SECOND READING. (Hansard, 11 April 1889)

*LORD STRATHEDEN AND CAMPBELL
My Lords, the circumstances under which the Second Reading of the Bill is urged upon the House, impose a statement which might have otherwise been easily avoided. Glad should I have been to move it formally and silently. It is hardly possible to do so, as I have to ask your Lordships—to some extent, at least—to rescind a Vote you previously arrived at. After the Bill had been repeatedly affirmed in principle, after it had been endorsed by a Select Committee, who went into it most accurately, after the Government had given notice of some further Amendments, and thus declared that it ought to go on, it was defeated in 1887 by the union of the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack with a noble Earl who often sits on the cross-benches (Earl of Wemyss), but who is not here this evening. Were it not for this to me disastrous combination, the Bill might now have been upon the Statute Book, and fogs such as we 188 observed to-day and yesterday at least considerably mitigated. I am ready to admit that the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack may have been misled by the noble Earl on the cross-benches. That noble Earl was under a very strong but most inaccurate impression, that the Bill gave local bodies a power to visit the interior of houses. But such a power is conspicuously absent. The local body may prohibit smoke, but cannot dictate any special manner of preventing it, or ascertain the cause from which it has arisen. The noble and learned Lord —to do him justice — did indeed advance a reason of his own for opposition to the measure. It was, that the vestry had too much discretionary power, because no maximum had been laid down as to the fine they may exact in certain cases. If the noble and learned Lord had moved the introduction of a maximum, the supporters of the Bill would have been ready to accede to it. But now a maximum is given. It is the same maximum as that provided by the Acts of Lord Palmerston against smoke in factories. It was objected to the Bill from other quarters that it enabled the vestry to exempt houses beneath a certain value, and so would operate unequally amongst the different classes of society. The exemption is removed, although its removal may tend to make vestries less inclined to use the privileges which the Bill confers upon them. The power of regulating new constructions, so that smoke may be prevented in them, which was accorded to the Metropolitan Board of Works, is transferred to the London County Council. It would have been possible to make the London County Council the sole executive authority. But the avowed principle of the Bill has always been that householders are only to be controlled by local bodies they can influence. If any one dislikes the Bill, or dreads its operation, he has only to go down to the vestry, and persuade them not to make a byelaw or exercise the power delegated to them. It may be observed without the slightest disrespect, that it is impossible to estimate beforehand the disposition or the prudence of the new councils. But setting that aside, as regards inspection, the vestries have machinery the London County Council has not yet arrived at. From what has reached me 189 I am led to think that if your Lordships hesitate about the Bill it is from doubt as to the facility of checking smoke in private houses. In a former Session I enumerated a dozen modes of doing so. But as the number may have gone too far and tended to confusion, I will now only mention two or three which satisfy the difficulty. The object of a householder would be to reduce disturbance to a minimum. Without the slightest alteration in his fireplaces, he may burn coke and wood together. The heat is good, the flame sufficient, and hardly any smoke emerges. If that plan is objected to, he may slightly alter his existing fireplaces, still burning coal, in a manner Mr. Ernest Hart explained to the Select Committee. If he is willing to go further he may adopt the fireplace of Sir William Siemens, in which coke and gas are seen to operate together. The result is excellent when once attained, but it involves the necessary work for bringing gas up to the fender. The Bill has been subjected to the Vestries and the London County Council. No adverse resolution has been carried. It is true that some expense may be involved to those who do not act on the first of my suggestions for burning coke and wood together. A noble Lord who sat on the Select Committee formed an estimate of what he apprehended as the new and serious taxation to be imposed on the Metropolis, in order to restrain the smoke of private houses. But Mr. Rollo Russell, in an admirable lecture about a year ago, pointed out how much expense may be avoided which the smoky atmosphere occasions. Mr. Rollo Russell is a son of the late Lord Russell. He began life at the Foreign Office, where accuracy is traditional. His lecture was delivered to the Society of Arts before Sir Douglas Galton, and thus exposed to every variety of criticism. He is by far the most accomplished expert on the subject now before us. Some of the calculations he has given in an interesting table may be more useful than any argument which I could add to those in the possession of your Lordships. Extra washing for a city with suburbs containing 4,000,000 inhabitants, £2,000,000. Restoring gilding, metal work, shop-fronts, signs, names of streets, advertisements at stations, monuments, &c., (e.g., Albert Memorial) £100,000. 190 Destruction of mortar, cement, &c., repointing and pointing bricks (see Angus Smith), £20,000. Chimney sweeping: 1,000,000 chimneys at 18. each, £50,000. Escape as smoke or soot of 1–100th of fuel burnt into atmosphere and chimneys, £100,000. Waste of one-fourth of the coal used by uneconomical and smoke-producing kitchen ranges and fireplaces, £1,000,000. Increased mortality: impairment of health, illness and consequent expense caused by smoke fogs and smoky air; lowered vitality hindering quick recovery from illness, and in general reducing capacity for work; children kept from school, &c., £320,000. Damage to trees, plants, shrubs, flowers, vegetables, fruits in and around London, in woods, parks, gardens, squares, conservatories, windows, nursery-gardens, orchards, &c., £50,000. Total, £5,200,500 per annum. It may be said that figures are uncertain, and that your Lordships ought not to be too readily directed by them. In that case, I give up the £200,500. I will oven reduce the £5,000,000 to £2,500,000 It would still exceed the highest calculation of the outlay which this Bill, if law, could fasten on the aggregate of householders. Mr. Rollo Russell is not the only witness or authority we can refer to. There is an interesting passage from the correspondence of Mr. Motley, which is, perhaps, the publication of the moment. Mr. Motley was well known to many of your Lordships as the Minister of the United States and the historian of the Netherlands. In November 1859, when the evil had not reached its present magnitude, Mr. Motley wrote from the Oatlands Park Hotel at -Walton, 20 miles from London— I do not object to fog, always except a black fog, a London fog. I was obliged to pass the day in town yesterday, and to breathe unmitigated coal smoke for six hours. When the fog settles down in London, the smoke from millions of chimneys settles down with it. It cannot escape upwards, and so every breathing being is turned for the time into a chimney. I was a chimney all day yesterday, and rejoiced that I was not born in that station of life, not finding it exhilarating. What Mr. Motley said in 1859 exactly harmonizes with our own experience as to the fogs of the Metropolis mixed up with smoke, and those which only spring from vapour in the country. On the 31st of December last there was a good 191 deal of mist in the vicinity of Frome and Bath, or further in the West of England. In London only it led to darkness, danger, a variety of accidents, including a collision on the railway between Victoria and Ludgate Hill. None who arrived that day in the Metropolis—it happened to myself— would doubt as to the necessity of passing a Bill like that before your Lordships. There is a quaint and vehement expression of the late Mr. Carlyle which has also recently appeared, although not based indeed on his experience of London— Are we doomed to the everlasting curse of choking atmosphere and sulphurous vapours which it is taught are the portion of devils, not still living men? I vow and swear that free air is the birthright of every free man. My Lords, the Bill indeed may be defeated by the union which was fatal to it in 1887, and which I am not able to outnumber. In that event its framers will rely for ultimate success on the mechanical inventor, who knows with what facility the smoke of London may be obviated; the painter, to whom daylight is indispensable as talent; the architect whose greatest works are marred or thrown into obscurity; the sculptor, who foresees the blackness of the marble which he handles. They will rely also on the whole of that sex who, as married women and young ladies, are compelled to pass weeks and months in an atmosphere by which their beauty is deteriorated. But in reading the Bill a second time to-night, the House will merely go back to its original position and affirm that to improve the air of the Metropolis something beyond the Acts of Lord Palmerston is called for. That name reminds me I shall have to move without the frequently-afforded aid of Lord Mount Temple, who has now closed his irreproachable career of virtue and activity. I am obliged, also, to lament the absence of the Duke of Westminster, who is retained, by some indisposition, in the country. However, I am authorized to mention that a letter has reached me from the noble Duke to the effect that his opinion on the subject—explained to the House before—is perfectly unaltered; that he regards the Bill as necessary to the health and comfort of the town with which ho is now officially connected, beyond the well-known ties which previously attached him to it.

