§ [SECOND READING.]
§ Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
THE EARL OF CAMPERDOWNMy Lords, the Bill to which I am going to ask your Lordships to give a Second Reading to-day is designed to meet a grievance which I think clearly attaches to small holders under the administration of the Small Holdings Act, 1908. It has reference to one case and to one case only—namely, the case of land which has been purchased by a county council and leased by them to tenants, or which is leased with an option of purchase by instalments. When county councils purchase land for the purpose of small holdings, they usually do so by loan, and it has become the practice to charge to the tenant, even though he be a yearly tenant, an annual instalment which is ultimately to recoup to the county council the loan which they themselves have made. Therefore it may happen in this way that a tenant may give up his tenancy, and that all the time he may have been paying, not merely the rent of the land which he has held, but also an instalment for the payment of the purchase of the land, the ownership of which will remain after his departure with the county council. It surely cannot be just that that sort of thing should take place—that a man should actually pay for that which he does not receive. That really is the substance of this Bill. That this is the habitual practice there is no doubt, because two years ago a question was put in the other House to Sir Edward 247 Strachey, who replied that he believed all county councils charged these recoupment instalments to their tenants.
I will now ask your Lordships to look at the clauses of the Bill. The first clause provides that in fixing the rent to be paid for any small holding purchased by a county council—and it refers to small holdings purchased by the county council only—under the Small Holdings and Allotments Act, 1908, the county council shall determine the proportion of such rent which is attributable to the sinking fund intended to recoup to the county council the cost of the acquisition of the land and its adaptation as a small holding, and shall keep a separate account of all such part of the sums received on account of rent as are so attributable. In this Bill that is referred to as the "recoupment account." It seems to me that any tenant who is required to repay a portion of the loan with which the land is purchased ought to have the right, if he sees fit, to give notice to the county council, and within a certain time to pay up the balance of the loan which remains due, so that he may become proprietor of the land of his small holding.
Your Lordships will find in Clause 2, subsection (2), a provision that a tenant—this is, of course, a tenant who is repaying instalments besides rent—of a small holding may at any time during his tenancy give to the county council six months' notice in writing of his desire to purchase his holding, and if within such period the tenant pays to the council the difference between the total amount of the sums paid by him in respect of such small holding and credited to the recoupment account and the total amount necessary to recoup to the county council the cost of the acquisition of the said land and its adaptation as a small holding, then the council shall transfer the land to the tenant. That seems to me a fair and reasonable arrangement. Although a yearly tenant he was called upon to pay instalments of the purchase money just the same as if he had been purchasing it, and the land having been purchased by the county council it seems only fair that the tenant should, if he thinks fit, call upon them to enable him to pay off the difference and become the owner of the land.
The third subsection of Clause 2 provides that when the total amount of the sums paid by a tenant and credited to the recoupment 248 account is equal to the total sum necessary to recoup to the county council the total cost of the acquisition of the land leased to that tenant and the adaptation thereof as a small holding, the county council shall transfer such land to the tenant in fee simple. In other words, the tenant, having paid the whole sum, shall be entitled to have the article for which he has paid—namely, the land. I believe that under the law as it stands there is no provision at all for enabling a purchasing tenant in this way, or any tenant, to have land transferred to him. There are other matters in the Bill, but they are subsidiary matters more suitable for Committee, and I will not trouble your Lordships at this moment by going into them. They are really matters of detail, and I think your Lordships will find it more convenient to deal with them in Committee. I beg to move that the Bill be read a second time.
§ Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(The Earl of Camperdown.)
§ LORD CLINTONMy Lords, I am very glad that the noble Earl has brought this matter before your Lordships' House, because it is causing a great deal of controversy in rural districts. There are certain objections against the Small Holdings Act which one hears discussed at almost every farmers' meeting, some of them well founded and some of them the reverse. But I do not think there is any part of the Act which has caused so much mistrust and dissatisfaction as what appears to us to be the extraordinarily unjust provision that a man should buy his holding and yet not own it. I am inclined to think that when the section was passed upon which this provision is founded it never occurred to anyone that such an interpretation would be placed upon the words of the section.
