CLAUSE 1.—(Continuation of Possession of Land Occupied for the Purposes of the Defence of the Realm.) (Hansard, 17 July 1916)

§ The SOLICITOR-GENERAL (Sir G. Cave)
I beg to move, in Subsection (1), to leave out the words " during the course of the present War."
The meaning of the Amendment is simply to deal with certain property taken possession of on the 4th of August, and therefore not actually during the War, because war was not declared until nearly midnight on that day. The matter will still be covered by certain words a little lower down, "for purposes connected with the present War." It should not go beyond that.

§ Mr. L. HARDY
I am glad the right hon. and learned Gentleman proposes to exclude these words, because they certainly have a much wider scope than seems necessary.

§ Mr. HOLT
May I ask the Solicitor-General whether he is quite certain, in moving the omission of these words, that he is not going too far? Land might be secured after the War for purposes connected with the War. It is quite conceivable that land might be taken for the purpose of disbanding the troops or other winding-up operations connected with the War. It would be right to make it quite plain that this only applies to land taken before the outbreak of the War, and not after peace has been declared.

§ Sir F. BANBURY
I am rather of the opinion that the hon. Gentleman who last spoke is right. The omission of these words seem to me to extend the scope and power of the Government. What will be the result of the Bill where possession has been taken of any land by or on behalf of any Government Department for purposes connected with the present War? Possession may have been taken at any time. All the Government have to say is that it was done for the purposes of the present War. 1s it quite certain, as the hon. Member opposite (Mr. Holt) said, that it might not be after the War? This Bill is going to extend for seven years. I do not see the object in omitting the words. They had much better be left in. If they are left out, it leaves power to any Government Department to take any land it likes. All they need say is that the land is taken for purposes connected with the War. Is there any definition of "purposes con- 730 I hope my right hon. and learned Friend will reconsider this matter and not press his Amendment.

§ Mr. ASHLEY
I rather agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for the City of London that the omission of these words is very likely to extend considerably the scope of the Bill. Surely it would be much better for the Solicitor-General to say that he omits these words because there are certain acts committed on 4th August, 1914, which he wishes to have included in the scope of the Bill. Why not have a specific date—3rd August or 2nd August, 1914—then we shall have a landmark and know exactly where we are?

§ Sir G. CAVE
I quite understand the point. I do not think that the words, if omitted, will enable the Government to apply the Act to any land taken possession of at the end of the present War. We could not bring that land within the compass of the Clause. But I want nothing else except to bring in, as the hon. Member has just said, the date immediately before the War, when the War was in immediate contemplation, and the land, of course, had to be taken. I am quite willing to meet the House, and I shall ask leave to withdraw this Amendment, and on Report to suggest some words which would appear to more nearly meet the case.

§ Sir F. BANBURY
I beg to move, in Subsection (1), after the word "shall" ["it shall be lawful for the Government Department"], to insert the words "in the absence of agreement to the contrary."
The object of this Amendment is to prevent land being taken without agreements duly entered into.

§ Sir G. CAVE
I am quite agreeable to my right hon. Friend's object, as I said' on the Second Reading, but I think it is completely carried out by a later new Clause of mine headed "Savings," in which Subsections (3) and (4) apply to this case.

§ Sir F. BANBURY
The Amendment of my right hon. and learned Friend seems to cover the case, and I beg leave to withdraw my Amendment.

§ Sir F. BANBURY
I beg to move, in Subsection (1), to leave out the word "three" ["not exceeding three years"], and to insert instead thereof the word
"two." It seems to me that two years is a sufficiently long period to give the Government the opportunity of making up their minds as to whether or not it is desirable in the national interests to acquire certain land. Under the circumstances, I do not think it is necessary for me to take up the time of the Committee toy argument, for I think it is perfectly clear that two years is ample time for the Government to make up their minds.

§ The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the MINISTRY Of MUNITONS (Dr. Addison)
It relates not so much to the acquiring of land as to the continuing in occupation, and I am advised by the military authorities that in many cases in connection with demobilisation it would be quite impossible to be clear in two years, and they would therefore require some machinery whereby they might have the consent of the Commission to continue longer in occupation. If the right hon. Gentleman will agree to an Amendment later on substituting "five" for "four" years, subject to the consent of the Commission, as provided in the Bill, we are willing to accept the Amendment. But we feel it would be impracticable to accept it, unless the total period is seven years in which occupation may be permitted by the consent of the Commission.

§ Sir R. ADKINS
I think even if the total period were to remain seven years the Committee would probably agree that the first part should be two, and not three, years. What many of us desire is that if the Government wish to continue the occupation of land they ought to get permission from a judicial body as soon as possible, and not do it without judicial authority. Therefore I support the right hon. Gentleman in his Amendment, whatever is done with regard to the further period by permission of the Railway and Canal Commission. Quite apart from the length of the second period, it is surely 732 desirable that the length of the first period, which is decided merely by the action of the Government without any judicial sanction, should be reduced to two years. Therefore I hope the Government will accept this, and then leave us free to discuss the matter whether, when you have to go to the Commission, it should be for three, four, or five years. My right hon. Friend who has just spoken has said, I have no doubt with great accuracy, that there may be certain cases for which the military authorities require a longer period than two years in connection with demobilisation. One cannot conceive a period of five, six, or seven years being required for demobilisation. Such a period as that would only be required when you are contemplating some permanent occupation. In such a case it would surely be a matter for the Railway Commissioners to decide. I hope, therefore, without prejudicing the question whether the remaining figure is to be three, four, or five, the Government will accept this Amendment.

§ Mr. ASHLEY
I entirely agree with the last speaker. Surely it would be much better to insert two years here, and leave it to the Commissioners to decide afterwards whether a more extended period is necessary. I do not quite like this bargaining on the part of the Government, that they will give us this if we will agree to that. I think every question ought to be considered on its merits, and we are now discussing the length of time which the Government should be allowed to remain in occupation before the Railway Commission is brought in. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred I am quite sure two years would be enough. You are not going to keep millions of men in barracks for over two years if you can possibly help it, if only for the sake of expense. Therefore it only ought to be for exceptional cases that an extended time is necessary. Let us have the two years, and then we can discuss how long an extension the Commission should have power to allow.

§ Sir G. CAVE
If we are content to take the two years here, we will show when the time comes why five years should be allowed in the second case. I accept the Amendment.

§ Sir G. YOUNGER
I should like to ask whether "land" here covers every sort of property; because, if so, the placing of two years in this Clause, I imagine, should not prevent an Amendment being moved 733 later on to limit the time for which the Control Board should hold public-houses. They are now limited to twelve months after the War, and certainly I am not prepared to see any Act passed to extend that period.

§ Sir G. CAVE
There is an Amendment down in my name to omit that.

§ Sir G. YOUNGER
Giving power to sell, but not limiting the time to hold. Your Amendment does not limit that.

§ Mr. WATT
I am sorry the Solicitor General has consented to change this for two years. He has already capitulated twice to hon. Members on the other side, and I hope this is not a sign that the Government intends to capitulate all along. This is not an economical Amendment. "My hon. Friend (Sir R. Adkins) suggested that the sooner we get to a judicial body to sanction the holding of the land the better, but expenses begin whenever you get to that judicial body, and under this Amendment the expenses of the judicial body will begin at an earlier date.

Mr HENDERSON
I am afraid I cannot agree with my hon. Friend. If we could mobilise and equip several million men in less than two years it cannot surely take two years for demobilisation.

§ Sir F. BANBURY
I am very much obliged to my right hon. and learned Friend for having accepted the last Amendment, without my being held to any bargain, because I do not feel at all inclined to make a bargain with the two right hon. Gentlemen opposite, for I am sure I should be entirely worsted if I attempted a bargain with them. I have an Amendment to leave out the words after the word "expedient" to the end of the Sub-section, the effect of which would be to prevent any further extension of time beyond the two years. After having heard my right hon. Friend's statement that the military authorities think it might in certain circumstances be necessary to have a short extension of that time, I think, perhaps, it might be more convenient, instead of moving the Amendment in this form, if I were to move to leave out " four " in order to insert " two."

§ Mr. ASHLEY
I have handed in an Amendment to that effect.

§ Sir F. BANBURY
I think there is a general feeling in the Committee that it might possibly be necessary to give power 734 to the Commission to make some slight extension of time under certain circumstances. If that is so, I do not think I will move the Amendment standing in my name. At the same time, I should have very much preferred for the Government to have come down to this House, if it were necessary, to extend the time and obtain powers from Parliament to do so. I do not myself quite like the idea of setting up tribunals to whom the Government Department are to go. It seems to me a setting up of a tribunal in place of this House and I am a great supporter of the House of Commons. I think power is gradually being taken away from it, and it seems to me the proper course would be for the right hon. Gentleman to come down to this House with another short Bill, which he would probably get without any discussion, and so preserve to the House of Commons the powers which have always hitherto belonged to it. I am glad my right hon. Friend the Lord Advocate agrees. I am afraid he will not say so, but I see he does agree. Under the circumstances, as my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Blackpool (Mr. Ashley) has an Amendment, I will not move my Amendment.

§ The CHAIRMAN
There are two manuscript Amendments which deal with this point.

§ Mr. MOLTENO
I beg to move, in Subsection (1), to leave out the words "Railway and Canal Commission," and to insert instead thereof the words " Defence of the Realm Losses Commission."
The right hon. and learned Solicitor-General on Second Reading expressed an open mind, I think, more or less with regard to this matter. The Defence of the Realm Losses Commission has really investigated the details of all this land. I think in most cases it has actually settled every interest in the land with the one exception of the actual freehold. It has settled the annual value for the purposes of compensation, so that there is only the freehold value to be settled if the Government desire to acquire the land. That is a very small step. My view is that if the Commission which has been up till now dealing .with these matters is allowed to continue to deal with them, it will save trouble for everybody and save expense, and be a more satisfactory tribunal, because it will bring the knowledge which it has already acquired to bear properly and effectively. I can give an 735 illustration. In my Constituency a very large area was taken. What the Commission did was to make a careful survey of the land exactly as it was before the Government began to operate upon it, so that they had every detail to enable them to ascertain exactly the condition and value of the land. Any Commission now setting to work and finding miles of country occupied, and every kind of structure put up at a cost of millions, would have an enormous task in ascertaining the actual position before it was built upon, whereas you have the facts ascertained by a body which has proved its competency. I think this is a very hard task to throw on these Commissioners. One of the members of this Commission is also a member of the other Commission, and therefore he would have to bear the double burden. This arrangement applies to Scotland, and there we have had most unsatisfactory results from the labours of the Railway and Canal Commission Two of these Commissioners sit with a judge who has the appointment of the assessor to deal with. The assessors will have to go over all this work again, which has already been done by the Defence of the Realm Losses Commission, and this will add very much to the expense. In Scotland we have had very unsatisfactory results from that kind of procedure. We have got before us a case where in another matter an enormous cost had to be borne by the public in consequence of a Commission of that kind calling in assessors. I suggest that if the Government will accept my Amendment very little change will be necessary in the Bill, for you will only have to leave out the words "Railway and Canal Commission" and insert "Defence of the Realm Losses Commission." [An HON. MEMBER: "That will be worse than before!"]

§ Sir G. CAVE
I am afraid I cannot accept this Amendment. I need hardly say that I have already expressed the highest possible opinion of the Railway and Canal Commission and the way it has carried out its work; but this is a War Commission appointed for a temporary purpose during the War only. Its function is to ascertain the amount of loss sustained by persons who have suffered by the exercise of the Royal Prerogative during the War. The Commission proceeds on rules which are applicable to that kind of inquiry. Under this Bill we are going into a different inquiry altogether. We give special 736 powers to the Commissions to sanction the purchase and so on, and the whole of the inquiry is different altogether, and I do not think we could impose this duty upon a temporary Commission. The personal consideration is not one which weighs with me, but on public grounds I think the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Exeter (Mr. Duke) will agree that for this particular purpose it is better to have a new Commission. With regard to the Railway and Canal Commission I am surprised to hear that in Scotland they are not satisfied with its work, because that Commission was suggested from Scotland for this purpose. It was a Scottish suggestion, and I think it is rather hard that the hon. Member should now turn round and express dissatisfaction with it.

§ Mr. FIELD
Do the Railway and Canal Commission give satisfaction anywhere?

§ Sir G. CAVE
I think they give satisfaction everywhere. The hon. Member has complained that one member of the Railway and Canal Commission is also a member of the Defence of the Realm Losses Commission, but I think he will be useful to the Railway and Canal Commission when it undertakes its work. The gentleman referred to is a regular appointed member of the other Commission, and I do not think it is unfair to ask him to continue his work on this Commission even after the War. The Railway and Canal Commission has its quarters, staff, and offices, and is has not a very large amount of work to do.

§ Mr. WATT
And it is highly paid.

§ Sir G. CAVE
We want to give it a little more work. There is this further advantage, that there is a different president for each of the three countries—one for England, one for Scotland, and one for Ireland—and that is a very useful arrangement. There has been no other suggestion made except this one put forward by the hon. Member, and I cannot accept the Amendment.

§ Mr. BOYTON
Personally I am glad the right hon. Gentleman has not accepted this Amendment, and I hope the Committee will take a similar view. I doubt whether the hon. Member for Dumfriesshire (Mr. Molteno) has had any experience of the Defence of the Realm War Losses Commission. If he had, I do not think he would be ready to substitute it for the Railway Commission. If he had 737 had the personal experience I have had of attending before the Commission presided over so ably by the Member for Exeter (Mr. Duke), he would not advocate them as a suitable body. In the ordinary course of my business I had to go before that Commission, and I asked how they proposed to justify by way of compensation the payment for over nine acres of land of £13,000. I was asked if I had particularly noticed what the title of the Commission was, and, if not, I was told that they would refer me to the doorpost, on which I should see written up "War Losses Commission," and not "War Gains." The Committee will readily understand that I have no personal appreciation of that Commission or of going before a body so ably constituted and working on charitable principles, for I understand they do not receive any remuneration. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Exeter was good enough to preside over the War Losses Commission without remuneration, and so did those who assisted him. Going before the Railway and Canal Commission will entail a certain amount of expense, but I think that will be preferable to the Losses Commission, although personally I should much prefer the old Lands Clauses Acts. I hope the Committee will share the views expressed by the Solicitor-General and reject this Amendment.

Mr. D. WHITE
I sympathise with the objects which the hon. Member for Dumfriesshire has in view in proposing this Amendment, but I am not altogether surprised that the learned Solicitor-General has not seen his way to accept it. I cannot, however, accept the hard and fast distinction which has been drawn between the class of compensation given by the Defence of the Realm Losses Commission and that to be given by this Bill. Take, for example, the matter dealt with in the first Clause, namely, the case of land now in possession and which possession is continued. For the first period compensation has been given by the Defence of the Realm Losses Commission, and why when that possession is continued for another three or four years should not the Defence of the Realm Commission deal with it? I fail to see any hard and fast distinction between the two. Even where land is purchased the Defence of the Realm Losses Commission has done its work excellently well, and it would do that kind of work also excellently well.
738 Referece has been made to Scotland but I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfriesshire will agree with me when I say that he had no complaint to make against the Railway and Canal Commission, but what he complains of is the bringing in of the elaborate and costly machinery of the Lands Clauses Acts under which the public have been fleeced time after time. I hope we shall steer clear of those Acts altogether. This Defence of the Realm Losses Commission has worked very well, and I think on similar matters arising out of the present state of the War the same procedure should be adopted. It may be said that the Commission is overworked, and that that particular Commission does not want to undertake these duties. I know that Commission has done excellent work and has probably got its hands full, but there is no reason why a second branch of that Commission should not be appointed to carry on the same work free from the trammels of the Lands Clauses Acts altogether. The learned Solicitor-General said this particular suggestion came from Scotland, but when I hear of people receiving suggestions from Scotland I am reminded of the fact that Scotland does not make suggestions, and they generally come from some particular body, and I would like to know what particular body in Scotland has recommended the Government to have resort to the Railway and Canal Commission and the Lands Clauses Acts. I think we are entitled to know that. The hon. Member who spoke last gave us a very bare story of his experience with the Defence of the Realm Losses Commission, and I would like to remind the House of the particular case which he put. It is the case of land which has not been used or developed to anything like its full value, and it is not being so used, but is simply being kept with a view to development.

§ Mr. BOYTON
By a statutory company and not by an individual.

Mr. WHITE
I do not care whether it is held by a statutory company or by an individual, and I am no respecter of persons in this matter.

§ Mr. BOYTON
It was a public utility

Mr. WHITE
It is a fact however that this land was not being used to its full 739 capacity, but was in process of being developed. Under these circumstances that land was required for public use, and the Defence of the Realm Commission has, I understand, awarded what would make up for the actual loss, but has not given such a profit as the development of this land would command now. I would like to know this——

§ Mr. BOYTON
The War Losses Commission allowed nothing. They simply took the land, and they pay no rent.

Mr. WHITE
They pay no rent to the company. Had the company been paying any rates to the public? I suppose this land has been rated at a purely nominal value, so that the basis on which the owner has contributed to the public needs has been a purely nominal basis. When the public come and say that they require the land, surely they are entitled to have it on something like the same basis. I am glad that the point has been put, because it gives the key to a good many of the objections, and explains why hon. Members want the Lands Clauses Acts brought in. This House would never have stood the Lands Clauses Acts in their natural state, but the amendments and qualifications did not go far enough; even with those alterations and qualifications they would bring in a higher and a totally unjustifiable scale of compensation. That is why I sympathise with the Motion which has been made by my hon. Friend.

