Cornwall, Sir Edwin A.

  Goldstone, Frank

  Barton, William

  Cotton, William Francis

  Greig, Colonel J. W.

  Beale, Sir William Phipson

  Crawshay-Williams, Eliot

  Griffith, Ellis Jones

  Beauchamp, Sir Edward

  Crumley, Patrick

  Guest, Hon. Major C. H. C. (Pembroke)

  Beck, Arthur Cecil

  Cullinan, John

  Guinness, Hon. W. E. (Bury S. Edmunds)

  Benn, Arthur Shirley (Plymouth)

  Davies, Ellis William(Eifion)

  Gulland, John William

  Benn, W. W. (T. Hamlets, St. George)

  Davies, Timothy (Lincs., Louth)

  Gwynn, Stephen Lucius (Galway)

  Bird, Alfred

  Delany, William

  Hackett, John

  Black, Arthur W.

  Denniss, E. R. B.

  Hamilton, G. C. (Altrincham)

  Boland, John Pius

  Dickinson, W. H.

  Harcourt, Robert V. (Montrose)

  Booth, Frederick Handel

  Donelan, Captain A.

  Harmsworth, Cecil (Luton, Beds)

  Bowerman, Charles W.

  Doris, William

  Harvey, A. G. C. (Rochdale)

  Boyle, Daniel (Mayo, North)

  Duffy, William J.

  Harvey, T. E. (Leeds, West)

  Brady, Patrick Joseph

  Duncan, J. Hastings (Yorks, Otley)

  Harvey, W. E. (Derbyshire, N.E.)

  Bryce, J. Annan

  Elverston, Sir Harold

  Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth)

  Buckmaster, Stanley O.

  Esmonde, Dr. John (Tipperary, N.)

  Hayden, John Patrick

  Burt, Rt. Hon. Thomas

  Esmonde, Sir Thomas (Wexford, N.)

  Hazleton, Richard

  Buxton, Rt. Hon. Sydney C. (Poplar)

  Essex, Sir Richard Walter

  Helme, Sir Norval Watson

  Cassel, Felix

  Esslemont, George Birnie

  Henry, Sir Charles

  Higham, John Sharp

  Morison, Hector

  Samuel, Rt. Hon. H. L. (Cleveland)

  Hinds, John

  Muldoon, John

  Samuel, J. (Stockton-on-Tees)

  Hodge, John

  Munro, R.

  Sanderson, Lancelot

  Hogge, James Myles

  Newton, Harry Kottingham

  Scott, A. MacCallum (Glas., Bridgeton)

  Holmes, Daniel Turner

  Nield, Herbert

  Sheehy, David

  Howard, Hon. Geoffrey

  Nolan, Joseph

  Simon, Rt. Hon. Sir John Allsebrook

  Hughes, Spencer Leigh

  Norton, Captain Cecil W.

  Smith, Albert (Lancs., Clitheroe)

  Illingworth, Percy H.

  O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)

  Smith, H. B. Lees (Northampton)

  Jessel, Captain H. M.

  O'Connor, John (Kildare, N.)

  Smyth, Thomas F. (Leitrim)

  John, Edward Thomas

  O'Doherty, Philip

  Snowden, Philip

  Jones, Edgar (Merthyr Tydvil)

  O'Donnell, Thomas

  Spicer, Rt. Hon. Sir Albert

  Jones, H. Haydn (Merioneth)

  O'Dowd, John

  Strauss, Edward A. (Southwark, West)

  Jones, J. Towyn (Carmarthen, East)

  O'Kelly, James (Roscommon, N.)

  Sutherland, John E.

  Jones, Leif Stratten (Notts, Rushcliffe)

  O'Malley, William

  Sykes, Alan John (Ches., Knutsford)

  Jones, William (Carnarvonshire)

  O'Shaughnessy, P. J.

  Taylor, John W. (Durham)

  Jones, William S. Glyn- (Stepney)

  O'Shee, James John

  Taylor, Theodore C. (Radcliffe)

  Jowett, Frederick William

  O'Sullivan, Timothy

  Taylor, Thomas (Bolton)

  Joyce, Michael

  Outhwaite, R. L.

  Tennant, Harold John

  Kellaway, Frederick George

  Parker, James (Halifax)

  Thomas, James Henry

  Kelly, Edward

  Pearce, Robert (Staffs, Leek)

  Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton)

  Kennedy, Vincent Paul

  Phillips, John (Longford, S.)

  Toulmin, Sir George

  King, Joseph

  Pointer, Joseph

  Trevelyan, Charles Philips

  Lambert, Richard (Wilts, Cricklade)

  Ponsonby, Arthur A. W. H.

  Walton, Sir Joseph

  Law, Hugh A. (Donegal, W.)

  Price, C. E. (Edinburgh, Central)

  Wardle, George J.

  Leach, Charles

  Price, Sir Robert J. (Norfolk, E.)

  Waring, Walter

  Levy, Sir Maurice

  Pringle, William M. R.

  Watt, Henry Anderson

  Lundon, Thomas

  Radford, G. H.

  Webb, H.

  Lynch, A. A.

  Rawlinson, John Frederick Peel

  Weston, Colonel J. W.

  Macdonald, J. Ramsay (Leicester)

  Rea, Rt. Hon. Russell (South Shields)

  White, J. Dundas (Glasgow, Tradeston)

  Macdonald, J. M. (Falkirk Burghs)

  Rea, Walter Russell (Scarborough)

  White, Sir Luke (Yorks, E.R.)

  McGhee, Richard

  Reddy, Michael

  White, Patrick (Meath, North)

  Maclean, Donald

  Redmond, John E. (Waterford)

  Whitehouse, John Howard

  MacNeill, J. G. Swift (Donegal, South)

  Redmond, William (Clare, E.)

  Whittaker, Rt. Hon. Sir Thomas P.

  Macpherson, James Ian

  Redmond, William Archer (Tyrone, E.)

  Whyte, A. F. (Perth)

  MacVeagh, Jeremiah

  Rendall, Athelstan

  Wiles, Thomas

  M'Callum, Sir John M.

  Richardson, Albion (Peckham)

  Williams, John (Glamorgan)

  M'Kean, John

  Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln)

  Williams, Penry (Middlesbrough)

  McKenna, Rt. Hon. Reginald

  Roberts, George H. (Norwich)

  Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)

  M'Laren, Hon. F.W.S. (Lincs., Spalding)

  Roberts, Sir J. H. (Denbighs)

  Winfrey, Richard

  Manfield, Harry

  Robertson, J. M. (Tyneside)

  Wing, Thomas

  Markham, Sir Arthur Basil

  Robinson, Sidney

  Wood, Rt. Hon. T. McKinnon (Glasgow)

  Meagher, Michael

  Roe, Sir Thomas

  Young, William (Perthshire, East)

  Meehan, Francis E. (Leitrim, N.)

  Ronaldshay, Earl of

  Yoxall, Sir James Henry

  Millar, James Duncan

  Rowlands, James

  Molloy, Michael

  Rowntree, Arnold

  TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—Mr.

  Morrell, Philip

  Runciman, Rt. Hon. Walter

  Brunner and Sir H. Verney.

  NOES.

  Barlow, Montague (Salford, South)

  Fell, Arthur

  Ratcliff, R. F.

  Barnes, George N

  Fisher, Rt. Hon. W. Hayes

  Roberts, S. (Sheffield, Ecclesall)

  Barnston, Harry

  Fitzroy, Hon. Edward A.

  Russell, Rt. Hon. Thomas W.

  Bathurst, Charles (Wilts, Wilton)

  Gilmour, Captain John

  Salter, Arthur Clavell

  Blair, Reginald

  Grant, J. A.

  Sanders, Robert Arthur

  Boyle, William (Norfolk, Mid)

  Gretton, John

  Spear, Sir John Ward

  Boyton, James

  Harris, Henry Percy

  Starkey, John Ralph

  Brassey, H. Leonard Campbell

  Hoare, S. J. G.

  Strauss, Arthur (Paddington, North)

  Bridgeman, W. Clive

  Hohler, Gerald Fitzroy

  Talbot, Lord Edmund

  Carlile, Sir Edward Hildred

  Hope, Harry (Bute)

  Thorne, William (West Ham)

  Cautley, Henry Strother

  Hope, James Fitzalan (Sheffield)

  Walker, Colonel William Hall

  Courthope, George Loyd

  Houston, Robert Paterson

  Weigall, Captain A. G.

  Crooks, William

  Hunter, Sir Charles Rodk.

  Wheler, Granville C. H.

  Dawes, J. A.

  Lloyd, George Butler (Shrewsbury)

  Willoughby, Major Hon. Claud

  Denman, Hon. Richard Douglas

  Morrison-Bell, Capt. E. F. (Ashburton)

  Yate, Colonel C. E.

  Denison-Pander, J.

  Mount, William Arthur

  Dixon, C. H.

