AGRICULTURAL HOLDINGS ACT. (Hansard, 14 March 1907)

THE EARL OF CAMPERDOWN
My Lords, I rise to ask the President of the Board of Agriculture whether he is in a position to make any statement as to the reasons which have led the Lord 181 Egerton of Tatton to serve notices to quit on his tenants in Cheshire in consequence of the passing of the Agricultural Holdings Act of last session.
This question is occasioned by a hasty, and, as I believe, entirely undeserved attack which has been made in another place upon a much respected Member of your Lordships' House. Early in the present year Lord Egerton of Tatton appears to have written a letter to his agricultural tenants pointing out to them that it would be necessary to make a new agreement in consequence of the Agricultural Holdings Act. No less than three Members of the House of Commons, without apparently instituting any inquiry, assumed that this was an evasion of the Act, and put Questions to the Government in that sense. The step which Lord Egerton appears to have taken, so far as his letter goes, is one of ordinary prudence. As your Lordships know, the Act of last year invalidates every agreement in England, Wales, and Scotland, so far as cultivation is concerned, and therefore it will be the duty, not only of Lord Egerton and other Members of your Lordships' House, but of every landowner, to consider present agreements with a view to making new ones. I cannot help believing that that was the only reason which prompted Lord Egerton to take the course he did; and if my noble friend is able to tell me, as I think he will be, that such was the reason, then I would suggest whether gentlemen in another place, before attacking a Member of this House, might not endeavour to infuse a little discretion into their zeal. I beg to ask the Question standing in my name.

§ THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE AND FISHERIES (EARL CARRINGTON)
My Lords, in answer to the noble Earl, I have to say that on 18th February a Question was asked in the other House of Parliament by Mr. Montagu on the subject that has been mentioned by the noble Earl.

THE EARL OF CAMPERDOWN
And by two others.

§ EARL CARRINGTON
Yes, consequential questions. I at once thought it my duty to communicate with Lord Egerton, calling his attention to the Question, and asking him if he wished to 182 say anything on the subject. The noble Lord was travelling at the time, and he replied as follows in a letter dated Cairo, 26th February:
DEAR LORD CARRINGTON I am glad of the opportunity (given me by your letter of 15th February, which I have just received) of contradicting the assumption made by Mr. Fullerton in his Question on the Paper of the House of Commons. I had no intention in giving formal notice to my tenants (on2nd February, the first legal day in the North of England) to defeat the measure intended for the benefit of tenant farmers. If I had intended to defeat a measure, which, speaking generally, carries out the long-established practice of my estate, I should not have written a circular to my tenants that it was necessary under the new Agricultural Holdings Act to cancel the existing agreement, which was out of date, and to substitute for it a simpler form 'in harmony with recent legislation.' My tenants know well that I am as anxious as ever to maintain the cordial relations which have long existed between us, and which will not in any way be affected by the recent Act. I shall be glad if you will give the same publicity to this letter as has been given to the question before the House of Commons. Believe me, yours sincerely, EGERTON OF TATTON". I was glad to receive this letter, although I knew what the answer would be, and I can inform the noble Earl that it will be read in the House of Commons in reply to a Question which will be put by my hon. friend Mr. Montague, and I hope the publicity which Lord Egerton naturally desires will be given to his letter. I trust the House will forgive me if for one moment I refer, with perhaps pardonable pride, to a sentence in Lord Egerton's letter. It is very pleasant to me, personally, and to the Government of which I am a humble member, to have the acknowledgment in this letter that the Agricultural Holdings Act of last session was intended for the benefit of the tenant farmers, and that, speaking generally, it carries out the long-established practice on Lord Egerton's estate.
There has undoubtedly, and not unnaturally, been some disquiet occasioned by the use of the words "notice to quit" in connection with the Act. I should like on this matter to quote the opinion of a body of practical men, who I cannot say were very favourable to the Bill when it was introduced. I refer to the Surveyors' Institute. At the Surveyors' Institute the Secretary of the Farmers' 183 Club, a well-known land agent, said that he for one, and he thought the general body of members would agree with him, would not dream of giving all the tenants notice to quit, and he added that in his opinion very grave responsibility would rest on the agent who advised his employer to take such a course. Mr. Aubrey Spencer, who read a paper on the Act at the same meeting of the Surveyors' Institute, and who is one of the best authorities on agricultural legislation, said that he would not like it to go out that he had advised that notices to quit should be given on every estate in the country, and that it would only be in exceptional cases that such a course would be desirable.
I have received a letter from a Yorkshire land agent in large practice stating that he disapproves the course of giving notice very strongly as disturbing to tenants and naturally making them suspicious. He adds that he has never found any difficulty in dealing with agreements thirty or forty years old which were never altered to meet the provisions of the Agricultural Holdings Acts of 1883 and 1890.
The noble Earl was, I think, a little too hard on the Members of the House of Commons in representing the questions they asked as a personal attack on Lord Egerton of Tatton. I see nothing of that sort in the Questions themselves. There have been articles in the Land Agent's Record—a journal which is very widely read—on the subject of contracting out of the Act, with an intimation that they were written in response to numerous applications for some light on the practical method of taking away from the Act its compulsory character. In the circumstances there is no cause for surprise if there is a certain uneasiness as to what may be the action of some landlords in regard to the Act. I do not for one moment think landlords will be guided by over-zealous agents or ingenious young barristers; I believe they will accept the Act as loyally as Lord Egerton of Tatton. If the Act is applied in a reasonable way on either side and interpreted with common sense it cannot fail to be of benefit to the agricultural community.