Mr. HENDERSON
I am afraid that the single taxers are on the war path. The moment you speak of acquiring land they are there. This Defence of the Realm Losses Commission is an affair totally different from what is contemplated in this Bill, and they would have to be reconstituted. Under the Defence of the Realm Act no one has any right or claim whatever, and the Commission was appointed, not for the purpose of assessing the loss, but for the purpose of recommending something to be paid by the Government ex gratia.

§ Mr. MOLTENO
What is just and fair.

Mr. HENDERSON
Their standard is not "right"; their standard is "loss," and only such loss as they can say was attributable to the War. They are not dealing with the thing as a right but as a favour, and all they do is to lay before the Government their recommendation.
740 If you are going to deal with it as a case of compensation for taking land, you must have some other body which deals with it as a right and not as a favour. I think my hon. Friend will see that, and will withdraw his Amendment.

§ Sir F. BANBURY
The hon. Member for the Tradeston Division (Mr. Dundas White) asked my hon. Friend, who said that no rent was paid for the land which was taken possession of, what it was rated at, and he seemed to think that because the land might not be rated it was fair to take it without paying any rent for it.

Mr. WHITE
I consider, particularly at a time like this, that there ought to be some parity between the valuation on which the owner contributes to the needs of the people and the valuation at which the people have to purchase from him.

§ Sir F. BANBURY
I do not see what that has got to do with it. May I ask the hon. Member this? He has a house which he desires to let. The house being empty, he does not pay rates. Does he contend, because that house which he used to let at £500 a year is empty and because he cannot for the moment find a tenant, and does not therefore pay rates, that the Government have a right to come down and take it and pay no rent at all? That is exactly the position. [HON. MEMBERS: "No!"] Certainly!

Mr. WHITE
The right hon. Gentleman

§ The CHAIRMAN
I have not intervened before, but the hon. Member for the Tradeston Division (Mr. D. White) has been knocking out his own Amendment later on. He is anticipating himself. The question certainly does not arise particularly on this Amendment.

§ Sir F. BANBURY
I am very glad that has happened, and I do not wish to continue the discussion.

§ The CHAIRMAN
I am only warning the Committee, if the discussion does go on any longer, that will finish it.

Mr. WHITE
I would like to point out, with great respect, that the question was raised not by me but by the hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. Boyton). I merely replied to the point that he made.

§ Mr. BOYTON
I only spoke strictly to the Amendment.

The CHIARMAN
I think it was on this side (including the benches on his right hand).

§ Mr. RAFFAN
I do not propose to anticipate my hon. Friend's Amendment. I only rise to express the hope that my hon. Friend opposite (Mr. Molteno) will go to a Division. I can assure him, if he does, that he will receive a considerable amount of support. It is perfectly clear that behind the choice of the body which is to determine the compensation lies the question whether the public should be called upon to pay fair and reasonable compensation or compensation under the Lands Clauses Acts. I am sure that there is not an hon. Member here who is a member of a county council or a town council, or any local authority, who does not know that the operation of those Acts is unsatisfactory to the public in every conceivable way, and that in nine cases out of ten larger compensation is awarded to the landowner than is fair and reasonable. This is a proposal to extend the operation of those Acts to compensation paid by the nation as a whole, and I hope my hon. Friends will test the matter so that we can ascertain how many Members are standing by landlords' interest at this time of crisis.

§ Sir RYLAND ADKINS
The issues have really just been put by my hon. Friend with great inaccuracy. To begin with, the Schedule is intended to alter the Lands Clauses Acts, rightly or wrongly, in the direction my hon. Friend desires. Therefore, it is quite misleading the public to suggest that a vote on this Amendment is a vote for or against the Lands Clauses Acts. It is a vote whether you shall put this into the hands of a temporary Committee appointed for other purposes or into the hands of a judicial body. The Railway and Canal Commission does not exist for the purpose of promoting the application of the Lands Clauses Acts; it exists for the purpose of having a special tribunal to which this kind of compensation case may properly be given. I merely protest against the false issues which my hon. Friend has unintentionally put to the House.

§ Mr. MOLTENO
I am much obliged to my hon. Friend (Mr. Boyton) for having pointed out the objection to my Amendment that the Defence of the Realm Losses Commission does not apply to profits but only to losses. I beg leave to withdraw my Amendment.

HON. MEMBERS
No, no!

§ Mr. ASHLEY
I beg to move, in Subsection (1), after the word "thereto" ["the Commission consent thereto"], to insert the words " on the ground that the Occupying Department has not had reasonable time to complete arrangements for giving up possession."
I imagine these words would meet the case which the Government have put forward, that further time in some conceivable circumstances would be necessary for the Occupying Department, and that they should come to the Commission and ask for that time to be given. The ground on which the Occupying Department may make the application is left delightfully vague in the Bill. Apparently, if they go on for another four years, and then tell the Commission that they would like to go on, they ought to be allowed to go on. The Solicitor-General shakes his head, but could he tell me if they have to give any reason? The main reason that he gave was that they should be given more time in order to complete their arrangements on demobilisation. Supposing the troops were in the camp twenty-one months after the War came to an end, I admit, as he has inserted two years instead of three years, that it would be perfectly reasonable that the War Office should go to the Commission and say, "Please give us another six months or a year"—or whatever time they wanted—"in order that we may complete our arrangements for dismantling the camp and closing up the business." But I myself do not see any other ground on which they could legitimately approach that Commission, and I would, therefore, ask the Solicitor-General whether he could not see his way to accept my Amendment, or some similar words providing that the ground on which they could make this application should be that they have not time to complete their arrangements for vacating the premises.

§ Sir G. CAVE
I could not accept this Amendment, because it implies that a Department should at once make arrangements for giving up possession, or if they 743 were not able to go out at once, at any rate in a short time. That is not the meaning of the Bill. There may be other reasons why it is necessary for national purposes that possession should be retained. It may be demobilisation. It may be that they want possession for the purposes of assisting demobilisation. That is inconsistent with this Amendment. It may be that they would want time to put up other factories to do the same work. That is not giving up at once. It might be necessary for defence purposes to keep possession a little longer. That is not consistent with this Amendment, and that is why it should not be accepted. I accept the position that the Government Department must make out a case to the Commission. They could not go to the Commission and say, "We want longer time, and we are, therefore, entitled to it." That is not at all the case. They must go and say why they want it, and only if they satisfy the Commission that for national reasons they want a longer time should they get it. This is an Amendment which ought not to be pressed.

§ Sir R. ADKINS
Would it be consistent with the public interest for the Solicitor-General to tell the Committee why the total time contemplated in this Bill is seven years?

§ Sir G. CAVE
We are coming to that.

§ Sir R. ADKINS
On the next Amendment?

§ Sir G. CAVE
Yes.

§ Sir R. ADKINS
I did not know that.

§ Mr. ASHLEY
Before I ask leave to withdraw my Amendment, I would like to ask whether when the application is made to the Railway and Canal Commission the parties interested in the land are to be allowed to appear and to state their case?

§ Sir G. CAVE
indicated assent.

§ Mr. ASHLEY
Is that so?

§ Sir G. CAVE
Certainly, I anticipate that.

§ Sir F. BANBURY
Might I suggest that we might put in some words instead of these words to show that the Commission must be satisfied that the extension is asked for on the ground of national requirements. That, I think, would meet the point raised by the Solicitor-General, 744 and I therefore suggest words to the effect that the Commission should give their consent on being satisfied that the request for the prolongation of the period is required on Imperial grounds.

§ Sir G. CAVE
On other grounds as well.

§ Sir F. BANBURY
The point is, that the Solicitor-General says it is not to be supposed that the Commission will consent to the Government extending the period merely because the Government say they want it. That is what I understood him to say. He says they will have to satisfy the Commission. That is all very well, but I should like to have that in the Act of Parliament. It is very much better to have what the Government intend, and what the House would wish, in the Act, instead of letting it be supposed to be the desire of the Government, because when you come to interpret this it by no means follows that the Department concerned will have read the Solicitor-General's speech in the OFFICIAL REPORT. We can quite understand a Department coming forward and saying, "We want this"—and because they want it, it follows that the Commission will give it. I can see no objection to these words being inserted if my hon. and learned Friend could draft some words to meet that object, or if the Solicitor-General would consent to the insertion of words to that effect.

§ Sir G. CAVE
I will consider it before Report.

§ Sir E. CORNWALL
I should like to support what the hon. Baronet the Member for the City (Sir F. Banbury) has just said. I think it is rather important that the Government Department should not consider it has only just to make an application to the Railway Commissioners, and that by the fact of making the application they will get an extension of time. We all want to give the Government all the facilities they require, but if you come to a case of officials of a Government Department finding it easier to go to the Railway Commissioners and make an application instead of making themselves busy and getting rid of some of these properties they have taken over for the War that would be very much against the public interest. They ought to make out their case, and something ought to be put in the Bill to let it be known to the Railway Commissioners that they have to be thoroughly satisfied that the Government 745 Department cannot in the public interest give up this land. I am glad that the Solicitor-General will consider the matter before the Report stage, and I only rose to emphasise the point because I do attach very great importance to the arguments of the hon. Baronet.

§ Sir F. BANBURY
I have some words here, and if this Amendment were withdrawn I should like, if I might be allowed, to move them?

§ The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN (Mr. Maclean)
That cannot be done now.

Mr. WHITE
should like to enter a protest against manuscript Amendments being moved to an important measure like this. This really goes to the root of public finance in acquiring property under the pressure of the War. There is no excuse for manuscript Amendments. This Bill has been before the House for something like ten days, and anyone wanting to make Amendments has had ample time to put them on the Paper. Every hon. Member knows that it is not entirely unknown for an Amendment to be kept out of the Paper, and to be put forward as a manuscript Amendment, the only copies being in the hands of the Member who moves it, the Chairman, and the member of the Government concerned. I do not say that is the case on this occasion. I do not suggest anything of that kind, but I do say that in a measure of this nature no manuscript Amendments, unless they are merely drafting Amendments, ought to be considered by the Government at all. I would call the attention of the Committee to this fact: that this manuscript Amendment will not appear in the Paper again, and will not appear until the Report stage, if, indeed, it appears on the Report stage. In a measure like this the Committee, or the House, whichever it may be, ought to have ample opportunity, and ample time, to consider an Amendment of this nature, which may involve the nation in a very considerable cost. I venture to appeal to the Solicitor-General not to accept any manuscript Amendments, and if hon. Members want manuscript Amendments to be considered on Report, they should put them down for the Report stage, so that all Members can see them, and they will then receive the consideration of the Government.

§ Mr. ASHLEY
As the hon. Gentleman who has just spoken made rather an attack on me, and just went short of saying that I did this on purpose to avoid criticism——

Mr. WHITE
I would like to say that I pointed out the danger of this procedure, but that I frankly said I made no reference to this particular case.

§ Mr. ASHLEY
On that point, this is not an easy Bill for a man who is not a lawyer to follow. If hon. Members have done me the honour they will have seen that I have a number of Amendments on the Paper in my own name. I spent most of the week-end, except church-time, over this Bill, and I hope the hon. Member who has just spoken will acquit me of having done anything intentionally to avoid criticism.

§ Sir W. BEALE
It might help the Committee a little if I mention that the marginal note of this Section, if referred to, will make the matter perfectly clear without this Amendment. The continuation can only be made for the Defence of the Realm—continuation of possession for that particular purpose. On the question whether a marginal note can be referred to, it is within my recollection—of course, it is only a recollection, because it is a great many years ago—that the very question arose before the most eminent judge I have known, Sir George Jessel, Master of the Rolls, who sent to ascertain whether a marginal note was on the Roll of Parliament, and finding that it was, he ruled that it could be referred to. I give that instance because if this is required the Solicitor-General will find this will answer all purposes.

§ Mr. RAWLINSON
If this is in the marginal note there can be no harm in putting it in the body of the Bill, because there are some modern judges, I am sorry to say, who are no doubt unaware of the ruling referred to by the hon. and learned Gentleman, and who do not even now like looking at marginal notes of Acts of Parliament, but are rather concerned with construing what is in the body of the Bill. If that is the intention of the Government, there is no harm in putting it in the Bill. If I may deal with the hon. Gentleman opposite (Mr. White), who made a severe attack on manuscript Amendments, as I am in no way responsible for this Amendment and have not even seen it, and am, therefore, quite guiltless in this particular case, I should like to ask the hon. Member, whose views about this Bill are so very strong, just to consider the difficulties hon Members opposed to the Bill have. The original Bill, I suppose, was after the hon. 747 Gentleman's own heart; but the Government have altered it very considerably, and Government Amendments on a large number of very important points did not appear until Friday or this morning.

§ Sir G. CAVE
Friday.

§ Mr. RAWLINSON
That is too late. A large body of Amendments was sent to me by persons interested in such matters to put on the Paper. I do not say I am going to put them on the Paper. Perhaps some others may do so. They only arrived on Saturday, and how can you get them put down in time? Private Members cannot send them by post. The Government may or may not be able to do so, but the Government Amendments only appeared on Friday morning, and Amendments of hon. Members could not possibly have come before Saturday morning. How could they have put them down except as manuscript Amendments in a case such as that? If the hon. Gentleman would reserve his indignation for the Government, who are rushing through a Bill when they have the whole time of the House, instead of turning on poor little people like ourselves, unfamiliar with the ways of the House, who are doing our best to put before Members such points as arise, I would support him gladly. I make a protest against what the hon. Gentleman has said, because it may be necessary to put a large number of manuscript Amendments down to the Amendments of the Government.

Mr. WHITE
There is one point I wish to mention, and that is that some reference has been made to the use of marginal notes, and judges' references to them. If I may speak with very great respect to my hon. and learned Friends, I think they will find that there is a comparatively recent case in which it has been decided, and for practical purposes finally, that marginal notes are no part of the Act and are simply put there for the convenience of men reading the Act. I understand that has been definitely decided. I am sorry I cannot quote the name of the case to the House, but since this has been suggested I think it only right to mention it.

§ Sir F. LOWE
I do not wish to prolong the discussion, because it seems to me very unnecessary. If you read the whole Clause, it says as clearly as possible that this permission can be given only for purposes connected with the War, and if the 748 Department can satisfy the Commissioners that it is necessary or expedient that the Government should have the land or the premises for a longer period, then they can have it for an extended period. That suggests that the continued occupation, just as much as the occupation for the earlier period, must necessarily be for purposes connected with the War. Therefore I cannot for the life of me see what there is to wrangle about. It is a question which laymen are not as well able to decide as the lawyers, but if the Solicitor-General assures us that the interpretation of the whole Clause is as I have suggested, there is nothing more to be said, and we might at once get on to the next Amendment.

§ Mr. R. McNEILL
After the speech to which we have just listened it is necessary to say something in this wrangle, because I entirely disagree with the point of view taken by my hon. Friend (Sir F. Lowe). It is quite true that according to the Clause the land in the first instance is taken for the purposes of the War. The very object of this Amendment is to provide that there shall be some reason given for holding possession of the land after the War is over. It is ridiculous to suggest, as my hon. Friend does, that at the end of two years after the War is over the Government should still be holding land for the purposes of the War. They must continue in possession for some other purpose. It may be a national purpose, but it will not be in connection with the War. It may arise out of it. It passed my comprehension why the right hon. and learned Gentleman should have any objection to putting in these words. The very outside objection he has to putting them in now is that the words are unnecessary.

§ Sir G. CAVE
What words?

§ Mr. McNEILL
The words suggested by the right hon. Baronet (Sir F. Banbury)

§ Sir G. CAVE
What are they?

§ Mr. McNEILL
Well, I will say the words suggested in the Amendment of the hon. Member for Blackpool (Mr. Ashley) or any words which the right hon. and learned Gentleman can suggest limiting the right of the Government to retain the land for some national purpose or for purposes of urgency. That would meet the wishes of those who think the words are at present too vague. As the Clause stands, notwithstanding what the right hon. and learned Gentleman has said, I 749 do not believe the Commission would require any reason whatever to be given; they merely have to be asked for their consent. If the right hon. and learned Gentleman thinks they would require a case to be made out showing that the land was needed for some national purpose, I cannot imagine his objection to the suggested words and to our putting them in now, because they would make clear what he says is the meaning of the Bill.

§ Mr. HORNE
I imagine that the object of the Bill is to enable the Government to recover as large a proportion as they possibly can of the money they have spent for the purposes of the War on buildings. So far as huts for the troops are concerned they may be dismissed as being finished within a year or two after the War; but in the case of large factories which are being put up, the question as to how they are to be disposed of will certainly take a good deal longer than two years. It may take seven. I imagine that immediately after the War the Government will continue to use those factories for a short time, and will then try to obtain large public companies who will be able to take them over, and use the elaborate machinery which has been put into them for some work of national importance, very likely of a private nature. In that case it would certainly be more than two years before the negotiations for the sale of those premises could take place, and for that reason it would be a great pity to assent to the two years being put in.