  O'Grady, James

  TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Lord

  Duke, Henry Edward

  Pollock, Ernest Murray

  Alexander Thynne and Mr. Goldsmith.

  Eyres-Monsell, Bolton M.

  Pryce-Jones, Col. E.

FINANCE BILL.
Postponed proceeding resumed on Question, "That the Bill be now read a second time." Question again proposed. Debate continued.
Mr. SNOWDEN: I was referring to the Sugar Tax, and I was calling attention to the speeches of Members of the present Government. I was just beginning to deal
718
with the opinions that were held by the Chancellor of the Exchequer on this matter when he was a private Member of this House. Speaking in 1904, he said that he did not think under the conditions that they ought to continue the tax on sugar as a permanent burden. He said:—
"It is a burden on the poorer class of the people, because sugar is an essential part of their daily food."

719
The last part of the right hon. Gentleman's observations I especially commend to his recollection now. He said:—
"I protest against the tax because it is a heavy burden on the poorest of the poor, and because it is necessitated by no great national emergency but by the extravagance and the mismanagement of the Government."
If the Sugar Tax was necessitated seven or eight years ago by the extravagance and mismanagement of the Government, may I ask if its continuance for all these years may not in some measure be due also to the extravagance and mismanagement of the successors to the Government then in office? The Home Secretary, too, held opinions on this question when he was an unofficial Member of this House. He not only expressed his own opinion, but he ventured to pledge the Liberal party when they assumed the responsibility of office. He said:—
"If the Liberals get into office there will be such economies as to permit of the Sugar Duty being done away with."
And the Home Secretary four years after that spoke in favour of the total repeal of the tax. Another Gentleman who holds Cabinet rank, the Secretary for Scotland, was even more definite as to what his attitude on the repeal of the Sugar Tax would be. He said in the General Election:—
"I strongly oppose the Sugar Duty, and will if I have the opportunity, vote for its abolition."
10.0 P.M.
I see the right hon. Gentleman in his place. We are going to give him an opportunity to-night to vote for the abolition of the Sugar Tax. Believing as I do that the right hon. Gentleman holds the same opinions in office as he does out of office, have no doubt whatever that we shall not be disappointed in having the pleasure of seeing him in the Lobby to support the Amendment. The President of the Board of Trade also expressed his views on this matter when a Motion was before the House for the reduction of the Sugar Tax, but that was not good enough for the present President of the Board of Trade. He would have no half-way house. He said:—
"I regret I am not able to agree with the hon. Gentleman to reduce the tax by one-half. I object to the tax entirely."
We will see whether the right hon. Gentleman holds the same opinions in office that he did out of it. And so I might go through the whole list. The President of the Board of Education also made a speech in which
720
he expressed his opinion on the tax. He said:—
"I have always voted against the imposition of the tax on sugar, and I intend to do so in future."
Two hon. Members who now occupy positions as Whips of the party also declared what their action would be in the new Parliament in the event of the question of the repeal of the Sugar Tax being raised. The hon. Member for Dumfries said:—
"I am strongly in sympathy with you in regard to the tax on sugar."
That was in reply to a question as to, whether he was in favour of the abolition of the Sugar Tax. The Liberal Whip went to one of the divisions of Wiltshire and said:—
"I shall certainly give my vote to secure the repeal of the tax on sugar."
I shall look with a good deal of curiosity to see whether these two Gentlemen carry out their pledges to-night, or whether as Government Whips they will vote for the continuance of the tax on sugar. So much for the views of the Government as to the continuance or the abolition of the Sugar Tax. As to the Tea Duty, no man knows better the iniquity of the Tea Tax than does the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I remember one speech when he was a private Member of the House, and the Unionist party were in power, in which he described the Tea Duty as being "an instrument to promote the stewing of tea." In submitting a demand for the abolition of a tax which would involve a loss of revenue of a little over £10,000,000, it is of course our duty to suggest what I might describe as a compensating revenue. The Amendment which is down in my name, and the names of one or two of my colleagues, suggests an alternative source of revenue. It demands the abolition of food taxes, and suggests that the loss of revenue involved by their remission should be made up by "increasing the direct taxes on unearned incomes and large estates." The time makes certainly opportune and necessary the abolition of taxes upon food. Everybody admits, and I am not going to labour the point, that there has been in recent years a very considerable increase in the cost of living. The great increase in the cost of living has borne very heavily upon the working people. It may be that there is not many much that Parliament can do immediately to relieve this additional hardship upon the working classes in their endeavour to make ends meet. Parliament, at any rate, can do something

721
by the abolition of the food taxes to relieve the cost of living on the working-classes to the amount of £10,000,000. The cost of living has been increasing without a corresponding increase in wages, and that is an additional reason why the Government should at once relieve the cost of living to the working-classes to the extent by which it would be relieved by the abolition of food taxes. I come to the suggestion in regard to compensating revenue. The Budget of 1909 carried out certain suggestions to a very moderate extent which had been advocated by the Labour and Socialist party of this country for a good many years. It increased the rate of Death Duty on large estates, and increased in a certain grade of incomes the amount of the Income Tax, and imposed for the first time a Super-tax, a feature which I have always regarded as being the best in the new proposals of that Budget, although I think, as I said then, that the Chancellor of the Exchequer could have arranged the details much better than he did, so that he might have received a much larger return than he has received from the Super-tax.
I went through the Debates of the year 1909. I am not going to deal with the Land Taxes. I never attached much importance to Land Taxes as a revenue-raising proposal. I think the chief value of the land taxation proposals of the Budget is that they give us the opportunity to carry out a valuation of the land of the country. I think when that valuation is completed it may be very useful as a means of carrying out certain land reforms which I believe will be found more effectual than any land reform by means of such taxation. I refer more particularly to the increase of taxation on wealth in the form of the Super-tax and increased Death Duties. What were the objections urged from the opposite side against those proposals? They were mainly that the taxation of wealth would be the taxation of the industry of the country, and that the consequences of the imposition of those proposed new taxes would be to lessen profits, lessen employment, and to bring about general stagnation of the industry of the country. What has happened? We are receiving, on the estimate of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, during the coming year 30 per cent. more from Income Tax than the yield from that tax the year before the Budget, and we are receiving in Death Duties this year no less than 40 per cent. more yield than in
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1908. What, I ask again, has been the effect of this increased abstraction of wealth from incomes and from estates. As we have been told this afternoon, we are enjoying a period of unparalleled trade prosperity. At the time those taxes were imposed the figure for unemployment stood at almost the highest on record. It averaged nearly 9 per cent. of all the trade union membership of the country. To-day it has touched a record figure at the other end. In those three years there has been an unparalleled increase in our imports and exports. Foreign trade for last year was 35 per cent. higher than it was the year before the imposition of those Budget taxes.
What lesson and what moral are we to draw from this? I certainly am not going to claim that the taxes that were imposed in that Budget are responsible for this extraordinary expansion of trade subsequently. I do not say that the increase of employment is due to the fact that a tax was levied upon incomes of over £5,000 per year, but, at any rate, we are justified in drawing this conclusion, that if those. Budget taxes are not responsible for the good trade, at any rate their imposition has not been a disadvantage to the expansion of trade. It has not checked development, and, as a matter of fact, such taxation never could, especially if the revenue derived from such taxation were used for what I may call developmental purposes, either materially or for the development of character and their enhancement of the good of the people. I believe that the advancement in trade and in general prosperity, and in moral and social welfare, would have been far greater than it has if such a large proportion of the increased taxation had not been spent so unproductively upon "Dreadnoughts" and other armaments. I believe that the increased prosperity of the country is to some extent due to the fact that the. £13,000,000 we now spend in old age pensions has been abstracted from the spending power of the rich and is not given over to luxuries, as it would have been if left on their hands, but is given to the working people, and has been used to encourage the staple trades of the country. The more we decrease the spending power of the rich, and transfer the spending power to the masses of the people the more we shall encourage every trade in the country which ought to be encouraged. Have profits declined as a result of taxation? Profits have not declined. They were

