§
Amendment proposed—
Page 21, line 17 and 18, leave out 'roads proposed by tie council of any rural district,' and insert 'any matter or thing, or for any purpose.'"—(The Marquess of Londonderry.)
§ THE MARQUESS OF LONDONDERRYThe Amendment which I propose to submit to your Lordships is, perhaps, the most important Amendment standing upon the Paper. It is one, to my mind, upon which, to a great extent, the whole future working of every county council or district council rests. I dwelt, my Lords, at considerable length, on Thursday last, upon this point—namely, the limit which should be permitted to district councils to expend money, and therefore I do not propose to again go through those details at any length. I dwelt at such great length upon them because I trusted that my noble and learned Friend, on hearing what my arguments were, would, between the Second Reading and the Committee stage, give consideration to the argument which, in all probability, he thought I should again produce. I pointed out, by a large number of examples, that, where a board of guardians had had the power in certain parts of Ireland, there had been unlimited jobbery, and maladministration, and extra expense. I quoted a large number of instances, most of which I should think were known to my noble and learned Friend, and therefore I need not quote them again. I hope they are fresh in his memory, but if he would like any instances again I could give them. It is to avoid any such cases in the future by these district councils—which will occupy in the future the places of those who were boards of guardians—and in order to put a check upon what would otherwise be an almost unlimited expenditure, that I ask your Lordships to carefully consider and support the Amendment which I am now introducing to your notice. The noble Earl opposite, both today and on Thursday, drew attention to the fact that there were many points in which Ireland differed from England. I know myself—and I think there is hardly anyone connected with county 1026 councils in England who does not know it also—that since the formation of county councils, no matter how well the business has been done, the expenditure has sensibly increased, and consequently, if the expenditure in England on the county-councils has increased, how much, more will it increase in Ireland, especially when we have had instances, of the extraordinary and unnecessary expenditure to which I alluded on Thursday last, and which, in all probability, will again be repeated. The Amendment that I move is to eliminate the word "roads" to which the extra expenditure was confined, and substitute the words—
any matter or thing, or for any purpose,by which I meant that the total extra expenditure which shall be permitted to the district councils shall, for expenditure of all kinds—whether it be roads, or otherwise—be limited to 25 per cent, more than the average expenditure has been for the last three years. The reason I do so, my Lords, is because, as I have told you, the jobbery and expenditure on outdoor relief, unless it is controlled by such an Amendment as I am submitting, will be absolutely ruinous to the large ratepayers in the various counties. I quoted to you the other day a speech of Mr. Chamberlain's in 1892. In one or two brief expressions he showed the dangers to which the ratepayers would be exposed far more ably than I could do if I addressed your Lordships on the subject, and his words are so important that I trust you will allow me to use them again, even though I only quoted them as late as last Thursday. He said—Speaking generally, all over Ireland, five per cent, of the ratepayers pay fifty percent of the cess.And then he went on to say—In one case two per cent, of the cess payers pay fifty per cent, of the cess.It is absolutely immaterial to the small cesspayer to what extent the rates are raised, provided, that out of them they can obtain employment for themselves at the expense of a small minority. Naturally, in the interests of the large ratepayers, there should be some limit to the expenditure. Mr. Chamberlain himself foresaw the danger Mr. Balfour in 1027 one of his speeches declared that they would be acting criminally towards the minority if they did not extend protection against what is nothing more or less than robbery by means of the rates. I know full well that the Government have given, this matter full consideration, and so have we who have been studying the details of this Bill. We have carefully considered whether a Standing Joint Committee, such as Scotland possesses, would be an advantage. We have also carefully considered whether rating qualification would safeguard the minority of large ratepayers. We have also considered the question of minority representation, but upon the whole we have come to the conclusion that the principle of the safeguard introduced by Her Majesty's Government was of the 'safest and best character, but that it was not wide enough, and that it should mot be confined to the roads. I should tie very diffident in raising this question if it involved an entirely new principle, but it involves no principle whatever. 'The principle is laid down that any extra expenditure on roads and the 25 per cent, limit should only be granted by application to, and with the permission of, the local Government Board; and consequently the authority of the Local Government Board is brought in with regard to the roads. All we ask is that the 25 per cent, should cover the limit of expenditure both of the roads and of every other head of expenditure, unless it is considered desirable by the Local 'Government Board to grant leave to the particular district to expend a large sum of money beyond that provided for by the Act. I think that is very fair. If the expenditure is fair and necessary it would not be a great trouble to a district council to apply to the Local Government Board, and if that expenditure is right and necessary it will be the duty of the Local Government Board to grant permission to exceed that limit exactly as they have the power now to do should they, in their opinion, consider that the limit should be expended for the benefit of the roads. I dwelt, my Lords, at such length upon this question last Thursday that it is really not necessary for me to dilate upon it at any length tonight, but I wish to draw the attention of the Committee to the fact that history 1028 has taught us that the right to grant outdoor relief has been exercised in the most flagrant manner in the past, and that it may be exercised in the most flagrant manner in the future; and if the Government really wish to safeguard the interests of the large ratepayers—and, my Lords, the large ratepayers do not only consist of landowners but also of large tenant farmers—I think it is but just that they should consider my proposal and limit the total expenditure to 25 per cent., excepting when the Local Government Board in Dublin thinks it is necessary to allow more to be spent.