§ Mr. NIELD
I should not have intervened in this Debate were it not for the fact that I have a concrete case which I have been asked to bring to the notice of the Government. In my Constituency there is a very large tract of land which was bought by the Agricultural Society of Great Britain for the purpose of agricultural show grounds. That failed, because the agriculturists would not come into that area of London and hold their shows as they do in the other parts of the country. The property lay idle for some time, and then a company was formed to acquire it. Capital was sunk in the purchase, and the property is now known as Park Royal. This is not a case of a person or company occupying land for the purpose of forcing up its value. This company has done everything in its power to get that land occupied by factories, and has lost no opportunity of spending money upon it. When the War broke out only some 750 portions of it had been occupied by factories. The War Office came down and commandeered the whole of it for the purposes of the Army Service Corps and the mules and huts necessary for the men. That place has been and is wholly occupied by the Army Service Corps. An hon. Member might say, "What does that matter: I suppose the company received proper remuneration'?" The company have put in their claim before the War Losses Commission and have been awarded something less than one-half of the value. They have actually brought concrete cases of loss before the Commission. A man had an option to take land at a certain price, but they have taken away that option. Is it fair that that land should be occupied upon that basis for three or four years after the War? It may be said that the Army Service Corps huts can easily be removed. After the War a great industrial development is looked for. Everybody hopes that the commercial community of the country will use the opportunity of putting up new buildings and factories. This is the very land for that purpose. It is in the vicinity of London and close to the Great Western and London and North-Western Railways. The company will be liable to be denied the user of that land which they have done their best to develop. This is a point which the Committee should take into consideration. Limiting words should be put into the Clause so that the grant of an extension in matters of this kind should not be granted by the more expression of a wish, but absolute necessity should be shown. I trust the Solicitor-General will see his way to make the words so clear that in cases where there are no permanent buildings provided and the occupation is like that of Park Royal, these properties should not unfairly be kept out of the possession of their owners when they will be of very great value to them.

§ Mr. ASHLEY
I ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

§ The CHAIRMAN (Mr. Whitley)
I understand that leave was asked and refused, therefore I am bound to put the Amendment to the Committee, who must now dispose of it.

§ The CHAIRMAN
The hon. Baronet (Sir F. Banbury) has handed in a manuscript Amendment which seems to me to be exactly the same proposal as that just negatived by the Committee.

§ Sir F. BANBURY
No, Sir. I would point out that you were not in the Committee at the time my hon. Friend (Mr. Ashley) moved his Amendment and the Solicitor-General, in answering a suggestion of mine, said he would consider these words on Report. I said that I would prefer to move them now, without waiting until Report. They are different from the words moved by my hon Friend. May I be allowed to read them?

§ The CHAIRMAN
I have them here. They seem to me to raise exactly the same point. It is quite true that they can be brought up on Report if the hon. Baronet puts them down then. I understand that he himself objected to the withdrawal of the other Amendment?

§ Sir F. BANBURY
No, I did not.

§ The CHAIRMAN
Anyhow, objection was taken, the withdrawal was refused, and the Committee negatived the Amendment. The hon. Baronet must leave the matter there until another stage.

§ Dr. ADDISON
I beg to move, in Sub-section (1), to leave out the word 'four" ["for such further period, not exceeding four years from the expiration of such three years"], and to insert instead thereof the word "five."
The effect of this will be to restore the period of seven years as it was in the Clause as printed. The Committee will remember that earlier on we substituted two years for three years as the period during which a Department might continue in occupation without having to apply to the Commission for continued occupation! In order to secure that the period should be seven years at least, I have to move to substitute five years for four here. Some hon. Members appear to be under the impression that the Commission will require no reason whatever to be given when a Department applies to it for continued occupation. I do not myself know much about the Railway and Canal Commission, but I do not think it is a Commission which would be satisfied to have a description of that kind applied to it. I imagine that the Occupying Department will have to make out a good case for continuing in occupation beyond the three years. My hon. Friend (Sir E. Corn- 752 wall) suggested that it would be easy for the officials of Government Departments to get this consent from the Commission. He thinks that in order to secure that, a good case must be made out in the national interest for the continued occupation with regard to the period already defined. There is a large group of cases, which one does not want to define too precisely, where a prolonged occupation or the possibility of it may be very necessary in the national interests. Of course, there are cases connected with demobilisation, such as hospitals and so on, all of which I hope will be cleared long before the two years have elapsed; but there are other cases, for instance, where aeroplane stations have been established in which it may be quite uncertain as to whether it may be necessary or desirable in the national interest to continue in occupation. Again, there are places where large stores of materials have been created, where it may be very undesirable to root up the whole thing where thousands of tons of material are stored and move it somewhere else. Those are cases where it may be necessary to have an option of continuing in occupation for a limited period. There are also various kinds of special works which have been put up for the provision of munitions of a special kind to which this provision or something like it must necessarily apply. The Committee will understand quite readily that all this is subject to a case being made out to the satisfaction of the Commission.

§ Sir E. CORNWALL
made an observation which was not heard in the Reporters' Gallery.

§ Dr. ADDISON
No, the Commission has to give its consent, and I take it no rational Commission will give its consent unless it sees ground for consenting. It will not see ground for consenting until a case is made out to show that consent is reasonable. That is the whole point. What I am asking is to give the Commission power, where a case is made out and where it is desirable and necessary in the national interest, to continue this occupation for a period of a further five years or up to that as a maximum. I cannot imagine that there will be many such cases, but there are some of that kind in our mind where it may be impossible or undesirable to say whether or not an end shall be put to this particular work for some time, and we ask the Committee to give us power to allow this option to continue for five years after the original two.

§ Mr. ASHLEY
I have handed in a manuscript Amendment to insert "two" instead of " four," but after hearing the right hon. Gentleman's speech I see the force of his contention that perhaps six or seven years may be necessary in certain cases in the national interest. I recognise that I was wrong and I quite agree with his point of view. But it was rather hinted or promised by the Solicitor-General that on the Report stage he would put in some principle to guide the Commission in deciding whether this extended five years should be granted or not.

§ Sir G. CAVE
I have promised to consider it.

§ Mr. ASHLEY
Something to guide them so that they should not give it almost as a matter of course.

§ Sir R. ADKINS
Perhaps on the whole this is the best solution of this rather difficult question. I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for the way in which he put what may be national requirements in particular cases, but I hope he realises that there is a very great, and I think justified, dislike of exceptional legislation of this kind going on a day longer than is imperatively necessary for national safety. Therefore we shall look with great interest at such words as my right hon. Friend can put in on Report which will act as a guidance to this tribunal, and which would indicate that the full five years are expected to be exceptional and are only justified by the most exceptional circumstances. I am sure the Government will gain and not lose by doing everything they can to limit the scope of the Bill and mark its exceptional character.

§ Mr. HOHLER
I also strongly urge this point, and I am not quite sure that my hon. Friend (Mr. Ashley) has given the matter adequate consideration. It seems to me a very serious thing that the owner of land should be held up for seven years without any possibility of dealing with it. What you may do in wartime is one thing, but when the War is over and the Government requires seven years to make up their mind whether they will take up the land or not, it seems to me an exceedingly serious case. Under the later provisions of the Bill at any time, so long as they occupy, they can exercise their right to purchase. Therefore, two years further would have been ample for the purpose. I cannot agree that four years 754 is requisite. If four years is requisite, is the private owner, who has perhaps suffered by the War, to be kept out of dealing with his freehold? There may be a mortgage, or other considerations may arise. I strongly urge on the Government to introduce words which will make it perfectly clear that this is only a concession to be yielded on statutory grounds, and that there may be direct guidance to the tribunal that it is only on real need shown to exist for the continuance in occupation of the land that any such consent as is asked for should be granted.

§ Mr. HOLT
I should like to caution some of my hon. Friends on this point. Do they really think it is going to make for public economy to allow the Government to remain for a long period of time in temporary occupation of land? It seems to me that what those who care for the economy of public money want is that the Government should wind up affairs relating to the War as speedily as possible. If we are going to give the Government four years of temporary occupation it is far more probable that public money will be wasted by shilly-shallying on their part, and by hesitating to make up their mind as to what their policy is than that it will be saved. I should very much have preferred to see the period cut down to two years, and then compel the Government, if they want to keep the land for a longer period, to come forward with a considered scheme which they can recommend to the House. There will be nothing to prevent the Government coming forward, by Provisional Order Bill if necessary, at the expiration of two or three years if it is really necessary. I am quite certain that this way is going to end in waste of public money.

§ Sir F. BANBURY
I agree with the hon. Member (Mr. Holt). He has made one little error. It is not five years, but seven years.

§ Mr. HOLT
I meant five years after the period.

§ Sir F. BANBURY
The total period is seven years after the War. I generally agree with my hon. Friend (Mr. Ashley), but I am afraid I do not on this particular occasion, because surely seven years is not necessary for the Government to make up its mind as to what it is going to do. If a Government Department is to be allowed to wander on in occupation or possession of a factory or land or 755 works or buildings for seven years, we all know perfectly well that there is always a desire that officials should remain on and get their salaries, and I think it is quite unnecessary that they should have an opportunity of remaining on for seven years, and some pressure should be put upon them to limit the date up to which they should get their salaries. Instead of its making for economy, it must make for extravagance. The right hon. Gentleman (Dr. Addison), in his very able defence of his Amendment, kept on alluding to the fact that the Commission would not grant the extension unless they were satisfied that it was absolutely necessary. But we have not got those words in the Bill. The Solicitor-General has promised to consider them, but has given no pledge that he will put in words to that effect. I think if we are going to pass this we ought to have something more than a mere undertaking to consider. I would much rather have had a shorter period of, say, two years, which would give a total of four years. That would be sufficient in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred for a Government Department to make up its mind, and if it turned out that there were some particularly exceptional reasons for continuing, the Government could bring in a Bill. We can always vote against the omission of the word "four" in the hope of having a smaller number. I think if, in order to show our desire to oblige my right hon. Friend where we possibly can, we do not vote against four years—it will go awfully against our conscience if we do not—we ought to have an assurance not merely that he will consider but that he will put in on the Report stage words which will show that this is only to be granted under very exceptional circumstances.

§ Sir G. CAVE
It may save time if I say I thoroughly accept what is proposed now. My meaning was this: The Committee would like words put in to show that the extension is to be given for some national reason. I do not want to accept precise words to-day because they want consideration. I will think over what are the best words for the purpose.

§ Sir G. TOULMIN
I hope that the Solicitor-General will think over those words very carefully. It is rather dangerous to make a promise of that kind, in view of the great importance of the subject. I think the Committee is forgetting 756 that all the Departments are under the control of this House—[HON. MEMBERS; " No."]—and that in this case the Department will have to justify their policy to this House as well as to make their application to the Commission. What I should dislike worst of all is that any limitation put in now, in the state of mind in which the Committee seems to be, which is having an absolute fear of these Departments going wild and spending money, they will be forced to sell the buildings on this land and come out of the occupation of the land at a time of depression, when they would not be given such time to make the best arrangement for securing the money which they have to spend on the land as they ought to do. They will have to justify any policy of holding the land and buildings and starting new concerns before the House. I hope the Solicitor-General will be careful that he does not limit their powers.

§ Sir W. ESSEX
I thought I understood this Amendment until I heard the explanation of my right hon. Friend (Dr. Addison). All his arguments seemed to tend in the direction of asking for more time even than the five years—the substantial need for many of the structures, for instance, and their possible importance in view of subsequent operations. It seemed to me that the whole of his argument rather led to a non sequitur. He should have accepted the four years, being six in totality, and if then the demands of the State made it desirable to continue the occupation of the land, he should have frankly bought up rights which had been invaded. In doing so he would have secured to the State the right at any subsequent time to sell, and it would enable the present owners to know exactly the limit of time wherein they could contract with a prospective purchaser to stand instead in the shoes of a Government Department. I have not heard any argument from the Front Bench yet for an extension of this time to six or seven years, and in default of other arguments, which I feel my right hon. Friend must have, I think six years are enough.

Mr. MONTAGUE BARLOW
I think the general feeling of the Committee, with which I agree, is that these large powers which the Government is taking are powers which we view with a certain amount of uneasiness, but having said that I think, in the interests of the State 757 and of that very economy which has been urged by both sides, we must recognise that the Government is bound to take some such step as it is taking. May I give an instance which came under my very close personal observation. Earlier in the War I was authorised by the Government to construct a hut camp for a large number of soldiers on common land. They will be perfectly good structures for a good many years to come. If the arrangement is to last only for the War and the huts are to be torn down directly the War is over, there is going to be, what I care about infinitely more than the amour propre of a Government Department, enormous waste of public money. We are bound to recognise that position on behalf of the Government. That is the difficulty the Government is in if we refuse to recognise their position. In the camp to which I have referred from £50,000 to £100,000 of materials and labour have been put into the place, and it is absurd to say that it is going to be torn up at the end of the War, when the life of that camp is good for many years. That remark equally applies to a great many hut camps, hospitals, and so on.

An HON. MEMBER
Buy the land!

Mr. BARLOW
Buy the land. We are up against a difficulty when you are going to appropriate common land. That is my answer to my hon. Friend who says, "Buy the land." The only question for the Committee is this: Have the Government adopted the proper procedure? Though I do not like these Clauses I think we have to recognise them, and on the whole I do not think that seven years is an unreasonable time, more especially if the Solicitor-General, with his great legal skill, can draft a form of words that will carry out what we all want, namely, a limitation of the time which, without hampering the Government in reasonable cases, shall yet require the Government Department to draft a case before they get the leave of the Commissioners.

Mr. HENDERSON
This discussion tends to confirm a danger that I apprehend. The hon. Member (Mr. Barlow) refers to a common on which there are huts. Are you going to pull them down after the War? The idea seems to be to keep them. Are you going to keep them full of soldiers and to employ the soldiers? What I am afraid of is that under this Defence of the Realm Act, which was only passed for the purposes of the War, we 758 are bringing in a Bill which is intended for the purposes of the next war. I cannot conceive for a moment why you want five years more than the two years before you can make up your mind what you are going to do. If you are going to make munitions in large quantities in the factories, and if you are going to keep a great many soldiers under the Colours, surely that must be part of a general policy after the War, for which the Government must come down and get the sanction of the House. If it is only for the Defence of the Realm during this War that you require these things, two years is ample time for the Government to make up their minds what they are going to do. They ought to come to the House and state what is their programme for the future, and let the House give its approval if it thinks fit, but to give them a power for seven years, which would outlast the Defence of the Realm Acts by several years, and leave them this option of getting property for the purpose of armaments, is dead wrong, and ought not to be done. I think the present proposal is a monstrous one, and can only be justified by the idea that there is something more behind it, and that the purpose of the present War is not the real object of this Bill. I shall oppose the Amendment because I believe it is quite unreasonable.

§ Mr. HARDY
I am rather amazed at the prospect in front of some of the unfortunate owners of land raised by the suggestion made by my hon. Friend (Mr. Barlow), because I know of huts put up for the Crimean War which have been lately occupied. That represents a time considerably more than seven years. Therefore, if we are to keep these huts until we get full value out of them, I do not quite relish the prospect. I suggest that as the right hon. and learned Gentle-has made a very considerable concession in his promise to consider this matter, it would be far better if we waited until we see his words, and then if we find they are not satisfactory we can raise the matter again on the Report stage.

§ Sir R. ADKINS
I beg to move, in Subsection (1), at the end, to add the words " Provided that no land or property belonging to a local authority shall be subject to this Section if required by the local authority to carry out efficiently its statutory duties, or unless proper substituted provision is made by the Government Department concerned for that purpose."
The Amendment which is down in my name and in the name of other hon. Members is of very considerable importance to local authorities throughout the country. Local authorities have been quite willing to impair their deficiency, to limit their work, and to embarrass their action in almost every direction, where it has been declared by the Government that it is necessary during the War that some of their property should be occupied for Government purposes and not for the purposes placed upon the local authorities by Statute; but it is a very different thing when the War is over for this hampering of the necessary and important work of local authorities to continue. When we are told by my right hon. Friend (Dr. Addison) some of the things they require only in the rarest cases, surely, at any rate, they can so arrange that land belonging to local authorities, and buildings belonging to local authorities, which are necessary for the carrying out of their statutory duties, should be relinquished as soon as possible, and the period of their retention should not be extended under this Bill. It is not easy to discuss this Amendment without referring to the new Clause which the Solicitor-General has down. I thank him for going some distance towards meeting the position of local authorities, but I desire to point out that there is nothing in that new Clause to give the local authorities the same absolute exemption, or to put them in the same position, as is given in the one case of common land. You may be doing as much harm to the government of a town or the country by taking away some other kind of property than you would be by taking away common rights for the period for which this Bill lasts.
There is nothing in the Solicitor-General's new Clause which covers the words of the latter part of the Amendment, "unless proper substituted provision is made by the Government Department concerned for that purpose." It may be possible for the Local Government Board to sanction the taking of some land, 760 or the Board of Education to sanction the taking of some school or playground, and nothing is said in the new Clause as to the question of substituted provision. I suggest that the proper principle is this, that if you cannot wipe up and finish matters arising out of the War within a little while after the War, and if you are going to hamper and interfere with local government, you ought to give the local authority which you are hampering a substituted provision, so as to see that that department of the. government of the country goes on as well as the Departments of the Government which are understood to benefit by the powers given in this Bill. I hope the Solicitor-General will be able to go further than he has indicated he will go, particularly in regard to this question of substituted provision. The Amendment which I am now moving has been put down to carry out the unanimous desire of the Parliamentary Committee of the County Councils Association, and I understand that the Association of Municipal Corporations are in agreement with us on this point. Therefore, we are speaking for the whole of the local authorities of the Kingdom. They do not want to interfere with the Government, and they do not want to interfere with anything which is necessary for the defence of the realm, but we say that the Government are only meeting half the problem, and are shirking half their duty by carrying out this Bill in such a way as to entail the continued impairment of the duties put upon local authorities by Statute.