723
never so high as they are to-day. The gross assessment to Income Tax has increased by £63,000,000 in three years. What is the moral and lesson of that? The lesson is to continue the same line of policy, and to be encouraged by the success of what we have done. We have by no means reached the limit of the taxable capacity of the rich. The rich are paying, I believe, about £20,000,000 per year more in Income Tax and Death Duties than they did three or four years ago, but they are far better able to-day to pay another £20,000,000 than they were to pay an additional £20,000,000 three years ago. I find that that sentiment is applauded from the Treasury Bench. Therefore I ask if that be the case and if they agree, why do they not do it? If the rich are well able to pay an additional £20,000,000, why does not the Government relieve the working people of that £10,000,000 on food taxes, and find a compensating revenue by that additional taxation? I shall expect an answer to that question when some Member on the Treasury Bench replies.
I would suggest, therefore, that they should place an additional tax upon incomes of, say, over £5,000 a year. When I was referring to the fact that I thought the Chancellor of the Exchequer might have arranged the details of his Super-tax better and more remuneratively, I had in mind that he ought to have graduated the tax. At present it is uniform on all incomes over £5,000 a year. I do not think that a Super-tax of 6d. is enough on incomes of £20,000, £40,000, £50,000 or £100,000 a year. I do not think that an Income Tax of 1s. 8d. in the £ is a sufficient payment by a person enjoying an income like that for the advantages and benefits derived from the government of the country. There was a time in the history of the country when people with incomes of £60 a year had to pay a higher tax than is imposed by the combined Income Tax and Super-tax to-day. The combined Income Tax and Super-tax is not quite 1s. 8d., because there is the remission on the first £3,000, but we may take it at 1s. 8d. About the beginning of the nineteenth century a tax of 2s. in the £ was imposed upon incomes of £60 a year. It may be, and no doubt will be said that that was a time of war. My answer would be that this is a time of war. We are proposing additional taxation to repel, not a foreign foe, but a foe which is here in our midst, and which unless it is
724
destroyed is going to make this great Empire fall as the great Empires of the past have fallen; because no Empire can continue to exist if it allows the canker of poverty to continue as the canker of poverty is wearing out the national life of this country to-day. I would suggest also an increase in the rate of duties upon estates, especially upon those estates falling within the higher ranges. There is, of course, from one point of view, a heavy tax laid upon the estates of millionaires to-day. It is possible by combined Succession Duty, Legacy Duty, and Estate Duty for an estate of £1,000,000 or more to pay 25 per cent. in duties. That seems a lot if you look at it from one point of view. Suppose a man leaves £4,000,000, and he has to pay duties of £1,000,000 on the estate. A million pounds does look a lot. But I do not think that that is the way we ought to look at it. We ought not to concentrate our attention on what the estate is. We ought to look at what is left. After £1,000,000 has been taken from an estate of £4,000,000, £3,000,000 still remain, and I venture to submit that it is not good for society that any individual should have the power to bequeath £3,000,000 to anybody he thinks fit. The State has no right, in my opinion, to give this special power to continue to levy an unearned tribute on the community. Therefore a Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he looked at it from the point of view of social well-being, would be absolutely merciless in the taxation of large fortunes of that character.
You cannot dissociate social policy from taxation, and any Chancellor of the Exchequer in levying taxation ought to have two purposes in view. He ought to have in view the raising of revenue to meet absolutely necessary expenditure, but he ought also to keep constantly in mind the social effect of the taxation which he imposes. I think it is his duty to use what the Prime Minister once described as "the potent weapon of taxation" to bring about a better distribution of wealth in the country, because the existence of a rich class is one of the greatest dangers to the stability and welfare of the nation. I read in the paper a day or two ago that the Liberal party is in need of a programme. I see that the Liberal Press attribute the misfortunes of Liberal candidates at recent by-elections to the fact that Liberal candidates do not quite know where they are—or where their party is. They are waiting for something a little

725
more definite about the new land crusade. I understand that they are quite assured that when they do get to know what the next Liberal programme is to be the fortunes of the Liberal party will revive in the constituencies. I have no right to suggest a, programme to the Liberal party, but may I venture to do so? Let them take the programme I have been submitting just now. Let them bring forward the earnest of their belief by this year abolishing the food taxes and get a compensating revenue by taxing the rich. Let them go to the country and say, "Return us to power once more; we intend to continue this policy; we intend to continue this policy until no unfair or unjust burden of taxation rests upon the working people of this country! We are determined to use the weapon of taxation in order to redress or to reduce the grave inequality of wealth and poverty." I am quite sure that there is a new programme the Liberal party can have which would appeal with power to a large body of the public opinion in this country which is anxious to do something to mitigate the hardships of the poor, and who recognise that that can only be done at the expense of those who are abnormally and dangerously rich. In support of the Amendment which stands in my name on the Paper I submit these views and commend them to the earnest consideration of the House.
Mr. GOLDSTONE: It is my privilege on behalf of my colleagues to second the Amendment which has been so brilliantly moved by the hon. Member for Blackburn. I think it will be generally accepted in the House that, however much there may be disagreement in some quarters with the views expressed, that at least the speech is creditable to the House of Commons and a brilliant performance. I venture to suggest to the leaders of the Liberal party on the Treasury Bench that some of the suggestions made by my hon. Friend will give them the opportunity of reviving the point in their own programmes, without going further afield for anything more in that direction. For many years past it has been an accepted canon of the Liberal party that they would establish a free breakfast table. They have stood for this on many platforms, and this is really in effect the Amendment which my hon. Friend has moved. In accepting this principle of a free breakfast table they will at the same time revive another old canon of their
726
principles, that taxation is based upon the ability of the taxpayer in the first instance to meet the demand which is made upon him for his contribution to the State, and they will meet the second portion of the same principle in taxing for the protection that they enjoy those in the receipt of large incomes. What can you expect from men whose wages are even below the level of subsistence, who are not able to meet even the smallest amount of subvention without eating into the miserable pittance which is to provide the wherewithal in the shape of subsistence for themselves and their families? It is generally accepted that the level of subsistence for a family of five, below which a proper state of dignity and decency cannot be maintained, is about 23s. 8d. per week. Probably as that was fixed some two years ago by an eminent authority on these matters it would be fair to suggest that the present minimum subsistence level as represented in wages for a family of two adults and three children is not less than 25s. per week. But we are told there are not less than 30 per cent. of our adults in receipt of wages less than that amount; that is to say, we have between 2,000,000 and 3,000,000 of adult workers taking in wages per week less than the amount which is generally accepted as the subsistence level of wages. And if you multiply that number, as you are entitled to do, by four of five you get a population of somewhere about 12,000,000 who have to be maintained at wages less than the subsistence level. And the effect is you take from those people and from their allowance, which after all is but a starvation allowance under your system of indirect taxation, and you make them pay not only the tax, but you make them pay the interest on the tax, which has to be paid when some of those articles, and particularly tea, is taken out of bond.
Let me give an actual illustration of how the thing works out in practice. We may imagine £1,000 worth of tea imported by a merchant at 10d. per pound. He pays 5d. per pound taxes. To that £1,000, on which, of course, he expects profit, he adds £500, which means an outlay of £1,500, and not only does he expect profit on the £1,000 outlay on tea in the first instance, but he anticipates profit on the £500 in addition. Looking at the figures, you will find my sum in arithmetic is correctly worked out. If he anticipates, as I dare say he may, and does in actual