Section 7, subsection (3), of the Act of 1908 provides that—
a county council shall not acquire land for small holdings save at such price or rent that, in the opinion of the council, all expenses incurred by the council in relation to the land will be recouped out of the purchase money for the land sold by the council, or in the case of land let out of the rent.I do not think any one could have believed that in those expenses would have been included the actual price for the purchase of the land, yet that is the official view 249 taken both by the Treasury and the Board. That being their view, it follows as a matter of course that the ultimate purchase price of the land must be paid by the small holder himself by way of some annual instalment of the sinking fund in addition to the rent. If I may, I should like to take up a moment of your Lordships' time in recounting the steps which led to a remarkable Treasury Minute on this subject. Under Section 6 of the Act of 1908 it is provided that, if a county council incurs a loss in carrying out any small holding scheme, the whole or any part of that loss may be remitted to them by the Board of Agriculture with the approval of the Treasury; but when the matter was being discussed in another place the Chancellor of the Exchequer instructed the Minister in charge of the Bill—I think the First Commissioner of Works—to say that only one-half of the loss would be remitted to the county council, and in a Treasury Minute of December 31, 1907, it is laid down with scrupulous exactness on what terms that half may be remitted. The Board has to certify to the Treasury that certain conditions have been fulfilled. I think they are seven in number. One of them only refers to the matter with which we are dealing. It is laid down that the Board of Agriculture must certify that they are satisfied—that the county council have in the case of holdings let used their best endeavours to obtain rents fixed at amounts which might reasonably be expected to be sufficient to recoup to the council all expenses incurred in the acquisition of the land (including repayment of capital where the land is purchased) or in the adaptation or subsequent management of the land.That is the Treasury view of the matter. But the Board of Agriculture shortly after that issued an interim Report of the proceedings under the Act.They appear to have questioned either the validity, or, I hope, perhaps the morality, of such conditions, and they referred the matter to the Law Officers of the Crown, who supported the view which the Treasury had taken. But in view of the fact that in the previous Act of 1892 such a condition had not been observed and that the Law Officers of the Crown of the previous Government had given contrary advice, the Board stated that they would not object to the county council excluding instalments of sinking fund from the amount of rent, provided that they—the 250 county council—were prepared themselves to suffer the loss. Those are points which I should like particularly to impress upon your Lordships—that the Treasury, being somewhat frightened of the losses that they might be required to recoup under this measure, decided that they would not pay more than half of the loss; and, further, that they imposed the condition, which seems to us to be exceedingly unjust, that a tenant should pay year by year a certain annual instalment of the sinking fund towards the purchase of the holding, in course of time purchasing the holding and yet never becoming the owner. And then the Board gave this advice to the county councils, that they would not object if the county councils did not behave in the manner which they evidently considered unjust to the tenants in imposing this condition. I do not suppose your Lordships can imagine it possible that any landowner, under our present system of land tenure, could put into his lease or into any condition of the tenancy a provision that in addition to the gross economic rent the tenant should pay a sum which should gradually recoup to the landlord the price of his land and yet the landlord should always remain in possession of it.
Those are the chief points to which I desire to direct attention. But I think there is a very curious spirit underlying this advice of the Board of Agriculture. They seem to say to county councils, If you find that you have met with a loss under your small holdings schemes and at the same time have imposed a condition which we believe to be unjust, then in that case the Treasury will repay you one-half of the loan; but, on the other hand, if you have not imposed that unjust condition, then you will have to bear the loss yourselves. That is what we wish altered. I hope the noble Earl the President of the Board of Agriculture will consider it fair that this question should be raised, and that he will meet it in a way which will remove the feeling of discontent to which this provision in the Small Holdings Act has given rise.
§ THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE AND FISHERIES (EARL CARRINGTON)My Lords, I can assure noble Lords opposite that we consider it quite fair that this question should have been raised. We are very glad that it has 251 been raised, and we shall try to argue the case in an absolutely fair way and entirely on its merits. This is the third time within a week that the land policy of the Government has been attacked. I need not recapitulate what happened on Tuesday and Wednesday of last week, when two noble Lords opposite brought forward Land Bills and dipped their hands to some tune into the taxpayers' pocket. Now when my noble friend opposite, in the third and last of these Bills, returns to the charge, he is more modest and goes for a contribution from the rates instead of out of Imperial taxes.
THE EARL OF CAMPERDOWNI beg the noble Earl's pardon. I do nothing of the sort. All I say is that when a man has paid for a thing he shall be allowed to have that for which he has paid.
