CLAUSE 54.—(Total exemption of agricultural land and buildings from rates.) (Hansard, 22 January 1929)

§ The CHAIRMAN
The first two Amendments on the Order Paper—in page 45, line 20, at the beginning, to insert the words "Subject as hereinafter provided," and, in line 22, to leave out the words "any agricultural land or agricultural buildings," and to insert instead thereof the words "improvements created by labour in, on, or under the soil"—are without the scope of the Bill. The third Amendment—in line 22, after the word "any," to insert the words "cultivated or grazed"—I have some doubt about on the ground of completeness, but I think I will give the right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Colonel Wedgwood), in whose name it stands, the benefit of the doubt.

§ Colonel WEDGWOOD
I beg to move, in page 45, line 22, to leave out the words "any agricultural land or agricultural buildings," and to insert instead thereof the words "improvements created by labour in, on, or under the soil."
The Title of this Bill is "Local Government Bill," but everybody knows that the Bill has been described up and down the country as the De-rating Bill, and in this Clause 54 we come to the de-rating proposals of the Government. The whole question that we have to discuss in this Clause is what shall be de-rated, what are we to exempt from rates in order to increase production, benefit consumers, and increase employment. The Government have at last recognised that rates are an overhead charge on industry, that they add to the cost of production, that they increase prices, and that they reduce employment; and they have introduced this Clause 54 with a view to carrying out the economic truisms at the basis of their argument. When I see the method adopted by the Government for 32 de-rating, the way in which they select certain trades and industries for the acknowledged benefit of de-rating and leave other industries, other forms of production, penalised as they are at the present time, I feel that the Government have not learned the elementary lessons of government, and that they are acting in a way to benefit those who make the loudest noise, and those who politically are their friends. The Labour party have approached this identical problem in a different, and, I cannot help thinking, in a sounder way. They introduced a Bill last year, the object of which was de-rating, but de-rating on sound lines. The Bill, which was based upon the resolutions carried at Liverpool, was to give to all local authorities the power, if they chose to exercise it, to de-rate all improvements, both industrial and distributive.

§ The CHAIRMAN
The Amendment which I called upon the right hon. and gallant Gentleman to move will have the effect of limiting relief to cultivated or grazed land.

§ Colonel WEDGWOOD
I am not quite sure which Amendment you are talking about.

§ The CHAIRMAN
The third Amendment—in page 45, line 22, after the word "any" to insert the words "cultivated or grazed."

§ Colonel WEDGWOOD
Why is the Amendment—in page 15, line 22, to leave out the words any agricultural land or agricultural buildings," and to insert instead thereof the words improvements created by labour in, on, or under the soil"— ruled out?

§ The CHAIRMAN
Because it is without the scope of the Title.

§ Colonel WEDGWOOD
I suppose that it would be in order to move the rejection of the Clause?

§ The CHAIRMAN
The right hon. and gallant Gentleman need not move the rejection of the Clause. I shall have to put it anyhow.

§ Colonel WEDGWOOD
Surely I am justified in moving an Amendment which will relieve all industry, and not merely some industries?

§ The CHAIRMAN
The right hon. and gallant Member has not read the Clause. The Clause deals solely with agricultural land, and the right hon. and gallant Gentleman's first Amendment is not in order, because it seeks to relieve improvements which are not dealt with by the principal Act.

§ Colonel WEDGWOOD
I had no idea that you had ruled out my first Amendment. I am afraid that I did not hear in the noise what was going on. The Amendment I wish to move is to leave out the words "any agricultural land or agricultural buildings" and to make the Clause read: No person shall, in respect of any period beginning on or after the appointed day, be liable to pay rates in respect of improvements created by labour in, on, or under the soil, or be deemed to be in occupation thereof for rating purposes.

§ The CHAIRMAN
The Title reads: To grant complete or partial relief from rates in the case of the hereditaments to which the Rating and Valuation (Apportionment) Act, 1928, applies. Clause 54 is governed by that, and the effect of the right hon. and gallant-Gentleman's first Amendment will be to exempt certain other things from relief. The right hon. and gallant Gentleman now goes into the question of improvements, and an improvement is not a hereditament.

§ Colonel WEDGWOOD
The whole point is that this is a Bill to relieve certain classes of improvements.

§ The CHAIRMAN
Improvements are not relieved, but hereditaments are.

§ Colonel WEDGWOOD
But they are relieved of that portion of the rates due to the improvements upon the property. That is perfectly clear Three-quarters of the value of the hereditaments due to improvements is relieved of rates, and I am seeking by my Amendment to include among the hereditaments benefited, those hereditaments which are improved.

§ The CHAIRMAN
The right hon. and gallant Gentleman is really asking for something which did not come in last year's Act. The whole of this Clause relieves those hereditaments which were included in the last year's Act, and he cannot bring in the question of improvements.

§ Colonel WEDGWOOD
I still do not understand the point, and I am sorry to press it. Are we debarred from discussing any question of giving relief to any hereditaments which are not at present in the Bill? For instance, are shops or empty houses—

§ The CHAIRMAN
Yes, that is the point. All that was decided in last year's Act; that cannot be raised. The question of the relief of hereditaments already set out can be raised.

§ Miss LAWRENCE
The Act with which we dealt last year did not say a word about rating relief. It merely classifies certain hereditaments, and it has no operative effect. Surely a Bill which makes only a catalogue of hereditaments, and says nothing whatever about rating, cannot limit us?

§ The CHAIRMAN
The Act last year set out a catalogue with a view to certain kinds of hereditaments being set apart from the others and being dealt with in this Bill. I must go back to the words; of the Title, which are: To grant complete or partial relief from rates in the case of the hereditaments to which the Rating and Valuation (Apportionment) Act, 1928, applies. I am not giving this decision on the spur of the moment. I have carefully thought about it. The Bill excludes any new relief.

§ Colonel WEDGWOOD
Are we to understand from your ruling that we are not entitled to urge that empty houses, for instance, should not receive the benefit of this reduction in rates? Can we argue that shops or garages are not to receive the benefit?

§ The CHAIRMAN
Hon. Members can argue that the Clause does not go far enough, put they cannot move a specific Amendment dealing with hereditaments other than those set forth in last year's Act.

§ Colonel WEDGWOOD
In that case, the only way of debating the point is on the Question, "That the Clause stand part of the Bill."

§ Mr. SEXTON
I am anxious to keep within your Ruling, but, as the Bill only relieves a very small section of the community, are we not entitled to move that the principle be extended to all payers of local rates?

§ The CHAIRMAN
No, we are limited, as I said. I have no discretion in the matter. If the hon. Member reads the Title, he will see that this particular Amendment is out of order, though the next is in order.

