HL Deb 28 July 1896 vol 43 cc796-803

On the Motion for the Second Reading of the Local Government Provisional Orders (Housing of the Working Classes) Bill,

*LORD STANLEY OF ALDERLEY moved that the Bill be read a Second time that day three months, and complained of the procedure of the Local Government Board in mixing up two schemes for different counties in the same Bill. The scheme for Birkenhead was a good one. He might he asked why he moved the rejection of the whole Bill. But he had been informed that it was not in order to move the rejection of the Leeds scheme before the Second Beading. Then he might be asked why he did not wait for the Second Reading. The reason was that before the Committee of the other House, a person called a referee interposed and prevented a number of questions being put before the Committee, because they had not been raised on the Second Reading. He should like to know what were the functions of a referee with regard to private Bills. He had never heard of a referee before except in regard to prize fights and similar events. The referee in this case was a Mr. Bonham Carter. He could not find he was a Member of the other House at all, and the only thing he could imagine was that the Chairmen of the other House were not sufficiently competent, and were obliged to have professional men to assist them, much as unpaid magistrates had to have a law clerk. Mr. Bonham Carter stated that because these points had not been raised on the Second Reading, the Committee could not go into them. As to the merits of the Bill, no one disputed the area was an insanitary one, and, perhaps, almost all the houses were bad. But that rather spoke to the discredit of the Corporation of Leeds, which had not had them repaired from time to time, and not taken precautions to prevent overcrowding. There were four public houses in the area which were admitted not to be insanitary, and no complaint was made as to the other public houses, for the owners of which nobody appeared. The corporation proposed to demolish houses on 16¼ acres. The population of the area was 3,844, all necessarily poor. For only 2,000 of these the Corporation proposed to provide dwellings, the excuse being made that the others were shopkeepers. But shopkeepers who supplied poor people like these living in slums must necessarily be poor themselves, and provision ought to be made for the people who were to be displaced as was done in the case of the Metropolitan Streets. Improvement Act of 1877, Clause 34 of which provided for the re-housing of people of the poorer classes, as well as of working men. He complained that the Local Government Board had acted ultra vires in sanctioning] an Order without having the scheme put before them. During the hearing before the Committee they tried to maintain that there was a scheme, which was for pulling down houses on an area of 16¼ acres, and afterwards building houses in their place. The people of Leeds, however, had had no opportunity of giving their opinion, and did not know in the least what was going to be done. The corporation expected to get £58,000 from the sale of surplus land, but how would there be any surplus land at all when there were nearly 2,000 people displaced for whom no provision was made? In the alteration of the Standing Orders there had been an addition made to Clause 134, and he should like to ask the noble Earl (the Earl of Morley) how that would bear upon this point? The words had been added, "unless the exercise of the borrowing power is made subject to the sanction of the respective Board." Would that go beyond the tether now imposed on corporations by which they were not allowed to borrow more than a certain amount? The amount of the debt of Leeds exceeded £4,000,000, and the extreme limit allowed by the regulations was £6,612,268. Preston was already ruined, and unable to borrow any more because the town had got so much into debt. He contended that the cost of the projected improvement by the Leeds Corporation had been very much understated. £126,000 was the cost estimated for acquiring the sites. Mr. Pember stated that the paper-mill site alone would cost from £100,000 to £200,000, and taking the former figure, if 10 acres were worth upwards of £100,000 for the site alone, how could 16 acres outside this, in the area to be taken be said to be worth only £126,000, unless the people were given less than the value of their sites? He wished to call the attention of the Chairman of Committees to another irregularity which was sufficient to vitiate the proceedings in another place, and he felt quite certain the noble Lord the Chairman of their Lordships' Committees would never sanction that a person residing within twelve miles, as the crow He;, of a town for which a contentious Bill was to be brought forward, should be the person who should act as Chairman of the Committee concerning such Bill. That, however, was what took place in the case of this Committee. With regard to the question of dissents and assents to the scheme, the dissents were more numerous that the assents. There were 634 houses to be demolished, and 447 notices to owners, which showed that these owners were poor people, not capable of opposing the Bill. The scheme was hurried through without the ratepayers having any opportunity of considering the matter. On inquiry being made into the subject the Mayor of Leeds distinctly refused to state what plan was to be presented before the Committee. He said the Corporation was not bound to any plan, and, in short, everything was in the air. There were 15 public-houses in the area, and the Chairman of the Committee was very anxious—but did not succeed—to get a definite statement from the Corporation that these public-houses should not be reduced or there should not be an area without any public-house in it at all. Only four public-houses were represented, the proprietors claiming that they were not to be compensated merely for the value of the bricks and mortar of the houses, but also for the licence, that their houses were not insanitary, that one or two of them had been rebuilt lately, and it was admitted that they were in good order. There was one witness who stated that the 15 public-houses would be valued on account of the licences at from £45,000 to £50,000. If they deducted that from the sum of £126,000, it left very little for the rest of the area. He thought he had touched upon all the questions that were likely to come before the Committee, so that it would not be able to be said that they ought to have been referred to on the Second Reading and had not been. He moved that the Bill be read a Second time this day three months.