727
practice, 25 per cent, of profit on £500, which is the amount of the tax, there is an additional amount of £125 to be added to the £500, and the whole £625 is passed on to the consumer, for, whatever may be said on Tariff Reform platforms, we know in practice that these taxes are passed, on without fail. But if the State takes this toll on tea, it naturally has to pay the cost of collection, and I suppose a fair estimate of the cost of collection would be 10 per cent., so that the State takes not £500 of taxes, but an amount equivalent to £450, but the consumers have to pay something like £625 for the State to receive £450. Such a method of taxation as that means that the poor in particular have to pay something like 50 per cent. in addition to the amount the State receives in taxation which they are called upon to meet. I want to draw the attention of the House to this fact, that in the early days of the imposition of this tax it was without doubt a tax upon the luxuries of the rich. Tea, in the days of the imposition of the Tea Duty, was a tax on those who were in receipt of good incomes. Only those who received large amounts in the shape of rents, and so forth, could then afford the prices charged for tea, and a very considerable element in the case was the high duty imposed. Taxation in those days was a question of the taxation of the rich. As time has gone on we have gradually transferred the greater part of this taxation to the shoulders of the poor, just as we have done with the bulk of our indirect taxation, which has been made a charge upon the poor. It is said that it is well that we should have this type of taxation, because it is only in this way that we can disguise what we are actually drawing from the taxpayers of the country. That may be defensible in a new country, which is, so to speak, at a low level of development, when you may put a tax on goods at the ports because you have a difficulty in getting your taxation from other sources; but surely, in this country, we have now got to that stage of development of our principles of taxation when we may let our people understand by direct means what are the duties as well as the privileges of citizenship! An indirect form of taxation, while at the same time it is vexatious and inefficient represents, as a matter of fact, a low level in the development of taxation, and we should bring it home to all our citizens who cry
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for "Dreadnoughts," and will not wait, and drive it into the intelligence of those who cry for huge armaments that they have to foot the Bill. Let them be taught to foot the Bill by paying in the real efficient way of direct taxation. I commend this Resolution to the hon. Baronet the Member for the City of London. To-night he told us that he could support a certain Instruction because it represented the views of the majority of the citizens of London.
Sir F. BANBURY: I said because it was in the interests of the majority.
Mr. GOLDSTONE: My suggestion is that this Amendment is in the interests of the majority.
Sir F. BANBURY: We disagree with you.
Mr. GOLDSTONE: I thought the hon. Baronet would agree that if you relieve the majority of our people from the onus of paying something which it is difficult for them to meet you would surely be acting in their interests. I venture to say that the majority of the people of this country would be found in favour of this proposal if we could have a straight vote on the Amendment, which is submitted from these benches to-night. It is really the democracy whose views we are supporting when we bring forward such a Resolution as this. My hon. Friend has put the case very clearly, and all I wish to do is to commend to the Chancellor of the Exchequer some of the alternatives which he has suggested for raising taxation to reduce the amount which the taxpaying portion of the working classes are at present called upon to pay. The point the hon. Gentleman made with regard to old age pensions is equally true with regard to the spending power of the working classes as represented in wages. If we can increase the effective amount they have at their disposal, as we could by reducing the amount of indirect taxation, we should increase their spending power in the direction of purchasing more commodities at reduced prices, or widen the area of their purchases by including other articles. The effect of that would be to stimulate industries which would provide the commodities, which it would be their pleasure to go and purchase in the local shops. I think we have shown sufficient reason for this Amendment, which ought to receive a considerable amount of support in this House.
Viscount WOLMER: I only rise to ask the Labour party, as they have brought forward this Motion to-night, why it is that in the past they have consistently voted for the retention of food taxes as part of our fiscal system.
Mr. SNOWDEN: It is not true.
Viscount WOLMER: I will just read to the House a few votes of hon. Members of the Labour party on the question of food taxes during the past few years. On 25th July, 1910, my Noble Friend the Member for Maidstone (Viscount Castlereagh) moved an Amendment to reduce the Tea Duty from 5d. to 4d. Four Members of the Labour party voted for that Amendment, and fourteen against it. A similar Amendment was moved by Mr. H. S. Foster on 23rd November, 1910. No Labour Member voted for it; ten Labour Members voted against it. On 22nd May, 1911, the hon. Member for the Faversham Division (Mr. Wheler) moved to reduce the duty on tea grown within the British Empire from 5d. to 4d. That is the tea which is consumed by the poor people of this country. Twenty-four Labour Members voted against it, and not a single Labour Member voted for it. On 24th June, 1912, my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall (Mr. Cooper) moved an exactly similar Amendment. Not a single Labour Member voted for it; twenty-five Labour Members voted against it. My hon. Friend the Member for Yarmouth (Mr. Fell) on 26th July moved a similar Amendment, not a single Labour Member voted for cheap tea; nineteen Labour Members voted against it. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, moved an Amendment on the same date to reduce the duty on tea of the value of from 1s. to 2s. per 1b. to 4d., and on tea of the value of 1s. or less, to 3d., that is to say, on tea consumed by the poorest classes of the community. Five Labour Members voted for it, and seventeen Labour Members voted against it. Therefore, I think we are justified in saying that this Motion which the Labour party have brought forward to-night is a window dressing and electioneering Motion. It is an organised sham fight, such as the Labour party love. Whenever there is the slightest prospect of the Government being defeated by a Conservative Motion on this question, the majority of the Labour party are invariably found in the Lobby in supporting a high Tea Duty. On this occasion they have adopted the plan of not taking a
730
straight issue on the question, but of coupling their proposal for a reduction of the food taxes with various measures which they know would be repudiated by the majority of the House of Commons. We of the Conservative party have frequently put forward proposals to reduce the food taxes—I have read out some of the instances to-night—and on those occasions the Labour party have always been found to be against us. To-night by devising a Motion which they know the majority of this House will refuse and which, therefore, cannot possibly put the Government in any difficulty, they have come forward to make a great sham fight display in order to give their adherents in the constituencies something to point to to justify their presence in this House. They are getting tired of the taunt that they are only servile followers of the Government. But that is what they are, because they only dare vote for a reduction of the food taxes when they know there is not the slightest chance of the Government being put in a minority.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: When a proposal is made to reduce the taxation in a time of high expenditure by a sum of £10,000,000 sterling it is perfectly fair that the proposers should be asked to say what taxes they would impose instead. The Noble Lord who has just spoken complained that my hon. Friends below the Gangway were only engaging in a sham fight. I cannot imagine anything cheaper than this moving of the reduction of the taxation and then going down to the constituencies and taking credit for it by saying, "Look at the taxes we propose to abolish!" and never having the courage at the same time to suggest an alternative. The Noble Lord has not the courage to get up and say what he proposes to substitute for the ten millions of which the Exchequer would be deprived by this Motion.
Viscount WOLMER: A tax on foreign manufactured goods.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: Then, I take it, the Noble Lord would put at least 20 per cent. on foreign manufactured goods, because the 10 per cent. which his leaders propose to put on would not bring in anything like £10,000,000. Thus we have a new policy from Lancashire—a tariff of 20 per cent. [HON. MEMBERS: "No, no."] That shocks some hon. Members opposite, but I venture to say that without at least a tariff of 17 per cent. on foreign

731
manufactured goods you would not get £10,000,000. That is the new policy of Lancashire as stated by the Noble Lord. My hon. Friend, in proposing this Motion, did, however, say how he proposed to make good the taxation he desired to get rid of. It is necessary either to reduce the expenditure or to find new sources of taxation.
Mr. DAVID MASON: Why not reduce taxation?
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: I do not think I should get much support from the Noble Lord if I proposed that. As far as the Motion itself is concerned, I have every sympathy with that. The hon. Member has referred to the fact that I have from time to time spoken and voted for the reduction of these taxes. I have nothing to withdraw. There is no statement of mine which he has quoted that I desire to withdraw. To my statements I adhere, and I ask my hon. Friends to remember that since the present Government came into office we have reduced by five millions at least the yield of the taxes we denounced when out of office. That is a very substantial contribution towards carrying out the policy we proclaimed. There is no doubt at all that there are very grave objections to taxes on the articles of food consumed by the bulk of the people. There is the objection, which my hon. Friend pointed out in very forcible and eloquent language, that it falls upon the very poorest of the population, those who have hardly the means to provide the necessaries of life for themselves and their children. There is also the very great objection that those who are earning the lowest wages pay more in proportion to their income than those earning higher wages. That, I admit, is bad in principle. But when my hon. Friend goes to the extent of saying that he would exempt a very considerable proportion of the population, including, as I shall show, men earning not £1, not £1 10s., but £3 a week, from any contribution towards Imperial taxation, there I cannot follow him. Let me put the other side of the case. Unless you have these taxes, or some substitutes, which might be in the form of direct taxation, the result would be that a very considerable proportion of the population, even those earning higher wages, would be altogether exempt from taxes. My hon. Friend said that for the moment he did not propose that we should get rid
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of the whole £60,000,000 of taxes, but only £10,000,000. We must be thankful for small mercies. He objected in principle to taxes on spirits and beer.
Mr. SNOWDEN: From an economic point of view.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: Yes. But he does not propose that we should get rid of them at the present moment. Let the House realise what would happen if this Amendment were carried. A man who does not smoke, a man who is a teetotaler would contribute nothing towards the Imperial expenditure of this country—not one penny. He would get his share of the pensions when the time comes, the contribution towards insurance, and there would be the education of his children. I am avoiding all reference to the Army and Navy. My hon. Friend did not consider they were a boon so far as the working classes are concerned, so I leave them out for the moment. But take all the other services which are as much for the benefit of the working classes as they are for any other class—pensions, insurance, and education especially—that man would contribute nothing towards them, although he would have a share in them. He would be contributing nothing in the form of direct taxes to the Government, although he would have a share in declaring the policy through the election of Members of Parliament. I do not think that my hon. Friend himself would accent the whole responsibility for that principle. I doubt very much whether he would lay down the principle that men earning from £2 10s. to £3 a week should not contribute.
Mr. SNOWDEN: I made no reference to that class.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE:I agree, but I do not think my hon. Friend quite realised that that is the effect of his Amendment. I cannot see by what other taxes or other method men of that type contribute to the revenue of the country. That man would not contribute through spirits, through beer, or through tobacco. I have taken the case of probably something like 500,000 or, it may be, 1,000,000 of the working class voters of this country, who are teetotalers, possibly non-smokers, who may be earning £2 10s. or £3 a week, and who, so long as they were under the Income Tax limit, would not be contributing one penny to the Imperial taxation of this country.
Mr. HODGE: A tax on rents.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: But surely that is paid by the landlord. If my hon. Friend refers to Schedule A, that is a tax which I think never enters into rent. Rates are a different matter.
Mr. HODGE: The landlord pays Income Tax under Schedule D. He must charge it against the tenant for his rent, and get his profit.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: No. I think my hon. Friend's economics are wrong there. I think he will find that most economists are of opinion that as far as that Schedule of Income Tax is concerned the landlord pays it. It is a different matter when you come to rates. A very considerable class would be paying nothing if the Amendment were carried in its present form, and my hon. Friend admits that is not his notion. He does not want to except all this class. It would be monstrous that the better paid class of artisan should have very considerable power in fashioning the policy of the State and directing expenditure, whilst not called upon to pay a penny towards the expenditure. My hon. Friend says taxes on commodities of this kind affect consumption. That is true. May I point out what has happened in regard to spirits. He claimed that under the Budget of 1909 the contribution of the working classes to the expenditure of the State has gone up by £9,000,000. In that he included the increased 3s. 9d. on spirits. It had such an effect in restricting consumption that the working classes are probably spending no more now on spirits than they did before. The only difference is that they are paying less to the publican and more to the Exchequer. The expenditure of the working classes in this respect is no greater than it was before the Budget. They are only getting less spirits. Undoubtedly taxation has had the same effect on tea. In an address to a society that inquires into these matters, a lecturer, whose name I forget, the other day pointed out how very difficult it is really to know what the effect of these taxes is upon consumption. He comes to the conclusion that on the whole it has had the effect of restricting the consumption of tea amongst the poorer classes of the population and to that extent the lower wage portion of the population are not paying as large a proportion of their income as they would otherwise have done. What they do is to reduce the quantity of tea they consume. Is my hon. Friend quite sure that is doing them so much harm?
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I am putting that quite seriously because it is the real difference between a tax upon tea and a tax upon bread. Any tax which would have the effect of restricting the consumption of bread by the working classes would be an unmixed evil. I do not think that a tax which would have the effect of restricting the quantity of tea consumed would be altogether an unmixed evil. Having seen a good deal recently of those who are organising the campaign against consumption in different parts of the country they tell me that the excessive consumption of tea amongst labourers, miners, and others, has a very disastrous effect in regard to the spread of tuberculosis. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] That is undoubtedly the case. I do not know that anyone who has inquired into the matter will deny that for a moment. I am not putting this as an argument in favour of increasing the tax upon tea, but I want to point out the serious difference between a tax upon bread and a tax upon tea. When you come to the question of the tax upon sugar, I believe the same argument does not quite apply, although medical men say that there might be an excessive consumption of sugar. I have indicated what the Government have already done in the matter of reducing these taxes. If food taxes had been levied at the rates at which they were levied when the present Government came into office, their yield would have been about £15,000,000 this year. It was 10,000,000. That is a reduction of £5,000,000 upon the amount at which we found them.
11.0 P.M.
My hon. Friend says, "Why do you not abolish them altogether?" I now come to the reason why. He quoted from a speech of mine and asked whether I did not propose to carry out what I said. I put the objection to the Sugar Tax not altogether upon the inherent objection to the tax, but upon the object for which the money was spent. I remember perfectly well that I stated I was not objecting to the tax upon sugar if the money were to be applied exclusively to providing pensions for the aged poor. I said that when the late Government was in power. My hon. Friend has pointed out what the food taxes amount to. I think I am entitled to repeat what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sherwell) that since then £20,000,000 has been allotted for purposes which are exclusively working class in their application. Old-age pensions—£13,000,000. That is spent purely