§ Colonel WEDGWOOD
I beg to move, in page 45, line 22, after the word "any" to insert the words "cultivated or grazed."
I must accept your Ruling, and I will deal with the matter later. The Clause, if this Amendment were made, would confine the relief to owners of agricultural land to that land which was cultivated or grazed, but it would not exempt from rates any land which was not being used in any way at the present time. Some lands are below the level of cultivation, and are not cultivated or grazed, but they are not the lands to which I want to draw attention, because in their case very little rates are paid at the present time. But I would point out that in the suburbs of our towns there are large areas of waste land, of land ripening for building purposes—often unfenced, and used as a receptacle for empty tins and dead cats. Such land is neither cultivated nor grazed. The value of that land, which is being retained for building purposes, is maintained and increased by the expenditure of the local authority on public services, but the owners of that land are, under this Bill, exempted from the payment of any rates whatever. To my mind, the owners of such land are those who should be specially asked to join the army of ratepayers and contribute towards the local expenditure. Not merely are they benefiting by the expenditure of the ratepayers' money, but so long as they keep that land ungrazed, untilled and, above all, unbuilt upon, they are keeping men in that town unemployed who otherwise could find work upon that land. The owners of such land seem to me to be dogs in the manger, and I would gladly exempt them from the benefits of this Clause.

§ Sir HENRY CAUTLEY
Will the right hon. and gallant Member say what benefit they get from the Clause?

§ Colonel WEDGWOOD
They get exemption from rates.

§ Sir H. CAUTLEY
But they pay no rates now.

§ Colonel WEDGWOOD
They pay no rates now. Why should not they pay rates now?

§ Sir H. CAUTLEY
On a point of Order, I submit that if the owners of such land get no benefit under this Clause that the right hon. and gallant Gentleman's speech is out of order.

§ The CHAIRMAN
I understand that the land the right hon. and gallant Gentleman is speaking about is not agricultural land, and is not relieved under this Clause, and therefore his arguments on that point really cannot be pursued.

§ Colonel WEDGWOOD
But the land is called agricultural land for the purposes of local rating and gets all the benefits that come to that land at the present time. We certainly think that the owners of such land should be the first contributors towards local taxation. It may be that this Amendment would apply to a very small area of land, but anyone who has studied this question will find that there is an enormously valuable area of land in all our large towns directly affected by this Clause.

§ Sir H. CAUTLEY
Not by this Bill.

§ Colonel WEDGWOOD
Within the boundaries of our municipalities there are hundreds of acres, thousands of acres, to which this Amendment applies. It is land which is let for some fractionally small figure, and therefore pays a small rate, but it is enormously valuable land, and the owners of it ought to contribute more to the local rates. I feel that here we have a stronger case even than in the case of the brewery companies, because these people are profiteering directly from the expenditure of the ratepayers' money and paying nothing towards that expenditure; and to give these people the benefit of this reduction and to excuse them legally, and not merely practically, from the payment of any rates, is a crime of which only a Tory Government would be capable.

§ Mr. SEXTON
The stringent Ruling which you have given with regard to the first Amendments to this Clause will prevent me from putting forward some of the points which I had originally intended to submit, but I wish to endorse every word which has been said by my right hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Colonel 37 Wedgwood). If examples are wanted I will give one or two out of dozens which are within my own personal knowledge. In the City of Liverpool land was required for the erection of an electrical station. The land selected was neither grazed nor cultivated, but was still agricultural land. The rent of it would be about £3 per acre, and at 20 years' purchase the price of that land ought to have been about £60, but because the municipality required it for municipal purposes they had to pay at the rate of £23,000 per acre. I understood that this Bill was intended to relieve ratepayers, but in the City of Liverpool the ratepayers are being penalised to the extent of £22,000 or £23,000 for an improvement which is to benefit not only the City itself but the surrounding district. There is another case where a strip of land was required for the laying down of a tram line. That land was neither grazed nor cultivated. It was only a question of laying tram lines on a strip of grass land, a narrow strip which did not in total area exceed three quarters of an acre. The agricultural value of that land was the same as in the other case which I have quoted, but the authority had to pay £7,000 for that land.

§ The CHAIRMAN
It appears to me that the hon. Member is really discussing a suggested Amendment to the Land Clauses Act or the Acquisition of Land Act, and not the question of whether agricultural land which is neither grazed nor cultivated should be relieved. The hon. Member is discussing the question of the compensation to be paid to landowners.

§ Colonel WEDGWOOD
On that point of Order. Is it not precisely the land which the hon. Member is now discussing which this Amendment proposes to exempt from relief, and is he not entitled to show that such land is at the present time fetching terrific prices when bought compulsorily by local authorities, and therefore not to be exempted?

§ The CHAIRMAN
I think the hon. Member may be able to get to that point; but I do not think he has done so yet.

§ Mr. SEXTON
I will endeavour to keep to your Ruling, but under it it is difficult to interpret the Amendment as, in my opinion, it ought to be interpreted. Open confession, they say, is good for 38 the soul. I happen to be, in a sort of a small way, a landowner myself. It does not extend to three acres and a cow, but it is a bit of land.—[Interruption.] And I am not ashamed of it. It is neither grazed nor cultivated. Opposite my land is other land not grazed or cultivated, and of the same agricultural value, but it has risen in value to something like £2,600 per acre. If they come along to me and offer me that price for mine, I shall take it; but I would not begrudge paying 4s. in the £ on the increased value to the local taxes. With all due respect, I wish to say that your Ruling, Mr. Chairman, has narrowed my opportunities to say what I wanted to say. The land required in the immediate vicinity of a city like Liverpool is mostly agricultural land, and yet the inhabitants of Liverpool, whom this Bill professes to de-rate or relieve, have to find £7,000,000 every year for local rates which go mostly to increase the value of the land, and the owners of the land do not pay one penny towards the local expenditure of the city. I could give cases in which common land belonging to nobody at all except the people of the village and the town has been enclosed and taken over by landowners and has been sold back to the city at very high rates. You send to gaol the man who steals the goose from off the common, but you let the greater criminal go free who steals the common from the goose.

§ The CHAIRMAN
We cannot deal with matters of that sort under the title of this Bill. The hon. Member is now dealing with the value of land. The Amendment under discussion deals with the point whether the relief should be confined to "cultivated or grazed agricultural land" to the exclusion of woodland, etc. That is the whole point of the Amendment.

§ Mr. SEXTON
I find it extremely difficult to keep within your Ruling, Mr. Chairman. We are face to face with the fact that in consequence of the increased value of land created by the industry of the whole community we have to pay £350 for a square foot of land in Liverpool. The people of Liverpool who pay £7,000,000 a year in rates have had to pay that price for land, and all that money escapes local rating. A rate of 4s. in the £ upon the money paid for 39 land in Liverpool would lift the whole of the burden of the local rates from the shoulders of the people of Liverpool.