LORD HARRIS

desired, in the first place, to express his regret to the noble Lord who had just spoken, and to every noble Lord who came down on Monday expecting that this Bill would be pro- ceeded with, that he was unable to give them earlier notice than was done of the necessity of deferring the Second Reading until to-day. He was not aware the Bill was opposed until Saturday morning, and he took the promptest steps in his power of advising the Clerk of Parliament, and of writing to the noble Lord himself. He was given to understand, in answer to the objection of the noble Lord to the mixing of the two Provisional Orders in one Bill, that it would be scarcely possible to put each order into a separate Bill. It would this year have involved over 130 separate Bills, instead of 29 Confirmation Bills. If their Lordships had taken their knowledge of this Bill from what the noble Lord had said, he was afraid they would imagine that the Local Government Board had been proceeding in an arbitrary and autocratic manner. As a matter of fact, the Local Government Board and the Corporation of Leeds had proceeded in the most strictly legal manner, and every person who had a right to be heard, both for and against the proposal, had been advised of the various steps that had been taken under the Act. What did the opposition amount to? There were 15 licensed public-houses in the area in Leeds affected by this Bill. They were represented at the local inquiry held in Leeds, and when the Bill came before the House of Commons Committee, the opposition had been reduced to, he thought, four public-houses. The House of Commons listened to what those four representatives had to say, but, having done so, they passed the Bill. The opposition in their Lordships' House had, he understood, been reduced to three public-houses. That was the amount and the class of opposition the noble Lord was representing that day. The steps that had been taken to support this proposal were these. The official medical officer had reported that the area was in an insanitary condition. The corporation, having taken his report into consideration, had prepared a scheme, with maps and plans for the consideration of the Local Government Board. The Local Government Board had held its Inquiry, and had listened to what had got to be said for and against the scheme upon the spot, while its officers had examined the area personally. Upon the information the officers thus obtained, they reported to the Local Government Board, who, after the consideration of the report, had consented to the scheme being proceeded with, subject, of course, to the sanction of Parliament and to certain conditions. He was given to understand that the main objection of the noble Lord to the Bill was that the scheme presented by the local authority was not such a scheme as was intended by the Act. He was given to understand that the scheme was, to all intents and purposes, precisely of the same nature as all schemes that were presented for the consideration of the Local Government Board upon Motions of this character, and that it would be extremely difficult, if it was at all possible, to present such a scheme in detail as would set forth every alteration that was to come into force in the future. What the scheme and the plans and the map of the Corporation did was to give the outlines of the area affected. He was given to understand that one of the reasons why this Bill was opposed by the representatives of these three public-houses was that if they could get their plots of land and tenements excluded from the provisions of Clause 8 of the Bill, they could then obtain the 10 per cent. compensation for compulsory acquirement which, as, under this Bill they were included in the insanitary area, they could not now do. When their Lordships remembered that some 12 other public-houses were not opposing the Bill in this House, they would realise the unfairness, apart from any other considerations, there would be in giving special consideration to these three persons, and allowing them to have extra compensation which was not asked for by the other 12 occupants of the public-houses. Another provision laid down was that the laying out of streets and approaches and other matters, and the dealing of the site when acquired, were to be subject to the sanction of the Local Government Board. The houses for the accommodation of 2,000 of the working classes displaced by the scheme were to be provided within the area by instalments, and the area could only be cleared piecemeal by four instalments as the accommodation mentioned was provided. That, he thought, showed that the Local Government Board had been careful in giving its approval to this considerable alteration, and had been mindful to see that the convenience of the poorer classes should be as carefully considered as possible. On all these grounds he thought their Lordships would agree that there was no reason for granting the objection of these persons, or for interfering with the passage of this Bill through its Second Reading stage.

THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (VISCOUNT CROSS)

assured the noble Lord that this scheme came entirely within the meaning of the Act of 1875, which he had the honour of passing.

* THE CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES

said that the noble Lord's Motion obviously could not be entertained by the House, because, while destroying the offending Leeds Order, he would at the same time be dealing a deadly blow at the unoffending Birkenhead Order. The practice of grouping several Orders in one Bill had been the universal practice, and had always been very conveniently adhered to. The noble Lord seemed rather to hold a brief for the opponents of this Bill and had entered into a large number of details which would be far more opportunely discussed before the Committee. He would point out that the Second Reading of a Private Bill was practically a formal stage, and did not commit the House in any shape to the principle of the Preamble of the Bill. Anything that might be discussed in the whole House was equally open to the Committee to which the Bill was referred, to discuss, and that included Preamble, Clauses, and, he ventured also to think, the jurisdiction of the Department which introduced the Bill. The opponents of the Bill would have ample opportunities of being heard before the Committee to which the Bill was referred, and the noble Lord would have an opportunity of doing so if he was not satisfied with the decision of the Committee. He thought that under these circumstances, and after hearing the explanation given by the noble Lord who represented the Local Government Board, the House could have no hesitation in rejecting the Motion of the noble Lord, and in assenting to the Second Reading of the Bill. The noble Lord had asked him a question about the Amendments which he had just moved to the Standing Orders—namely, in reference to the Order 134. He could assure the noble Lord that the Order would make no difference whatever in the present practice, which was that in private Bills which empowered local authorities to raise money for improvement schemes, either estimates must be recited or the money sanctioned to be raised with the consent either of the Board of Trade or the Local Government Board as the case might be.

* LORD STANLEY OF ALDERLEY

said he had forgotten to state one fact which he should like their Lordships to know. He was entirely disinterested in Leeds. He knew nothing of the place, and believed he had only passed through it once. As he understood from the noble Lord the Chairman of Committees that the opponents of the Bill would have ample opportunities of being heard before the Committee, he would not trouble their Lordships further, and would withdraw the Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Bill read 2a accordingly, and committed. The Committee to be proposed by the Committee of Selection.