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for the working class. For insurance and labour exchanges something like £7,000,000 is spent, making together £20,000,000. It will be more next year. What I mean is an annual expenditure. I think it was £10,000,000 only in 1909. It is now about £20,000,000. That amount is expended upon purely working-class purposes. I would ask my hon. Friend in those conditions whether it is quite fair so to arrange the finances of this country that no portion of the burden of this £20,000,000 should fall upon the working classes at all? [An HON. MEMBER: "Yes."] One hon. Member thinks so, but I hope that he stands alone. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."]] I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford would exclude the working classes altogether—so long as they do not drink or smoke—from taxation, even if they were earning £120, £130, or £140 a year, but I believe that the vast majority of his party would not support him in a proposition of that kind. There is another fact which I would like to impress on my hon. Friend. The taxation of food in this country is less than that of any other great civilised country in the world. The taxation of food in this country is £10,000,000. In the United States of America according to the latest figures I have been able to procure it is £114,000,000; in France it is £16,000,000; in Germany it is £30,000,000. Some of the taxes on food in those countries are so imposed that the duties have to be paid twice over, because they are so arranged that the commodities which are taxed are commodities which are produced in the home market, and the prices are increased almost by the amount of the taxes which are imposed on the foreign importer, so that the £30,000,000 which is raised by German taxes on food does not really represent the whole burden imposed upon the food of the working classes in Germany.
The real question is this: If the working classes are not to contribute by means of taxes on food, I ask my hon. Friend what is his suggestion as to the way in which they should contribute. He is asking us at one stroke to take away £10,000,000 as the burden of taxation upon the working classes. That is equivalent to an addition of 2½d. to the Income Tax—that means an Income Tax of is 6d. My hon. Friend not merely proposes to reduce the burden of taxation on the working classes, but he has great schemes in his
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mind for the improvement of their condition with the aid of the State. With many of them I heartily sympathise. He would spend more money on their education, he would spend more money on the improvement of their condition in every respect, and he would spend more money in relieving the burden of local taxation in order to increase the efficiency of municipalities. Where is he going to find all the money? My hon. Friend below the Gangway says, "From the same quarter. Increase your charge on the big estates; increase your Income Tax." He begins by wiping off £10,000,000 of taxation, and he increases the Income Tax to 1s. 6d. He will go on piling increases on the Income Tax—starting from that basis. But any attempt to immediately impose a great additional burden on any tax of that kind would inevitably break down the machinery. It would be unwise, it would be especially unwise from his point of view. He is looking forward to developing his ideas, but if he does it by immediately piling these fresh burdens on the State taxes, he defeats his own purpose. The way in which the Government is dealing with the matter is by far the best from his point of view. We have reduced the burden of taxation upon food by 30 to 40 per cent. Although the general expenditure of the country has gone up by 30 per cent. or 40 per cent., we have actually reduced the burden of the taxes on food by about £5,000,000 a year. If my hon. Friend were in the position in which I am now, he would not make such a proposal. It is perfectly right that it should be ventilated, and that it should be pressed upon the attention of the Government.
In fact, it would be perfectly wrong if it were not, because it has had the effect already, first of all, of reducing the taxation on tea by over a million, and on sugar by over £3,500,000. What he is asking tonight is to take £10,000,000 of taxation off a very considerable proportion of the population of this country who have great political power, and to leave them without any taxation at all. If he were in the position I am in now, if he were a Member of the Government, and his hon. Friends alongside of him were his colleagues, he would not make a proposal of that kind. He would take into account the fact that those things have to be done and that you must not leave a class which has got great political power and control over expenditure without any share of responsibility. He would also take into account that he

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would want his Income Tax and Death Duties for other great social schemes of amelioration which he urges in common with a great many other hon. Members of this House. That is what the Government are doing. I am not here to say that food duties are a permanent instrument of taxation in this country—quite the reverse. I do not believe it is possible to keep up these taxes. I can quite see, whatever may be the views of hon. Gentlemen opposite about food taxes, that they take opportunity whenever they find it of doing any damage to a Government which they dislike, but I do solemnly appeal to the House and to the right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite on this ground: If they say that the whole of these taxes are to be wiped out and that a great portion of the community are to be left with no taxation at all, and with all the powers they possess at present of directing expenditure and of increasing it, that is to be done at the very moment when every party in the State is suggesting new forms of taxation for the benefit of particular classes whom we are now called on to leave out of taxation altogether. That is a responsibility at which I should have thought the hon. Gentleman opposite would have hesitated. The right hon. Gentleman who sits opposite knows perfectly well that under no conditions could he raise those ten millions by taxation under any proposal which has ever emanated from his own party. There is only one way in which he could raise it, and that is by putting a tax upon other food which is much more essential to the life of the people. I do not agree with the right hon. Gentleman opposite. A tax on bread is much more vitally important to the people in this country than a tax upon tea, but I need not argue that for a moment—that is out of his programme. If he wipes out those ten millions where is he going to raise the new?
My hon. Friend said he would tax millionaires and large estates and would increase the Income Tax; but what would the right hon. Gentleman do, because the 10 per cent. on manufactured goods is not merely to wipe out the tax on tea and the tax on sugar, but it is also going to wipe out half the rates of this country as well, and it is also to keep foreign articles out. That is, it is a tax upon goods which are not to come to this country at all to be taxed, and this tax upon goods which are not to come to our shores is going to be a substitute for the
738
farmers for the 10 per cent. which has been promised on their cattle and corn. And after paying half the rates it is also going to pay this ten millions for tea and sugar. There is not a right hon. Gentleman opposite who does not know that it is preposterous and impossible, and that it is a proposition that would not materialise. I ask hon. Members opposite that, before they vote for the abolition of taxes amounting to £10,000,000, they should be clear in their minds as to what they are doing. There is only one way in which you can really get the working classes to contribute fairly and that is undoubtedly the method adopted in the Insurance Act, where the tax falls upon the man who is actually earning wages at the time. I would like to see the Chancellor of the Exchequer who would go out of his way to propose that. I have made one proposal of the kind, and it will last one Parliament. It is a perfectly straightforward tax, and I agree that if right hon. Gentlemen opposite proposed to put that as a substitute for the present taxes there would be something to say. But this is a proposal which would leave a large section of the community without any taxation, while they have power to increase the burden. That is a proposition which, with all the sympathy in the world—[HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear!"] The right hon. Gentleman opposite rather sneers at that. May I remind him that that sympathy has already materialised to the extent of £5,000,000 a year by the proposals of this Government? We have reduced by £5,000,000 the taxes upon food imposed by the Government supported by hon. Members opposite. [Interruption.] I have no objection to interruptions when they are relevant—
Mr. COOPER: Repetition. Six times you have said it.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: I was answering an interruption of the right hon. Gentleman, who sneered at the expression of sympathy as if it were purely a verbal expression, whereas we have already reduced the food taxation by £5,000,000. But we cannot by a single vote in the course of a single year, when burdens are so heavy, reduce it by another £10,000,000. For that reason, I cannot accept the Amendment.
Mr. HUNT: The Chancellor of the Exchequer said that the taxation on food in this country was less than in any other