§ Sir G. CAVE
I intervene at this point because I have a proposal to make. This is the first of a series of Amendments which were intended to protect local authorities, statutory companies, and bodies of that kind, in regard to the operations of this Bill. In every case the intention of the Amendments is to give these bodies a veto upon the proposals of the occupying parties. What I suggest is that we should defer the consideration of this Amendment, and of the others which are like it, until we come to the new Clause which I have put down: That Clause deals with all these matters. I will not say that it deals with them to the satisfaction of all hon. Members, or to the satisfaction of the hon. and learned Member who has moved this Amendment, but it is so framed that it may be amended in the direction desired by my hon. and learned Friend. That being so, I think we 761 might save a great deal of time if we were to defer discussion until we come to the new Clause.

§ The CHAIRMAN
While I cannot rule this Amendment out of order here, if hon. Members insist upon it, I may state that the points raised by them will be in order on the Amendment of the new Clauses referred to.

§ Mr. TURTON
As my name appears on the Paper as a supporter of this Amendment, I would like to raise a point of Order. As something has been said about manuscript Amendments, shall we be in order if we hand in manuscript Amendments to the new Clause, providing that substituted land shall be found for local authorities? Will there be any question about that?

§ The CHAIRMAN
No.

§ Mr. HOLT
I should like to know whether the Solicitor-General expects to take his new Clause to-day, or whether he will give us an undertaking that the new Clause shall be taken on another day, so that we can draft any Amendments which we think suitable?

§ Sir G. CAVE
I am an optimist, and I am hoping to get my new Clause to-day. There are a number of Amendments down to my new Clause which deal with this matter. We had better postpone the point until the time comes.

§ Sir R. ADKINS
I am most anxious to meet the Government, but if we are to take the new Clause to-night it must involve manuscript Amendments, and manuscript Amendments seem curiously out of favour this afternoon. We represent and are speaking here to-day for local authorities, and we are exceedingly anxious that no Amendments, whether in manuscript or otherwise, shall be taken at any disadvantage. I think, in view of the discussion this afternoon, the Government should not wonder that we are asking the Solicitor-General not to take the new Clause to-night. It is not very easy, particularly when we are trying to consult the experts of local authorities in different parts of the country, to draft our Amendments and make them appropriate to the Clause so that it will work. If the Clause is not taken before Thursday I am sure those who have been acting in concert will do their best, and will put down Amendments in such a form as to raise the issue simply in order to get a Clause which 762 will work well. If we can have an under taking of that kind from the Government I will gladly give way now.

§ Sir G. CAVE
We will not take the new Clause to-day.

§ Sir F. BANBURY
I beg to move, at the end of Subsection (1), to insert the words, "Provided that no land or property belonging to a local authority shall be subject to this Section if required by the local authority to carry out efficiently its statutory duties, or unless proper substituted provision is made by the Government Department concerned for that purpose."
I move this formally to put myself in order, though I do not intend to proceed with it. I do it because I understood my right hon. and learned Friend to attach to his not taking the Clause to-night the condition that he gets the whole of the Bill to-night, and I wish to utter a note of protest against that. There is not the slightest chance of us getting the Bill to-night.

§ Sir R. ADKINS
My point was that we should have another day to discuss my right hon Friend's Clause. I must not be taken thereby as agreeing to drop other Amendments, or to sit up until breakfast time in order to get the whole Bill to-night.

§ Sir F. BANBURY
I do not think that my right hon. Friend need be anxious, because we cannot go on after eleven o'clock, and there is not the slightest chance of us getting the Bill by then. I should be very pleased to agree to the arrangement, because I do think that his Clause will require a great deal of amendment, and we ought, to have some time to consider and to consult outside bodies as to the Amendment which will be put down. I beg to ask leave to withdraw.

§ Mr. ASHLEY
I beg to move, in Subsection (2), after the word "however," to insert the words "as respects the power to close public highways or rights of way to the provisions of Sub-section (2) of Clause six, and."
The Sub-section gives to the Occupying Department for a possible seven years after the War of the powers over the land that they had during the War, except the power of removal of buildings. I wish to remove that power as respects the closing 763 of public highways and rights of way during these seven years, except for the twelve months reserved to the Occupying Department under Clause 6. Under Clause 6, Subsection (2), the Occupying Department may not keep a highway, which I understand includes a right of way, closed after the termination of this War for more than twelve months; but it says that it may do so by virtue of another Section, which I take it is this Clause, under Subsection (2). I do not think that my proposal is unreasonable.

§ Sir G. CAVE
I will accept that. Amendment agreed to.

§ Mr. BOYTON
I beg to move, after Subsection (2), to insert the following Sub-section: (3) The Occupying Department shall pay such rent in respect of any land which continues in their possession and such continuance shall be upon and subject to such terms and conditions as may be agreed between the Department and the persons interested in the land or as, failing agreement, shall be determined by the Commission.

§ Sir G. CAVE
Would not this come as an alternative to Subsection (3)? It deals with the same subject matter.

§ The CHAIRMAN
The hon. Member really requires to move to leave out Subsection (3), in order to insert his proposed Subsection.

§ Mr. BOYTON
I beg to move, to omit Subsection (3), in order to insert instead thereof the words which I have read.
This is a very important question, which may provoke a good deal of discussion.

§ Sir G. CAVE
I am willing to accept the Sub-clause of my hon. Friend; I think that it is quite good enough.

§ Mr. BRUNNER
My hon. Friend moves to substitute one Sub-clause for the other. Does he mean the compensation is not to be paid, or that rent is to be paid instead? I would like to have some explanation.

§ Mr. POLLOCK
If my hon. Friends will look at the Clause as amended by the Amendments which the Solicitor-General proposes to insert, he will see that the Solicitor-General's Clause is a better Clause. The Clause as amended by the Solicitor-General would read in this way: There shall be paid to the persons interested in the land in respect of the 764 exercise of the powers conferred by this Section such compensation as in default of agreement the Commission may determine to be reasonable. Those really give a better and wider Clause than the words proposed by my hon. Friend. They give authority to the Commission to determine, and supply a flexible Clause, in place of one in which I do not think my hon. Friend has quite foreseen that there may be different interests and considerations which ought to have free play under this Section. I hope that he will not move his Clause, but that the Clause will be amended as suggested by the Soicitor-General.

Mr. RUTHERFORD
I do not think that the hon. Member who moved the Amendment has quite realised the improvement in the Clause when the Government Amendments, which have not yet been reached, are made. If we adopt the Amendment now before the Committee the effect would be that nothing could be paid but the rent. I think that that would be a very great pity, because there may be a number of other people who suffer damage, who are not entitled to rent. We are not here to protect landlords simply. We are here to protect everybody whose interests may be affected adversely. On the whole I think that the Clause in the Bill, as proposed to be amended by the various Amendments put down by the Solicitor-General, is infinitely better than the one suggested.

§ Mr. BRUNNER
May I point out that the people for whom I am acting in connection with this Bill, namely, the commoners, those who are interested in common rights, under this proposal get nothing at all.

§ Sir G. CAVE
I have been made aware that the Association of Municipal Corporations greatly prefer the Amendment, and they are also supported by other bodies representing a number of local authorities, and I thought that in adopting it I should find general concurrence. I have proposed to amend the Sub-clause in two ways: To my mind compensation by way of rent might mean nothing at all to the local authority, because they may lose nothing at all by their land being occupied, and therefore they could get no compensation except rent. If it is desired to substitute compensation for rent, that is the first way in which the Amendment gives them more than before. The second point was this: That they wanted power from the 765 Commission to impose terms and condition on the occupying authority. The Amendment does that, and I thought and still think that the Amendment has advantages to the local authorities over the Bill as drawn, and if my hon. Friend adheres to his Amendment I am prepared to keep to my promise.

§ Mr. HOHLER
I prefer the Subsection in the Bill as proposed to be amended by the Solicitor-General. I think that the word "rent" alone is far too narrow. It is a word that has a very strict legal significance, involving the relations between landlord and tenant, owner or occupier. There may be other interests to consider, and I am satisfied that it would be exceedingly dangerous from the point of construction, to put in this Clause the word "rent" only. Preferring the Sub-section as it is to be amended by the Solicitor-General, I shall certainly vote against that proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Marylebone if he goes to a Division.

§ Sir FRANCIS LOWE
I submit that the Clause might be made perfect if we substituted the Subsection now proposed by my hon. Friend for that which is in the Bill, and if the substituted Subsection were very slightly amended by the Solicitor-General by inserting the words, " shall be upon and subject to such terms and conditions as to payment of compensation or otherwise." These words could be inserted after the word "conditions" ["conditions as may be agreed."] I think the whole thing would be covered in that way.

§ Sir F. BANBURY
My hon. Friend the Member for Marylebone, so far as I can make out, proposes to move his Amendment at the end of line 4 of the Subsection, and there is nothing to prevent the right hon. Gentleman dealing with the Subsection afterwards in a way that would give a double safeguard as to rent and other claims. If my hon. Friend moves his Amendment, the Solicitor-General might on the Report stage put in some words which would bring in the question of compensation where it differs from rent. I think something should be provided in order that compensation may be paid in regard to other claims, while rent is provided for as well. No doubt in many cases at the present moment these Departments are occupying lands and buildings and paying no rent at all.

§ Mr. BUTCHER
The Solicitor-General's Amendment on the Paper might be put in this way: "Or compensation by way of rent or otherwise." Everyone interested in the land would get what they are entitled to by accepting the Clause as it stands, with the Solicitor-General's amendments. In the case of the landlord he would get his rent, and in the case of people like commoners with rights of turbary and so forth, where those rights are interfered with, would get compensation. Under the Clause, as moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Marylebone, the commoners would not get anything at all, it seems to me. I really think the Solicitor-General had much better stick to the original Subsection, and I appeal to the hon. Member to withdraw his Amendment, as the original Subsection, when amended by the Solicitor-General, will give something additional, which the Subsection now proposed does not provide.

§ Mr. BOYTON
I have to appeal in this, case to the Solicitor-General. If the Subsection is allowed to stand as it is now I have already handed in a manuscript Amendment to alter it. I have made an arrangement with the right hon. Gentleman, and if I withdraw this Amendment I should like to know whether he will accept my other Amendment later?

§ Mr. PROTHERO
Would it not meet the case if the hon. Member's Amendment were accepted by the Solicitor-General, and further amended in this way, " the occupying Departments shall pay such rent or compensation in lieu thereof in respect of any land?

§ Sir R. ADKINS
The difficulty is that compensation in lieu of rent would be held to be compensation in cases where land was otherwise held; therefore I doubt whether it would cover the case. If the Subsection is accepted by the Government that it should be amended by putting in, after the word "conditions," words which would bring in the case of persons who are commoners, whose case cannot be expressed by terms of rent, but would be met by the use of the word "compensation."

Mr. BARLOW
We are gradually getting out what we want with regard to this Subsection. What is really required is the word "compensation," and as the Solicitor-General pointed out, the Sub-section now proposed meets that point. It is one about which the Association of 767 Corporations feel very strongly. Unfortunately the new Subsection defines rent. If the words in the original Clause, namely, "compensation due to loss or damage," were put in, I believe, in respect of any matter such as that of commoners, they would cover the ground.

§ Mr. PRINGLE
I hope the Solicitor-General will adhere to his decision to accept the Amendment of the hon. Member for Marylebone. It seems to me to be an improvement upon the Sub-section as it at present stands in the Bill, together with the Amendments that the Solicitor-General has upon the Paper. As the new Sub-section with the Amendment stands it meets the case, and I think everything is covered that is exercising the minds of my hon. Friends the Member for Nottingham and others. In the first place, the Occupying Department " shall pay such rent in respect of any land which continues in their possession," and then it goes on further to say, "and such' continuance shall be upon, and subject to such terms and conditions as may be agreed between the Department and the persons interested in the land." It seems to me that they would be included under "terms and conditions." Personally, I have a very strong objection to anything in the nature or surplusage being put into an Act of Parliament, and undoubtedly the commoners could appear as persons interested in the land, and they could apply for "such terms and conditions" in regard to the use of the common, and, failing agreement with the Department, they could apply to the Commissioners to obtain the "terms and conditions" which they consider they ought to have.

§ Sir W. BEALE
The Subsection in the Bill as proposed to be amended by the Solicitor-General would practically cover all the points raised, and I do not see the slightest advantage in adopting the phraseology suggested by the Amendment of the Member for Marylebone. I should not recommend the introduction of words referring to rent, for the reason that they might exclude terms and conditions favourable to such persons as commoners, for instance, who should have some equivalent rights. You require to use broad words, like "terms and conditions," which would include compensation other than rent, and in that way I think you would make the whole case perfectly clear.

Mr. BARLOW
Has the Amendment of the hon. Member for Marylebone been accepted, and what are we now discussing?

§ The CHAIRMAN
The Amendment has not been accepted by the Committee. The question at present before the Committee is to leave out Subsection (3) as it stands at present in the Bill, and substitute for it the proposal of the hon. Member for Marylebone. It is for the Committee to say on what basis they will proceed for the purpose they have in mind.

§ Sir G. CAVE
I think we ought really to agree to the Amendment, which in some respects is better than the Subsection now in the Bill. What hon. Members want is the word "compensation" in some way, and I am willing to put it in the Bill in some shape.

§ Mr. POLLOCK
I submit that if the words "terms and conditions" are put in they would make terms and conditions relating only to financial matters. I would point out that the association of municipal bodies to which reference has been made have not yet considered the Amendments of the Solicitor-General which are on the Paper. If they had, they would have found that really everything is contained in the Clause as amended by the Solicitor-General. I hope that the Committee will not delete Subsection (3), but will accept the Amendments with the words "by way of rent or otherwise." It would be very unfortunate to tie ourselves by making the Department only pay rent, which means that there must have been a real tenancy between the parties, which in many cases would not exist, so that they would be cut out of the benefit of the Clause.

§ Mr. RAWLINSON
May I make a suggestion to the learned Solicitor-General?

§ Sir G. CAVE
I have finished. I have tried to satisfy you.

§ Mr. RAWLINSON
I would suggest that after the word "rent" in the first line of the proposed Amendment to insert the words "and compensation for loss or damage, if any, suffered."

Mr. RUTHERFORD
I think we are really all agreed as to what we want. We do not want to cut out of compensation people who do not happen to be landlords. Questions of parks or common grounds and matters of that kind may arise. The Solicitor-General's Amendment to the 769 Clause would probably meet all the difficulties; but, if it is desired, in deference to municipal corporations, to adopt the Sub-section now before us, I would suggest to insert after the word "conditions" the following words: "and with such compensation to any person suffering loss or damage." Those words, I think, would meet all the difficulties.

Mr. WHITE
I hope the Solicitor-General will not accept those words. One knows perfectly well what their object is, and the object of a good deal of the discussion on this Clause. The phrase "compensation to any person suffering loss or damage" is extremely wide, with no limit whatever to the measure of damages, so that any person who could make a case of however indirect and remote damage could claim. I do not know if that is what is wanted. It may be by some, but it is not what is generally wanted. The principle! on which these compensations have been given so far is that the measure of damages, to use the technical phrase, must be kept within reasonable limits, and it must be a reasonably direct consequence of what the Government has done. That seems to me a most important fundamental principle, and if we go beyond that the Government and the Treasury are simply open to financial claims by all and sundry who can suggest the most remote damage that may have happened.

§ Mr. HOGGE
I hope the right hon. Gentleman will consult with the Lord Advocate, who has an intimate knowledge of the kind of things for which compensation has been asked for in Scotland under similar Acts. There was a notorious case in Scotland where men were settled on the land and the lady who owned the property got several hundred pounds compensation because at some future time she would require to build a school for the children of those people. By consulting with the Lord Advocate, I think the right hon. Gentleman will get much valuable advice.

§ The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN (Mr. Maclean)
Does the hon. Gentleman (Mr. Boyton) wish to withdraw?

§ Sir G. CAVE
I accept the Amendment of the hon. Gentleman. I would rather accept the Amendment as it stands, and if there is more to be done we can do it on Report.

§ Sir F. LOWE
May I ask the right hon. Gentleman to insert the words he promised 770 to accept with regard to compensation or otherwise? [HON. MEMBERS: "Wait and see!"]

§ Sir G. CAVE
They were refused.

§ Mr. RAWLINSON
I beg to move in the proposed Amendment, after the word "rent," to insert the words "and compensation."

§ Sir G. CAVE
I could not accept this Amendment, as it would entitle people both to rent and compensation, and the words would be very wide. I think it is better to leave the Amendment as proposed and we can alter it if necessary.

§ The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN
That disposes of the Amendments on the Paper as far as Subsection (4).

Mr. WHITE
Is my Amendment not in order—[At the end of Subsection (3), to insert the words "provided that the amount of such conmpensation in so far as it represents annual rent for the land shall not be greater than the annual value of the land as adopted for the purpose of local rating at the time when the occupancy thereof by the Department began "]?

