UGANDA RAILWAY BILL. (Hansard, 17 December 1902)

§ *EARL SPENCER
This is a fresh example of the difficulties your Lordships are placed in when Bills are brought up in this exceeding hurry from another place, and at the latest possible period of the session. We have not only not had this Bill in any way on our Votes before today, but we have not even seen the Bill; we have heard of it in another place; but it is certainly contrary to the dignity and efficiency of your Lordships' House if this practice continues. I have protested before on the same subject, and I protest again.
Of course, my Lords, we are going on with the Bill; there is no doubt of that. I do not propose to stand in its way at all; indeed, that would obviously be impossible, looking to the way in which these Benches are occupied at this moment; but I want to ask the noble Marquess in charge of the Bill one or two questions. This is a Bill for the working of a railway called the Uganda Railway, though I am told it is not in Uganda, and the railway is under the management and control of the Foreign Office. I am not going into the policy of the railroad; I believe both sides are equally, or nearly equally, responsible for it; but I want the noble Marquess to explain to the House how the Foreign Office conduct their business in regard to these matters. This railway has cost a very large sum indeed; I rather think now something like five and a half millions of money. Originally, when I first remember this being discussed, it was a very much smaller sum. The late Government, who were originally responsible to a great extent for this, may have had the first contract; of that I am not quite sure; but I would ask, has this work been open to contract, and, if so, what were the offers made? I think at first the estimate was for three millions, now, as I said, it has got up to five and a half millions. That seems to me a very strange way to conduct business, and there must have 1462 been something wrong with regard to the estimate. In this House on one occasion we had a debate, and I think the late prime Minister spoke upon it, and he alluded to the great difficulties there were with regard to the labour part of the business, and he particularly mentioned one difficulty which we are not accustomed to in dealing with railways—that some of the men were sometimes cut off by lions. I should like to hear the explanation of the Foreign Office as to the enormous excess of expenditure on the estimate, and why this has arisen. I noticed in the papers this morning that a very distinguished traveller, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, has gone up the railway, and has expressed himself very strongly, not only as to the richness of the country but as to the amount of game. He does not allude to lions—I hope he did not encounter any on his journey. I should like to be told by the noble Marquess whether there is any possibility of saying what chances there are of this railway eventually being a financial success; is there any real prospect that it will have any considerable amount of traffic of any sort, in order to give anything like a return for the outlay made upon it.
I think, my Lords, these are two important matters upon which we may ask for information. As to the administration by the Foreign Office of matters of this sort, if we are going to have more railways made under their jurisdiction, I hope they will be more successful than it would appear this has been.

*THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS (THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE)
My Lords, I share the noble Earl's regret that this important Bill should have come before your Lordships at so late a stage of the session. But I am afraid it was inevitable; and as the Bill is a Money Bill, the details of which could not be discussed here, the delay perhaps signifies less than it would do in other circumstances.

§ *EARL SPENCER
If we could not alter it, we might have thrown it out.

