RESOLUTION. (Hansard, 6 July 1877)

§ THE EARL OF REDESDALE
, on rising to call attention to the Correspondence between the Earl of Redesdale and the Postmaster General laid before the House on the 28th June last; and to move a Resolution, remarked that no man had been a more consistent supporter of the Government than himself; but that, as Chairman of Committees appointed by the House to watch over its private legislation, he had thought it his duty to take the course he was now pursuing. He desired that, at any rate, the responsibility in respect of these clauses should rest upon the House, and not upon himself. The provisions which the Post Office sought to introduce into certain Private Bills appeared to him objectionable, not in themselves, but because they would be of piecemeal and partial application in the country, and as the Postmaster General had challenged his right to veto them, he had deemed it right to bring the question under the notice of the House. In the Correspondence which had passed on the subject, the Postmaster General reminded him that the assent of the Crown must be given to any Private Bill affecting Crown property before it could pass. That statement was, no doubt, true, but it applied only to landed property of the Crown, which could only be dealt with in special Bills relating to particular cases. The Post Office clauses wore of a different character altogether. They were to a considerable extent positive enactments conferring certain rights and privileges upon the Postmaster General as against the corporations or companies in whose Bills they were to be inserted. Now, if those clauses were required on public grounds, they ought, in his opinion, to be applied to all companies, in all parts 879 of the Kingdom, and not merely to those who happened to have particular Bills before Parliament. In. one town a Gas Bill would subject the gas works to the penalties laid down by the Postmaster General, while the waterworks in the same town which had no Bill would escape scot-free. A corporation with a Bill was made liable, while the companies in the same place were not. That seemed to him an extremely unfair mode of proceeding with regard to public property. Whatever provisions the Postmaster General might think necessary for the working of the telegraphs ought, in his opinion, to be uniform in their application, and to form the subject of public legislation. He accordingly declined to sanction the introduction of the clauses referred to in the private Bills. His views on the subject were fully embodied in the Correspondence which he now moved should be laid before the House, and he trusted the subject would receive from their Lordships the attention which, in his opinion, it deserved.