739
country in the world. I say that that statement is not true. The right hon. Gentleman, I suppose, will not deny that the taxes on food, drink, and tobacco for the working people is higher in this country than in any other great country in the world. Does the right hon. Gentleman deny that?
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: The taxation on drink is higher in this country than in any other country except the United States. The taxation on food is lower here than in any other country in the world.
Mr. HUNT: Does the right hon. Gentleman remember telling the House that the import taxation per head on all classes in this country was 15s. 3d., whilst in Germany it was only 9s. 7d.? Does the right hon. Gentleman remember that in Germany they tax luxuries and manufactured goods and get money in that way? Has the right hon. Gentleman yet succeeded in understanding that all the food that is grown in this country is very heavily taxed—about 15 per cent.? We produce all our milk here, and about half of our meat. The right hon. Gentleman in saying that the taxation of food in this country was less than in any other country was simply saying what was not true. In Canada the taxation of agricultural land compared with this country is hardly anything at all. If you tax land you must tax what it produces. In that country on comparatively expensive agricultural land the whole of the Imperial and local taxation is only from 2d. to 6d. an acre—I believe in some parts only ½d Is the food they grow there more heavily taxed than in this country when we remember that they grow their own food in Canada? These are the sort of things the Chancellor of the Exchequer says and people in the country are fools enough to believe it. I submit that our people are very heavily taxed indeed.
The right hon. Gentleman says that the taxation of tea does not matter so much. I have heard Liberals get up and say that the taxation of tea injures working people just as much as the taxation of bread. But it would not be a tax on bread; it would be a duty. That distinction was made by the Premier of Australia; it is a distinction that Radical politicians do not seem able to understand. The hon. Member who seconded the Amendment brought up the question of the free breakfast table. I should have thought that this was the last question he would have referred to. The
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Liberals have promised a free breakfast table for the last forty years. The Labour party have been asking for it for about the same time. I suppose they will go on voting for the Government and telling the people in this country "we are all for a free breakfast table." The hon. Member opposite told us that under our present system of taxation 12,000,000 of people are living on starvation wages. The Chancellor of the Exchequer gave us no hope of less taxes or better wages. As far as I can see neither the Labour party nor the Liberal party can give the working people of this country any hope whatever. We are still to go on with millions of our people drawing starvation wages. That is the Liberal message to the people as shown by this Debate to-night. The Chancellor of the Exchequer talks about taking off £5,000,000 of taxation, but he has added £40,000,000. Does he say the working people do not pay any of that? Do not they pay rates and have not real wages gone down? The right hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well that since this Government came into power real wages have gone down and the working people are worse off now. The labour people know perfectly well and the hon. Member for Blackburn knows that the people are worse off now under this system of taxation than when the late Unionist Government were in power, and the people of the country are beginning to find it out and it is getting very awkward for the Government. It is not only that we have continual strikes—and I see in the papers to-day that there is beginning to be a very serious strike in the black country—but these strikes are the result of the people being worse off than before. Owing to the extravagance of the Government local and Imperial taxes have increased so much and wages have increased comparatively little that the people are worse off.
These are the facts of the case, and I do not see how they can be altered until you alter the whole system of the taxation of this country. The right hon. Gentleman says "how are we going to take the burden off the working classes?" He has no objection to the taxation of the rich. I dare say that is perfectly true. Under his present system we know the Income Tax is very high. The present Prime Minister said the Income Tax is not only a tax upon profits but a tax upon wages. Now the Chancellor of the Exchequer goes on putting the whole of his import taxes upon the necessaries and simple comforts of the poor and he refuses to put any

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taxation at all upon most of the luxuries of the rich. I ask him is there any sense in that system? I will give him an example to show how he can get revenue, and at the same time provide work for our people. I am sorry that it is rather a hackneyed example, but it is one that points out how, by putting an import tax on a luxury of the rich, you can get both revenue and provide the people with more work and wages. Instead of importing as you do now £4,000,000 worth of motor cars into this country, you should put a tax of 20 per cent. on them. If the result was that we made £2,000,000 worth here, the £2,000,000 worth imported would provide 20 per cent. in taxation, and the £2,000,000 worth made here would provide 12 per cent. to our revenue, and you would provide the people of this country with £1,000,000 in wages which are now paid to the working people of other countries, and at the same time you would obtain a contribution to the revenue of £640,000. That sum is not to be despised, and you could do that with all the luxuries of the rich which the working people do not use. The Chancellor of the Exchequer says we have no way of getting the money. I will quote the statement made by Mr. Andrew Carnegie in America. He said:—
"The system of import taxation in America and Great Britain is very different, to the enormous advantage of the great mass of the American people. We do put on heavy taxation in America, but we take the greatest care to put as much as we can on the luxuries of the rich and the things which the working people do not buy, and we get £45,000,000 on things which the poor do not buy and it cannot possibly hurt them. In England you put the whole of your taxation on food, drink, and tobacco, and the working people and the poor pay the greater part of it."
The hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Snowden) admits that the poor pay the greatest part of the taxation on food, drink and tobacco, and I know that he is not a hide-bound Cobdenite like some right hon. Gentlemen opposite. We are not only justified, but we are bound to put it to the right hon. Gentleman that things are not right in this country, and that the land is being neglected. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] I am a landlord and I know something about it. I have had a great deal to do with agricultural workers for at least thirty-five years. I know a great many of them intimately, and what they want is a chance of rising and an opportunity of getting a bit of land of their own.
A good many hon. Members opposite do not know anything at all about land, and I tell them that as long as you continue this system and put
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such heavy taxation on everything that you grow in this country and allow the produce from abroad to come here absolutely untaxed, paying nothing at all; as long as you protect the foreigner against your own people, you cannot expect the small holder and the small farmer to be able to make a satisfactory living. British men and women cannot contend against a system so absolutely unfair as the system that you call by the name of Free Trade. If it were Free Trade there might be something to be said for it, but everybody knows it is not; everybody knows that the name is absolutely humbug. How can it be Free Trade when you tax your own stuff heavily and let the foreigner not only send his things in here free but also have enormous advantages on the railways? Now you have put an extra tax on the farmers who produce the food by your Insurance Act. You keep piling the taxes on to the land, and yet you expect the farmers to be able to grow your food. I really believe a great many hon. Members opposite think that we could not grow most of the wheat that is eaten in this country at reasonable prices. We could grow most of the wheat that we require to eat in this country if we had a reasonable tariff at about 35s. to 40s. per quarter. The loaf would be about 5½d. and you would get your rural population back. Do not make any mistake about it! No country can prosper if you allow your agriculture to go to ruin.
Sir HENRY DALZIEL: I beg to move, "That the Debate be now adjourned."
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: Unfortunately, two and a half hours have been taken off the Debate to-night by the consideration of a Private Bill, and the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Snowden) only moved his Amendment at ten o'clock. If, therefore, there is a general desire to carry the discussion on, I do not think I could resist it. I am entirely in the hands of the House in that respect.
Mr. G. H. ROBERTS: I think, having regard to the importance of the issue raised by my hon. Friends, that we are entitled to have reasonable time to discuss them. It has been charged against us that we have simply put this Motion down for the purpose of what is called window-dressing. We have put it down for the purpose of making perfectly clear our attitude on taxation generally. The Motion did not come on until late at night. The time, as the Chancellor of the

743
Exchequer expressed it, has been cut into by the consideration of a Private Bill, and there are several Members of the party responsible for the Motion who are very anxious to take part in the Debate. It has been urged upon us that a late sitting is not agreeable and that it is for the general convenience of the majority of the House that the Debate should go over to another
day. On the understanding that reasonable time will be given for the further consideration of the Motion and that a Division will be taken, we of the Labour party are prepared to support the Motion for the Adjournment of the Debate.
Question put, "That the Debate be now adjourned."
The House divided: Ayes, 259; Noes, 201.