§ Sir G. CAVE
My hon. Friend's Amendment refers to compensation, and, in view of the decision arrived at, I submit it is no longer in order.

Mr. RUTHERFORD
I submit we have already decided that the word "compensation" shall not go in and that therefore the proposed Amendment is out of order.

§ Mr. RAFFAN
On the point of Order. The question we have been discussing is whether there should be compensation for loss and damage apart from rent. This 771 question of this Amendment is a totally different one, and it is the only opportunity my hon. Friend has of raising it.

Mr. WHITE
I beg to propose, at the end of Subsection (3), to insert the words " provided that the amount of such rent shall not be greater than the annual value of the land as adopted for the purposes of local rating at the time when the occupancy thereof by the Department began."
The difficulty with regard to my original Amendment arose owing to the changes which have already taken place in the Bill, and I now move it in this form to meet the variations which have taken place.

§ Mr. POLLOCK
Is it fair, after there has been accepted an Amendment which we want to consider very carefully, to ask us now to consider a very important Amendment to that Amendment? The word "compensation" has been left out, and now the hon. Member proposes to use his Amendment in a modified form in order to deal with a part of the Clause which has really been dropped out.

Mr. WHITE
Oh, no!

§ The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN
I have not to decide whether it is fair or not. The only point I have to consider is whether it is in order. As far as I can see, the precise point made by the hon. Member seems to be in order. As far as I understand, the Amendment will read:
"Provided that the amount of such rent shall not be greater than the annual value of the land as adopted for the purposes of local rating at the time when the occupancy thereof by the Department began."
Is that right?

Mr. WHITE
Yes.

Mr. RUTHERFORD
That is nonsense.

§ Mr. HARDY
I would make an appeal to the Government. As only two minutes ago they asked us to accept their Amendment, and, if necessary, reconsider it on the Report stage, I think we ought to consider that that has definitely dealt with this Clause and leave it for further discussion on Report. In view of the appeal made by the Government we have given up discussing questions in which we are interested. I would, therefore, suggest that so far as this Clause is con- 772 cerned we ought to limit our discussion now to other points and await the result of the consideration on Report.

Mr. WHITE
I should like to give my reasons for moving this Amendment. Here we are going to pay compesnation to those whose land we take. In so far as that compensation represents rent I want to secure something like a parity between the valuation on which the owner contributes to the State and the valuation on which the State is to pay the owner I quite understand that there are Members who do not wish these points to be raised, but there are other Members who do want them discussed. The hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire (Mr. J. Henderson) said that whenever these questions were raised his phrase was, "The single takers are on the rampage." I do not know quite what he meant, but if he meant that those associated with the land values movement are on the rampage whenever there is any question of the people having to purchase land at a higher valuation than that upon which the owners contribute to the municipal rates, he is quite right. There have been instances in which the amount paid by way of rent or purchase money has been many times the annual value adopted for rating purposes. I am not in favour of land purchase. Many of my hon. Friends differ from me there. But many of those who are in favour of land purchase will at least agree that that purchase should be at a fair price and that there should be a fair relation between the valuation upon which the owner contributes to the State and that upon which the State purchases from the owner.
That is the object of the proposal. We have an annual value for rating purposes, and I say that when land is taken the compensation in so far as it is annual rent for the land should be based on the annual value for rating purposes. There could not be a simpler proposition. There could not be a simpler check on excessive prices. I agree that the rating valuation may be too low. If that is so, let it be put up. Unfortunately the very people who oppose this kind of proposal are also the people who do not want rating valuations raised to the market value. This seems to be the best form in which I can make my proposal. If the Government think that there should be some allowance let them propose that it should be the annual value for rating purposes plus, say, one-fifth, or one-fourth, or even one-third. In any 773 case, I submit that there should be some automatic limit of the kind I am proposing. It is absolutely scandalous the enormous prices that have been paid for land in respect of which the owner has been contributing little or nothing to the State or municipality. I hope the Committee will consider this matter very fully, because I think we ought to bear in mind the cardinal principle to which I have referred, namely, that what is sauce for the goose ought to be sauce for the gander.

§ Mr. HORNE
Surely the hon. Member ought to address himself to the difference in the basis on which municipal authorities think fit to collect rates. The valuations are not made by the owners of the land or property. The basis on which rates are collected is fixed by the authorities themselves. In the case of empty houses or vacant land the authorities think it is not proper to collect rates on the higher system, and in many cases they strike the houses or land out of the rate book altogether. I do not imagine that even the hon. Member would suggest that because the property has been struck out of the rate book by the overseers, therefore, if the property is taken by the State, the owner should receive nothing for it.

Mr. RUTHERFORD
I am one of those who belong to the same school of thought, in regard to the subject just mentioned, as the hon. Gentleman who moved this Amendment. At the same time I see the inconvenience of endeavouring to push home that principle in the Bill that we have before us. The taxation of land values is a very large subject. It is one which has been the express object of legislation, or attempted legislation, two or three times during the last fifteen years while I have been in the House, but it certainly is not appropriate to endeavour to put it into an Act like this. We are passing an Act for temporary purposes, and an Act that has simply to do with occupation arising out of this War. It would be exceedingly inconvenient, and very unjust, to put this particular Amendment into this Act——

HON. MEMBERS
Why?

Mr. RUTHERFORD
When people have no opportunity of adjusting their assessments. [Laughter.] I mean exactly what I say. I am one of those who think that if once we had an equitable principle of assessment embodied in Statute people would adjust their assessments to the proper figure upon which they really ought 774 to contribute taxes. There are, however, to-day such anomalies of assessment for local rating purposes that it would be obviously unjust to import this Amendment into this particular Bill, and at the present moment! Agricultural land in England to-day is assessed upon a basis that is clearly unfair as compared with the assessment of property in the urban districts. There are such anomalies in existence to-day as this: A friend of mine, the other day, leased a fishing, for which he paid £300. He was assessed at £300 a year to the local rates. He made a few inquiries, and found that the whole of the farm lands in the parish were only assessed at £150. Of course they were assessed by the local farmers, who formed the assessment committee. I helped my friend to make a proper communication to the Local Government Board, and the local assessment committee immediately climbed down, and assessed the fishing at £25. There are things of that kind all over the country in various parishes and unions, and to attempt to cut down the amount of rent that a man is to receive for his property to-day, under existing conditions, and with the existing state of the law to the amount generally at which it happens to be assessed at the moment, having regard to the fact that the assessment is to-day levied upon the annual letting value to the tenant, seems to me to be entirely wrong. I hope in the interests of the general principle of endeavouring to put this matter right some day. [Laughter.] Yes, upon that day I shall be found, if I am in the House, entirely in accord with hon. Members opposite. I hope, in the interests of that principle, the Amendment will not be pressed. It opens up such large questions, with so many complications of matters which when they have come before the House have taken days to discuss, that any hope of getting this Bill, which is intended to meet an entirely temporary state of affairs arising out of the War, would be seriously prejudiced, if the Amendment is pressed.

§ Dr. ADDISON
I hope my hon. Friend behind me will not press this Amendment. [HON. MEMBERS: "We will!" and "What about Lloyd George?"] It is impossible to accept it. May I point out one or two considerations to my hon. Friend which perhaps his insistence upon this Amendment may have made him forget. This Bill is obviously framed in view of a certain necessary national object. Those of 775 us who have been associated with its drafting and so on, from the very start until now, have had continually to make concessions to one another. There are many hon. Members of the House on both sides who have very strong views on land questions and subjects arising out of them, and who are willing, in this case, to make special concession of certain cherished principles for the sake of getting an agreed Bill through the House of Commons. My hon. Friends indicated a little while ago by certain interruptions, or rather comments on one of the speakers, that they quite recognised that the Amendment of my hon. Friend would really open up the whole question of the taxation of land values.

HON. MEMBERS
No! and Yes!

Mr. WHITE
Will the right hon. Gentleman allow me——

§ Dr. ADDISON
No, no! I think that the speech my hon. Friend delivered showed quite well what a very wide issue was raised by this Amendment. Also I must say that it would not be altogether applicable to a great many interests. The Amendment which has already been accepted by the House leaves it to the person concerned to come to an agreement, or failing an agreement the rent, or whatever it is, to be determined by the Commissioners. I think that is quite a fair way to leave the matter. It is all very well to insist upon the doctrine of my hon. Friend, which a good many of us might have strong views upon in times of peace: but I would point out that the conditions upon which this land has been taken possession of are entirely different from those usually obtaining. Land or buildings were taken arbitrarily, here and there, according to the requirements at the time, without any regard whatever—so I may put it—to any interest except the national interest. It often happens that a tradesman or a group of men carrying on business in one town were a bit hard in comparison with another group of men similarly occupied in the same district, because the place, or the land, which they occupied, happened to be suitable for our purpose. It is not a case in which you apply a certain principle in a fairly uniform manner. It is something which is arbitrarily applied here and there, as the national interests might require certain buildings or portions of land. I would suggest that cases of this kind, picked out here and 776 there, for special national reasons and in special emergencies, are really not the occasions in which to embody in legislation some principle which might, or might not, in time of peace be applied in a comprehensive scheme dealing generally with the land question. I am not very sanguine of my representations weighing against the opinions and views of my hon. Friend upon the justice of an Amendment in connection with a subject of which he has long been an exponent. I do, however, sincerely hope that the Committee will not, at all events, discuss it at great length, but will allow us to get on with the Bill. Having accepted the principle of procedure already, we are quite unable to accept this Amendment.

§ Mr. OUTHWAITE
The statement made by the right hon. Gentleman certainly shows that we have travelled a long way since the days of Limehouse. I was not at all impressed by the argument he used that this was particularly inapplicable in time of war. I should have felt some diffidence in supporting this Amendment if it were not for the conditions which have arisen through the War; but, after all, if we are under these circumstances going to pay landowners rather less than they would be entitled to in the days of peace, I think we are justified in doing it at a time when we are told this land is in danger of invasion and this War is for the purpose of preserving it. If ever there was a time when in the national interests we should prevent the landlord getting the price he has got in the past, it is now. The State requires to get land in the main in connection with munition work. I can inform the right hon. Gentleman that in all the great munition centres this process of extracting enormous sums when land has to be purchased by public authorities has been going on. Take, for instance, Sheffield. A very great area has been rated in the past as agricultural land at about £2 an acre, but I know from figures supplied to me by the education authority of Sheffield that in the past where they have purchased sites for school buildings assessed at about £2 an acre annual value, they have paid from £1,000 to £2,000 an acre for it. I think by the acceptance of my hon. Friend's Amendment, in this week of national economy, when we are told that to waste is treason, we are providing means by which the State will not be called upon to waste the public funds.
I think my right hon. Friend will realise that the need has arisen for the adoption 777 of such a method as this, and it seems to me we have recently adopted some almost analogous provision. We have established the War Losses Commission, under which the landowner gets no compensation whatsoever unless he can prove an actual loss has taken place by the taking over of the land. If we take this land over on the basis of the rent actually being received, the owner cannot claim to have suffered any loss by our doing so. He may claim to have suffered a prospective loss, but then we say to him, "We are taking this for the national purposes of the War, and if we did not wage this war to prevent the invasion of this country by Germany, you would lose all your land and everything else." Surely as patriotic gentlemen—and they claim to be the most patriotic section of the community—they will not object to our taking this step. Therefore, I think, this is a practical method of preventing the State being punished. The appeal is always being made at this time of war for the surrender of all individual rights. While I would not support this Amendment in peace time, I will support it now because we have overridden the individual rights of a man's own life and limb. This is following on the principle of Conscription which has been adopted in this House. We have been told that Conscription is the establishment of the principle of equality of sacrifice. Well, let us try to establish some little equality of sacrifice in the region of land monopoly. I cannot believe for a moment that this Amendment would be opposed by the Territorialists of this country, and I am surprised to find my right hon. Friend who represents the Government, in view of his recent association with the late Minister of Munitions, opposing some little step in this direction. I would advise him to look up some of the former speeches made by the present. Minister of War, and then perhaps he will adopt the Amendment of my hon. Friend.

§ Sir F. BANBURY
I have much pleasure in voting with the Government on this occasion. I always do so when they are right. The Debate to which we have just listened shows the inadvisability of bringing in the Bill in its present form, because it has given hon. Members below the Gangway an opportunity of airing all those old theories with regard to Land Values and a variety of other things which really are not concerned with this Bill at all, and of bringing in again those speeches 778 of the Secretary of State for War which, I feel sure, he would be only too glad to forget.

§ Mr. OUTHWAITE
We will remind him.

§ Mr. RAFFAN
Is that statement of the right hon. Baronet made with the authority of the Minister of War?

§ Sir F. BANBURY
No. I am not a member of the present Government, and I am generally in opposition to the present Government. The present Government do not confide in me in the least; if they did, probably they would conduct the affairs of the State better.

§ Mr. HOGGE
Impossible!

§ Sir F. BANBURY
The hon. Gentleman who has just spoken seems to consider that the whole of the land which is going to be taken is undeveloped land in the neighbourhood of Sheffield or some other towns, which, not being productive of a very large rental at the present time, inasmuch as it is building land which is not yet available or developed for building purposes, is rated at what it brings in, and considers he is going to put his hand in the pocket of somebody else and secure some particular advantage to the State. But I thinks he forgets that a great deal of the land which has been acquired in the present connection is not land in the neighbourhood of large towns. No doubt some of it is, but a great deal is certainly not. There is a large portion of land which I happen to know, because I pass it whenever I go down home, which is near Didcot. It certainly is not very valuable building land, and probably is rated at its full value. Now land, I am given to understand, includes buildings, and buildings include houses. There are a great number of houses which are very much overrated. There has been a very great fall in the price of a great number of houses, especially in London. I should be very glad to let my house in London at the price at which it is rated. I have been unable to convince the gentleman who makes the assessment that it is a great deal too high. It is an undoubted fact, certainly in the ease of a large number of houses in the West End, that the annual value of assessment is far above that at which they could be let. As regards agricultural land, what would be the effect supposing this Amendment were carried? Here I speak from what I 779 know. There are a large number of farms let at rentals which obtained in the "nineties" and which have never been raised. The landlord who has got a tenant in possession has never raised his rent. In many cases the rentals were fixed in the "nineties," when wheat was about 25s. a quarter, when beef was selling about 6d. per pound, and sheep, now fetching 90s., were selling at about 36s. The rental has never been raised, and consequently under our system of rating it is fixed upon what the house or the land is let at, and the rating has not been raised. Consequently all landlords who have agricultural property whose farms are under-rented will suffer, and that is what would take place unless the landlord did not really care what happened to his property. It is said that the landlord ought to be willing to hand over his property below its ordinary value, but is the landlord the only person who is being benefited in this country at the present time, and is it not a fact that the landowner has probably made greater sacrifices than any other persons? [HON. MEMBERS: "No!"] How about the Death Duties, the Super-tax, and the Income Tax paid in many cases on a nominal rental which he never received? I do not say that the landowner is alone, because all the richer classes are paying far and away more than anyone else, although they have made just as great sacrifices in other respects. In many cases the richer classes are paying 1s. in the £ for every 20s. they receive. I should be the last person to say that the other classes have not made equal sacrifices, but no classes have made more sacrifices than what are called the " upper classes," by the way they have fought at the front and the way in which they have given their money.

§ The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN
I have not risen to rule the right hon. Gentleman out of order, but I would remind him that if he opens out this subject I shall be unable to stop a general debate upon it.

§ Sir F. BANBURY
I do not wish to raise a big question like this, and I regret that it has been raised. I only rose because amongst a certain class of people it is becoming a habit to attack other people simply because they have a little land or have been prudent and saved a little money.

§ The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN
The subject has been rather widely opened and carried on upon the same basis by the right hon. Gentleman who has just sat down. I would now suggest that hon. Members should make their remarks more strictly relevant to the Bill and to the Amendment under discussion.

§ Mr. ANDERSON
I will confine my remarks strictly to the Amendment. I wish to bring the subject back to the simple issue raised by the hon. Member who moved this Amendment. It does not seem to me that it opens out questions of land value and land monopoly unless hon. Members wish to use it for that purpose, but what we do want is to find a reasonable basis for compensation and rent in regard to the land and buildings that have been taken over during the War. The question arises, does local rating afford a reasonable basis for that purpose? I suggest that no better basis can be found for fixing the maximum that ought to be paid than this basis of assessment for local rating purposes. Either local rating represents the true value of the property, in which case no harm can be done, or else it is equivalent to us being told, as we were told by the hon. Member for Liverpool, that farmers for years have been paying far less than they ought to have been paying in regard to their assessment. It seems to me if that is true and if these people have been getting off far too lightly——

Mr. RUTHERFORD
I did not say anything of the sort. I said as between themselves and the paying of local rates the farmers in question had fixed values upon their farms which are obviously much below their true value to the extent of about 20 per cent.

§ Mr. ANDERSON
That is my point. If farmers, by means of a local council or otherwise, have fixed for certain other farmers or for themselves a value 20 per cent. below what ought to have been charged, and if they have been paying less all these years to the local authority, it seems to me to be quite fair now to equalise the matter by allowing the local authority to pay back a little less than the value.

Mr. RUTHERFORD
The hon. Member is quite mistaken in imputing that motive. As they were doing it amongst themselves for the whole of themselves, 781 and had to contribute a certain quantity to the union, it made no difference as between one and the other except when some stranger came in to build a house or rent a fishing.