§ THE MARQUESS OF LONDONDERRY
My Lords, I have listened with satisfaction to the noble Earl's approval of the 184 letter he has read, a letter such as was to be expected from Lord Egerton of Tatton. While I cordially agree with all that fell from the noble Earl with regard to Lord Egerton's letter, there were certain remarks towards the latter part of the noble Earl's speech on which I should like to say a word. The noble Earl seemed to think that landlords had no right to make any alteration in the relations between themselves and their tenants in the interval between their passing of the Act and its coming into operation. What was the object of postponing the date of the Act's coming into force unless it was to enable landlords and tenants to consider their relative positions? In the interests of agriculture as a whole, it is necessary for landlords to consider their position. There is such a thing as the rotation of crops, established by experience of the land; and a bad tenant, taking advantage of the new power of cropping, might do great harm to the land. That is why landlords are carefully considering this question. The noble Earl talked as if landlords were giving wholesale notices to their tenants. The idea is a figment of the imagination conjured in the minds of some supporters of the Government in the House of Commons who wish to create ill-feeling between landlord and tenant. When the noble Earl comes to giving advice to landlords as to what they should do, I must remind him that landlords have a right to consider their own interests without advice from the Front Bench. If the powers of landlords are unfair, let Parliament alter them; but I object to dictation from the noble Earl or anyone in his position.

§ *THE EARL OF CREWE
My Lords, I desire to say a word, not so much as a Member of the Government, but as a brother landlord of Lord Egerton in Cheshire. All of us who live in that county know how admirably the noble Lord's estate is managed—Icould not name a better anywhere—and all who know him would be aware from the first that any step he took in relation to the new Act would be for the advantage of the estate and of the tenants. The noble Marquess who has just sat down alluded to the time of grace, so to speak, given before the Act came into operation. But I am bound to remind him that, while that time of grace was, it is perfectly 185 true, given to enable people to make arrangements, it certainly was not given, nor do I know that it ever was claimed to be given, to enable people to evade the provisions of the Act, or in any sense to contract out of it. No such claim during all the debates that passed was ever made on the other side of the House. The only claim made was that time should be given to enable people to make the necessary arrangements, but not arrangements contrary to the provisions or even to the spirit of the Act. As regards the question of giving general notice, of course I do not know what the particular circumstances of my noble friend Lord Egerton's estate may have been; but, speaking generally, it does seem to me an unnecessary and rather startling act to give a general notice to all the tenants on one's estate. If a landlord desires to reconstruct his form of agreement in consequence of the provisions in this Act, it would be by no means a difficult matter to carry that purpose out gradually in the course of two or three years instead of in the somewhat dramatic manner of a general notice. We all know that Lord Egerton had no malign intention whatever in the matter; but to those who are not acquainted with the particular circumstances it certainly would seem that a landlord who gave all his tenants notice to quit on the passing of a particular Act, might have in view some object not consonant with the spirit of the Act. Therefore, speaking generally, I should be inclined, like my noble friend behind me, to deprecate the practice of giving general notice.

§ THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE
My Lords, none of us differ from the noble Earl when he says that the period of grace allowed under the Act of last year was not intended as offering an opportunity for a wholesale evasion of the letter or the spirit of the Act. But what I wish to draw your Lordships' attention to is this—that, as I understand the matter, these charges were brought against Lord Egerton with the deliberate object of suggesting that he had attempted to evade the provisions of the Act.

THE EARL OF CAMPERDOWN
It was stated in terms that he was evading the Act.

§ THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE
This discussion has been sufficient to show that nothing could be further from the truth than that charge. Whether it was necessary to take this particular means of adjusting the estate agreements to the new order of things created by the Act of last year I cannot say; but it is quite clear that the Act did so fundamentally alter the relations of the landlord and tenant that it must have become necessary on some estates that those relations should be formally readjusted, not with the idea of depriving the tenants of anything the Act gave them, but of adapting the old order of things to the new, and that, I think, is really all that has happened on Lord Egerton's estate.

§ LORD HENEAGE
My Lords, I would remind the noble Earl the President of the Board of Agriculture that when the Agricultural Holdings Act of 1883 came into force, fresh agreements were entered into on nearly every estate. The Minister for Agriculture has referred to the Institute of Surveyors as very learned in this matter. I understand from them that they are not at all certain whether the present agreements as they stand would be legal at the end of the two years, and whether it will not be absolutely necessary even for those who desire to give the fullest scope to the Act to make fresh agreements to comply with it. I do not see how you can legally bring fresh agreements into force without some formal notice to the tenants that there will be new agreements substituted for those at present in existence. Therefore I think that such an accusation as that which has been made against Lord Egerton is rather hard indeed. In Lincolnshire, the county with which I am more closely connected, nearly the whole of the present agreements are based on the Lincolnshire custom. That custom has been practically abolished by the Act of last year, and we shall have to see how far our agreements are waste paper and substitute others for them; but I understand that cannot be legally done with-but first giving formal notice to quit, whatever one may intend to do afterwards.