HL Deb 11 May 1911 vol 8 cc335-52

[SECOND READING.]

Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.

THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE AND FISHERIES (EARL CARRINGTON)

My Lords, I respectfully ask the House to be good enough to give a Second Reading to this Bill, which I hope will not take up much of your Lordships' time. The object of the measure is to repeal subsection (3) of Section 41 of the Small Holdings and Allotments Act, 1908. The subsection proposed to be repealed runs as follows— No holding of 50 acres or less in extent, or any part of such holding, shall be authorised by an Order under this Act to be acquired compulsorily for the purpose of small holdings and allotments. Your Lordships will no doubt remember that this provision was not originally in the Bill, but was put in on account of fears—rather groundless fears I venture to think—that one small holder might be ousted from his land in order to find land for another.

I have seen it stated in the Press that there is some sinister design at the back of this Bill, and that it ought to be resisted. It is stated that there is a sinister design to cut up farms and to injure existing small holders. I can assure the House that nothing is further from the thoughts of the Government than to do any such thing, and I might, in passing, say that it would be futile to try to do so, because if you injured or took away any portion of a man's land in an improper manner, all the tenant would have to do would be promptly to call upon the county council to find him some more land, which they would have to do. As noble Lords know, small holdings range from one acre up to fifty acres, and that would be an expensive and inconvenient process.

The sole and only reason for proposing the repeal of this subsection is that it has had in its working results which were neither contemplated nor desired. There have been the inevitable legal difficulties, which seem to crop up on every possible occasion. We have had an object lesson to-night. The noble Duke opposite seemed to me to be unnecessarily hard on my noble friend Lord Ashby St. Ledgers when he said that my noble friend had been badly coached in regard to his Bill and had been rebuked on a question of law by the Lord Chief Justice. I am sure your Lordships will agree that there is no member of the House who is more painstaking about his Bills than my noble friend Lord Ashby St. Ledgers, or who explains them more plainly or lucidly, and I think it was a little hard upon him that he should be found fault with on account of the inability of legal luminaries to agree on a particular point.

There have been, as I say, the inevitable legal difficulties in this case. Lawyers have differed—I suppose it was necessary they should—as to what is and what is not a holding, and this has been found very seriously to impair the fair and reasonable working of the Act. I will not trouble your Lordships with many examples, but will state two or three. It is held on the highest authority that if a farm of 200 acres is let by five different agreements to five different persons, or even to the same man, they are five different holdings, though they are cultivated as one farm and under one management. With all respect I do think that this is the misapplied subtlety of legal ingenuity. If I had time I could give numerous instances of the result of this decision. But I may be allowed to quote one, and I only quote it on account of the sequel. It is a case in the county in which I live, where a lady, held in high respect, had a 274 acre farm. The County Council of Buckinghamshire wanted eighty acres for the poor men in the district, all of them hard-working, respectable, solvent men, just the sort of men your Lordships would desire to have as tenants on your own estates. So this estimable lady set to work to defeat the county council by cutting up this farm into six different holdings of under fifty acres each, and she let them to six members of the family, five of whom were women. Of course, that knocked all the men out. There was no possibility of getting land for the men in the district, and the Act which your Lordships in your benevolence passed two years ago was openly set at nought.

Now I come to the sequel. There is a very large and useful body called the Farmers' Union of England. It has 15,000 members, and they passed a resolution at the general executive committee, in which they said— The general executive committee of the National Farmers' Union, having regard to the case of the Buckinghamshire County Council and Miss—would urge the Board of Agriculture not to proceed with the compulsory order that they made on this land with a view to making it a test case. The County Council of Buckinghamshire were openly defied, and we had determined to make a test case of it to see whether or not it was legal for this good lady to do as she had done. I agreed with the union. I thought it would be better not to make a test case of it at all, but to ask the House of Lords, which, after all, is one of the fairest tribunals in the world, to stop a repetition of such an open scandal; and that is one of the reasons why I ask your Lordships to give a Second Reading to this Bill.

There is another hard case. A holding must not be a separate holding at the time an order is made—that is, of course, some months before the land is procured for the men. This creates some of the hardest cases that the county councils have to deal with. Where small holders are given notice to quit, either at the end of the lease or because people want to get rid of them, the county council very often would be glad to get hold of that piece of land and keep the tenants in possession, but they cannot do so on account of this subsection. The tenants are given notice to quit, and are deprived of the land which we all know is of such benefit to them.

