§ Where the year ending the thirtieth day of September, nineteen hundred and fourteen is adopted by a brewer under the proviso to Section two of the principal Act for the purpose of computing standard barrelage, and the brewer proves to the Commissioners that during or since the year so adopted the brewer has closed any brewery at which beer was brewed during that year either by the brewer himself or by any person then in possession of the brewery, and that the brewery was so closed as part of the private brewing arrangements of the brewer and has not since been used as a brewery, so much of any beer so brewed at the closed brewery as the Commissioners think just in the circumstances shall be deemed to be beer brewed at the brewer's brewery for the purpose of that Section.
§ Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Clause stand part of the Bill."
§ Mr. SHERWELLThere is one point to which I think the attention of the Committee and of the hon. Gentleman in charge of the Bill ought to be directed. The effect of this Clause as it stands is to grant an extension of output in the case of certain brewers who claim that they are entitled to that extension on the ground that, although the brewery or branch brewery may have been closed, the trade in that brewery or in that branch brewery shall be accounted to them in the total standard output. I would point out to the hon. Gentleman that in 1914, the year that is now chosen, under the normal working and administration of 539 the Act of 1904, which is now embodied in the Consolidated Licensing Acts, a number of licences were suppressed under the Compensation Funds associated with these provisions. The brewers and the owners of these licensed houses received compensation based upon the barrelage of the trade done in those houses. If you allow as a standard the total output of 1914 you are actually allowing them an increase over the current output by reckoning in the quantity of the trade for which ample compensation has already been paid. It is a fact that in 1914 something like £400,000 were paid to the brewing trade in compensation for houses suppressed under statutory powers. It is a question whether I think some allowance and some deduction ought not to be made in consideration of that fact. I quite recognise, as my hon. Friend will doubtless remind me, that the same omission was made in the original Act. It was not noticed at the time; but I feel bound to call his attention to the matter, as practically one involving a practical consideration when you are fixing the standard output of a particular brewery.
The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD of TRADE (Mr. Prety-man)I am bound to say that the matter to which the hon. Gentleman has drawn attention has not been considered, but so far as, at short notice, I can make an answer to the hon. Member, I hardly think it affects the case, as the total brewing has already been reduced by 70 per cent. I do not know that that is a complete answer; what the hon. Gentleman wants is to put right an omission in the original Act.
§ Bill reported without Amendment; read the third time, and passed.