§ The MINISTER of HEALTH (Mr. Chamberlain)
The right hon. and gallant Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Colonel Wedgwood), who moved this Amendment, is so obsessed by his ideas about the taxation of unoccupied land that he loses no opportunity of talking about that subject in the House, no matter whether that particular subject is really relevant or not. On this occasion, that subject does not happen to be relevant, and I desire to explain to the Committee why that is so. I think that fact is agreed and is admitted even by the right hon. and gallant Gentleman himself. It has already been pointed out by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for East Grinstead (Sir H. Cautley) that land which is unoccupied is not rated as long as it is unoccupied, and now the right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme says:"Here you are making legal what is now merely only a practice, and you are exempting this particular class from rating. "The right hon. and gallant Gentleman's statement was that under this Clause we are exempting legally from rating land which is unoccupied. May I say that he is mistaken in that assumption, and he cannot have looked up what agricultural land means as used in this particular case. This Bill has to be read together with the Eating and Valuation Act of 1925 and the Rating and Valuation (Apportionment) Act of 1928. In the latter Act, there is a definition of agricultural land. The actual words are: 'Agricultural land' means any land used as arable meadow or pasture ground only, land used for a plantation or a wood. Therefore, in order to be agricultural land within the meaning of this Clause the land must be used for agricultural purposes, and, when it is not so used and is in fact unoccupied, it is no longer agricultural land, and does not come under this Clause.

§ Colonel WEDGWOOD
Is it liable to be rated?

§ Mr. CHAMBERLAIN
That is an entirely different point. It is not rated now if it is unoccupied. It may come 40 back into the valuation list if occupied for some other purpose, and it would then be rated. The purpose of this Amendment is not to bring in for derating something which is not now derated, but to limit it to land used as agricultural land, and that is done already.

§ Colonel WEDGWOOD
The right hon. Gentleman accepts the exemption which has gone on up to now and allows it to go on, but he makes no effort to distinguish between agricultural land and land which is not being used.

§ Mr. SEXTON
I referred to land required for the building of houses.

§ Mr. CHAMBERLAIN
Land which is being used for the building of houses is not agricultural land, and does not come under this Clause. We are now dealing with the de-rating of agricultural land, and it is not the case that this Clause makes any difference with regard to unoccupied land which is not agricultural land. The only effect of accepting this Amendment would be to leave unoccupied land exactly where it is, and it would not be affected in any way. All the Amendment would do would be to limit the relief to agricultural land which is cultivated or grazed. The only difference between that and the definition in the Rating and Valuation (Apportionment) Act of 1928 is that that definition includes woodland, and the one single practical effect of the Amendment would be that we should exclude the de-rating of woodlands.

§ Mr. GARDNER
I wish to ask the Minister a question in view of the definition that he has given. In the past, as he is aware, cemeteries have been classified as agricultural land for the purpose of assessment, and whether it is desirable or not to permit the rich cemetery companies of London to escape rating, does the right hon. Gentleman opposite consider a cemetery as being cultivated land?

§ Mr. CHAMBERLAIN
Here we are dealing with the words of the Bill, and of the Rating and Valuation (Apportionment) Act of last year, and any derating that takes place in consequence of those two Measures can only take place in accordance with those two 41 Measures. The definition of "agricultural land" in the Act of last year does not include cemeteries.

§ Mr. ERNEST BROWN
May I ask whether it is not a fact that, further than that, an attempt to include cemeteries under that definition was expressly excluded by this House?

§ Mr. WALLHEAD
Will the right hon. Gentleman tell us whether land which is exclusively used for sporting purposes is exempt under the Bill or not? I believe that there are large quantities of land in various parts of the country from which even sheep have been excluded. Is that land excluded? I understand that this Amendment would exclude from the benefit of the Act land used exclusively for shooting?

§ Miss LAWRENCE
This Clause says that agricultural land shall be de-rated, and so forth. There is no definition of "agricultural land" in this Bill and there is no reference to the Rating and Valuation (Apportionment) Act in this Clause in that respect.

§ Mr. CHAMBERLAIN
Clause 67.

§ Miss LAWRENCE
It says: The 'principal Act' has the same meaning. It does not deal with the definition of the word "agriculture." This is to be construed with the Rating and Valuation Act. Yes, but construing with the Rating and Valuation Act does not import into this Measure all that it means. To make the thing watertight, I submit that you want a reference to the definition in the Measure.

§ Mr. CHAMBERLAIN
When it says that one Act is to be construed with another, it means that we are referring in this Measure to an Act where there is a definition.

§ Mr. BROMLEY
There is a phrase in this Amendment which the right hon. Gentleman appears to have skipped somewhat. He took the words from the Act of last year when he said that "agricultural land" means any land used as arable, meadow or pasture, etc., or as a plantation. A plantation may be a pheasant cover or a cover for foxes, or it may be anything which is certainly not agricultural land. I gather—it may be wrongly—that the Government have 42 set out in this De-rating Bill, in so far as it applies to agricultural land, to relieve from rates the farming community, on the supposition that it was going to make for the cheapening of the products of the farmer and, secondly, foodstuffs; but if wrapped in that laudable intention is the release from taxation of plantations which are used for the cover of something to be shot at in the name of sport, then it is going much further than the public are told from the Front Bench or from any other Government exponent of the Measure. If the Government were really desirous only of exempting from rating agricultural land which produces food, or something to wear or of use to the community, then they would be certainly willing to make what is now designated as agricultural land, but which is really a plantation for sporting purposes, pay its quota towards the upkeep of the nation. I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he will not be prepared to accept an Amendment which in no way infringes on the stated desires of the Government and yet remedies an injustice? It is all very well to say that these people are already exempted. I do not think it is at all an argument that because a thief has been getting away with some of the nation's property for so long, the nation has no right to bring him to boot. That is a very poor argument, and if in the course of this Bill an Amendment is brought forward which may impinge on some interest of sporting rights, and so forth, this Committee; ought to take notice of it, especially when it cannot be said to impinge on the desire of the Government in their Bill.

§ Sir H. CAUTLEY
After what has just been said by the hon. Member opposite, I would point out that this Bill is a Derating Bill and not a Rating Bill, and if he wishes to bring in fresh hereditaments to be rated, he must bring them in in some other Bill, and not this one. That is the short answer. As to the other point he made about sporting rights, those rights are not dealt with. Those who indulge in that kind of sport will have to pay the same rates that they have paid hitherto. In fact, I go further, and I believe I am right in this, that the only woodlands exempted are not woodlands used for purposes of amenity or sport at all, but only those woodlands which are used for the sale of underwood. In the county of Sussex there are farms 43 with small woods where, in the course of husbandry, the wood is cut and sold for firewood or other purposes. It is those that are exempted, and woods for amenity are not dealt with at all.