§ Mr. ANDERSON
I think my point holds good that where the rating was too low, it seems to me that the matter will be equalised if the same test is now applied, and as these farmers have escaped paying the full value it will only be fair if the owner gets a little less now.

§ Mr. ASHLEY
But it is the landowners who will suffer in the compensation.

§ Mr. ANDERSON
I am aware that rating is paid by all sorts of people in different ways. The hon. Baronet opposite raised a question of local rating in other cases being too high. If the local rating has been too high, and some one has been paying more than he ought to be paying in regard to local rates, it is only fair that he ought to get a little more now, and the matter will equalise itself in that way. I am sure that hon. Members do not wish to emphasise private interests against the public good in a matter of this kind, and surely the public good is still going to obtain in regard to this kind after the War is over, and if a fair basis is reached that is all they have a right to claim. I suggest that the question of local rates fixes a rough and ready method by which that basis can be reached, and for that reason I think this Amendment ought to be pressed to a Division.

§ Mr. PRINGLE
I desire to support the Amendment which has been so ably moved by the hon. Member for the Tradeston Division (Mr. D. White). I have listened with great care and attention to all the speeches which have been made in opposition to the Amendment, and in neither the single official speech nor in the three unofficial speeches which have been made in opposition can I find any adequate reason for resisting this very reasonable proposal. I may say in passing that I regret extremely, when a proposal of this kind is being discussed by the Committee, that neither is anybody here representing the Treasury nor is the Secretary of State for War, who has in the past spoken so soundly and so clearly upon this important question, present.

§ Dr. ADDISON
He is not in the House.

§ Mr. PRINGLE
Well, we shall have him here on the Report stage. I hope my right hon. Friend will give him notice that his presence is urgently desired when this question comes up for discussion again on the Report stage. We have to-day read the stirring appeal of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the morning papers in regard to war savings. Here the Committee of the House of Commons is discussing a question in which the protection of the public purse is most closely concerned. We are now determining the terms upon which rent is to be paid for land which is now occupied by various Government Departments. My hon. Friend justly desires that some reasonable standard should be placed in the Bill so that those authorities who have to determine the matter in the future may be guided by some sort of rule from this House, and he has suggested the rateable value. This amuses the hon. Member for Liverpool (Mr. W. Rutherford), who constantly assures us when any critical proposal dealing with this question is put forward that he has a great platonic affection for the principle, but he can under no circumstances adopt any of its practical applications. His platonic affection has been extremely useful on the platform, but it has had no practical result in the Division Lobby of the House of Commons. I hope we shall give him another opportunity this evening of demonstrating for the benefit of the Liverpool electors the value of his platonic affection. The hon. Member for Guildford (Mr. Home), who has left the House, seemed to be under the impression that any unfairness or any inequality in the matter of rateable value is entirely due to the local authorities, but the very opposite point was made by the hon. Gentleman opposite, who objected to this proposal because the people affected can have no opportunity of adjusting their assessments. Therefore, according to the theory of the hon. Member for Liverpool, it is the person assessed who adjusts the assessment. Obviously he should not have an opportunity of taking advantage of his own wrong to the disadvantage of the public purse.

Mr. RUTHERFORD
If and when the rating assessments are fixed upon the value, which is one of the principles which the hon. Member and his Friends want, then such a Clause as this might be fair, but it has not yet been done, and it is not 783 the principle upon which properties are assessed. Therefore this Amendment is entirely unfair. Of course, it is too late to appeal to you on a point of Order, but it must be very inconvenient on a Bill such as this to bring up a great principle which has nothing to do with the Bill and spend the whole night discussing it.

§ Mr. PRINGLE
The hon. Gentleman has taken ample advantage of the privilege I accorded him by giving way.

Mr. RUTHERFORD
I beg your pardon.

§ Mr. PRINGLE
But by his ample explanation he has done nothing to retrieve the position which he took up in his original speech. I can understand, having made the howler he did in his original speech, that he should now desire to have the discussion closured. But having exposed the very absurdity and inconsistency of the hon. Gentleman's position, I propose to leave him to himself and to his constituents. We may now leave this unofficial defence, even that of the hon. Baronet opposite (Sir F. Banbury), because the greater part of his speech was taken up with an irrelevant panegyric of the landed classes, and turn to the official defence given by the right hon. Gentleman representing the Munitions Department. He studiously avoided any attempt to deal with the fairness of the proposal. He merely put forward a case on the ground of inconvenience. After all, this was a temporary measure, and, of course, it is inconvenient to be just in temporary measures. It is inconvenient to put into practice all those principles which we have so eloquently protested in the past, because this is a temporary matter.

§ Sir F. BANBURY
Only on the platform.

§ Mr. PRINGLE
That is a theory of the City.

§ The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN
I would venture respectfully to point out to the Committee that the sole question with which this Amendment is concerned is whether the existing rateable value is to be taken as the standard for the rent of the land used by the Government, and to that alone I must ask hon. Members to direct their remarks.

§ Mr. PRINGLE
I was endeavouring to point out that the principle of this Amend- 784 ment, as you have so clearly stated, is that for the purpose of compensation in respect of land the rateable value should be taken. That is a matter which many of us have advocated in the past, and we regret that the right hon. Gentleman cannot support this principle now. We naturally look for some reasons for a departure from such a sound and such a just principle, and the only reason which the right hon. Gentleman gave us was that in dealing with a tempoary measure of this kind in a time of war concessions have to be given on all sides. I took down to the best of my ability the words which he used. So far as I have been able to follow the discussion on this Bill, the concessions have been all on one side. This is the first occasion upon which a concession has been asked for in the interests of the Treasury, and it is a very strange thing indeed that in a time of war when the necessity for economy is so urgent—the necessity will be even greater probably in the earlier years of peace than now in a time of war when we are living upon borrowed money—the only people who turn a deaf ear to the appeals for economy are those who are understood to be the guardians of the public purse.

§ Mr. R. MCNEILL
I was unfortunate enough not to have heard all the earlier speeches delivered on this Amendment, but I have gained some idea of what they must have been by the speech of the hon. Gentleman who has just sat down. I gather from what he has just said that very foolish and irrelevant talk came from this side of the House, because my hon. Friend who sits beside me (Mr. Rutherford) appears to have been guilty of howlers, and my right hon. Friend in front of me (Sir F. Banbury) guilty of irrelevance, and the only person who appears to have acted better in the eyes of the hon. Member is the Mover of this Amendment, who appears to have been forcible and convincing. At any rate, that shows some broad-mindedness on his part, as I always understood he was unable to find anything relevant or logical outside Lanarkshire, but now it would appear to have extended to Glasgow. If I may say so, with regard to the speech of the hon. Member for Attercliffe (Mr. Anderson), he really brought before the Committee the one and only point which we have to discuss, and that is: Does the present local rating, or does it not, afford a fair basis for the compensation to be paid under this Clause? It appears to me that the discussion upon 785 this point has brought out, as so many of these discussions do bring out, the difficulty that arises from the constant use in economic discussions of the same term in various senses. Nothing seems to me more prolific of confusion and of fallacy than the way in which the word "value" is constantly used, and that appears to me to be the cause of the disagreement in the discussion on this Clause, and of the disagreement in the minds of a good many hon. Members. The value in the sense of rateable value is a totally different thing, and is intended to be—an hon. Member laughs as though it was intended and had failed to be, but that is not the case—from the market value. Rateable value is one thing, and market value is another. No one ever pretended it was otherwise. There is no reason whatever why they should be the same. It is quite true that you might completely amend your system of taxation so as to make them the same, and it would be a very arguable proposition, but that is not the basis of taxation or of rating in this country, and it never has been. The reason for it being on a different footing is quite plain. You want to get a certain amount of local taxation raised, and it is raised exclusively from land and houses and does not fall on personal property at all, and in order to get a certain taxation you put it upon a fictitious entity called the rateable value. There is no occasion for getting that to be the same as actual or market value. You get your taxation spread over a certain source which is real property, apart from personalty, and you get it quite fairly as between the different owners of that class of property by that means. When once you come to the question of disposing altogether of that particular property, however, and you use the word "value," you use it in a totally different sense. You do not mean a fictitious entity for purposes of taxation, but what one man would give and another man would take. It is a totally different thing, and it is exactly the same as it would be in regard to the disposal of any other property under the sun. Whether or not that is right or wrong, whether the single-taxers, or whoever they may be, have good or logical ground for their doctrine, is neither here nor there in the present taxation, but there is not the slightest similarity between the two. If hon. Members will bear that in mind they will see how utterly unfair and unjust it would be to impart that sense to the word "value" 786 in this particular connection. The hon. Member for Attercliffe said quite truly and fairly of us on this side that we were all anxious during this time of war for the public good, and that he was quite sure that owners of particular property would not allow private gain to stand in the way of the public good. That is not more than fair to owners of private property, and I can speak quite disinterestedly, as I have none myself. Surely it is fair to look to the position in which owners of property will be placed. If hon. Members will look at the Subsection they will see that it there says that— There shall be paid to any person interested in the land who suffers direct loss or damage by reason of the exercise of the powers conferred by this Section, such compensation as in default of agreement the Commission may determine to be the amount of such loss or damage. It is clear that the loss or damage which a man might suffer in relation to his land, whatever your theories may be about the taxable value, is an actual loss——

§ The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN
I would remind the hon. Gentleman that the Subsection to which he refers has been struck out.

§ Mr. McNEILL
I knew it had been altered, but I did not know in exactly what way. In any case, I thought the sense was exactly the same. The meaning is, at any rate, to give compensation for loss. [HON. MEMBERS: "NO, no! It is acquisition of land!"] I understood it was to be compensation for loss or damage. That is the purpose of the whole Bill. [HON. MEMBERS: "NO, no!"] It is quite true that I have not the exact words that have been substituted, but that is the meaning of the whole Bill.

§ Mr. RAFFAN
May I point out that compensation is to be dealt with quite separately? This is merely a question of how rent is to be fixed. Compensation for loss and damage will be dealt with quite separately.

§ Mr. McNEILL
I will not proceed with the minutiæ of the argument. The broad sense is the same. I mean that the value that the land has to its owner is not to be measured by what he is assessed at for taxable purposes. It is to be based really, as all other real values are in the last resort, on what he could get for it if he 787 sold it in the market. That is the only true position of any real value. You may attempt to value property because you have not an open market for it, and you may appoint a valuator to determine the value. But he must, if he goes on any sound principle—and that is what he will do if he endeavours to value it fairly—determine what would be its value if there were an open market, and what price would be given by a willing purchaser to a willing seller. If hon. Members bear that in mind they will see the unfairness of this Amendment.

Mr. CHANCELLOR
I do not intend to wander all over this question of taxation, but the speech to which we have just listened is based on a misconception of the meaning of this Amendment. The hon. and learned Gentleman has been arguing about purchase. This has nothing to do with purchase. This Amendment merely deals with the rent to be paid for the land taken. If the Government takes land which is let already, the proposals would leave them to pay the owner the same rent as he had been receiving from the private tenant. The owner, therefore, would suffer nothing whatever. All he would be prevented from doing would be putting up the rent against the Government because it had bean taken for national purposes. Surely no patriotic owner is anxious for the power to put up the rent against the Government in order to make a profit out of the War, because the nation wants his property for national purposes, and this would limit it to the amount paid before. Either the land has been rented or it has not been rented.

§ Sir E. CORNWALL
It has nothing to do with rent.

Mr. CHANCELLOR
It has. Either the land has been let or it has not been let. If it has not, no income has been received from it at all.

HON. MEMBERS
Why not?

Mr. CHANCELLOR
Because if no income has been received, and the land has been used, it will have been assessed at the value of the rent which would have been receivable if it had been let to a tenant. That would be a fair basis for rent fixed to be paid by the Government to the owner. If the land has not been used at all—some of it has not been used, because it has been taken in districts where it has been practically 788 derelict—in such cases the Government have to agree, I presume, on the rent and the rent agreed between the owner and the Government would be the basis of rating, which would form the remuneration which the landlord would obtain for the loan of his land. In that case the owner would have increased his income by letting the land to the Government. Is there any reason why, simply because we are at war, the nation, in taking large quantities of land, should be made to pay more taking it wholesale than the private individual who takes it retail? Why should we penalise the Government every time it requires the use of a piece of land? This proposal is a perfectly reasonable one; it is that no landlord should be damnified through having to let land to the Government. Every provision is made whereby loss due to damage done to the land is to be paid to the owner, but in the meantime the owner himself stands either to receive the same income from the land he has been receiving or he will receive an increased income from the land. No injury can be done by passing the Amendment, which I hope will be voted for by all hon. Members who are sufficiently patriotic—

Mr. RUTHERFORD
To kill the Bill

Mr. CHANCELLOR
To wish to protect the national Exchequer against private exactions.

§ Sir E. CORNWALL
On general grounds I am entirely in favour of the principle embodied in the Amendment, but I cannot understand how it applies to this Bill. It may be that I am not so capable of appreciating the position as some of my hon. Friends who have already spoken. This is a Bill dealing with properties taken over by the Government during the War which are in the possession of the Government now. Under the Bill, as we have already passed it, the Government can keep it for another two years. If they want it for a longer period they have to make an application to the Railway and Canal Commission for an extension of the period of occupation. The occupation may be extended for any period not exceeding five years if the Government Department can prove to the Railway and Canal Commission that it is in the interests of the State that they should occupy the land or the premises for a certain period not exceeding the five years. How in the world can my hon. Friends introduce the question of basing compensation—[HON. MEMBERS: "Rent!"]—on a 789 theory to which I subscribe as much as they do, on the rateable value prior to the Government acquiring the land? Any tribunal that assesses the value the Government will have to pay for the few months, or years, during which the Railway and Canal Commission will authorise them to continue in occupation, must do so on the basis of the rent the Government is paying now, What troubles me about the Bill is not so much the public money for any particular rent or compensation which the Railway and Canal Commission may give to the owners of the land or the properties under the Bill. What troubles me is that we should make this Bill so secure that no Government Department shall take more land or more premises than is actually required. It is in the retention of more land and more premises than is actually required that you are going to have a waste of public money.

Mr. CHANCELLOR
Will you make it more expensive?

§ Sir E. CORNWALL
No, I want to make it less expensive. If anybody is getting more money than is required for any land or premises now, let the Government, after they have occupied the land for two years after the War, refuse to occupy it and get rid of it.

§ The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN
The hon. Member is now going back to a general discussion of the Clause. We had a very long discussion this afternoon on the whole subject of the Clause, and are now shut down to a much more clearly denned point. I hope the hon. Member will keep to that.

§ Sir E. CORNWALL
I will endeavour to do so, Sir. The principle of the Amendment, good as it is when applied to compensation for land and premises occupied by the Government in ordinary times, has no bearing whatever upon this Bill, and we had better not be led astray into the difficulties created by the Amendment. We should limit the Bill to the occupation of land and premises actually required for Government purposes during the War and immediately after the War is over.

§ Sir F. LOWE
The wording of the Amendment is extremely indefinite. It says: The annual value of the land as adopted for the purposes of local rating. If that means anything, I should say it means the assessment for rating purposes, 790 that is, rent less a considerable amount in deductions. If this Amendment were adopted, you would have the rent of the land subject to various deductions made for rating purposes. That would be the rent fixed. After that the same deductions would have to be made again from the reduced rent. You would then get a rent very much below the actual rental value of the land on ordinary principles. Therefore the Amendment is absolutely-absurd and inconsistent with ordinary commercial usages. It ought not to be entertained by the Committee for a moment.

§ Sir G. TOULMIN
We have just passed a new Subsection to the Clause which says: The Occupying Department shall pay such rent …. as may be agreed …. or, as failing agreement, shall be determined by the Commission. The question is, whether there is to be any limit to the rent and are we to give any directions of any kind as to any limit that shall be fixed to the demands on the Departments. Unless some limiting words are inserted it appears that the Government must raise the value against itself. It has done so in consequence of the action it has taken directly for the defence of the realm and of the emergency which has arisen. A number of hon. Members have been very anxious to limit the amount of benefit which the Departments might take under this Bill. Now some of us desire to limit the costs in which they may be cast in regard to the action they have taken. In rating, the property which is occupied by an owner is valued on the rent which would be obtained from any tenant, including the owner. If the property is already let, it would appear that that which has been already fixed in the open market is a sum which can be objected to by no one, unless you want to say that the Government must be rated and have to pay rent upon its necessities. If the property is in the hands of the owner himself he has been able to see that he had the full annual value if he desired to do so. The only change which has taken place with regard to him is the appearance of the Government as the tenant, and we have to ask ourselves what is the result of that? We must find out the owner's loss. The illustration of the hon. Member for Marlborough was a very good one. We want to find out what has been the war loss to the owner and 791 not give him war profits. Find out what he has lost through the Government having his land, and give him that rent. Manufacturers have to take their chance in calculating the munitions levy which is placed upon them. They at least have certainly been using their resources to the best advantage, but they are not to have a greater advantage than a fifth over their datum line. Why should the land-lord have more than a fifth? Why not let this be inserted, giving them an advantage of a fifth just as manufacturers have had to submit to? There is one point about this. I think, as the Amendment is now drawn, it would limit the power of agreement of the Department. I do not think that it is advisable. I think the Department should be able to agree with the landlord as now, and that this proviso should only relate to anything which is determined by the Commission. It should be a direction to the Commission and not to the Department, leaving the Department to do what I am sure it will endeavour to do—to come to an amicable and just arrangement with any landowner whose land it takes.