The third case, and perhaps one of the worst, is what is called in the agricultural world the case of a "by-take." Your Lordships know that many farmers take small bits of land as what is called a "by-take." They take a field or a bit of land some distance from their farms; in many cases it is not a great advantage to the farm itself, but it is a convenience. This subsection as it stands prevents our getting a portion of a man's farm that is necessary for the benefit of the neighbourhood because it is a separate "take," and because it is under fifty acres. I will give an instance of that. The Buckinghamshire County Council wanted to get land for the people at Marlow. It was quite impossible. Nobody would let them have a flower plot. There was a field close to Marlow which was very convenient; it belonged to one of my tenants, and was certainly a mile and a-half or two miles from the homestead itself. I went to the County Council's Small Holdings Committee and met the men, and everybody agreed that it was an ideal place for the men to have. Curiously enough, my tenant came by in his gig from the market at the time, and I stopped him and said, "Will you let us have that field?" He replied, "Yes, with the greatest possible pleasure." I said, "Would it be a great inconvenience to you?" His reply was, "It would be a great 'bore' to give it up, but I have no objection. You can have it if you like." We went to the Oxford College authorities, to whom this field belonged, and they at once doubled the rent because it was to be let to poor people, but the men said they could manage that. Then, ten days after, the tenant changed his mind and said, "You cannot have this field." I am speaking under correction, but I believe that up to this moment the men at Marlow have no land whatever. It is to stop a case of this description that I ask your Lordships to give favourable consideration to this Bill. These are technical difficulties which were never contemplated.

I have heard that there is some objection to the way in which this Bill is drafted. I tried to substitute other words which would meet these cases, but "English as she is spoken" is a most difficult language. I had the best legal advice it was possible to get, and it was found quite impracticable to find words in the English language and string them together so as to meet the case. Therefore the only thing to be done was to ask that subsection (3) of Section 41 of the Small Holdings and Allotments Act should be repealed. I think that the tenants of these holdings may sleep comfortably in their beds. They know that county councils are, after all, human beings, and have a certain sense of what is right and what is wrong. They do not want to strain the law to injure their fellow-creatures. Moreover, every order is carefully considered by the Board over which I have the honour to preside, and every application to take land in this way is always most carefully gone into. I may add that in many cases the views of objectors to an order have been met by the Board, and the wishes of the farmers and landowners have also been met. I honestly think that if this Bill is not allowed to go through these great hardships will continue, and if a test case is taken and the law maintains that it is possible to defeat the legislation of 1908 in the way I have described, then the Act will be practically a dead letter, and the real good that we are doing will be most seriously impaired. Therefore, with great respect, I ask your Lordships to be good enough to give a Second Reading to this Bill.

Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Earl Carrington.)

THE MARQUESS OF LONDONDERRY

My Lords, I confess that when I saw the Bill of the noble Earl I considered it a most extraordinary infringement of the Act which was passed a few years ago, and I expected that in the speech which he would make in proposing the repeal of this subsection we should have heard some arguments put forward which would have carried real weight with your Lordships. I would speak in the most respectful way of the noble Earl's speeches, but I cannot see one argument in his speech this afternoon which should induce your Lordships to repeal this most important section of the Act of 1908. Remember for what that Act was passed. The Act was passed to give county councils compulsory powers to acquire land from large farms in order to make small holdings. It was, however, a colleague of the noble Earl's—Mr. Harcourt—who moved this subsection, which was perfectly right, that holdings of fifty acres, which are considered small holdings, should be excluded, and that county councils should not have power to take them.

The proposal now made is not only entirely contrary to the Act, but to my mind it is absolutely contrary to the spirit of the Act; because by enabling county councils to take these small holdings, for fifty-acre farms are small holdings, you take away the main principle of the Act of 1908, which was the creation of small holdings. The object of that Act, as I understood it, was to extend the principle of small holdings. Now, as far as I can gather, the intention of the noble Earl is to change the class of existing small holdings. I fully anticipated that the noble Earl would have gone fully into it, and explained the reasons for proposing to repeal this subsection, which was meant to safeguard the men who were holding small holdings. The noble Earl quoted certain cases, and for the sake of a few cases he asks us to alter the principle of the Act, which seems an extraordinary thing to do.