§ EARL CARRINGTONThe noble Earl rather anticipates me. I am coming to that. The Bill is entitled, "An Act to provide for the acquisition by tenants of small holdings in respect of which a rent in excess of the gross annual value is received by county councils." Your Lordships will see exactly what the noble Earl's meaning is from the title of the Bill, and at the risk of being thought inquisitive I should like to ask what is the meaning of the words "gross annual value" of the holding. As far as I can make out, the gross annual value of a holding is the amount it can be let for—that is, the rent; and so it is rather difficult to see how there can be holdings in respect of which a rent in excess of the gross annual value is received by county councils. But the noble Earl has explained his Bill very clearly, and it is obvious to all of us what is really meant. What he means is that the practice of charging rents sufficient to cover the sinking fund is an injustice and ought to be remedied.
§ EARL CARRINGTONThere are four obvious propositions that I should like to lay before your Lordships. The first is this, that when county councils let land which they have bought for small holdings the interest and the sinking fund together which they charge is 3¾ per cent. Nobody would say, I think, that the ¼ per cent. 252 sinking fund charged is an excessive return to the county council for pledging their credit. That is what it comes to. The county council pledge their credit, and for that they ask ¼ per cent. If the rents did not cover the sinking fund charge, who would pay it? The noble Earl said it would not fall on the rates. Where else would it come from? It must be paid by the county rate; there is no other source. Therefore the present ratepayers would have to find the money for the benefit of the ratepayers who live after the term of eighty years has expired. I may be told that that is always done, and that in every important case the ratepayers have to pay for the benefit of people who come after them. But I would point out that the ratepayers in those circumstances get something for their money. Take the case of an open space, or a wider street, or the pulling down of slums; the ratepayers do get some enjoyment out of that, and though they have to pay for what ought to fall on people in days to come, they, at any rate, get something out of it. But in this case the ratepayers would get nothing out of it at all.
Lord Clinton put a very good point. He expressed his doubts on the question of legality. I really cannot be responsible for the opinions of lawyers. We have all suffered through lawyers, and nobody has suffered more than I have. The noble Lord will recollect the terrible hullabaloo there was on the question of sheep in Scotland. One lawyer said one thing was meant and another lawyer said another thing was meant. Therefore the Local Government Board and the Board of Agriculture have, I think wisely, left this an open question. Both views cannot be right, but I suppose one of them is right and the Departments treat the necessity for rents sufficient to cover the sinking fund charge as an open question. County councils may charge this sum or they may not, and there are two county councils—the Glamorganshire County Council and the County Council of the West Riding of Yorkshire—which very generously do pay this sum on the understanding that in eighty years the land will belong to them.
The average cost of the land purchased by county councils in England is about £30 an acre. The sinking fund on that, which has to be repaid, as noble Lords 253 know, in eighty years, is, after all, only 1s. 6d. an acre. Therefore you see that any gentleman who is in the enjoyment of Mr. Jesse Collings's three acres and a cow would have to pay 4s. 6d. more a year than he would have to pay if he had the luck to be farming as a tenant of one of your Lordships opposite. But then the tenant under the county council has this great advantage. After all, it is only a matter of insurance. If a tenant is on the Cara bas estate, the Marquess of Carabas may find it convenient, for reasons best known to himself, to put the property into the market—everybody knows how it is done and why it is done—and the unfortunate tenant finds himself within a very few months deprived not only of his livelihood but of his home. Tenants under a county council run no risk of that sort. They run none of the risks that are run under our much vaunted and well-beloved patriarchal system, which, from recent evidences that we have had, seems to be rapidly approaching to its last legs.
I ask the House to take the point which the noble Earl so lucidly put before us. He told us that Clause 1 of his Bill provides that, in fixing the rent to be paid for a small holding purchased by a county council, the county council shall determine the proportion of such rent which is attributable to the sinking fund, and shall keep a separate account of such sums. There is no earthly reason why they should not do that. Clause 2, subsection (1), enacts that if the county council give notice to the tenant to quit the council shall repay to such tenant all sums paid by him in respect of the holding which have been credited to the recoupment account. I would point out to the noble Earl that this provision draws no distinction whatever between loans for purchase and loans for short-lived improvements. There are other criticisms which I should like to make, but they are not necessary at this stage, and I shall reserve them for a future occasion if the Bill goes into Committee.