§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR
The noble Lord has referred to me once or twice in the course of his observations; I can only say that my objections to a great part of this Bill remain unaltered, but I understand from those who represent the Department of the Government which particularly deals with a subject of this kind that they would rather have the various matters considered in Committee than decided summarily by rejecting the Bill. I will not persist in the intention I originally conceived of moving that this Bill be read this day six months, but at a later stage of the Bill, unless the objections which I shall urge are removed by Amendments in Committee, I shall certainly move the rejection of the measure.

§ EARL BROWNLOW
I feel that the noble Lord who moved the Second Reading of the Bill has a very strong argument in the condition of the Metropolis yesterday and this morning. On reading over the Bill I find that several clauses which, on a former occasion, I pointed out to the House as objectionable have been removed, and there fore I think the Bill is better than that which was brought forward by the noble Lord on a former occasion. The particular provision, however, which caused the Bill on the last occasion to be thrown out still remains—namely, the clause providing that private houses should be included in the operation of the Bill. I can only say that when the Bill goes into Committee it will be impossible for Her Majesty's Government to support that proviso in any way. At the same time there are in the Bill other points which, I think, might become law. I cannot help regretting that the noble Lord proposes to make the Vestry the local authority for the purpose of making bye-laws. It appears to me that it would be far better to have the bye-laws made by some higher authority, say the County Council, the Vestries only having power to adopt thorn if they choose.

THE EARL OF MEATH
I am sure the public outside will be delighted with the attitude which the Government have taken up on this Bill. I think the public would have been disappointed if the Bill had been rejected altogether on the Second Reading. As a Member of the London County Council, I may be allowed to say that I am very glad that, 193 under Clause 5, power is given to the County Councils to alter or to make bye-laws. I am also glad to hear from the noble Lord who has just sat down that the Government will agree to that, because there is no doubt in my mind whatever that, until the Government do make up their minds in one way or another to deal with private houses, we shall never get rid of the great smoke nuisance in the Metropolis. After all, it is the millions of chimneys belonging to private houses that create the nuisance, not the factory chimneys.

§ LORD HERSCHELL
I should like to say one word upon a point to which the noble Lord opposite called attention. 'Whatever legislation be determined upon in the shape of bye-laws to be made, I think that those bye-laws ought to be made by one body for the entire Metropolis. Nothing could be more objectionable than that there should be different regulations on this subject for different parts of the Metropolis; because, in one parish where the evil, so far as it was strictly local, had been remedied at great sacrifice and expense, the population might still be under the burden of the smoke from a neighbouring parish. It seems to me that, in any legislation on this matter, that should be one cardinal point.
Motion agreed to.
Bill read second time.

LORD STRATHEDEN AND CAMPBELL
I beg to move that the Bill be referred to a Committee of the whole House.

§ LORD HERSCHELL
I should think this was distinctly the class of Bill that should be referred to one of the Standing Committees.

§ THE PRIME MINISTER AND SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (The Marquess of SALISBURY)
I think the general feeling of the House will be with the noble Lord (Lord Herschell) that this Bill should go to one of the Standing Committees, where the examination into its provisions will, no doubt, be severe and salutary.

LORD STRATHEDEN AND CAMPBELL
I will defer to what seems to be the general opinion of your Lordships, and move that the Bill be referred to a Standing Committee.