One particular case he quoted was the breaking up of a farm into five different portions. He maintained that that was not legal; that one person had no right to break up a farm into five different portions, and give to five persons a small holding under fifty acres. That surely is a matter of opinion. At any rate, it does not break into the noble Earl's principle of making small holdings, because every one of these holdings is a small holding, and the main object of the Act, was, as far as I can gather, to break up large farms. It seems to me that the lady in question has really been carrying out the spirit of the Act which the noble Earl introduced, and I think there should be a great many more instances given to us to prove the necessity for the repeal of the subsection before the noble Earl asks us to pass this Bill.

There is another point which has been overlooked. I think it is very hard that a man who has a small holding of his own should have it broken in upon, a thing he never anticipated, by a still smaller man who wishes to have a part of that holding. Surely that never was intended when the Act was passed. It seems to me a very odd way of promoting the desire of people to obtain small holdings that a man who has obtained his small holding voluntarily, who has, perhaps, expended the sweat of his brow and his capital upon it, should have part of that holding taken away from him because the county council think it right to break it up. I am told that this would not be the general course pursued by county councils, and that they would not do this without the sanction of the Board of Agriculture, but I think we have seen recently that the Board of Agriculture is a somewhat squeezable body. I think that if county councils are urged to break up these small holdings, the Board of Agriculture would be found very squeezable, and I could not envy the position of these small holders in hoping that their holdings would be kept for them by the Board of Agriculture.

While I am on the subject of small holdings, I would say how glad I was to see that the noble Earl wrote a letter contradicting the false statement that the Duke of Portland, amongst other landowners, had not done his best to promote the system of small holdings. As far as my experience has gone since that measure became the law of the land, I know that it has been the object of the owners of property to make the Act a success. I should like to hear from the noble Earl whether he considers that the whole system of small holdings is working well.

EARL CARRINGTON

Yes, I do.

THE MARQUESS OF LONDONDERRY

I know what the noble Earl means. But I saw in one of his speeches the statement that "the thing is going like wildfire." That meant that small holdings were being taken up, and that is satisfactory. Perhaps it is early in the day to ask the question or to get a reply, but are these people who have taken up those holdings satisfied with their bargains? Are there any cases in which they have not been able to make as much out of them as they had hoped to do? I am not asking this question in any spirit of controversy, but we should be glad to hear how the Act is working. At the same time I do think that to break into an Act which the noble Earl tells us is working well and to alter it materially as is now proposed, as far as I can see without rhyme or reason, is very inadvisable, and in view of the hardship which this might inflict on small holders I think the step proposed would be very naturally resented by them.

THE EARL OF CAMPERDOWN

My Lords, I do not rise to oppose the Second Reading of this Bill, but I do hope that before it becomes law your Lordships will insist upon very much better reasons being given than we have received up to the present moment for passing it. I notice that when the noble Earl gets into a difficulty he always begins by abusing the lawyers, saving present company. Having done that, and having proposed his Bill, he always says to your Lordships, "I respectfully ask you to pass this little Bill. It is only a little one." Two or three days ago the noble Earl recalled your Lordships' attention, for some reason best known to himself, to the great muddle he made, with the assistance of his legal advisers, about the question of Scottish sheep stock. He said on that occasion exactly the same as he said on this.

Let me point out to the noble Earl that he does not seem to realise in the least the importance of the Bill which he is now proposing. He says— It is only to repeal a subsection of the Act of 1908 which was not inserted by me but by somebody else. To a certain extent that is true. But let me remind him of what the real history of the clause was, because he gave it to us imperfectly. This clause, I believe, originated in the Standing Committee of the House of Commons. When it went down to the House, it was debated and altered. Then it came to this House, and Lord St. Aldwyn had it altered here. Then it went back to the other House, and was again debated, and so this clause was thoroughly considered in both Houses, and in that form passed into the Act. On this occasion the noble Earl is striking at this very clause. The other day he blamed me, very unfairly as I think, for what he called attacking the principle of his Act. What is he doing to-night himself? I do not refer to the particular set of circumstances which have arisen in the course of the administration of the Act. But what is he proposing to do to-night? He is proposing to tear up one of the most important clauses in his own Act. And what reason has he given us for that? If this Bill had been brought forward by somebody on this side of the House I should like to know what the noble Earl would have said. He would have said, "Dear me, you touch my small holders, the children whom I have created," and there would have been any amount of indignation with the wicked Unionists for attacking the principle of his Act. But it is quite a different thing when the noble Earl tears it up himself.