THE LORD CHANCELLOR
fully acknowledged the great energy and activity which his noble Friend had always shown in the conduct of Private Business, and the great weight of his authority on that subject; but he was nevertheless of opinion that, in the present instance, he had taken an altogether untenable position. The Resolution he had submitted to the House was, he would venture to say, without parallel in Parliamentary history. His noble Friend did not say that the clauses to which he referred were improper clauses—he only said that they ought to be made general. Whether the clauses in question ought to be introduced into certain private Bills was a point which his noble Friend was perfectly entitled to raise. He might have moved that one of those Bills should be considered in Committee of the Whole House, and he might then have taken the opinion of the House upon the clauses to which he objected. But instead of following that course—which would have been in accordance with Parliamentary practice—his noble Friend had introduced a Motion apply- 880 ing to particular clauses in something like half-a-hundred Bills, and the result might be this—The House might be induced—though that was not very likely—to accept the Motion, and when the clauses in question came before it in each of those Bills it might vote in the opposite way. He (the Lord Chancellor) entirely protested against the Motion, and in all friendliness challenged his noble Friend to produce a single example of such a course as he proposed being adopted in either House of Parliament. What was the nature of the clauses to which the Motion of his noble Friend applied? They were simply intended to prevent Gas and other companies who had obtained power to carry out public improvements from meddling with the telegraph wires and poles without obtaining the consent of the Postmaster General or his representatives; and if such interferences took place penalties were made exigible. These were, surely, safe provisions. As an example of the kind of cases for which some provision of that kind was necessary, he might mention that, at Manchester, some workmen finding telegraph wires in their way, cut them without notice, and thus caused great inconvenience to the public. There were now something like 60 Private Bills which had come up from the other House, in which the Post Office Department had proposed in the other House that those protective clauses should be inserted. Into a great number of them they were introduced with the consent of the promoters; but with regard to others objections were made by the promoters. Those objections were considered by Select Committees of the other House, and the result was that the clauses were inserted either as they had been first proposed or, in some particular cases, with modifications suited to the locality in which they were to be applied. Those Bills had come up to their Lordships' House, and the question which his noble Friend raised was whether it was right that that House should reject those clauses which, after consideration and in many instances with the consent of the promoters had been inserted in the other House. There was also a certain number of other Bills—bringing the whole up to about 100—as to which the question was sub judice in this House, whether clauses of that description should be introduced. There- 881 fore, what his noble Friend proposed was that they should undo what had been done in the other House in the ease of some 60 Bills, and declare what they would refuse to do in respect to some 40 more Bills. His noble Friend said that if those clauses were proper to be introduced, they ought to be introduced by a general measure. He conceded that it might be advisable to introduce those clauses by a general measure, and there was a strong probability that they would be so introduced; but still, it was new to him that it was contrary to Parliamentary practice or at all unusual when the promoters of private Bills came to Parliament for powers to enable them to interfere with public property or public rights of a particular kind, for Parliament to put them under terms requiring them in executing such powers not to do injury to those public rights. It was the most common of all cases for Parliament to require clauses of that kind to be inserted. His noble Friend had complained that the Government had brought in an additional Bishoprics Bill, and occupied the time of Parliament with that, whereas they ought to have endeavoured to pass a general Bill in regard to those clauses. With all courtesy he told his noble Friend that the Government must be the judges in a matter of that kind. He demurred to the proposition that because it might be desirable hereafter to have a general measure on that subject, therefore they were to allow the promoters of a number of Private Bills to carry them through Parliament, to acquire vested interests, and to meddle with public property without putting them under reasonable terms as to the exercise of those powers for which they were soliciting Parliament. He would commend to the attention of his noble Friend the passage in Sir Erskine May's valuable book as to the Practice of Parliament in regard to Private Bills. That work gave the history of what was done generally by the public Departments in regard to such Bills. The authorities of those Departments in both Houses frequently suggested Amendments in Private Bills, which were either agreed to by the promoters, or the promoters suggested similar Amendments of their own for the same purpose. The Board of Trade assisted at the revision of Railway Bills, and suggested such Amendments as 882 they thought necessary for the protection of the public, or for the saving of private rights. The Home Secretary exercised a similar supervision over turnpike road Bills. When, again, Private Bills affected places where there were naval dockyards, the Admiralty required protective clauses to be inserted. And so the Board of Trade, the Board of Health, the Treasury—in fact, there was not a single Department of the State which was not in the habit of watching in that way over the public interests committed to it, and of having the Private Bills of the year submitted to it, with a view to the insertion in them before Committees of both Houses of provisions analogous to those which the Post Office now required in the ease of the telegraphs. Finding in Private Bills powers taken the exercise of which would interfere with the telegraphs under their protection, the Post Office Department framed a set of model clauses, moderate and proper for their purpose, and they asked Parliament in the case of every such Bill to adopt them. Those clauses, in the great majority of instances, had been inserted without the slightest objection on the part of the promoters until they came to that House, when they found they had an unexpected ally in his noble Friend, who became their champion; and, although they had assented to the insertion of the clauses in the other House, those Gentlemen would be exceedingly glad to have them rejected in their Lordships' House. It was perfectly right, when an application was made in that House to have those clauses inserted in any Bill, that the question should be fairly considered whether there was a justification for their insertion; but a sweeping Resolution like that proposed by his noble Friend was an entirely different matter. The Post Office was only following the practice adopted by every other Department, yet his noble Friend said they were to have no protection until they had a general measure. But he submitted that those who came to Parliament for powers, in the exercise of which they might cause inconvenience to the telegraphic system of the country might fairly be put under the terms which Parliament thought just and reasonable.

EARL GEANVILLE
said, he was not surprised that the noble Earl the Chairman of Committees, having a strong 883 opinion, rightly or wrongly, that those clauses ought not to be introduced into Private Bills in the present manner, should have brought the matter before their Lordships. The noble Earl had suggested that the remedy on this subject would be to pass a general Bill with regard to it. In answer to that remark, the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack said that it was too late for Her Majesty's Government to introduce such a Bill this Session. He (Earl Granville) thought Her Majesty's Government ought to give a pledge that they would prepare and introduce such a Bill in the next Session.

§ THE EARL OF BEACONSFIELD
said, he quite admitted that a general Act on this subject should be passed, and Her Majesty's Government would undertake the duty of bringing in a general Bill. But he trusted that after the declaration on the part of the Government, there would be no further opposition to the Bills—of which the number was considerable—now before the House awaiting its sanction, and in which great interest was felt.

§ THE EARL OF REDESDALE
, in reply, said, he regarded these clauses as unjust, and the promise just given by the Prime Minister, in fact, admitted that they were so. Of course, if their Lordships took upon themselves the responsibility of sanctioning the insertion of them, it would be useless to press his Motion; but he must observe that their sanction of them was the worst precedent in his time with regard to Private Legislation.