§ *THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE
I think what the noble Earl said in the course of his speech fell short of any desire to throw out the Bill; indeed, he and his friends would appear to regard the measure with a certain amount of sympathy. My Lords, it is perfectly true 1463 that the estimates which have been olaced before the country as to the cost df this line have been largely exceeded; but though that may be to some extent due to preventable causes, it is also due to reasons which can be satisfactorily explained. In the first place, as the noble Earl is aware, the country traversed by the line is one the configuration of which presents very great difficulty. It rises from sea level to an altitude of over 7,000 feet; it then descends 1,700 or 1,800 feet into what is known as the Rift Valley; it then rises again to the top of a range over 8,000 feet in height, and then again descends to the level of the lake, which is 3,700 feet above the sea. It is obvious that a line constructed in a difficult and unexplored country like this is one the cost of which cannot be estimated beforehand with precision. We have had also to contend with the difficulty arising from the employment of large numbers of coolies imported from India; and then there has been a great rise in the price of coal, which disturbed many of our calculations. Expense has been involved, too, by the scarcity of water in certain sections of the line, so that it has been necessary to carry water by rail from the sources of supply to the points at which it was necessary for consumption. Then again, if there has been too little water at some points, here has been too much at others. The line has suffered great injury from floods, and of this supplementary sum of £600,000 a very considerable amount will be required to make good damage of this kind. But what really has rendered the finance of this enterprise so difficult of explanation is, I am afraid I must admit, the untrustworthiness of the original estimates. The sum first mentioned in 1896 was £3,000,000. But when that sum was named by the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, he was careful to explain that it was not a final estimate, but was merely a sum named provisionally as that which would be required for the purpose of proceeding with the construction of the line. In 1900 a revised estimate was put forward, and that reached the sum of £4,950,000. But even at that time there were no surveys available of a kind to make it possible to put in thoroughly trustworthy and well-considered estimates. That, I 1464 admit, sounds unbusinesslike; but your Lordships can scarcely realise the difficulty and expense which attend the execution of an elaborate survey in remote and unexplored regions like those which the line traverses. If we had waited to begin until we were in possession of thoroughly well-worked out surveys of the whole, I am afraid that we should be waiting still, and instead of having a finished line we should have no line at all. We ought not to leave out of consideration the fact that the construction—and I may say, the immediate and rapid construction—of this line was very earnestly desired by the public in this country; and for that reason it was determined to proceed with it without waiting for those more elaborate surveys which in ordinary cases would have been desirable. Allowing for all this, I think there is some consolation to be found in the fact that we have a good line, for it has been inspected and approved by such high authorities as Colonel Gracey, Sir Francis O'Callaghan, and Sir Guilford Molesworth. Nor do I think that we have a dear line, as such lines go. The cost works out at £9,500 per mile, as compared with the £10,000 per mile of the Cape Railway, and the £11,000 per mile of the Natal Railway. Besides, we have to take into consideration the undoubted value of the line for administrative purposes. As to its financial results, while I should be sorry to indulge in any sanguine forecasts, I may say that those who are good judges—amongst others Sir Harry Johnston, who knows the country probably better than any living man—believe that before long the line will earn a considerable revenue. This is certain; that at the present moment it enables us to save a very considerable sum of money owing to the facilities it affords us for cheap transport. I may mention to your Lordships that the carriage of goods by caravan used to cost 7s. 6d. per ton per mile. The same goods carried by the new line of railway cost at the rate of 2 ½d. per ton per mile. I am told that on Government stores alone we have already saved by this cheapness of transport half-a-million of money, so that is, at all events, an asset to which we can point with some satisfaction.
1465 The noble Earl asked me whether at any moment the question of giving this line to contractors had been taken into consideration. I am only aware of one offer having been received, from a well-known firm of contractors, but I believe the offer was one of which the conditions relating to such questions as gradients and curves were such as to render it impossible of acceptance.
Then the noble Earl dwelt upon objections to entrusting the management of such an enterprise as this to the Foreign Office. I think the noble Earl, like many other people, imagines that the whole control of the affairs of the line is in the hands of Foreign Office officials. But the fact is that the Board which is superintending the arrangements of the railway is a Board on which there are only two Foreign Office representatives. It includes a representative of the Treasury, and it includes Sir John Kirk, whose name is well known to the noble Earl, Colonel Gracey, a railway engineer of great Indian experience, and Sir Francis O'Callaghan, also a well-known and distinguished Indian railway engineer; and they have the assistance of such a high authority as Sir Alexander Rendel as consultative engineer. I venture to say that these gentlemen, with the assistance of the two Foreign Office representatives whom I have referred to, form a strong, businesslike Board, and there is no reason for doubting their fitness for the task committed to them. I think I have answered the noble Earl's questions. I must express my regret that the estimates of cost have been so considerably exceeded, but I do venture to think that there are, to some extent at all events, extenuating circumstances to be urged.

§ *EARL SPENCER
I do not wish to reply to the noble Earl, but I devoutly hope that in the future the Foreign Office will not be put to the enormous difficulties they are now under by having to make a railroad under similar circumstances.