§ Mr. BROMLEY
As the hon. and learned Gentleman is willing to assist me in this, may I suggest to him, in all courtesy, that he knows as well as I do that in certain of these covers which are now coming within this category there is certainly timber taken from them, but their only purpose, in fact, is for the preservation of game?

§ Sir H. CAUTLEY
If those woods are let to a tenant for sporting rights they become rateable as sporting rights, but if the occupier of land uses his own land as a farm and also for shooting purposes, those sporting rights are not rateable now. This Bill makes no alteration whatever in the incidence of rates on such sporting rights.

§ Colonel WEDGWOOD
I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment.

§ The CHAIRMAN
I think the only other Amendment in order on this Clause is the last one in the name of the right hon. and gallant Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Colonel Wedgwood), in page 45, line 29, to leave out Subsection (2).

§ Colonel WEDGWOOD
I do not propose to move that Amendment. It is really a formal Amendment to preserve upon the rating book the figures, although the subject is not rated. I do not think it is the slightest use moving it, and I suppose, if you will permit me, to speak on the Question "That the Clause stand part of the Bill."

§ Colonel WEDGWOOD
This Bill, as I have stated, has been called by a title entirely different from the title of the Bill. It has been called a De-rating Bill, and the Clause which I am now proposing should be rejected is the de-rating Clause in the Bill. From de-rating the Government hope—we all hope—to get an enormous benefit to industry. The productive industries of this country are to be relieved from rates, and thereby the 44 cost of production will come down, and, presumably, except in the cases of monopolies like the brewing industry, the product will become cheaper and the consumer will benefit. So far, on both sides of the Committee, we are agreed, but the objection to the Government's Measure is that it is partial. You are relieving factories in order to cheapen production and increase employment, but you are leaving that vast body of ratepayers in the retail trade liable to the full burden of the rates, knowing that the arguments you use to relieve the productive industries apply equally as truly to the distributive industries.

§ The CHAIRMAN
I must point out that this Clause deals with the relief of agricultural land.

§ Colonel WEDGWOOD
Amongst other things.

§ The CHAIRMAN
It is confined to agriculture.

§ Colonel WEDGWOOD
"Total exemption of agricultural land and buildings from rates."

§ The CHAIRMAN
It is confined to agricultural land and agricultural buildings.

§ Colonel WEDGWOOD
I am coming to agricultural land and buildings, because there you have the key to the situation. So far as the Government's De-rating Measure applies to buildings or improvements of any kind created by man, so far we are with them in supporting their proposals, and in urging that they should carry their principles to their logical conclusion. in this Clause they de-rate agricultural land and agricultural buildings, but they leave rated the farmhouse. On the principles which they themselves lay down they should de-rate the farmhouse and the farm buildings, but leave the rates instead upon the land value, which is in an entirely different category from the improvements created by labour on the land. I would put it this way. In so far as the Government are de-rating agricultural improvements, they are cheapening the product of the farm. In so far as they are de-rating the value of agricultural land, they are not cheapening the product of the farm, but they are putting the money which they remit into 45 the pocket, in the first place, of the tenant farmer, and, certainly on any change of tenancy, into the pocket of the landowner. They are not thereby making the land more valuable, but they are making it more expensive for anyone who wishes to use it. This Measure gives relief amounting to some £4,500,000 in the case of agricultural land. That money will not benefit industry in any way; it will simply be taken out of the taxpayers' pockets and put into an increased price of land. If it would increase the value of the land to the user, nobody would complain, but, if it is merely added to the price of land, it is going to make the position of the unemployed in this country worse than it is at the present moment, because they will have to pay a higher price or a higher rent for the use of the land, which, unrated, will be able to extract a higher price in the market.
I do not know if the Committee follow me. Here you are increasing the price of land; you are making it more difficult for the unemployed man, if he should want an allotment, a small holding, or a house, to get a piece of land, because the price of that land will be more. You are adding, not £4,500,000, but you are adding a capitalisation of, say, 20 years' purchase of £4,500,000, or £90,000,000. You are adding that in one lump sum to the price of British land, so that anyone who wants to buy British land has to pay more for the privilege. That obviously makes the barrier between the unemployed man and the raw material to which he must get access in order to start work, higher and more difficult to get over than it is at the present time, and, therefore, in so far as you de-rate agricultural land, you are actually increasing the compulsion of unemployment in this country. Let me put it the other way. Suppose that, instead of de-rating agricultural land, you imposed a tax or rate upon agricultural land. If that were done, no one would be more determined in his complaints than the hon. and learned Member for East Grinstead (Sir H. Cautley). He would point out at once that we were—

§ Sir H. CAUTLEY
Agricultural land cannot stand any more taxes or rates of any kind.

§ Colonel WEDGWOOD
Exactly. This is precisely the reverse. If you put a tax 46 or rate on agricultural land, you injure the landlord, and the price of the land comes down. If you do the reverse—if you take an existing rate or tax off agricultural land—obviously the price goes up and the landlord benefits. You cannot have it both ways. If the hon. and learned Gentleman, in his idea rightly, objects to the tax or rate on land because it reduces the price and injures the landlord, then, at any rate, he ought to accept the fact that, if you remove an existing rate or tax, to that extent you benefit the landlord. But what I want to point out is not so much this present of £90,000,000 to the landlords, but the injury that it does to employment in the country, and the additional barrier that it sets up between the unemployed man and the raw material which he must get.
Hon. Members will, I think, agree with me that all useful productive work, the only sort of work that we want to increase in this country, must begin by the application of labour in some form to the land. If you bar the primary trades —the building trade, the agricultural industry, the mining and quarrying trades —off from their raw material, they will suffer unemployment, but it is not only the primary trades that will suffer unemployment. If the man in a primary trade cannot start a job, all the other people in the community who complete the processes of manufacture and distribute the goods will lose their chance of a job, too; so that, every time you make land more expensive, you are thereby creating unemployment, not merely among the people who use the land, but among all the other people who will distribute goods or complete processes of manufacture. If you realise that all useful work must begin by the application of labour to the land, you will realise the position which I am always anxious that the House of Commons should understand, namely, that these proposals which I am putting forward to rate or tax land values are intended, not to bring in revenue, but to make land cheap, because everything that we can do to make land cheap, so far from being an injury to the country, is an enormous benefit to the people of the country who depend on production. Anything which will make that essential raw material easier to get at is going to benefit the whole community by increasing production and thereby cheapening goods.
47 The people who own the land, however, will not have it. Obviously, the people who own the land own the right to keep people unemployed, and every additional power that you put into their hands to keep people unemployed is going to increase the unemployment in the country. By de-rating this land you are putting into those people's hands even greater powers than they possess at the present time to keep people unemployed. You think of it as only affecting a few smallholders or allotment gardeners, but, in effect, it hits the whole of the productive working community in the country. That is why I beg the Committee to reject this Clause—because it exempts agricultural land from rates, enabling the landlords to put up the price of land against anyone who wishes to use it, and, incidentally, because it puts into the pockets of the agricultural landlords of this country £90,000,000. It is a monstrous case of a Government deliberately using the taxpayers' money to benefit their own particular friends. The hon. and learned Member for East Grin-stead is as old as I am, and his memory will go back to the time when Lord George Hamilton, in connection with this precise problem,, justified the remission of a quarter of the rates upon agricultural land on the distinct ground that the Government were justified in helping their friends. Here they are helping them on a much larger scale than they did then—