Mr. HENDERSON
For the life of me I cannot understand this. It says, as I read it, "Provided that 'he amount of such rent." There is not a word about rent.

§ The CHAIRMAN
The hon. Member does not know what changes have been made. I have already explained to at least one other Member what Amendment has been put in—the second one on page 414.

Mr. HENDERSON
It is given to me that you have struck out the words "compensation in so far as it represents annual rent."

§ The CHAIRMAN
The hon. Member is not aware that Subsection (3) has been struck out and an Amendment put in there.

§ Mr. RAFFAN
In my view the question which is raised by the Amendment is the one familiar and simple question of whether any direction whatever is to be given to the authorities which is to decide the question of rent or whether they are to be left without any direction of any sort. That is not a mere academic question. I could give instance after instance of cases where, when it was necessary to secure land for public purposes, the nation 792 has been compelled to pay up to 2,000 or 3,000 years' purchase. Does even the right hon. Baronet (Sir F. Banbury) defend that sort of thing going on in time of war, in War Savings Week, when it is so necessary to exercise economy?

§ Sir F. BANBURY
This has nothing to do with purchase; it is only a question of direction.

§ Mr. RAFFAN
That is no doubt perfectly true, but if the land is being purchased, and no direction whatever is given to the tribunal, we shall have the same problem for the taxpayer by way of excessive rent as we have by way of excessive price. I have endeavoured to understand the right hon. Baronet, who is usually the most able defender of vested interests in this House, but I fail on this occasion to see what he is afraid of. He informs us that in many cases properties are rated too high. I think he said that, as a rule, properties are rated too high. Under these circumstances, what does the landlord stand to lose by the Amendment? He loses nothing by the Amendment unless the right hon. Gentleman desires to obtain for him a larger sum even than this amount, which, in his view, is an excessive amount of rent. It is true he told us of other cases of agricultural land where the landowner has gone on for many years letting the land at a rent which is less than its real value, and he asks pathetically what the position of that landlord is to be under this proposal. The position of the landlord is simply this, that as he has been considerate to his tenants in time of agricultural depression, so we ask him to take the same terms and no other terms from the nation at a time when it is passing through a period of great stress. We ask by this Amendment nothing more than that there should be some check on excessive rents. We should like, if it were possible, an even more exact standard. The hon Member (Mr. R. McNeill) says the only true value which should be arrived at in dealing with all transactions of this kind is that the price should be as between a willing buyer and a willing seller. I agree absolutely that that should be the standard, but it should be the standard for rating and for value, and if we are unable to secure that ideal standard it is only left to us to say that if we are fixing rent we shall take the only figure that is available at present. Rateable value and rent are supposed to be on the same basis and the same standard. 793 It is possible that there are cases where they are not, but they are supposed to be. That is the test. We ask that the rate which has been put down on the rate book for so many years, and against which the occupier and the owner have every right to appeal if they are dissatisfied with it, shall be taken and that we shall not have in time of war a repetition of the old scandal that the nation's need is the landlord's opportunity.

Mr. HENDERSON
I apologise for not quite following this, but I submit that there is really no substance in this Amendment. If the Bill continues the tenancy as now existing, the rent is agreed. The War Office always enters into an agreement for any land they have taken. No one would think of increasing the rent, but if they have not fixed the rent now there is no rating. Upon this nothing you are going to find the rate that you are going to pay. My hon. Friend said if they have not agreed the rent they will agree the rent.

Mr. CHANCELLOR
made a remark which was inaudible in the Reporters' Gallery.

Mr. HENDERSON
That is putting the cart before the horse to say that the rent will have to be fixed and then the rate will be paid. What is the use, then, of saying that the rent will be fixed from the rate? The whole thing is absurd. The rents are being paid now; they are agreed, and when the War is over, if they want them for two years more, that rent cannot be raised. They would have to go to the Commission to raise the rent, and would have to show very good reason why that rent, which has been paid for two years, should under those circumstances be raised.

§ Sir R. ADKINS
I beg to move to omit Subsection (4).
I do so for the reason that this Subsection would enable any Department which, under this Bill, occupied land or acquired it to transfer possession to any other Government Department. We are dealing exclusively with land or houses which are acquired during the period of the War for war purposes, and this power of general transfer would have the effect of giving the power to any Government Department which had no interest in the matter at the beginning to acquire it afterwards. That would abolish the very wholesome and proper restriction, made in time of peace, that if a Government Department want land or houses other than by agreement they must come to this House to get permission. I see that my right hon. Friend has an Amendment down to limit it to the Admiralty, the Army Council, and the Minister of Munitions. When he replies to me, as he will in a minute, perhaps he will say why he put in the Minister of Munitions, because if that Department continues after the War, surely it would continue in possession of such property as is necessary for its work. If after the War it is absorbed in the Army and Navy, then one can understand that the transfer of property might still be required for these purposes either to the Admiralty or the Army Council. But what ground is there for land or houses being transferred to the Minister of Munitions which has been acquired during the period of the War itself? I take it from my right hon. Friend's Amendment that the Government do absolutely withdraw the general suggestion of transfer among Government Departments, under which land acquired for the purpose of huts might be assigned to the Post Office for the purpose of a new post office. There would be no end to this, and it would be a quite unnecessary violation of the general procedure of Parliament in these matters.

§ Sir G. CAVE
I think that this point is met by the Amendment which is put on the Paper. There was not and there is not any intention that land which is occupied for defensive purposes shall be transferred to other Civil Departments. The object of putting in this Subsection was that it should be open to one defensive Department to transfer the land to another Department of defence, so that, if found necessary, land occupied for Army aeroplanes should be transferred to the 796 Admiralty side of the same Department, and also that when the Ministry of Munitions is coming to a close it will be able to transfer land in its occupation to the Army Council, or the Admiralty. That object is attained by the Amendment in my name. As to the Ministry of Munitions, it may be desirable when land is held on very good terms to transfer it to the Ministry of Munitions during the short time in which that Department will exist after the War.

§ Sir F. BANBURY
I agree thoroughly with what was said by the hon. and learned Gentleman who moved the Amendment. I cannot understand why the Subsection was ever put into the Bill in the form in which it now is. I am quite certain that my right hon. Friend had nothing to do with the drafting, or he would not have put in the Clause in this form, because as it is it does give power to different Government Departments to do that which hon. hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway, in the interests of economy, are desirous that they should not do. They can transfer, say, from the Admiralty or the Ministry of Munitions to the Post Office, and so set up a sort of gambling or speculation in houses and land between various Departments of the Government. When the Second Reading took place my right hon. Friend said that they did not mean that. It would be very much simpler if we had the real meaning put into the Bill. To begin with, it would save a considerable amount of time. As the Ministry of Munitions will probably not be in existence for long after the War, and as they might wish to transfer some of their Departments either to the Admiralty or to the Army Council, they should have power to do that, and I understand that the Amendment of my right hon. Friend is designed to meet that. I do not know whether I should be in order in saying anything about it at present. I do not know what the hon. and learned Gentleman is inclined to do. I should be inclined not to press this Amendment, provided I could get an undertaking from my right hon. Friend to leave out " Minister of Munitions." I quite see that it may be necessary to give the Admiralty or the Army Council power to take over from a moribund Department certain lands or buildings which it has to get rid of, but why put in "Minister of Munitions "? They do not want to take 797 over anything. I understood that the whole thing is founded on the fact that after the War the Ministry of Munitions will not exist. If that is so, it is quite clear that it is not necessary to have the words, "or the Minister of Munitions." All they want is "the Admiralty or the Army Council." I do not know whether it would be more convenient to defer that point until the actual Amendment is before the Committee, but I think that my hon. and learned Friend had better not withdraw his Amendment until he has got some undertaking from the Government with reference to the Minister of Munitions.

§ Mr. HOLT
There are two points on this Amendment to which I would draw attention. I do not think that any power to transfer land from one Department to another ought to apply to land as to which any extension of time has been granted by the Railway and Canal Commissioners. It the Government grant an extension of time for the occupation of land that only applies to its use by the Department which obtains the extension of time. Words ought to be put in making it quite plain that land in respect of which such extension of time has been granted cannot be transferred to another Department, because, if that were so, the extension of time would be quite vitiated as having been obtained under false representation. It may be quite right that the Admiralty, for instance, should be in occupation for their purpose of particular land, such as docks and land in connection with ships, but there is not the slightest reason why they should have the absolute right to transfer it to the War Office or to the Ministry of Munitions for a wholly different purpose. It is quite true that work in the War Office and work in the Admiralty have more connection than work in the Admiralty and work in the Board of Education; but they do not carry on the same work and do not necessarily require the same land, and I do not think it is a desirable thing to allow them to pass land between themselves without the consent of Parliament. I hope that my hon. and learned Friend will persist in his Amendment, unless he gets an assurance from the Government that land as to which an extension of time has been given shall not be transferred, and also that land shall not be turned from one purpose to a wholly different purpose. If it is merely going to be used by the same Department for the same purpose that is one thing, but if it is 798 to be passed by the Admiralty, who have been using it for loading and unloading ships to the War Office, to be used as a place for storing disused clothes, that is a totally different proposition. We should get an assurance that the land will continue to be used for the same purpose for which it was originally obtained.

§ Mr. ASHLEY
I think in the case of the Ministry of Munitions there is reason why they should have power to hand over land to another Department. Whether or not they continue after the War their activities will certainly be greatly diminished, and therefore they will probably have surplus land which they do not require. I think it is quite reasonable that this Subsection should be so amended that they may be able to hand over any surplus land, either after they are dead or even if they continue to live, to some other Department. Having said that I do protest against the idea that the Army Council should be allowed to hand over land to the Admiralty or vice versâ, because I do not see what reason there is for it. If the land was taken for Army service purposes, and those are not continued purposes, it can be disposed of; or if for naval purposes and it is not wanted for those purposes, it can be disposed of. I do not think that we ought to have dealings in land between Departments except in the case of the Ministry of Munitions, which will probably soon come to an end, or in any case its activities will probably be greatly diminished.

Mr. WHITE
I rather differ from what has been said on this subject, because it seems to me that the Subsection is much better as it stands than is the suggested Amendment. The reason is very simple. In the first place, let me refer to what was said by the hon. Baronet opposite, that there might be cases of speculative land purchases for buildings, for a post office, or anything of that sort; but I would point out to the hon. Baronet that I think he has overlooked the Clause which relates to land leased for a time, and the total lease is for a period of about seven years. That being the case, there can be no question of speculative building or anything of that sort. The concession which the Solicitor-General foreshadowed seems to me to go rather too far because it is limited to the three Departments concerned directly with the War. I would like to point out the effect of that provision. If, for instance, a large camp were established, and 799 it was desirable to set up a temporary post office for the use of the camp, and no other land was available, the suggested provision would have the effect of preventing the military authorities from handing over a certain part of this land that had been taken for the camp, and which piece of land was acquired for the purposes of a temporary post office. One might give other instances. For instance, if it were necessary to have something connected with rails, rails being under the Board of Trade, that Department would be prevented from having land handed over to it. It seems to me entirely unnecessary that we should have this Amendment. This measure proceeds on a certain assumption that the powers given to the Government will be exercised for purposes connected with the War. I think if this Subsection is allowed to stand, it will be sufficient for all purposes. I would point out that even the concession which the Solicitor-General suggests does not meet the opinion of the opponents of this Subsection, because my hon. Friend said that it is not merely the question of the Departments but a question of what use the land is to be put to. Supposing the War Office get a piece of land and wants to change it for another piece, that would be prevented quite as much in regard to the War Office as the handing of it over to the Admiralty. We are dealing here with land taken on short lease under special powers necessary for war, and I think that the Government Departments should have a free hand.

§ Sir F. BANBURY
The hon. Gentleman (Mr. Dundas White) has not read the Bill. I do not in the least blame him, because it is really difficult to understand what the effect of the Bill is. This provision only applies to the occupation of land and to the renting of buildings for a period of seven years. The hon. Gentleman should read Clause 3. First of all, Clause 1, which we are now discussing, says that land may be held for a period of something less than seven years, and it is called occupying land. Clause 3 goes on to say that it shall be lawful to acquire land by purchase or lease, and therefore what really takes place is, that if we do allow this Clause to remain in the Bill, or if we accept the Amendment of the Solicitor-General, we give power under Clause 3 to acquire any land in which the Departments are now occupying. The hon. Gentleman need not shake his head. I admit that the Bill is 800 difficult to understand, and is very far-reaching in its effect; but I think if he had taken the trouble to study it, as I have done, and I have given the hon. Gentleman chapter and verse, he would see in regard to a Bill like this that, unless he can give proof, he must do something more efficacious than a mere shake of the head. The fact is that it is a very difficult Bill to understand, and it is extremely badly drafted.

Mr. WHITE
I have studied the Bill, and I am familiar with Clause 3, which relates to the purchase of land, but this Subsection of Clause 1 relates to the continued possession of land on lease. I frankly admit to the hon. Baronet that my impression has been that Subsection (4) of Clause 1 which we are now discussing referred to Clause 1, and did not refer to Clause 3. I gather that the general opinion is that it not only refers to Clause 1, but refers to Clause 3 as well. For myself I find nothing linking it with Clause 3, but perhaps the Solicitor-General will give us some interpretation of this very difficult Bill.

§ Sir R. ADKINS
In reply to my hon. Friend I would point out that this deals with Occupying Departments, and, for the purposes of the Clause, their powers are denned. It is perfectly clear that under Clause 1 the Departments can continue possession, and under Clause 3 they can acquire land by purchase, and then transfer it to any other Government Department. They can buy it or sell it. Most of us think it is far too great a power to give to any Government Department. In a Bill like this, which is an emergency measure, it is not fair either to private persons or to public bodies, who parted with their land willingly under emergency conditions during the War, to have all these fresh contingencies put upon them without the direct and frequent intervention of Parliament. Perhaps the representative of the Ministry of Munitions who is present will speak to us upon these points which have been raised and. as to the transfer of land and to the continuance of the use of the land for the same purposes. The people who originally parted with their land in time of war did so for specific and important purposes; and it is not fair to them, and it is still more unfair to public bodies who have parted with their land for specific purposes, to change its use to another purpose not so urgent. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will 801 meet me on the two points I have mentioned. I quite agree that the Solicitor-General has gone a long way to meet the other point, and if the right hon. Gentleman meets the points I have set forth I will willingly withdraw the Amendment.

§ Dr. ADDISON
I am sorry to say that we cannot accept the proposal of my hon. and learned Friend because there are very substantial reasons why this power must be in the Bill in some form or other in the interests of the conduct of the business of the Departments, which are the three Defence Departments. For instance, there will be miles of stores belonging either to the War Office or the Ministry of Munitions. In the case of those occupied by the Ministry of Munitions it may be desirable in some cases to trasfer them to the Admiralty and in some to the War Office. There will be many cases arising of clearing up at the end of the War where it will be desirable or convenient for certain of the stores to be transferred. There are all kinds of storehouses occupied at present by two or three Departments, and in some cases it may be very convenient that the whole thing should be carried on by the Ministry of Munitions and in others by the War Office. [An HON. MEMBER: "After the War?"] Yes, in order that the matter may be properly cleared up. Such a power as that proposed is necessary in order to carry out the various arrangements which must be carried out at the conclusion of the War to enable the Departments to transfer land from one to the other for ,the purpose of public service.

§ Sir R. ADKINS
In the case of the Ministry of Munitions, would it not be well done within two years after the War so that therefore you need not bring in the remaining five years?

§ Dr. ADDISON
I cannot see what the hon. and learned Gentleman is going to gain by embarrassing us with all those kind of conditions. This provision is designed to serve the interests of the public in some way or other, and what does it matter if it is more convenient, say, that a given store shall be under the War Office or the Ministry of Munitions, as long as it is the more convenient in the interests of the public. I really do not think the hon. and learned Gentleman would be acting either in the interests of the local authorities or anybody else by tying up the Departments as to how they may 802 transfer. It is desired to get rid of these places as soon as we can, especially as the majority will be occupied by perishable stores. There will be cases, particularly, I dare say, in connection with the Air Service, where it will be desirable to transfer either to the War Office or to the Admiralty, so that it is advisable to keep the three Departments in. The modification which my right hon. and learned Friend has put down meets all the serious points which were directed against the Subsection on Second Reading. I hope my hon. and learned Friend will not press his Amendment, for I am sure it would be entirely contrary to the public interest that such a provision as we here seek to obtain should not be contained in the Bill.

§ Mr. HOLT
Can the right hon. Gentleman give us an assurance that in cases of transfer there shall be no alteration in the purpose for which the property is used—that something connected with the Air Service shall not be altered to the manufacture of jam, for example?

§ Dr. ADDISON
I must ask my hon. Friend to believe that the Department will exercise some common sense. Neither of these Departments would start the manufacture of jam. It would not be within their powers to do anything of the kind. It must be something within the functions of the Department. Suppose there is a storehouse in which we store 2—inch bombs. It might be convenient for the War Office to store clothing there. We might come to an arrangement to turn out our bombs and they would store their clothing. It is quite a different purpose. It is storage, and that is all the similarity there is, but I do not think there would be any advantage in tying our hands to prevent that.