*THB LORD CHANCELLOR OF IRELANDI do not think that my noble Friend who has moved this Amendment has rightly grasped the position and the circumstances of the various authorities who are named in the Bill, or the powers that are given in the Bill, and the powers that exist independently of the Bill entirely. If a great change like that which is contemplated in this Bill is to be made, it must be done to a certain extent on the principle of confidence and of trust, and if you call into existence a popularly elected county council, as in England and in Scotland, so now in Ireland you must assume that they will be animated to a certain extent with a sense of the responsibility cast upon them and with, a sense of duty. The safeguards provided all through the scheme that has been stated to your Lordships are of a broad character, and they are not small or vexatious ones. A large grant is made by the State, which is to effect a very great change, and the change that is to be accomplished is that the occupier is to be made the person who is to be liable to pay the rates. That is a great change and a great safeguard, because it places upon the occupier the disadvantage of any extravagance; it gives him the advantage of being economical. That is a great and general safeguard, and it is one which pervades the entire structure of this Bill. But now let us go to those particular clauses which my noble Friend has shortly described as the 25 per cent, clause, and, in so doing, I have to direct his attention to this that it is worthy of note that this proposal, during the whole of the time that the Bill was before the House of Commons, was received upon all sides as the most potent 1029 check that could be devised against extravagance on the part of the district council. It never was suggested from beginning to end on the part of any landowner or any Unionist that the clause was susceptible of advance or improvement; and it was attacked all through only by those who take another view of the question. Gentlemen sitting upon the Nationalist Benches described it as being an undue restraint and an improper check upon the methods of expenditure that might be adopted in reference to this matter. I have directed my Friend's attention to what may be a confusion in reference to the way in which this matter is viewed. There are district councils and there are boards of guardians. It is true that the same people constitute these boards, speaking roughly—that is to say, that the district councillors make the district council, and also in their character as guardians, they make the board of guardians. But the matter must be looked at from an entirely independent point of view. They are kept separate; they are not amalgamated, because different considerations and different codes and different checks prevail in reference to each of them. The staple argument of my noble Friend, and in his Second Reading speech, which he has just given, is, that there may be abuses as to outdoor relief. The Bill does not touch outdoor relief. Every check that was in existence for outdoor relief is in as potent and efficacious application now as before the Bill was thought of. The Local Government Board preserved every check and every single power that is in existence now and will be in existence after the passing of this Bill. Every check upon outdoor relief forbidding it to be given to able-bodied people—forbidding it to be given to those who have a quarter of an acre of land—enabling the auditor to overhaul the guardians if it is given extravagantly, enabling the Local Government Board to dissolve boards of guardians; all these are preserved, and there is not a single syllable in this Bill that interferes with, or changes, or mutilates, or embarrasses the efficacy of the existing control of the outdoor relief, or of any other part of poor law administration. If that is so, I apprehend that is a complete answer to the suggestion of my noble Friend, that we should 1030 apply the 25 per cent limit to everything. This Bill is without the slightest reference or regard whatever to poor law relief, or to any other limit of poor law relief. How can you tell guardians that they are not to spend money beyond so much, in the time of poverty and distress it may be, and under circumstances that everyone recognises as reasonable? How can you tell them that they must not spend more than 25 per cent? It would be impossible. Their first and primary duty is to provide for the poor. We do not seek to change a single enactment in reference to that, and it is, I venture to think, a confusion of ideas to suggest that there is anything whatever in common between this 25 per cent, limit introduced in reference to roads, which might be made by the district council in their character as district council, and the question of what might be a perfectly reasonable expenditure of the boards of guardians on outdoor relief or anything else connected with the administration of the poor law. That only leaves me one, other matter to deal with which has been referred to. It may be said that that deals completely with the question of the poor law guardian, but what do you say about the expenditure of the district council—why must the expenditure of the district council be at all limited? It has been represented over and over again—in the press, in pamphlets, and everywhere else—that the reason for that is that there may be some extravagance in making roads within their own district. That is the main danger. That is a danger that requires looking after, and it is conceded that that danger is met in the clearest, the fullest, and the most satisfactory way by the limit that is put in here, requiring the assent of the Local Government Board to any expenditure beyond 25 per cent, in a certain standard number of years that are named. What else remains? Absolutely nothing. It is impossible to name any other limit of expenditure that the district council can go to where they are not met face to face with existing safeguards in the existing statutes, and which prevent them from running riot with any expenditure. In the first place, the