Just let me consider what this clause is. It was passed by Parliament as a protective clause, to protect the small tenants who would be created under the Act, and also to protect existing owners of small properties, who represent a large number of people. The noble Earl says the reason for tearing up this clause is that there is an estimable lady in Buckinghamshire. By the way, I notice we always go back to Buckinghamshire whenever we talk about small holdings. I suppose it is natural. The noble Earl thinks a good deal of his own home. Apparently this lady has six admirable daughters—

EARL CARRINGTON

No, not daughters. Tenants, I said. She is the landlady.

THE EARL OF CAMPERDOWN

Six tenants. I am afraid I did not catch correctly what the noble Earl said. But he did say that all the men were turned out, and I naturally supposed it was because the women were in. The noble Earl says that these tenants can sleep in their beds at night, for the Board over which he has the honour to preside watches over all the arrangements that are made with regard to them. However great may be the confidence which these tenants repose in the noble Earl, I think the man of fifty acres would prefer the protection of an Act of Parliament; and if I were one of those men I should be extremely angry—and I expect they will be angry—with the noble Earl for proposing to take away this protection. I ask your Lordships to consider what would be said by a tenant of a small holding of, say, forty acres, which he had cultivated, when he was told, "It is quite true you have been protected up to the present time, but now we have taken away your protection. There is very little chance of your land being taken, but, if it is taken, all you have to do is to go and ask the county council to give you other land." I am sure small holders will by no means bless the noble Earl for this proposal. It is really cutting at the root of his own Act; and why in the world he proposes to do it I cannot imagine.

The noble Earl says it has been stated in some of the newspapers that there is a sinister design on his part in bringing forward this Bill. I do not think anybody would suspect the noble Earl of doing anything from sinister motives. They might possibly imagine that his proposals were not always very wise. And certainly unless the noble Earl can produce for it some better reasons than he has done, I think a Bill of this kind ought not to be allowed to pass into law. Just consider the reasons that have been given to-night, if you can call them reasons. The noble Earl quotes a case where a big farm has been divided up into a number of forty-nine acre holdings. The noble Earl wishes to crack an egg, and what does he do? He comes down on it with the biggest steam hammer he can find. He wants to prevent this old lady from dividing up her farm, and in order to do that he absolutely does away with the whole protection at present enjoyed by small owners and small tenants in the kingdom. I must confess that up to the present time the noble Earl has said nothing to make me in favour of the Second Reading of his Bill.

THE MARQUESS OF LANSDOWNE

My Lords, it must be a little surprising to your Lordships that the speeches which have been delivered on this side of the House have not been thought worthy of reply by any of the noble Earl's friends. Apparently he stands alone on that side of the House as the champion of this measure. Now let me assure the noble Earl that nothing is further from my thoughts than to impute to him what he calls a sinister design in connection with this Bill. I am quite certain he has no sinister design. But I do desire to call his attention and the attention of the House not to the design that may or may not lie behind the Bill, but to the effect which this Bill produces.

This Bill, beyond all question, destroys a safeguard which was deliberately inserted by Parliament for the protection of a very important and a wholly blameless section of the agricultural community. Your Lordships will not have forgotten the grave apprehensions with which the farmers of this country regarded the proposals to allow county councils to cut up their farms for the purpose of creating small holdings. That feeling was a perfectly natural one, whether the farmer was a large or a small farmer. A farmer can become deeply attached to a large farm, just as he may become deeply attached to a small one. We were, however, all of us in favour of extending small holdings, and we realised that unless some sacrifice of this kind were made there was no chance of the policy being successfully applied, but when we sanctioned that policy we made an obvious exception in favour of those who were already small holders, whether owners or occupiers of their farms. That class of agriculturist is numerically very important. The noble Earl will correct me if I am wrong, but I am under the impression that in England alone there are something like 248,000 of these holders of less than fifty acres of land. What this Bill does is to throw the whole of those holdings open to the encroachment of the county councils. That is a very serious matter indeed.