§ Sir F. BANBURY
We are all anxious to meet the right hon. Gentleman in any way we can. I understood that the Ministry of Munitions would probably not be in existence for many years after the War. There will be some time in which the Department can make arrangements for winding up. That being so, what advantage is to be gained by transferring to a Department which is going to be wound up these assets, so to speak——

§ Sir G. CAVE
Possession.

§ Sir F. BANBURY
What for?

§ Dr. ADDISON
That is what I have indicated.

§ Sir F. BANBURY
I understood the right hon. Gentleman to say that it must be advisable to transfer from the Ministry of Munitions something in which shells were kept so that the War Office might keep clothes there. I did not understand that there was anything now in the hands of the War Office or of the Admiralty which would be transferred for a short time to the Ministry of Munitions.

§ Dr. ADDISON
Certainly.

§ Sir F. BANBURY
What sort of things?

§ Dr. ADDISON
There are miles of storehouses belonging to the two Departments on both sides of the Channel. I am certain there will be a large number of cases in which it will be most convenient to transfer things from the War Office to the Ministry of Munitions, or vice versa, for a short time.

§ Sir F. BANBURY
On both sides of the Channel?

§ Dr. ADDISON
We shall have to bring a lot of goods from the other side to this side.

§ Sir R. ADKINS
In view of what has been said, I ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

§ Sir G. CAVE
I beg to move, in Subsection (4), to leave out the words "any other Government Department," and to insert instead thereof the words "the Admiralty, or Army Council, or the Minister of Munitions."

§ Mr. PETO
I would only ask one question, in view of what the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Munitions has just said—particularly as regards the Air Service. It is quite possible that, before the end of the period of seven years, we may have a definite organisation of the Air Service. It seems to me that these words, " the Admiralty, or Army Council, or the Minister of Munitions," would preclude the transfer of stores suitable for air defence to the definite Department or Ministry of the Air. I should, therefore, like to ask the Solicitor-General whether it would not be wise to put in words to cover that, or any other Department connected with air defence?

§ Sir G. CAVE
Is not the answer to that, that if an Air Department is 804 created, the Bill creating it will surely contain words to enable the Army Council, or other Department, to transfer to the new Department anything that may be connected with it?

§ The CHAIRMAN
The two subsequent Amendments have been disposed of.

§ Mr. WATT
On a point of Order, Mr. Whitley. May I draw your attention to the Amendment standing in the name of the hon. Member for East Edinburgh: "(5) This Section shall not apply otherwise than by agreement to any land belonging to any local authority or held by any statutory body for public purposes." I understand you have ruled it out of order. May I call attention to the fact that it brings in the question of agreement in dealing with land of a local authority?

§ The CHAIRMAN
That matter will be appropriate on the New Clause on the Order Paper dealing with Savings.

§ Sir F. BANBURY
Notwithstanding the very pleasant way we have been met by the right hon. Gentleman and the endeavours to amend the Clause, I still think it would have been very much better if the whole Bill had been withdrawn and a new Bill had been substituted for it. It has been shown, perfectly conclusively I think, that the Clause which is under discussion goes very much further than the majority of Members of this House had any idea of. Instead of this House, it sets up another authority in the form of the Railway and Canal Commission. If the Government are desirous of taking private property, instead of their acting as hitherto, under the general law of the land, by coming down to this House and asking for a Bill, giving the particulars of the particular land or buildings that they desire to acquire and so getting the consent of the House, all they will have to do is to go to the Commission I have named and ask for power to do these things. That is a very great mistake and a very great abrogation of the powers of this House. I regret very much that my right hon. and learned Friend did not accede to the request which several of us made on the Second Reading, withdraw the Bill and substitute for it another Bill.
805 It would have been much simpler, and it would not have met with the opposition which this Bill has met. It looks as though the Government desired to do away with the authority of Parliament and allow the Departments, in consultation with the particular Commission, to do practically what they like. I do wish to offer another protest against Clause 1, which, I think, is quite outside the necessary powers required, and which ought never to have been introduced into the Bill.

§ Mr. RAWLINSON
I do venture, before this Clause forms part of the Bill, to enter a formal protest against its existence at all. It is a most extraordinary Clause even with the Government Amendments. A person who has been patriotic enough to give up his land for a particular purpose is subject to what amounts to penalties in this Clause. His neighbour who has been equally unpatriotic is not touched by this Clause. You have this position: a man who has given up fields or meadows or cricket grounds, or whatever it may be, to the Government for a particular purpose, say, for a hospital, is under this extraordinary Clause liable to have his land, which he gave perfectly willingly and for nothing, kept away from him for seven years, possibly on some chance of getting compensation on some kind of basis by the Railway Commission, and the land which he has given in that way for a hospital can be used against his will and wish for any purpose the Government may desire. He may object to it being turned from a hospital into a munition works in the neighbourhood of his house, or, if he had given it for soldiers' huts to be erected on it, he might object very much to it being turned into a hospital quite adjacent to his house. I do submit that, merely because a land-owner has willingly given up his land to the War Office or to the Ministry of Munitions at a time of emergency, to bring in this Clause for the next seven years is a great injustice and an entirely wrong form of legislation. There has been no friction, or very little friction indeed, so far as I am aware, with the land-owning community as regards the question of the needs of the realm at the present time. Why this Bill should be necessary to suggest anything of the kind I cannot under- 806 stand. It seems to me no real case has been made out for this Bill at all. The person who has given up his land, which was used as a cricket ground, is possibly willing to meet the Government if the land is required for a further four or seven years for the purpose. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred I believe they would do it, but it is quite a different matter when a Government comes down and says, " Unless you do this or that, we can exercise our powers, and keep you out of your cricket ground, and you will be put to the expense of going before the tribunal to show cause why you should not be compelled." Upon the point of the land which is given for one use being used for another, on which I propose to put down an Amendment on the Report stage, I do submit that this Clause is' an unnecessary Clause, and I am sorry to see it introduced.

§ Sir G. CAVE
I understand my hon. Friends are only making a protest. Out of respect for them, may I say two or three words? I am very glad that the opinions they uttered about the Bill are really not reflected outside the House. I have had a great deal of correspondence from responsible bodies, and all of them are very desirous of helping the Government in this matter. Provided reasonable objections are met, I am sure that the strong feeling of the country is in favour of some Bill of this kind. It is suggested we might withdraw this Bill and introduce another. Hon. Members have not tried to conceive, as I have, the terms of another Bill which would meet their views. The more I think of it, the more I am sure this is the proper way of dealing with the emergency that has arisen. If we had not had this Bill, or something very like it, an enormous national expenditure must have been thrown away, and, much worse than that, the future defence of this country would have been hampered if it had been in the power of any private owner or any local authority to require the Government at once to give up possession unless they came to some terms or other by agreement. For that reason I am quite satisfied we have a right to bring in this Bill, and I feel confident, when my hon. Friends have considered it further in its final stage, their feelings towards it will not be as hostile as they have been to-day.

§ Colonel GRETTON
There is one particular matter which has not been noticed in the discussion, and that is the necessity 807 for public economy. In winding-up any business where a large staff has been employed there always is a difficulty in closing down because the staff is very often anxious that there should be no closing down. The only protection which this Clause gives is the Railway and Canal Commission. I do not know whether that protection is sufficient to protect the public purse in that direction. It is much to be lamented that the time for winding-up is so long, and that there is not another provision for examining more closely into the circumstances under which the longer occupation of land may continue under this Clause. I hope that something will be devised on Report which will meet this difficulty.

§ Mr. R. McNEILL
I hope my right hon. Friend will not think it any want of personal consideration on my part if I decline to apologise for taking up the time of the Committee by saying a few words. I took no part in the Debate on the Second Reading, and I do not think the Government can possibly expect that this Bill will be passed in the course of an evening, when every Clause is full of debatable matter. This is a Bill that cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be called an urgency war measure, because it deals with controversial matters for a period after the War. Under these circumstances I do not think that on the first evening of the Committee any of us need apologise for asking for a few moments to lay our views before the Committee. The Solicitor-General said that he imagined that this Bill was not so unpopular outside the House as it seemed to be inside, and that he had received communications from various responsible bodies. I do not know what sort of responsible bodies they were, but, after all, the people most affected by this Bill are not responsible bodies but individuals, and my belief is that the actual provisions of this measure and the proposals of the Government are not in the least known out of doors.
I do not believe that there is a general understanding throughout the country of the proposals of the Government, and I feel confident that if those proposals were more generally known my right hon. Friend would not be able to stand up and say that he believed the Bill would be popularly received out of doors. I am certain that there is no one on this side of the 808 House who would raise a single voice against any proposal for really helping along the War, nor would anybody say a word against public economy or any reasonable and definite means the Government might take for keeping down the awful cost of the War and the loss which must follow at its conclusion. I entirely agree that the proposals in this Bill do an amount of injustice both in principle and to individuals which is quite unnecessary, and we believe that all the legitimate objects of the Government, with which we all sympathise, in the way of the saving, expenditure, and losses which will have to be incurred in the cutting of the loss on stores and so forth after the War, could have been obtained without those objectionable principles to which we have called attention in the Bill as it stands. The reason this Bill has not been more understood out of doors is owing to the peculiar conditions under which Parliamentary work is being done at the present time. Just imagine if this Bill, as controversial as it can possibly be, had been brought in under ordinary prewar Parliamentary conditions! I have not the slightest doubt that the Government which was in power in 1914 could, by the strenuous use of their Parliamentary majority, have carried this Bill through the House. We should then have had the advantage of the serious, strenuous opposition which would have been offered to it by my right hon. Friend who then would have been sitting on this side of the House. Does anybody imagine that it would not have been fought line for line and Clause for Clause by any Parliamentary body sitting opposite to the Government of the day? Therefore, I do think that we are fully justified at all events in making a serious protest. We do not complain of my right hon. Friend. We recognise the necessity for the Coalition Government, and we recognise that all of us support measures during the War to which we object very largely on principle, and which we only support because of the necessity of the time. Our complaint here is that the Government have gone far beyond those necessities. They are making this particular Bill a vehicle for dealings with property long after the necessity for them must have passed away, and they have resisted some of the proposals which we have brought forward, and which at all events might have mitigated the objection we entertain.

§ Mr. A. WILLIAMS
The hon. Gentleman who has just sat down has charged against the Government that they are using this Bill to promote dealings with property long after the necessity has disappeared. I really do not see how he can substantiate that charge at all. The Bill simply gives them power for two years to do certain things and then to go to the Commission and ask their consent to continue for another five years. The Commission will only give that consent if good reason is shown. It is quite misleading to say that the Government have power to do all these things for seven years; they have only power to do them for two years and then to go to the Commission and ask for a continuance if they can show good cause for such continuance. That is a perfectly reasonable thing. We have had dreadful pictures drawn to us this evening of the unreasonable things the Government could do under this Bill. It would be quite equally possible to draw harrowing pictures of the things landlords could do to the Government if no such Bill were in existence. It seems to me a perfectly reasonable thing that the Commissioners, as a judicial body, should hold the balance fairly between the two sides. I do think it conveys a false impression to the House and to the country if hon. Gentlemen are allowed to rise one after another in criticism, and if a large number of Members in this House who are in favour of the Bill and think it a just and reasonable measure for dealing with a difficult position sit still and do nothing. Therefore, I thought I ought to say these few words in support of this Clause.

§ Mr. ASHLEY
I was very much impressed by the remarks of the hon. Member for Rutland (Mr. Gretton). He said that what he was afraid of was the delay in closing down Government establishments and enterprises after the War, owing to the natural desire of the officials connected with those establishments and enterprises to continue the jobs in which they were occupied and which, no doubt, in many cases would be well paid. I think there is a great deal in what he says, and I would put it forward for the consideration of the learned Solicitor-General whether he might not before the Report stage think over and devise some Amendment, so that, though the Commission would be empowered to give additional extension of five years when the Government Department came up for it, 810 yet they should in the same way have to go up again in two or three years to justify the continuance of the whole of the five years.
It is rather a large order for the Government Departments to go to the Commission and say, "We want another five years; give it us." The Commission goes into the matter, and to the best of its knowledge and belief decides that it is justifiable to give these five years. It may well be that, after two years, another investigation, not necessarily so searching but some sort of investigation made by the Commission or some other independent body, might be made, and it might be discovered that the whole thing could be wound up in two instead of five years. I know it is not easy to suggest an exact plan that could be followed, but I suggest to the Government in the interests of economy, because nobody wants to continue this longer than is necessary, that they should consider the suggestions of the hon. Member for Rutland, and see whether it is necessary to give a definite five years extension, or whether some revision should not be had after two or three years.

Division No. 37.]	AYES.	[9.47 P.m.
Baker, Joseph Allen (Finsbury, E.)	Jones, Edgar (Merthyr Tydvil)	Roch, Walter F. (Pembroke)
Bryce, John Annan	Kilbride, Denis	Rowlands, James
Byles, Sir William Pollard	King, Joseph	Samuel, J. (Stockton-on-Tees)
Chancellor, Henry George	Lambert, Richard (Wilts, Cricklade)	Toulmin, Sir George
Clynes, John R.	Lundon, Thomas	Watt, Henry A.
Cosgrave, James	M'Callum, Sir John M.	Whitty, Patrick Joseph
Davies, Timothy (Lincs., Louth)	Macdonald, J. Ramsay (Leicester)	Wilkie, Alexander
Dickinson, Rt. Hon. Willoughby H.	Morrell, Philip	Williams, J. (Glamorgan)
Flavin, Michael Joseph	Nolan, Joseph	Wilson, W. T. (Westhoughton)
Gilbert, J. D.	Outhwaite, R. L.	Wing, Thomas Edward
Goldstone, Frank	Pratt, J. W.
Harvey, T. E. (Leeds, West)	Pringle, William M. R.	TELLERS FOR THE AYES—Mr. Dundas White and Mr. Anderson
Hazleton, Richard	Raffan, Peter Wilson
Hogge, James Myles	Rees, G. C. (Carnarvonshire, Arfon)

NOES.
Addison, Rt. Hon. Dr. Christopher	Flannery, Sir J. Fortescue	Peto, Basil Edward
Agg-Gardner, Sir James Tynte	Forster, Henry William	Phillips, Sir Owen (Chester)
Ainsworth, John Stirling	Greenwood, Sir G. G. (Peterborough)	Pollock, Ernest Murray
Ashley, Wilfrid W.	Gretton, John	Prothero, Rowland Edmund
Baird, John Lawrence	Gwynne, R. S. (Sussex, Eastbourne)	Radford, Sir George Heynes
Banbury, Rt. Hon. Sir F. G.	Hardy, Rt. Hon. Laurence	Rawlinson, John Frederick Peel
Barlow, Montague (Salford, South)	Harmsworth, Cecil (Luton, Beds)	Rea, Walter Russell (Scarborough)
Bathurst, Capt. C. (Wilts, Wilton)	Harris, Henry Percy (Paddington, S.)	Roberts, Charles H. (Lincoln)
Beale. Sir William Phipson	Henderson, J. M. (Aberdeen, W.)	Roberts, George H. (Norwich)
Benn, Arthur Shirley (Plymouth)	Holt, Richard Durning	Roberts, Sir J. H. (Denbigh)
Bowerman, Rt. Hon. C. W.	Hope, James Fitzalan (Sheffield)	Robertson, Rt. Hon John M.
Boyton, James	Horne, Edgar	Robinson, Sidney
Brace, William	Howard, Hon Geoffrey	Roe, Sir Thomas
Bridgeman, William Clive	Hunt, Major Rowland	Runciman, Sir Walter (Hartlepool)
Brunner, John F. L.	Kellaway, Frederick George	Rutherford, Watson (L'pool, W. Derby)
Butcher, J. G.	Layland-Barrett, Sir F.	Salter, Arthur Clavell
Carew, C. R. S.	Levy, Sir Maurice	Samuel, Samuel (Wandsworth)
Cator, John	Lloyd, George Butler (Shrewsbury)	Scott, A. MacCallum (Glas., Bridgeton)
Cave, Rt. Hon. Sir George	Lowe, Sir F. W. (Birm., Edgbaston)	Stewart, Gershom
Coats, Sir Stuart A. (Wimbledon)	Macmaster, Donald	Tickler, T. G.
Cochrane, Cecil Algernon	McNeill, Ronald (Kent, St. Augustine's)	Turton, Edmund Russborough
Cornwall, Sir Edwin A.	Magnus, Sir Philip	Valentia, Viscount
Craig, Ernest (Cheshire, Crewe)	Mason, James F. (Windsor)	Walker, Colonel William Hall
Davies, David (Montgomery Co.)	Morgan, George Hay	Warde, Colonel C. E. (Kent, Mid)
Dixon, C. H.	Munro, Rt. Hon. Robert	Williams, Aneurin (Durham, N.W.)
Dougherty, Rt. Hon. Sir J. B.	O'Brien, Patrick (Kilkenny)	Williams, Col. Sir Robert (Dorset, W.)
Essex, Sir Richard Walter	Parker, Rt. Hon. Sir G. (Gravesend)
Fell, Arthur	Pearce, Sir Robert (Staffs, Leek)	TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—Mr. Gulland and ,Lord Edmund Talbot.
Ferens, Rt. Hon. Thomas Robinson	Pennefather, De Fonblanque
Ffrench, Peter	Perkins, Walter F.