district council have to ask the sanction of the county council for this expenditure on roads which are of a new kind. It has to do the same in reference to ordinary 1031 public works. Take now the only other works of any substantial character—sanitary expenditure and public health expenditure. In those cases they are fact to face with this restriction—that they can only carry out works of that nature by means of loans approved of by the-Local Government Board. There they are met with the existing facts of the law. They cannot, under the Sanitary Acts and the Public Health Acts, proceed to borrow without the sanction of the Local Government Board, as to the fixing of the area charge, and as to everything else connected with it. It may be said that in the case of the Labourers Acts they might run into excess. But there again they are face to face with a statute limit; they cannot go to more than one shilling in the £ If you look at this with a technical knowledge, which, of course, is not found on the surface of the Bill, it is obvious that whether you take the guardians, who are subject to all existing checks, or whether you take the district councils with their new duties and new obligations, there is an ample check on the power of spending money. Twenty-five percent is named here in reference to the roads, and there are existing statutable checks in reference to everything else. There is no such check as this, as suggested by my noble Friend, in the English and Scotch Acts. If you call into existence an Irish county council and Irish machinery of local government, you must have some regard' to the way in which it has been worked in England—the way it has been legislated for in England, and the way it has worked. I myself think it will be found that the view that was taken of this by those who looked into it very closely, and came to the conclusion that this is a very carefully framed provision, going as far as can be reasonably expected in the direction of safeguarding every possible likelihood of extravagance, is a very correct view, and I hope that your Lordships will be satisfied with this explanation that the matter has been very fully considered, and that you will not accept the Amendment.
§ THE MARQUESS OF LONDONDERRYI will only detain your Lordships for a moment in replying. The Bill has very thoroughly and very wisely safe- 1032 guarded undue expenditure on the roads, so that it is hardly possible that any jobbery can be perpetrated with reference to them; but nothing is done to prevent jobbery in regard to outdoor relief or to provide a safeguard with reference to undue expenditure in that direction. If you do one, I do not sea why you should not do the other.
§ THE MARQUESS OF LONDONDERRY"Any matter or thing."
*THE LORD CHANCELLOR OF IRE-LANDThat is the district council. If my noble Friend passed this Amendment it would not touch outdoor relief.
§ THE MARQUESS OF LONDONDERRYI cannot agree with my noble and learned Friend if the county council has any power of vetoing the expenditure of the district council.
§ THE MARQUESS OF LONDONDERRYI want to have some safeguard to prevent this very reckless expenditure which I have mentioned before, and I think my Amendment will give us some safeguard.
§ THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL (The Duke of DEVONSHIRE). I think my noble Friend has hardly studied this question sufficiently. He based almost the whole of his argument upon the liability to extravagance in the poor law expenditure; but if his Amendment was carried it would have no effect whatever upon the poor law; it would not impose any check upon poor law expenditure. The clause of the Bill provides that—
A county council shall not, without the consent of the Local Government Board, approve of any expenditure on roads proposed by the council of any rural district, which will cause the expenditure on the roads of the district to exceed by one-fourth the amount certified by that Board to have been the average expenditure thereon during the three years next before the passing of this Act, and the Board may, as respects each council, consent either for a particular road or a particular 1033 year, or generally, and in the latter case may fix a new limit under this section.An urban district council shall transact the business transferred to them by this section in the manner prescribed by general rules of the Local Government Board.A district council, as a district council, has nothing whatever to do with poor law expenditure, and the poor law expenditure never comes in any shape or form before the county council. In their capacity as guardians it conies before the district council, but it never comes before the county council at all; so that, as regards poor law expenditure, my noble Friend's Amendment would be absolutely and entirely without effect. The expenditure on sanitary works which may be incurred by district councils is already controlled and checked by the Local Government Board, because sanitary work cannot be carried on out of current income; sanitary works can only be carried on by means of loans, and no loan can be raised without the sanction of the Local Government Board, and where the Local Government Board has satisfied itself that the work is a necessary one, and that the manner in which it is going to be carried out is economical. Therefore, the Local Government Board possesses already a control over the proceedings of the district council, excepting that control over the expenditure on roads which the clause gives them. As to the poor law expenditure, the county council has nothing whatever to say to that.
*THE EARL OF MAYOThe district council is the board of guardians, and the men on them fill a dual position. What I am sure is in the noble Marquess's mind is that the 25 per cent, can be spent upon the roads, and that then those same district councillors, filling their dual position as guardians, can administer the outdoor relief—
§ THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCILThe district council cannot.
§ THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCILIt is a different body.