The second subsection of Clause 2 provides that the tenant of a small holding may, by giving six months' notice, buy his holding from the county council. Consider for a moment what that means. He can do it by paying off the remainder of the sinking fund, plus the cost of acquisition and adaptation of the holding. That 254 means that if the land goes up in value the tenant buys and pockets the profit. I will give an instance of what. I mean. Where I live in Buckinghamshire there is a beautiful bit of country which lies between Uxbridge and High Wycombe. That land years ago could have been bought for from £15 to £20 an acre. The Great Central Railway Company run a trunk railway—the shortest route to Birmingham—through that land, and the result has been that the country all round has developed. Land which was formerly worth from £15 to £20 an acre at once went up to £200, £300, and £500 an acre, and in one instance I know it went up to £1,000 an acre. What would be the inevitable result if there had been a farm here which had been cut up and given in small parcels of land to the people in the village? Why, every one of these people—who are supposed to be the bulwarks of society, and, as Lord Wantage said, pistols against every socialist—would at once have bought their land under the noble Earl's plan at the price, plus the cost of acquisition and adaptation, of £20 an acre, and would have sold it at once at £200, £300, or whatever they could get. That would be the inevitable result of the noble Earl's proposal in a case where the value of land went up. I next take subsection (3) of Clause 2, which provides that when the total amount of the sums paid by a tenant to the recoupment account is equal to the total cost of the acquisition and adaptation of the holding, the tenant is to have a free gift of the land.
§ EARL CARRINGTONWell, he is to be given the land when the total sum has been paid. Well, how long do your Lordships think it would take such a man to get the land? It would take this wretched man 400 years to acquire this "magic of property." We have heard of Methuselah; but I really do draw the line at providing tenants with the magic of property which will take them 400 years to acquire.
§ EARL CARRINGTONNoble Lords may think I have made a mistake, and 255 that it would only take eighty years. Not at all. For every £100 the tenant pays 5s. a year—namely, a ¼ per cent. If the noble Earl intended to put in compound interest, which would allow a man to obtain his land in eighty years, why on earth didn't he put it in the Bill? But he evidently expects these advantages to be acquired by some one in the very dim and distant future, for if you refer to subsection (4) of Clause 2 you will see that he brings into the field the legal personal representatives of the agriculturist deceased. I quite admit that it is rather a clever thing to bring in this sort of Bill, and I do not for a moment say that it is not a good electioneering cry. It is a capital platform advertisement, and it is exactly the same sort of advertisement as I think Lord Willoughby de Broke told us would exist in the case of the Referendum. He said it was a most admirable thing on the platform, but that it was not of very much practical use. If this Bill is to be used for that purpose, I have nothing more to say.
But I should like to point out that there is no real demand for purchase. I am not going into what I have said before as to the persons who wished to purchase numbering only 1½ per cent. of the total applicants for land throughout England. I would, however, point out that up to the end of 1910 there were only fifty-two acres acquired by seven small holders, and I received a letter from one of them the other day-one of the first pioneers of these small proprietors—who said he had been in occupation of his holding since Michaelmas, 1908. He complained that he was now in a very sorry plight, that he had exhausted all his capital and had spent over £200 of his friends' money, and he concluded, in touching but somewhat homely language, by saying that he was afraid it would not be many weeks before "he would have to go pop." That is the case with one of the leading pioneers of this great and most beneficent scheme.
If the noble Earl who has introduced this Bill could show that our policy had hampered county councils in getting land or in letting that land for small holdings, or if he could show that it is the accepted wish of the ratepayers that the cost of recoupment of the sinking fund should fall upon them, the remedy, of course, would be that the charge should not be 256 included in the rent. That is obvious enough. But I strongly object, it being included in the rent, to a provision enabling tenants in some cases but not in all to recover payment, or to claim the land on payment of a sum which need have no relation to the true value of the land. If noble Lords opposite wish to give a Second Reading to this Bill, and if there is any reason why for future service the Bill should be passed through the House of Lords, of course we have nothing to say; but on its merits His Majesty's Government oppose the Bill, and though, of course, we should not take the trouble of forcing your Lordships to a Division, yet we object to the Bill and most earnestly hope that the noble Earl will not carry his Bill to a Second Reading, but will be satisfied with having brought what he considers this great grievance before the House.
§ THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNEMy Lords, I heard with regret the uncompromising hostility to this Bill with which the noble Earl ended his speech, for I certainly thought that in one of the earlier passages I noticed an admission on his part that there were points in my noble friend's proposals which could be appropriately examined in Committee, and I think that is the case. The noble Earl seems to me to have somewhat misapprehended the general scope and purport of my noble friend's Bill. The noble Earl represented this as another frontal attack on the land policy of His Majesty's Government, and he went on to say that, whereas other critics of that policy had been content to make an attack on the pockets of the taxpayers, my noble friend meditated an attack on the pockets of the ratepayers. As I understand my noble friend's proposal, it does not involve any attack upon the pockets either of the ratepayers or of the taxpayers.
What is, stated in the simplest possible words, the proposal which we understand my noble friend to lay before the House? These county councils, under legislation for which the noble Earl the Minister for Agriculture is responsible, are in the habit of letting to small tenants farms which they have themselves previously purchased, and when they come so to let these farms they are in the habit of charging to the tenant for the use of the land a sum containing two constituent parts. There is, in the first place, what may be regarded 257 as the ordinary rent of the holding, and to that is added an additional sum for the purpose of recouping to the county councils by instalments the principal money which they have advanced. I do not think there is any doubt about it, because it is laid down in a Treasury Minute that in all such cases the council are to obtain rents fixed at amounts which might reasonably be expected to be sufficient to recoup to the council all expenses incurred in the acquisition of the land. That is a clear intimation that the rent charged is to be something more than the ordinary agricultural rent, and is to include an addition for the purpose of recouping the local authority. What, then, is my noble friend's proposal? He proposes that these two elements should be, as it were, dissected and separately shown, and an account kept on the one hand of the ordinary rent and on the other hand of the addition to the ordinary rent on account of recoupment, and be it observed the noble Earl the President of the Board of Agriculture said there was no difficulty in keeping a separate account of that kind.
§ EARL CARRINGTONI said there would be no objection.
§ THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNEThat is quite sufficient for my purpose. My noble friend behind me makes two proposals. First, that any one of these tenants, at any time after giving six months' notice, may purchase his holding out and out on condition that he repays to the county council the whole cost of the acquisition of the land and its adaptation as a small holding. There is no loss to the county council. They are fully indemnified for every farthing they have spent. The only effect is that it enables a tenant who desires to exchange his present position as a mere occupier under the local authority for the position of an owner to do so upon terms which seem to me absolutely fair and just between the parties. What is the second proposal? It is that when one of these tenants has paid on this recoupment account, as distinct from ordinary rent, enough to recoup the county council completely, he then becomes, if he chooses, automatically the owner of his farm. There, again, the noble Earl has not shown us that there is any iniquity in a bargain of the kind. He mentioned, I think, one case where agricultural land had immensely increased in value owing to the advent of a railway, and he asked, Why should the 258 farmer who happens to rent one of these farms have the advantage of that great increment of value? That obviously must be a case of a very special nature, and one which might be provided for by some Amendment in the Bill. But the main proposal of my noble friend seems to me, I must say, to be a very simple and businesslike one.
One word with regard to these alleged attacks upon the Government policy. His Majesty's Government, we are well aware, regard the solution of this agricultural question as bound up in the creation of small tenancies. We, on the other hand, are disposed to look rather to the creation of small occupying ownerships. I do not want to dogmatise upon this subject. I am quite content to admit that there may be advantages in both systems. I think it is possible that there may be localities where tenancy may be preferred, but I am quite sure there are other localities in which actual ownership would find the preference, and I am not at all convinced by the noble Earl's statement that up to the present time only a very small number of small holders have chosen to become the actual owners of their farms. Is the noble Earl quite sure that the explanation of the fact—and I dare say it is a fact—is not to be found in this, that the terms which His Majesty's Government have offered to those tenants who have selected tenancy are so much more attractive than those which they have offered to the tenants who prefer actual ownership, the scales being, as it were, unevenly weighted, that only a small number have decided in favour of ownership and a comparatively large number in favour of tenancy? What I feel about all these questions is that we ought to introduce as much elasticity as possible into our arrangements, and I should like to see those who desire to become small occupiers of land given, on absolutely fair terms, the choice whether they will own their land or whether they will rent it. My noble friend's Bill seems to me to have this great merit, that it does introduce a new element of elasticity inasmuch as it enables a man who has set out on his journey as an occupying tenant to convert that tenancy, on terms which seem to be just and equitable, into ownership of the land which he tills. I therefore give my support to my noble friend's Bill.
§ THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WAR (VISCOUNT HALDANE)My Lords, 259 I am not sure that the noble Marquess opposite has done full justice to the argument of my noble friend behind me. The basis of that argument is to be found in the policy of the Act of 1908, which the Bill of the noble Earl opposite proposes to amend. The principle of that measure was that State assistance should not be brought in for the purpose of enabling small tenants to become either lessees or owners of their land unless in the interest of the State there was some control. For that purpose county councils were enabled to acquire land and either let it or sell it. If they let it, they did so on certain statutory terms, and, if they sold it, by Section 12 of the Act statutory terms obtained also. It was not open to a person enabled by the State to become on favourable terms the owner of his land to use the land just as he pleased. He could not make himself a nuisance to the neighbourhood, but had to conform to certain statutory conditions which were to obtain for a certain time. These provisions were conceived to be necessary in the interests of the community by those who accepted the principle that small holdings would be a great advantage. The small holder was not to till or own the land at his own sweet will, but had to conform to regulations which seemed desirable in the general interests. What does this Bill propose to do? It proposes to repeal that policy by a stroke.
§ VISCOUNT HALDANELook at subsection (2) of Clause 2. That subsection enables a tenant to give six months' notice and thereupon to purchase his land on certain terms, and it is to be conveyed to him in fee simple.
THE EARL OF CAMPERDOWNOnly in the case where land purchased by the county council has been let to him, and in which he was required, in addition to the rent, to pay an instalment of the loan.
§ VISCOUNT HALDANEThat does not make the smallest difference. The policy of the Act of 1908 is being repealed by this clause. The noble Earl's clause as he has just described it enables the small tenant to acquire the land in fee simple, which, of course, means free from all conditions. There is nothing in this Bill keeping alive the provisions of Section 12 of the Act of 1908, and, if this Bill passes, the man who had become a tenant under the Act of 1908 260 would be able to turn himself into a fee simple owner, free from all the restrictions which the policy of the Act of 1908 imposed upon him. The policy of that Act may have been right or wrong, but it was a policy deliberately adopted by Parliament, and this Bill, so far from conforming to that policy, repeals it at a stroke. Your Lordships have already within the last few days given a Second Reading to two Bills which would be fatal to that policy if they became law. Those two Bills have gone to a Select Committee, where the whole matter is to be inquired into. If your Lordships desire to add a third Bill and to send this measure to that limbo, then I do not think it is a matter worth while making a fuss about. This is a third Bill very much of the same nature as the other two, equally fatal to the Government's policy, and so far as I am concerned, though I should not desire to divide against the Motion for the Second Reading, I wish at the same time to reserve in the strongest possible manner liberty of action to the Government to preserve the policy deliberately enacted in the Act of 1908.
§ THE EARL OF SELBORNEMy Lords, I should like to remind your Lordships of the extraordinary inconsistency of the attitude taken up by the Government on successive days with regard to this question. The noble Viscount who has just spoken has made the point that this Bill does not provide for a continuance of the restrictions which constitute part of the policy of the Government in this matter. The noble Viscount told us himself that those restrictions were only for a limited period.
§ EARL CARRINGTONFor thirty-five years, with power of renewal.
§ THE EARL OF SELBORNEThat is a reasonable point to raise in Committee, but I wish to draw your Lordships' attention to this. The noble Earl the Minister for Agriculture, when he was dealing with the Bills that were before your Lordships last week, made all the fun of which he is a known master of the very restrictive clauses, taken from the Irish Land Acts, which were put into those Bills. That was one of the main points taken by the noble Earl the President of the Board of Agriculture. But now the noble Viscount comes forward and puts the very restrictions which were derided last week as the reason why he objects to the Bill of my noble friend. I 261 hope your Lordships will support the Second Reading of this Bill, and if there is anything in the point as to restrictions—and I am quite prepared to admit that there may be—let us go into it in Committee.