§ Sir H. CAUTLEY
That was the tenant farmers.

§ Colonel WEDGWOOD
I am sorry that the hon. and learned Gentleman made that interjection, because he knows as well as I do that the tenant farmers are an admirable screen behind which to fight, but that it is the landlord who at last gets the benefit. Everybody who looks at this question from the point of view of the public interest should reprobate and check any attempt on the part of the Government to select a certain body of people in the country for direct benefit at the expense of the vast mass of the people of the country. When it is a question of a subsidy to the coal industry, Members on all sides say that we cannot have the community as a whole contributing £20,000,000 to the coal industry in this country. We are all 48 agreed upon that. Why are we not equally agreed on this question of contributing £4,500,000 a year, or £90,000,000 in all, to a class in the country who are now prosperous, and who, by the revolution in transport which is going on, are being made more and more prosperous as their land rises day by day and year by year? Here you are benefiting one class of the community at the expense of the whole, and here you have a Government which is content to go to the country having benefited their friends at the expense of the rest of the country.

§ Sir H. CAUTLEY
The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Neweastle-under-Lyme (Colonel Wedgwood) is incorrigible. I. would, however, just remind him of a few things, though with no hope of changing his opinions. I would point out, first of all, that every argument that he has used on this Clause is equally applicable to the whole of the de-rating proposals in the Bill. Every argument that he has used, if true, would apply equally to business premises, and, according to him, the rents of those premises will go up if this Bill is passed.

§ Colonel WEDGWOOD
I am very sorry if the hon. and learned Member is under that impression. Any rates levied upon the result of human labour applied to the land pass on to the consumer—

§ Sir H. CAUTLEY
Why?

§ Colonel WEDGWOOD
May I give to the hon. and learned Gentleman the ordinary view of political economists on this matter? I thought it was recognised on all sides of the Committee. For instance, Thorold Rogers says: The power of transferring a tax from the person who actually pays it to some other person varies with the object taxed. A tax on rent cannot be transferred. A tax on commodities is always transferred to the consumer.

§ Sir H. CAUTLEY
Part of the cost of the products of the farm is the rent and the rates that farmers have hitherto paid. Part of the cost of goods in industry is the rent and rates on the hereditaments where those goods are produced. Both kinds of products, whether produced on the farm or in industrial hereditaments, have to be sold in competition in the open market, and the whole of the argument which the right 49 hon. Gentleman has addressed to this Clause dealing with agricultural hereditaments equally applies to industrial hereditaments. The right hon. Gentleman is going down to the principle of the Bill. The House, however, passed the Second Reading by an enormous majority, and, as regards agricultural land, the tenant farmer has suffered, and the owner of land has suffered, quite as much as, and I personally think more than, the occupiers of the vast majority of the industrial hereditaments dealt with in this Bill.
A further point made by the right hon. Gentleman was that all these rates must go back into the landlord's pocket- I wish the right hon. Gentleman would remove himself from the world of theory and come down to actual practice. He has referred to the Agricultural Rates Act, 1896. We have had 32 years' experience of that Act. I would remind the right hon. Gentleman that it was the first Act which reduced the assessment of agricultural land to one-half of its annual value. Has the right hon. Gentleman's party ever attempted to repeal that Act? Has the Liberal party ever attempted to repeal that Act? Would the right hon. Gentleman say now that, if by any misfortune his party got into office, they would repeal that Act? Perhaps he would let the agricultural industry of this country know if that is the intention of his party. He knows perfectly well that there are figures and facts which show the amount realised under Schedule A. I have not the figures before me, because this matter has been raised unexpectedly to-day so far as I am concerned, but after the Act of 1896 there was no increase such as the right hon. Gentleman foretells, nor is it the fact that anything has gone into the landowner's pocket. The rates were further reduced in 1923, when the assessment of agricultural land was put at one quarter of its value instead of one-half. Does the right hon. Gentleman suggest that rents have gone up in the last five years?

§ Mr. RILEY
Certainly.

§ Sir H. CAUTLEY
On what authority does the hon. Member make that statement?

§ Mr. RILEY
The Farmers' Union.

§ Sir H. CAUTLEY
Where are there any statistics or figures to show that rents are higher to-day than they were in 1923? I could produce facts and figures to show that they have diminished, rather than increased. I think this de-rating is a substantial advantage to an industry which is in a very perilous position. It represents about £5,000,000 of money which is going to the producers of corn and beef and mutton and the products of the farm which will somewhat lessen the cost of their production and will do something to meet the competition that we have from abroad, for the foreigner knows that this country is the best market in the world.

§ Mr. E. BROWN
Surely the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for East Grinstead (Sir H. Cautley) in rebuking the right hon. Gentleman for going too far in one way, has himself gone too far the other. I do not think anyone would controvert his major proposition, but surely he would agree that in innumerable instances where tenancies have been broken, the rent has been put up to individual farmers. I have heard of a case to-day where a break has taken place and the rent has been increased from 21s. 6d. to 27s. I will not re-argue the general question, but when the hon. and learned Gentleman rebukes the right hon. Gentleman he himself falls into the same error if he leads the Committee and the country to believe that it is not the case that, when tenancies are broken and things are favourable, rents are not increased. It is the intention of this Clause to help the producer of agricultural land, so that by de-rating he may be able to employ more people and produce more food. I regret that it has not been possible to get a legal statement in the Clause, so that, as far as the law can make it so, the relief shall really go to the hard-pressed tenant farmer. In another part of the Bill, an attempt is made to do this. Paragraph 9 of Schedule 10 says: The relief to occupiers of agricultural hereditaments granted by this Act shall not he taken into account by an arbitrator in determining for the purposes of Section 12 of the Agricultural Holdings Act, 1923, what rent is properly payable in respect of a holding. If that is true in cases of arbitration to determine rent, surely it is equally true 51 with regard to the price of land at the breaking of a tenancy. I would ask the Minister to consider between now and Report if it is not possible to have some declaratory form of words, such as is contained in Schedule 10, to ensure what we all desire, that if relief is given it shall go to those who really want it, who will make use of it to increase agricultural produce, so that the House may know, before it passes the Bill, that the relief will go to the tenant, and that the de-rating shall not be taken into consideration when the owner seeks to make a new lease. It is a very substantial point, and, despite what the hon. and learned Gentleman has said, there is a good deal of feeling in rural England, as well as in the landward parts of Scotland, that if relief is to be given from public sources it ought to go, not to the landowner, but to the man who is really the producer, whether a smallholder or a tenant farmer.