Division No. 97.]

AYES.

[11.40 p.m.

Abraham, William (Dublin, Harbour)

Field, William

M'Kean, John

Acland, Francis Dyke

Fitzgibbon, John

McKenna, Rt. Hon. Reginald

Addison, Dr. Christopher

Flavin, Michael Joseph

M'Laren, Hon. F.W.S. (Lincs., Spalding)

Agnew, Sir George William

Furness, Stephen

Manfield, Harry

Alden, Percy

George, Rt. Hon. D. Lloyd

Markham, Sir Arthur Basil

Allen, Arthur A. (Dumbartonshire)

Gill, A. H.

Martin, Joseph

Allen, Rt. Hon. Charles P. (Stroud)

Glanville, H. J.

Mason, David M. (Coventry)

Arnold, Sydney

Goldstone, Frank

Masterman, Rt. Hon. C. F. G.

Asquith, Rt. Hon. Herbert Henry

Greig, Colonel J. W.

Meagher, Michael

Baker, H. T. (Accrington)

Griffith, Ellis Jones

Meehan, Francis E. (Leitrim, N.)

Balfour, Sir Robert (Lanark)

Guest, Hon. Major C. H. C. (Pembroke)

Millar, James Duncan

Baring, Sir Godfrey (Barnstaple)

Guest, Hon. Frederick E. (Dorset, E.)

Molloy, Michael

Barlow, Sir John Emmott (Somerset)

Gwynn, Stephen Lucius (Galway)

Mond, Sir Alfred M.

Barnes, George N.

Hackett, John

Money, L. G. Chiozza

Barran, Rowland Hurst (Leeds, N.)

Hall, Frederick (Normanton)

Montagu, Hon. E. S.

Barton, William

Harcourt, Rt. Hon. Lewis (Rossendale)

Mooney, John J.

Beauchamp, Sir Edward

Harcourt, Robert V. (Montrose)

Morgan, George Hay

Beck, Arthur Cecil

Harmsworth, Cecil (Luton, Beds)

Morrell, Philip

Benn, W. W. (T. Hamlets, St. George)

HarmsWorth, R. L. (Caithness-shire)

Morison, Hector

Bethell, Sir J. H.

Harvey, A. G. C. (Rochdale)

Muldoon, John

Birrell, Rt. Hon. Augustine

Harvey, T. E. (Leeds, West)

Munro, R.

Black, Arthur W.

Harvey, W. E. (Derbyshire, N.E.)

Murphy, Martin J.

Boland, John Plus

Haslam, Lewis (Monmouth)

Neilson, Francis

Booth, Frederick Handel

Hayden, John Patrick

Nolan, Joseph

Bowerman, Charles W.

Hayward, Evan

Norton, Captain Cecil William

Boyle, Daniel (Mayo, North)

Hazleton, Richard

Nuttall, Harry

Brady, Patrick Joseph

Helme, Sir Norval Watson

O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)

Brunner, John F. L.

Henry, Sir Charles

O'Connor, John (Kildare, N.)

Bryce, J. Annan

Higham, John Sharp

O'Connor, T. P. (Liverpool)

Burns, Rt. Hon. John

Hinds, John

O'Doherty, Philip

Burt, Rt. Hon. Thomas

Hobhouse, Rt. Hon. Charles E. H.

O'Donnell, Thomas

Buxton, Noel (Norfolk, North)

Hodge, John

O'Dowd, John

Buxton, Rt. Hon. Sydney C. (Poplar)

Hogge, James Myles

O'Grady, James

Carr-Gomm, H. W.

Holmes, Daniel Turner

O'Kelly, Edward P. (Wicklow, W.)

Chapple, Dr. William Allen

Holt, Richard Durning

O'Kelly, James (Roscommon, N.)

Churchill, Rt. Hon. Winston S.

Howard, Hon. Geoffrey

O'Malley, William

Clancy, John Joseph

Isaacs, Rt. Hon. Sir Rufus

O'Neill, Dr. Charles (Armagh, S.)

Clough, William

John, Edward Thomas

O'Shaughnessy, P. J.

Clynes, John R.

Jones, Rt.Hon. Sir D.Brynmor (Swansea)

O'Shee, James John

Collins, G. P. (Greenock)

Jones, Edgar (Merthyr Tydvil)

O'Sullivan, Timothy

Condon, Thomas Joseph

Jones, H. Haydn (Merioneth)

Outhwaite, R. L.

Cornwall, Sir Edwin A.

Jones, J. Towyn (Carmarthen, East)

Palmer, Godfrey Mark

Cotton, William Francis

Jones, Leif Stratten (Notts, Rushcliffe)

Parker, James (Halifax)

Cowan, W. H.

Jones, William (Carnarvonshire)

Pearce, Robert (Staffs, Leek)

Craig, Herbert.J. (Tynemouth)

Jones, William S. Glyn- (Stepney)

Pease, Rt. Hon. Joseph A. (Rotherham)

Crawshay-Williams, Eliot

Joyce, Michael

Phillips, John (Longford, S.)

Crooks, William

Keating, Matthew

Pollard, Sir George H.

Crumley, Patrick

Kellaway, Frederick George

Ponsonby, Arthur A. W. H.

Cullinan, John

Kelly, Edward

Price, C. E. (Edinburgh, Central)

Dalziel, Rt. Hon. Sir J. H. (Kirkcaldy)

Kennedy, Vincent Paul

Price, Sir Robert J. (Norfolk, E.)

Davies, Ellis William (Eifion)

King. Joseph

Priestley, Sir Arthur (Grantham)

Davies, Timothy (Lincs., Louth)

Lambert, Rt. Hon. G. (Devon, S.Molton)

Rea, Rt. Hon. Russell (South Shields)

Dawes, J. A.

Lambert, Richard (Wilts, Cricklade)

Rea, Walter Russell (Scarborough)

Delany, William

Law, Hugh A. (Donegal, West)

Reddy, Michael

Denman, Hon. Richard Douglas

Leach, Charles

Redmond, John E. (Waterford)

Devlin, Joseph

Levy, Sir Maurice

Redmond, William (Clare, E.)

Donelan, Captain A.

Lewis, John Herbert

Redmond, William Archer (Tyrone, E.)

Doris, William

Lundon, Thomas

Rendall, Athelstan

Duffy, William J.

Lyell, Charles Henry

Richardson, Thomas (Whitehaven)

Duncan, J. Hastings (Yorks, Otley)

Lynch, A. A.

Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln)

Elverston, Sir Harold

Macdonald, J. Ramsay (Leicester)

Roberts, George H. (Norwich)

Esmonde, Dr. John (Tipperary, N.)

McGhee, Richard

Roberts, Sir J. H. (Denbighs)

Esmonde, Sir Thomas (Wexford, N.)

Maclean, Donald

Robertson, J. M. (Tyneside)

Essex, Sir Richard Walter

Macnamara, Rt. Hon. Dr. T. J.

Robinson, Sidney

Esslemont, George Birnie

MacNeill, J. G. Swift (Donegal, South)

Roch, Walter F. (Pembroke)

Falconer, James

Macpherson, James Ian

Roche, Augustine (Louth)

Farrell, James Patrick

MacVeagh, Jeremiah

Roe, Sir Thomas

Ferens, Rt. Hon. Thomas Robinson

M'Callum, Sir John M.

Rowlands, James

Rowntree, Arnold

Taylor, Thomas (Bolton)

White, J. Dundas (Glasgow, Tradeston)

Runciman, Rt. Hon. Walter

Tennant, Harold John

White, Sir Luke (Yorks, E.R.)

Russell, Rt. Hon. Thomas W.

Thomas, J. H.

White, Patrick (Meath, North)

Samuel, Rt. Hon. H. L. (Cleveland)

Thorne, G. R. (Wolverhampton)

Whitehouse, John Howard

Samuel, J. (Stockton-on-Tees)

Toulmin, Sir George

Whittaker, Rt. Hon. Sir Thomas P.

Scanlan, Thomas

Trevelyan, Charles Philips

Whyte, A. F. (Perth)

Scott, A. MacCallum (Glas., Bridgeton)

Ure, Rt. Hon. Alexander

Wiles, Thomas

Seely, Rt. Hon. Colonel J. E. B.

Verney, Sir Harry

Williams, John (Glamorgan)

Sheehy, David

Wadsworth, J.

Williams, Penry (Middlesbrough)

Shortt, Edward

Walters, Sir John Tudor

Williamson, Sir Archibald

Simon, Rt. Hon. Sir John Allsebrook

Walton, Sir Joseph

Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)

Smith, Albert (Lancs., Clitheroe)

Ward, W. Dudley (Southampton)

Winfrey, Richard

Smith, H. B. Lees (Northampton)

Wardle, George J.