§ LORD JOICEYMy Lords, I should be sorry to be considered an opponent of the Government's land policy because I do not agree with them in regard to the course which they propose to take upon this Bill. I live in a district where there are a great many small holdings, and I think that the one object of those small holders is to become the actual owners of the holdings they occupy, and I cannot see that it is against the interests of the State that we should have some means of increasing the number of landowners in this country. I think it rather strengthens the policy of the Government if we give power for a small holder who holds under a county council to purchase his holding if he happens to have sufficient money to do so. I am anxious to see a much larger number of people upon the land, I care not whether by ownership or by occupation, and I should be sorry to put any obstruction in the way either of a person occupying a small holding or becoming the purchaser. It is decidedly in the interests of the State that we should have as many occupying owners of land as possible, and while I do not tie myself to all the details of this Bill I do think, so far as its principle is concerned—that is, that men should be assisted to become owners of their holdings—that it is a very good principle indeed. Besides, if you allow existing small holders to purchase their holdings it will liberate a certain amount of money and enable county councils to purchase other small holdings and increase the number of occupiers. I do not see why, because a county council acquire a certain area of land and divide it into small holdings, they should put every occupier of that land in the position simply of a lessee. I believe in removing all the restrictions you can with regard to the occupation of land. The tenant who has freedom to cultivate in the way that he thinks best, who is at liberty to do the very best he can for his property and for the object that; he has in view, is more likely to succeed than a man who is tied by restrictions. I care not who puts the restrictions on the land, whether the landlord, or the county council, or any other body. I think it is a mistake on the part of the Liberal Party—and I speak as 262 a Liberal—to prevent any extension of the principle of ownership in this country. We should rather assist than discourage this tendency, and on that ground I am bound to say I thoroughly sympathise with the principle of the Bill, though I do not agree with all its details.
§ LORD ILKESTONMy Lords, having been engaged in this matter since 1883, and being President of the Allotments and Small Holdings Association which I had the honour to form in conjunction with Mr. Jesse Collings in 1883, I naturally feel somewhat the aspersion that the policy of the Liberal Party is against the creation of ownership. It always has been part of the policy of the Liberal Party to put men on the soil, whether as owners or tenants. I would recall to your Lordships the fact that the Small Holdings Act of 1892, which was passed by the Unionist Government and which had a large amount of support from the Liberal Party, was based on the principle of putting owners on the soil as small occupiers. That was the basis of that Act, and the Act which followed it was brought in because that policy had absolutely failed. The Act of 1892 was a serious failure. We found it did not put people on the soil. One of the great difficulties of small holders is lack of capital. The small holder does not want to spend his capital on buying his holding, but on the cultivation of the land. That being so, His Majesty's Government brought in the Act under which we are now working, and which the noble Earl opposite seeks to amend. This Act has been in force for three years, and during that time it has created almost as many thousands of small occupiers as were created in hundreds by the former Act. I think I am understating the real facts of the case. At all events, we have some 9,000 persons placed on the land under the Act of 1907 as small occupying tenants; and the most remarkable part is this, that while active county councils all over England, north, east, south and west, have been asking people to come forward and become small holders of land, they have hardly had any people asking to become owners. If you take the whole country through, I think the figure works out at about 2 per cent. of the applicants. That shows that there is no great and universal desire to become small owners, but that there is a very much larger desire to be occupying tenants under county councils.
263 As to the point raised by the noble Earl opposite, I am bound to say that my sympathy is to some extent with his Bill. He wishes to take away what is on the surface a grievance on the part of those people who pay for laud through a sinking fund and at the end of the period do not become the owners. I have been familiar with that grievance for a great many years. It was a grievance among allotment holders in various parts of the country before the Small Holdings Act was passed. But it must always be remembered that in order to get a county council to move in these matters you must, as far as possible, secure them against loss and pay them for their trouble and for pledging their credit. You are giving them the minimum amount of money in this case which could be expected to make it worth while for a county council to undertake very serious and grave labours for the provision of small holdings. I myself would gladly see the provision in this Bill made law. I have no objection to it. It is a matter which requires to be threshed out very carefully, more carefully than I think could be done in Committee of the Whole House. Therefore I feel that the suggestion which was made by my noble friend the Secretary of State for War is one worthy of consideration. The whole land policy has been referred to a Select Committee in connection with the two Bills which your Lordships read a second time last week. Why should not this Bill also go to that Select Committee to be considered with the other two Bills, so that a general policy can be framed, not only with reference to ownership generally, but with reference to this small grievance connected with those who hold land under the system of the Act of 1907? I would assure noble Lords opposite that as regards the Liberal Party generally there is no desire to oppose the creation of small occupying ownerships. On the contrary, we regard that as one of the methods by which people can be placed on the land. It is, however, not the only method, and in my opinion it is not the easiest or the best method in which to create small holdings.