§ Mr. RILEY
I want to emphasise the point the hon. Member for Leith (Mr. E. Brown) has just made. There was such a provision in the Corn Production Act of 1917, and, unless the Government are prepared to insert some definite declaration to the effect that the relief intended for the tenant shall not be taken into account in renewing tenancies and fixing new terms, it will inevitably go to the owner. That argument has been traversed by one or two hon. Members opposite to-day. Probably no one would say that existing tenants generally will be deprived of the benefits conferred by the Bill, but all the evidence goes to show that, once tenancies are terminated, what is given passes straight away, not to the future tenant, but to the owner. I saw a paragraph in the "Manchester Guardian" three weeks ago with regard to the sale of a small holding in Cheshire, for which no less than £98 per acre was realised, an altogether unparalleled price. The only reason given was the advantage to be conferred by this Bill. I agree entirely with the hon. and learned Gentleman that what applies to agricultural occupancies will apply to all kinds of tenancies, and in urban industrial premises the same thing is likely to occur where the occupier is not the owner. The people who will gain in the long run are those who own the premises. It is obvious that the occupying owner of a 52 farm gains. He is relieved of the remainder of the rates, and he is under no liability to an increase of rent, whereas, if he sells, he realises.
The same, of course, applies to all kinds of tenancies where the occupier is the owner. He gets the benefit. If he is subject to a terminating of the tenancy, the owner is in a position to say at the end of the term: "You have an advantage that you did not have before, and you must pay more rent." The hon. and learned Gentleman questions whether these things are taking place. I was speaking to a farmer in Anglesey a fortnight ago, and he told me it has been the custom there for several years, owing to bad times, to have regular reductions in rent. Already the owners have intimated that for next year there is to be no reduction, because of the advantage of the relief of rates. It is up to the Government, if they really mean what they say, that they want this relief to go to the producing occupier, to have some provision that secures that benefit.

§ Mr. MORRIS
If this Clause stood by itself unrelated to other parts of the Bill, or to other Acts on the Statute Book, there could be no question that it would benefit the farmers, but, if you examine it more closely, it seeks to do two things. It de-rates agricultural land, and it de-rates agricultural buildings, and those two classes must be kept separately in mind, because the provisions applying to both already on the Statute Book are totally different, and the results of the Clause will be different. Agricultural land is de-rated already under the Agricultural Rates Acts of 1896 and 1923. Under the Act of 1923, 25 per cent. of the land is de-rated and 50 per cent. under the Act of 1896. This Bill adds the other 25 per cent., giving complete de-rating. The effect, so far as local authorities ate concerned, is set out in the Memorandum. It shows that £1,320,000 is paid in respect of the deficiency to local authorities under the Act of 1896 and a further £3,000,000 is paid in respect of the deficiency under the Act of 1923, making a total of £4,720,000 paid by the Treasury. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health estimated that the total rates on agricultural land throughout the country were some £12,000,000. If the 53 whole deficiency were made up to local authorities, they would be entitled to £9,000,000, but all they get is £4,720,000, and there remains a deficiency of somewhere in the neighbourhood of £5,000,000. That has to be borne by the ratepayers in rural areas, and the additional rate in my division amounts to 1s. 7d. in the £. It is not entirely met, and this Bill does not provide for that deficiency.
We have been told over and over again that the whole of agricultural land and buildings has been de-rated, and the inference we are allowed to draw from that is that the local rating authorities will get the full benefit of the £12,000,000, but when we turn to the Bill that is not the case at all. It is true that in the Twelfth Schedule, the Acts of 1896 and 1923 are set down as being repealed. This is what happens. The losses of the local authority are to be made up under the Bill under two headings, namely, the losses of rates to the local authorities and the losses of grants to the local authorities. Clearly if under this Clause you de-rate the whole of agricultural land, the losses in respect of the land will fall into two categories. There will be losses in respect of the land de-rated under this Clause—the 25 per cent.—and the losses with regard to the existing 75 per cent. de-rated under the other two Acts will be losses in respect of grants. The losses in respect of grants will be £4,720,000. That sum will still have to be made good. It will be a stabilised figure. Notwithstanding the repeal of the Act of 1896, under the Schedule to this Bill, the provision will still remain operative, because losses of grants and losses of rates are going to be payable by the Treasury. The. losses in respect of 75 per cent. under the two previous Acts will be losses of grants and not losses of rates at all.
In answer to a question some time ago, the Minister said that the subsidy to be provided by the Treasury would be £4,000,000 to meet the deficiency presumably under this Bill, although his words did not clearly indicate it. This would mean that the grant paid by the Treasury would be £4,720,000, plus another £4,000,000, making a total of £8,720,000. That is in respect of both land and buildings. Take the estimate of the right hon. Gentleman the Parliamentary Secretary in respect of the build- 54 ings. This would mean an additional £1,000,000 on the rates and would bring the total up to £13,000,000. I deduct £8,000,000, and it leaves a deficiency somewhere in the neighbourhood of £5,000,000 or £6,000,000. I make that calculation on the assumption that the assessments remain as they are to-day. But they are not going to remain as they are to-day. They are going up as a result of the increased deficiency. That is my point with regard to land.
I come to agricultural buildings. This Clause purports to de-rate the whole of agricultural buildings. What is going to be the net result? If the agricultural buildings were being de-rated for the first time, I have no doubt that under this Bill the deficiency would be made good. But when one examines the existing position he finds that under the Rating and Valuation Act, 1925, agricultural lands are de-rated already to the extent of 75 per cent. Losses will fall on the local authorities from the 1st April of this year. This Bill provides for making good those losses. In order to ascertain what is the loss of rates, the local authority will have to certify, in the first place, the unreduced rateable value of the area, and, in the second place, the reduced rateable value, and then take the difference between those two and consider the proportionate relationship between them. What will be the result. Taking the Act of 1925 as being in force, the 75 per cent. will have been de-rated on the 1st April. If it had not been in force, clearly the local authority could have put down as the rateable value of the area the total assessment of the agricultural buildings, but, the Bating and Valuation Act being in force from the 1st April, it will only be able to put 25 per cent. of that sum as representing the unreduced value of the area, and therefore the whole loss of the 75 per cent. will fall on the local authority and will have to be borne by the ratepayers—the farmer and the other ratepayers alike. This is going to be the result. The right hon. Gentleman the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health shakes his head.

