THIRD READING. (Hansard, 10 March 1890)

§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR
My Lords, I should simply have moved the Third Reading of this Bill, only that the noble Lord on the Cross-Benches desires me to give some explanation on the subject. I cannot help thinking that the noble Lord is, I will not sty confusing, but not sufficiently discriminating between two different things—the repeal of the Turnpike Acts, which is a very 326 serious question for consideration, and the taking out of the Statute Book those Statutes which are, in fact, obsolete. But in making that distinction I also want to say that with reference to the Turnpike Acts there is a difficulty in regard to the present year which the Bill before your Lordships is intended to remove. All the Turnpike Trusts, with the exception of one, expire in this year; there is one of them which does not expire until the year 1896. Accordingly, the second section of this Bill has been expressly framed to get rid of that difficulty, because, upon the re-printing of the Statutes, unless some provision of that sort is made, every one of those Acts referring to this matter, including an Act of George III., which is an exceedingly bulky Act, will have to be re-printed in the new edition of the Statutes, the completion of which is the great object of the Bill. With that object that section in the Hill has been devised so that only part of a very bulky Act shall be preserved, by reference to a schedule to the Bill. Therefore, until the one remaining Turnpike Trust expires in the year 1896, it will only be necessary to refer to this section of the Bill which will now, if your Lordships choose, pass into law. That is the whole scope and object of the provision made in Section 2, and the necessity for it only arises from the fact that one solitary Turnpike Trust will be outstanding until 1896, all the rest disappearing in the present year. I do not know whether the noble Lord has in his mind some objection to the alteration of the law which has prevented the continuance of the Turnpike Acts altogether. That is a totally separate question, which may be discussed on another occasion; but the question now before your Lordships is whether useless Acts which the Legislature has declared shall not in future continue in force shall be re-printed in the new edition of the Statutes. I beg to move the Third Reading of the Bill.

§ * LORD THRING
I trust your Lordships will accede to the request of the Lord Chancellor. This Bill deeply concerns me as Chairman of the Committee for the Revision of the Statutes; and I can only say that if you will not accept the 2nd clause of it, a hundred useless pages will have to be reprinted; for, as the Lord Chancellor has told you, in a very 327 few years those 100 pages will be of no effect whatever. With the object of saving almost unlimited confusion, I most earnestly again suggest to your Lordships that, in passing this Bill, you will allow a clause precluding the necessity of printing in an edition of the Revised Statutes 100 useless pages.

§ * EARL FORTESCUE
My Lords, as I have no intention of proposing any amendment, and much less of opposing the principle of the Bill proposed by the Lord Chancellor, I thought I should best consult the convenience of the House by deferring until this stage the very few remarks which I have to make upon the Schedule of the Bill. Before you proceed finally to expunge the Statutes comprised in it from the Statute Book, I would venture to remind you that although over a great part of the country the local Acts which called them into operation in the different localities have practically annulled them by their expiration successively, yet I would ask you to consider what the legislation is which is comprised in that second Schedule, and upon what that legislation is based. The two most important Statutes in that Schedule are known as the General Turnpike Acts, one passed in the third and the other in the fourth years of George IV., which applied to all the Turnpike roads throughout the country. Those Acts were based upon a Report of a Committee of the House of Commons in the year 1819, which very carefully investigated the whole subject. That Committee took evidence in reference to experiments which had been tried as to the best shape and width of wheels for carts and wagons as regarded their action upon the roads, and they made some recommendations on the subject which were afterwards embodied in those Statutes. I will refer your Lordships shortly to that Report, troubling you with only a line or two from it. It says— It is of great importance to the wear and tear of roads that wheels of moderate breadth or less than six inches should he brought into general use. With this view your Committee are disposed to recommend a general permanent scale of toll adapted to the breadth of wheels, the proportions laid down in which should be made to durate alike in all trusts and districts, it being evident that if the Legislature encourages the construction of carriages of any peculiar form they should not he liable to a preference in one district and to penalty in another. With this view they recommend that 328 the toll payable under any Act for a carriage on wheels of 6 inches should be increased one-fourth if the wheels (being less than 6 inches) are not less than 4½; and so an increase of one-half more than is payable for 6 inches, if the wheels (being less than 4½) are not less than 3 inches in breadth; and, further, as it is most desirable that no wagon should travel with wheels of less breadth than 3 inches, that all such should be subject to double toll. I wish to remind your Lordships that by the expiration of the various Turnpike Acts, those provisions of the general Turnpike Act applicable to the whole country have lapsed along with them throughout the greater part of the country. Practically, the Turnpike Trusts Acts have so generally lapsed that they can scarcely be said to exist. In the absence of any legislation relating to what the Committee very rationally described as an undesirable narrowness of wheels; those who get new carts or wagons have been induced to get them with very narrow wheels. In former times even carts and wagons, which were not intended exclusively to travel on turnpike roads were to a very great extent, and in very great proportion, made of the width recommended by the Committee in order not to be exposed on the turnpike roads to these very much heavier tolls. That legislation has now lapsed, and the consequences, as I ventured to remind your Lordships the other day, will be increasingly detrimental to the ratepayers of the country, that is to the owners and occupiers of real property, because personal property escapes rates. I described the other day in general terms what the consequences had been and were sure increasingly to be, and I have received a, letter from the Vice Chairman of the Highway Board for the South Molton District since I last spoke, in which he says— The cost of repairs for the last three years on the two miles of road from the Holland mine to the Milne Station which has been caused entirely by the carriage of heavy loads narrow-wheeled carts and wagons has been over £57 10s. per mile, while other ordinary roads have cost for repairs rather under £7. Now, my Lords, the imposition of such a needless tax, saving shillings, as I said the other day, to the owners or purchasers of the carts or wagons, and costing the ratepayers pounds in the repair of roads, thus wantonly, needlessly, and wastefully destroyed, is an evil likely to go on increasing, because as each reasonably- 329 wide-wheeled cart or wagon becomes worn out it will be replaced by slightly cheaper but infinitely more destructive carts or waggons with narrow wheels, thus imposing very heavy additional charges and a much greater burden upon the ratepayers, that is to say, as I have before stated, upon the owners or occupiers of real property. I am hardly sanguine enough, particularly after what has happened in the other House quite recently, to expect that in the present Session it will be found possible to pass any legislation to encourage the reasonable width of wheels and to discourage the unreasonable and destructive narrowness of wheels; but I have taken the liberty of trespassing on your Lordships' indulgence for a few minutes in order to call attention to the matter, and I hope Her Majesty's Government may in due time be enabled to give it their consideration.