Wing, Thomas

Smyth, Thomas F. (Leitrim)

Waring, Walter

Wood, Rt. Hon. T. McKinnon (Glasgow)

Snowden, Philip

Warner, Sir Thomas Courtenay T.

Young, William (Perthshire, East)

Soames, Arthur Wellesley

Wason, Rt. Hon. E. (Clackmannan)

Stanley, Albert (Staffs, N.W.)

Wason, John Cathcart (Orkney)

TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—Mr.

Strauss, Edward A. (Southwark, West)

Watt, Henry Anderson

Illingworth and Mr. Gulland.

Sutherland, John E.

Webb, H.

Taylor, Theodore C. (Radcliffe)

Wedgwood, Josiah C.

NOES.

Amery, L. C. M. S.

Faber, Captain W. V. (Hants, W.)

MacCaw, Wm. J MacGeagh

Anstruther-Gray, Major William

Falle, Bertram Godfray

Mackinder, Halford J.

Archer-Shee, Major M.

Fell, Arthur

Macmaster, Donald

Ashley, Wilfrid W.

Fisher, Rt. Hon. W. Hayes

M'Calmont, Major Robert C. A.

Astor, Waldorl

Flannery, Sir J. Fortescue

M'Neill, Ronald (Kent, St. Augustine's)

Baird, John Lawrence

Forster, Henry William

Magnus, Sir Philip

Baker, Sir Randall L. (Dorset, N.)

Gastrell, Major W. Houghton

Malcolm, Ian

Baldwin, Stanley

Gibbs, George Abraham

Mason, James F. (Windsor)

Banbury, Sir Frederick George

Gilmour, Captain John

Mildmay, Francis Bingham

Banner, John S. Harmood-

Glazebrook, Captain Philip K.

Mills, Hon. Charles Thomas

Baring, Maj. Hon. Guy V. (Winchester)

Goldsmith, Frank

Morrison-Bell, Capt. E. F. (Ashburton)

Barlow, Montague (Salford, South)

Gordon, Hon. John Edward (Brighton)

Morrison-Bell, Major A. C. (Honiton)

Barnston, Harry

Goulding, Edward Alfred

Mount, William Arthur

Bathurst, Hon. A. B. (Glouc., E.)

Grant, J. A.

Neville, Reginald J. N.

Bathurst, Charles (Wilts, Wilton)

Greene, Walter Raymond

Newton, Harry Kottingham

Beach, Hon. Michael Hugh Hicks

Gretton, John

Nicholson, William G. (Petersfield)

Beckett, Hon. Gervase

Guinness, Hon. Rupert (Essex, S.E.)

Nield, Herbert

Benn, Arthur Shirley (Plymouth)

Guinness, Hon. W. E. (Bury S. Edmunds)

O'Neill, Hon. A. E. B. (Antrim, Mid

Benn, Ion Hamilton (Greenwich)

Haddock, George Bahr

Orde-Powlett, Hon. W. G. A.

Beresford, Lord Charles

Hall, D. B. (Isle of Wight)

Ormsby-Gore, Hon. William

Bigland, Alfred

Hall, Frederick (Dulwich)

Paget, Almeric Hugh

Bird, Alfred

Hall, Marshall (E. Toxteth)

Parker, Sir Gilbert (Gravesend)

Blair, Reginald

Hambro, Angus Valdemar

Parkes, Ebenezer

Boscawen, Sir Arthur S. T. Griffith-

Hamersley, Alfred St. George

Pease, Herbert Pike (Darlington)

Boyle, William (Norfolk, Mid)

Hamilton, Lord C. J. (Kensington, S.)

Peel, Lieut.-Colonel R. F,

Boyton, James

Hamilton, C. C. (Altrincham)

Perkins, Walter F

Brassey, H. Leonard Campbell

Hardy, Rt. Hon. Laurence

Pole-Carew, Sir R.

Bridgeman, W. Clive

Harris, Henry Percy

Pollock, Ernest Murray

Burdett-Coutts, W.

Harrison-Broadley, H. B.

Pretyman, Ernest George

Burgoyne, Alan Hughes

Herbert, Hon. A. (Somerset, S.)

Pryce-Jones, Colonel E.

Butcher, John George

Hewins, William Albert Samuel

Randles, Sir John S.

Campbell, Rt. Hon. J. (Dublin Univ.)

Hickman, Colonel Thomas E.

Ratcliff, R. F.

Carlile, Sir Edward Hildred

Hill-Wood, Samuel

Rawlinson, John Frederick Peel

Carson, Rt. Hon. Sir Edward H.

Hoare, S. J. G.

Rees, Sir J. D.

Cassel, Felix

Hohler, Gerald Fitzroy

Ronaldshay, Earl of

Cator, John

Hope, Harry (Bute)

Rothschild, Lionel de

Cautley, Henry Strother

Hope, James Fitzalan (Sheffield)

Rutherford, John (Lancs., Darwen)

Cecil, Lord Hugh (Oxford University)

Hope, Major J. A. (Midlothian)

Salter, Arthur Clavell

Cecil, Lord R. (Herts, Hitchin)

Horne, E. (Surrey, Guildford)

Samuel, Sir Harry (Norwood)

Chaloner, Colonel R. G. W.

Houston, Robert Paterson

Sanders, Robert Arthur

Chamberlain, Rt. Hon. J. A. (Worc'r., E.)

Hunt, Rowland

Sanderson, Lancelot

Chaplin, Rt. Hon. Henry

Hunter, Sir Charles Rodk.

Sandys, G. J.

Clay, Captain H. H. Spender

Ingleby, Holcombe

Scott, Leslie (Liverpool, Exchange)

Clive, Captain Percy Archer

Jessel, Captain H. M.

Scott, Sir S. (Marylebone, W.)

Cooper, Richard Ashmole

Jowett, F. W.

Smith, Rt. Hon. F. E. (L'pool, Walton)

Courthope, George Loyd

Joynson-Hicks, William

Smith, Harold (Warrington)

Craig, Charles Curtis (Antrim, S.)

Kerr-Smiley, Peter Kerr

Spear, Sir John Ward

Craig, Ernest (Cheshire, Crewe)

Kerry, Earl of

Stanley, Hon. Arthur (Ormskirk)

Craig, Captain James (Down, E.)

Keswick, Henry

Stanley, Hon. G. F. (Preston)

Craig, Norman (Kent, Thanet)

Kinloch-Cooke, Sir Clement

Starkey, John Ralph

Craig, Sir Henry

Kyffin-Taylor, G.

Steel-Maitland, A. D.

Croft, H. P.

Larmor, Sir J.

Stewart, Gershom

Dalrymple, Viscount

Law, Rt. Hon. A. Bonar (Bootle)

Swift, Rigby

Dalziel, Davison (Brixton)

Lawson, Hon. H. (T. H'mts., Mile End)

Sykes, Alan John (Ches., Knutsford)

Denison-Pender, J.

Lee, Arthur Hamilton

Sykes, Mark (Hull, Central)

Dickson, Rt, Hon. C. Scott

Lewisham, Viscount

Talbot, Lord Edmund

Dixon, C. H.

Lloyd, George Butler (Shrewsbury)

Taylor, John W. (Durham)

Duke, Henry Edward

Locker-Lampson, G. (Salisbury)

Terrell, George (Wilts, N.W.)

Eyres-Monsell, Bolton M.

Locker-Lampson, O. (Ramsey)

Terrell, Henry (Gloucester)

Faber, George Denison (Clapham)

Lyttelton, Rt. Hon. A. (S. Geo., Han. S.)

Thomson, W. Mitchell- (Down, North)

746

747

Thorne, William (West Ham)

Weigall, Captain A. G.

Wood, John (Stalybridge)

Thynne, Lord A.

Weston, Colonel J. W.

Worthington-Evans, L.

Touche, George Alexander

Wheler, Granville C. H.

Wright, Henry Fitzherbert

Tryon, Captain George Clement

White, Major G. D. (Lancs., Southport)

Yerburgh, Robert A.

Valentia, Viscount

Williams, Colonel R. (Dorset, W.)

Younger, Sir George

Walker, Col. William Hall

Willoughby, Major Hon. Claud

Walrond, Hon. Lionel

Wolmer, Viscount

TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Mr.

Warde, Col. C. E. (Kent, Mid)

Wood, Hon. E. F. L. (Yorks, Ripon)

Evelyn Cecil and Mr. Samuel Roberts.

COMPANIES (CONSOLIDATION) ACT (1908) AMENDMENT BILL.
Order for Second Reading read and discharged; Bill withdrawn.

EDUCATION (SCOTLAND) (GLASGOW ELECTORAL DIVISIONS) BILL.
Read a second time, and committed to a Standing Committee.
The remaining Orders were read, and postponed.
It being after half-past Eleven of the clock, Mr. SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.
Adjourned at Five minutes before Twelve o'clock.