§ The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the MINISTRY of HEALTH (Sir Kingsley Wood)
It is quite true.

§ Mr. MORRIS
The right hon. Gentleman says that it is quite right. What 55 is the result? The farmhouse and the cottages, if any, are to be subject to a rate. Furthermore, at the present moment the new assessments are continuing under the Rating and Valuation Act, 1925, and invariably these assessments are being increased. It is the common experience. Assessments are going up by 10 per cent., in some cases by 30 per cent. and in others by as much as 50 per cent. I notice that in some cases local authorities are recommending —I dare say quite naturally—that the farmer ought to have his land and buildings assessed as high as possible, because he is going to have them totally de-rated. The recommendation is made on the assumption that the local authority is going to get more money out of the Treasury, but actually the exact opposite will be the case. Obviously, the higher the assessment the greater will be the deficiency, and the greater the deficiency the higher the additional rate must be in order to meet it, and that rate will fall upon the farmer and upon everyone else in a rural area. That would be the result of this Clause, in its present form, and of the Bill. I should vote for this Clause as it stands if it were unrelated to other parts of the Bill and I had an assurance that the deficiency was going to be made good. If this deficiency, and probably a greater deficiency, is going to fall on the rural ratepayers, I shall be compelled to vote against the Clause.

§ Sir K. WOOD
The Government welcome the Amendment which has been moved by the right and gallant Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Colonel Wedgwood). It seeks to leave out of the Bill the total exemption from rates of agricultural land and buildings. They welcome it, because they hope that it will afford an opportunity for a Division in the Committee, when we shall -see exactly where everybody stands in relation to this matter.

§ The CHAIRMAN
I must point out to the right hon. Gentleman that no Amendment has been moved. The Clause has to be put in any case.

§ Sir K. WOOD
I am sorry, but I was misled by the speeches of hon. Members opposite. In any event, I hope that we shall have an opportunity of dividing on 56 this question. The hon. Gentleman the Member for Cardigan (Mr. Morris) made a very interesting speech in which he recalled to the Committee many of the facts in connection with the previous history of the partial exemption of agricultural land. A good many of the facts which he has put before the Committee are quite true and have been pointed out on a previous occasion. His last point in relation to farm buildings dealt with a proposal which, as was pointed out by my right hon. Friend, has already been put on the Statute Book. That has little or no relation to the particular matter we have to consider at the present time. Neither the hon. Gentleman nor his party can ride off on an issue of that kind. What we have to decide this afternoon is whether or not agricultural land and buildings should be totally exempted from rates. I am very interested to observe exactly what hon. Members who belong to the party of the hon. Member for Cardigan are going to do in regard to this matter, because the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) and Sir Herbert Samuel, are still going up and down the country, not using the argument of the hon. Gentleman, but saying that to give this relief is wholly? wrong, and that it is simply a dole and putting money into the hands of the landlords. These statements are still being made, but no Member of the Liberal party in the House of Commons, during the course of these Debates, has got up and said so. Therefore, we are having one hon. Member after another, as did the hon. Gentleman the Member for Leith (Mr. E. Brown), saying that they are not quite certain about this matter.

§ Mr. E. BROWN
The right hon. Gentleman is not showing his usual fairness. He knows perfectly well that this issue was decided, as far as classification was concerned, in July of last year and that I voted with him on the matter. He knows that, and therefore he is quite unfair in trying to put that point.

§ Sir K. WOOD
The rebellion and the division in the Liberal party is growing more and more plain. I thought that of all Members the hon. Member for Leith would have have been the first to support the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs. Now, apparently, he is not ashamed to differ alto- 57 gether from the policy of the leaders of his party and has actually voted against them.

§ Mr. BROWN
The whole party so voted, and you know it.

§ Sir K. WOOD
When the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs reads this, he will, no doubt, cause an inquiry to be made. At any rate, this is simply the issue, and it is no good the hon. Gentleman the Member for Cardigan raising a lot of points which do not affect the particular matter now before the Committee. The issue is a perfectly plain one and was put quite fairly by hon. Gentlemen opposite belonging to the Socialist party. They say, quite candidly, that they are opposed to it and believe that it is putting money into the wrong pockets. They go along theorising as they have done for the last few years and ignoring altogether the practical effects of what has followed from partial exemption in relation to agriculture. The right hon. and gallant Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme still prefers to take this course and not to look round and see what is happening in regard to partial exemption in this respect. Everyone knows that none of the things which hon. Gentlemen opposite' said would happen have happened in connection with the partial exemption of agricultural land. Rents have not gone up. They still prefer to adopt their old policy, their retrograde policy, of ignoring what is going on around them and declining to give some relief to an industry which very badly wants it at the present time. I hope that agriculturists and farmers who are asking for this relief will note what the Socialist party are doing to-night and scrutinise very carefully the Division list so far as this matter is concerned.