*THE EARL OF MAYOThey can spend money on outdoor relief, and the Sanitary Acts, and the Labourers' Acts, and the other Acts mentioned by the noble and learned Lord. Our contention is that 25 per cent, goes on the roads, and that another 25 per cent, may go> upon all these other charges, so that the half of the poor rate is wiped out entirely. That, I imagine, is what my noble Friend means by his Amendment.
§ THE EARL OF DUNRAVEN AND MOUNT-EARLAs I understand it, the same individuals act as boards of guardians and district councillors. As boards of guardians, they have to deal with outdoor relief. As far as that is concerned all the checks and safeguards in existence in Ireland will continue to be in existence after the passage of the Bill, and why on earth the noble Marquess wants to put in more safeguards I cannot understand.
§ Question put.
§ Amendment negatived.
§
Amendment proposed—
Page 22, after line 26, insert as a new sub-section—
A district or urban council shall have the power of making by-laws for the purpose of removing or preventing the erection of manifestly disfiguring open - air advertisements within their several jurisdictions; provided, always, that if an objection is raised to any decision under such by-laws, there shall be an appeal to the Local Government Board."—(Viscount de Vesci.)
*VISCOUNT DE VESCIThe Amendment which stands in my name is not a very, difficult one, but I have been asked to move it on behalf of the society formed for the purpose of preventing the erection of disfiguring open-air advertisements. The difficulty of the matter is this, that there is no clause, I believe, 1035 of the same kind in the English or Scotch Acts, but, as your Lordships are aware, it is this practice of disfiguring advertisements in country districts which is felt to be a great nuisance, and there is, I know, a very strong feeling about it. I do not stand by the language of the sub-section that I am proposing, but I will ask the Government if they will accept the principle of it, and then I can bring forward fresh words on the Report stage. I ought to state, as a matted of fact, that this practice of putting up these disfiguring advertisements is very prevalent in Ireland, especially in the south-west and those portions much frequented by tourists.
*LORD CLONBBOCKI hope that the Government will accept this new clause of my noble Friend, because I can assure your Lordships that it is occasionally very much wanted in Ireland. I remember that about 20 years ago a seller of artificial manures had his place of business near a most historical ruin in Ireland, and on that ruin he had painted in huge letters, about 10 feet long, the names of his manures, and he was perfectly surprised when remonstrances were addressed to him on the subject; he appeared to think that his advertisement rather added to the beauties of the place than otherwise. I must say he did his best to eradicate the letters, although I am not sure that they cannot be seen up to the present day. No doubt the more picturesque a place is the more likely it is to be disfigured by these kinds of advertisements. I trust that this Government will see its way to accept the Amendment.
THE DUKE OF ABERCORNI hope that the Government will accept this Amendment. It is what may be called a sentimental Amendment. Ireland is one of the most beautiful countries in the world. A large number of English tourists go over there, and they want to see the beauties of the country undisfigured by 1036 any of these monstrous advertisements, which now are so prevalent in the south of England, and in other places. If the county councils have not the means of preventing these erections, no doubt, in the course of time, as the country is developed, they will be placed much more freely in the more frequented districts. I think it is a very good Amendment; it is not a very important one; it would no doubt give a great deal of trouble to the county council, but at the same time it may hereafter be the means of doing a certain amount of good.
*THE LORD CHANGELLOR OF IRELANDThere will be a most frightful jealousy between the two countries if this Amendment is accepted. By the common law of this country the most hideous advertisements that are conceivable can be put up with impunity in every direction. I am always greatly struck by an Amendment of this kind, which appeals, so much to human sentiment, and to a desire to look upon beautiful things and a horror of seeing ugly things, but this, is a question which has agitated public opinion for a considerable time, and I really do not think it ought to have a place in this Bill. I have a great deal of sympathy with the object in view, but I am afraid it touches the fringe of a branch of the law that is not at all peculiar to Ireland. For my own part, I really believe that we have fewer uglier advertisements in Ireland than certainly in any part of England, and why the society for the prevention of the exhibition of disfiguring open-air advertisements should begin with this I really do not know. There are some specialities, we have in Ireland, but this is not one of them, and I think the matter might be left to be dealt with by some general law which shall make some general reform in this matter. At any rate, it is hardly appropriate here. While, as said, I have every sympathy with the-noble Lord, I do not think such an Amendment should form part of a Bill 1037 of this; character, but that it should be dealt with aa a whole by a Bill which should make a general change dealing with the whole of the country.
*VISCOUNT DE VESCII only ask the noble and learned Lord as a matter of patriotism to let Ireland lead the way.
*THE LORD CHANCELLOR OF IRELANDI yield to nobody in patriotism, but I am afraid that my patriotism will not induce me to accept an Amendment which, I have said, ought not to find a place in a Bill of this character.