§ LORD HENEAGEMy Lords, the noble Lords who have spoken from the other side of the House seem to think that this is a measure for opposing their great land policy. This Bill will in no way affect the policy of the Government's Act of 1908. The tenancy system will go on just the same whether this Bill is passed or not; 264 but what this Bill does propose to do is, as my noble friend Lord Joicey said, to give a man who has taken land on tenancy and done well upon it an opportunity of becoming the owner if he so desires. The Bill distinctly states—if it does not state it in terms satisfactory to the Government it could be amended—that that shall be done without any loss whatever to the county council or to the Treasury. Therefore this is a very small point, and it is a point which I should have thought no one would have regarded as worth while contesting. It is the simple point that a man who is now a tenant can, by payment of a certain sum, become the owner. I had al ways thought that it was the great Liberal policy—at any rate it was in old days when there was a sane Liberal policy in this country—to have as many owners of land as possible.
With regard to the other point, if the Government desire to keep up restrictions there is nothing to prevent words being put into the Bill in Committee to guard against any infringement of the restrictions contained in the original Act. I therefore hope that my noble friend will take a Division on the Second Reading if necessary, and that he will keep the Bill in this House to be dealt with in the ordinary way rather than allow it to be sent to what the noble Viscount opposite described as the limbo of a Select Committee. If my noble friend adopted the noble Viscount's suggestion, the Bill would probably not get out of the Select Committee in time for anything to be done this year. I hope that in the short time there may be at the disposal of my noble friend he will be able to get his Bill through Committee altered in such a manner as to make it acceptable even to His Majesty's Government.
THE EARL OF CAMPERDOWNMy Lords, I find some difficulty in replying to the speech of the noble Earl the President of the Board of Agriculture, because, although he went into a variety of circumstances more or less interesting and amusing, there was hardly one of them which had any reference to this Bill. The noble Earl said that all that the county councils charge to these tenants is ¼ per cent. for the advantage of their credit. This Bill has nothing to do with the question of what they are charging. This Bill simply has reference to the case of the man whom the county council call upon to pay an instalment of the purchase money 265 apart from the rent of the land. Throughout this debate, at all events on the other side of the House, the real position has been ignored. I look at this matter entirely from the point of view of a tenant who is cultivating on an annual tenancy, and who is made to pay, in addition to the rent, a sum in respect of the purchase. Is not that a very great hardship? The noble Earl the President of the Board of Agriculture and in a lesser degree the noble Viscount, Lord Haldane, seem to think that this is an attack upon the land policy of His Majesty's Government. It is nothing of the sort, and it never was so intended. In the administration of the Act of 1908 a great hardship has arisen, which I do not believe the noble Earl the Minister for Agriculture or anybody else ever contemplated would arise, and it is solely to deal with that hardship that this Bill is introduced. It has been suggested that I should move that the Bill be referred to a Select Committee. This Bill has nothing to do with the policy of land purchase, with which the two Bills to which your Lordships gave a Second Reading last week dealt, but simply with the particular case in which a tenant has been called upon to pay money in respect of the purchase of the land. This Bill does not in any way attack the policy of His Majesty's Government. It is owing to the regulations of the Local Government Board and the Treasury that this difficulty has arisen, and it is to meet this difficulty that I have introduced this Bill. In these circumstances I do not feel at all disposed to send the Bill to a Select Committee to be taken together with other Bills which have nothing in common with it. Therefore if the Bill receives a Second Reading I shall ask your Lordships to commit it in the ordinary way to a Committee of the Whole House. I am well aware that in two or three minor details my Bill does require alteration, and I myself shall propose certain Amendments in Committee, and I shall be glad to receive advice and assistance from any one in regard to amending the measure. In the meantime I ask your Lordships to give the Bill a Second Reading.
§ On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.