§ Miss LAWRENCE
I always listen to the right hon. Gentleman the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health with the utmost possible pleasure, but, when he told us that he could show that rents had not gone up, I think he was rather more bold in his speech than he is usually. I want to speak about this Clause from the point of view of agriculturists. If you read it, the Clause seems to say that no person shall pay rates in respect of agricultural land. Many innocent Members, and, I believe, even some Ministers, have been to the 58 farmer to tell him that he will be relieved of all rates in the future. That is not true. If you look at the definition of rates in the various Acts, you will see that the heaviest rate, the most unjustifiable rate, the rate which is doing more damage to agriculture in many counties than any other single cause, is left. I refer, of course, to the Drainage Bate.
The drainage rates in agriculture have been condemned a great number of times. What the Government are doing is only, in Clause 61, putting the drainage rates off the land on to the proprietor. I am assured by a very important town clerk that, as far as buildings are concerned, the provisions in Clause 61 mean that we shall leave the larger buildings where they are and increase the tribute from the smaller buildings. That is a point which may have escaped the Minister. A house of £10 rental which is assessed for rates at £6 is assessed at £7 10s. under Schedule A for Income Tax. In the same way, where a £15 house is assessed at £9 for rates it is assessed at £11 5s. under Schedule A. Therefore, the small houses will have to pay more. That is a detail. My point is, that the one rate which has been condemned by Royal Commission after Royal Commission is the drainage rate. The Royal Commission on Agriculture said that in many instances land is burdened with a drainage rate so heavy as to cripple the resources of the holders. The Royal Commission give horrible instances of the effect of the drainage rate. They give instances where the drainage rate is as much as £2 per acre, and other instances where the drainage rate is so high as to make the land unsaleable.
If ever there was an inequitable tribute levied on any class of persons, that tribute is the drainage rate in the Fen country. I cannot understand why this local question of most burning importance has been overlooked by the hon. Members for Huntingdon, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Soke of Peterborough and the Isle of Ely. The most casual person cannot speak to a Fen man without realising with what rage the drainage rate is regarded. In the Fens the drainage rate is resented by a class of people of an especially manly spirit, whose ancestors, under Hereward the Wake, were the last people to defend our country against a foreign invader. 59 These people have habitually resisted the drainage rate. So cruel is this imposition that the people in those districts habitually refuse to pay it. This question is of importance also in Somerset, Wiltshire and the East Riding of Yorkshire, and there are also flooded districts in Oxfordshire and Berkshire. The Royal Commission points out that the burden of the drainage rate is an indefensible burden, that it ruins a great many agricultural occupiers and that in many eases it cannot be collected.
While the Government the quite willing to help the farmers who have good, dry land and whose rates are, perhaps, 6s. or 7s., they leave untouched the wretched people to whom I have referred who are paying rates in some cases so high that the land has lost all value. If this Clause is to be passed we shall press to have the drainage rate included as the most burdensome. We shall move to have an Amendment of the definition of rate so as to bring in all the rates levied by the Commissioners of Sewers, Elective and Special Drainage Authorities, and those under four special Acts. We shall vote against Clause 61 and we intend to move that the drainage authorities shall be refunded the money they lose by the abolition of the drainage rate as are the counties and towns. We say that, because we believe that if there ever was a rate which is killing people's industry it is the drainage rate in agriculture. If the Committee pass this Clause we shall endeavour to ensure that drainage rates are abolished and that an equivalent amount shall be refunded to the drainage authorities. The whole business of local drainage needs remodelling, but that cannot be done under the Title of this Bill. What we propose will, at any rate, relieve the people for whom I have been pleading, and will give a subsequent Ministry an opportunity, in a clean field, to deal with one of the worst forms of rating in local government.

§ Mr. TOMLINSON
I should like to draw attention to a statement made and the argument used by the hon. and learned Member for East Grinstead (Sir H. Cautley) in regard to the effect of the Agricultural Rates Acts of 1896 and 1923. It has been assumed that because there was no increase in rent after the passing of those Acts, the benefit went to the tenant farmer and not to the land- 60 lord. I take strong exception to any such statement. If hon. Members will recollect the position of agriculture in 1896, they will remember that there was an outcry for reduction of rents from all sides, and relief was given in the Act, but in many cases it prevented the reduction of rents which otherwise would have had to be given. Just to the extent that that protected landlords from the necessity of granting any reduction of rent, so it as surely went into their pockets as if it had meant an increase in rent. The same thing happened in 1923. There was an outcry for a reduction of rent at that time, and further relief was given to agriculture by Parliament, and that just as certainly benefited the landlord by saving him from giving a reduction of rent as if it had meant an increase in rent. The statement that has been made so often from the Government benches that the fact that there was no increase in rent after the passing of the Acts of 1896 and 1923 is a proof that the benefit went into the pockets of the tenant farmer, is a statement which ought not to be accepted without question.
Like other hon. Members, I have had instances brought to my notice where, during the past two or three months, when a tenant has applied for or taken a farm, he has been met with the statement: "Have you forgotten that after next year there will be no rates to pay!" In one particular case, a farmer bid the old rent, and the land agent, in my judgment very foolishly, said to the prospective tenant: "You will have to bid more rent or you will not be the tenant." "But I bid the old rent," said the farmer. "This is no time for asking for an increase in rent." The agent replied: "Have you forgotten that there will be no rates after next year?" That farm was let for £20 a year more than it was let for to the old tenant. That is a proof that the benefit is not always finding its way into the pockets of the occupier of the land. I would like to ask the Minister whether he will consider, between now and the Report stage, the introduction of some such Amendment as the one referred to by the hon. Member for Leith (Mr. E. Brown), in the ninth paragraph of the Tenth Schedule, to ensure that the benefit shall go to the tenant farmer? I believe it is the intention of the Minister concerned that the tenant farmer shall get the benefit. In 61 his reply to the hon. Member for Cardigan (Mr. Morris), the right hon. Gentleman failed entirely to deal with the points raised, which were points of great interest. Under the Agricultural Rates Act, 1896, everybody connected with agriculture recognised that a great mistake was made, and members of the present Government recognised it, because when they found it necessary to give further relief to agriculture under the Agricultural Rates Act of 1923, the mistake of giving a fixed Exchequer grant was remedied, and the amount contributed by the Exchequer was not based on the assessment in force in that year, but was 25 per cent. of the assessments on agricultural land, the amount being determined by half-yearly ascertainments.
I had hoped that the mistake made in 1896 would have been put right and that under this new Bill a sum equal to the full amount of the rates on agricultural land and buildings in the standard year would have been the Exchequer contribution, instead of which I find that the old grievance will be perpetuated, as the Exchequer grant will only be a sum equal to the 25 per cent. now being paid by occupiers of land, plus the grants given under the Agricultural Bates Acts of 1893 and 1923. If the contribution from the National Exchequer is not going to to based on that figure it will not be that relief to agriculture which is so often assumed when the Bill is explained to audiences of farmers in rural areas. I have been trying to find out whether the Government have made provision for making a contribution from the National Exchequer to meet the relief that is to be given on 1st April on farm buildings. The 75 per cent. relief which is now given on agricultural land is to be extended to agricultural buildings, but I cannot find that there is any contribution from the National Exchequer to meet the Concession that has been given. That concession is given to the occupier of the buildings, but it is given to him by the people in the rating area, who have to make good the amount that will be lost. If the National Exchequer made a contribution to the relief that was given under the 1923 Act, on land, how is it that there was not provision made for the same relief from the Exchequer to be given to agriculture when that relief was applied to agricultural buildings? I am 62 strongly of opinion that the effect will be as has been set out by the hon. Member for Cardigan, and I hope that before the Third Reading of the Bill we shall have some definite assurance from the Government that these very important points affecting the occupiers of land in agricultural areas have been considered and that adequate safeguards will be provided.