Another small point which I think has not been noticed is this. I understand that under the law as it now exists if these small holders happen to be the owners of the land they occupy they are not entitled to more than the bare price of the land. His Majesty's Government last year, and I am bound to say not of their own accord but at our instigation, did provide a measure of protection for those small holders who happened to be occupiers of their holdings, but that protection, unless I am misinformed, does not extend to the small holder who is owner of the farm which he tills. What is the justification for this really momentous change? The noble Earl produces two cases, and I have no doubt he was correct in his statement of the facts. There was the case of the ingenious person who subdivided his farm into five holdings. I confess it surprised me to hear from the noble Earl that no means could be discovered, with all the legal assistance which he has at his command, for rendering a practice of that kind unsuccessful. But do let me remind the noble Earl of the homely old adage, which after all contains a great deal of wisdom, that "hard cases make bad law." The noble Earl says that in this and other cases the law was openly set at naught by these people. Surely it should be possible to discover some means of preventing flagrant evasions of the law such as he described.

Let me, before I sit down, add one word more. I will tell the noble Earl why this new departure of his inspires me with a great deal of alarm. It seems to coincide with the adoption of a somewhat more vigorous and aggressive policy on the part of his Department in connection with this question of small holdings. We all recollect how at a certain moment it was thought necessary to appoint Small Holdings Commissioners, whose duty is was to travel about the country, and—the expression is not my own; I think it was used by the noble Earl or one of his colleagues—to "ginger"—[Several NOBLE LORDS: It was the Home Secretary]—whose duty it was to "ginger" the local authorities and stimulate them to increased exertions in augmenting the number of small holdings. We gather that the noble Earl is now going to appoint six more of these roving Commissioners, whose business it will be to apply a further stimulus to such county councils as have up to the present disappointed the noble Earl's hopes. I confess I regard these appointments with a good deal of suspicion. In the first place, I regard with suspicion any multiplication of the number of new public appointments. The record of His Majesty's Government in this respect is certainly an extraordinary one. I have no recent figures, but I remember coming across a Return which showed that up to the end of the year 1909 His Majesty's Government had been responsible for no less than 1,164 new salaried appointments, and they evidently intend to go on multiplying appointments of this kind.

But there is another thing. These officials are appointed for the deliberate purpose of applying coercion to the local authorities—local authorities elected by the people of this country and possessing an amount of local knowledge which no gentlemen sent down from a bureau in Whitehall could possess. I have not a word to say against these gentlemen, but if I am to choose between their judgment and that of a properly constituted small holdings committee of a county council, I prefer the judgment of the committee. I should like to quote to the House a statement I happened to come upon the other day which rather impressed my mind. This is from a report of a meeting of a small holdings society— Mr. F. Verney addressed the meeting. He said he was an enthusiastic advocate of small holdings, but he recognised the possibility of pursuing the policy to the injury of tenant farmers and even landowners, and he urged that they should not be forgetful of these. The speech of Mr. Verney was followed by one from Mr. Fordham, a gentleman well known, I think, to the noble Earl. Mr. Fordham— bemoaned the squeamishness that had been shown about disturbing tenant farmers to make room for small holdings, and he hoped that a more aggressive policy would be adopted in the future. It is against this proclamation of an aggressive policy that I hope the noble Earl will set his face. I trust that this question of small holdings will be dealt with without any addition to these aggressive and somewhat incendiary elements. Both political Parties are committed to the policy of small holdings. Both political Parties desire to do what lies in their power to bring back a large number of people to the land. But it is when you introduce these elements of quarrelsomeness and aggressiveness that, in my view, you most imperil thesuccess of your policy; and I hope we shall learn from the noble Earl that he, at any rate, deprecates the introduction of elements of that kind, and desires that the policy which he has so much at heart should be followed out in a temperate and conciliatory spirit.

VISCOUNT HALDANE

My Lords, with the concluding observations of the noble Marquess about the spirit in which the Act must be interpreted if the system is to be worked successfully I find myself in entire agreement. The system cannot work if the Act is carried out aggressively or arbitrarily. It can only be made a success if consideration is shown in the selections made of land for allotments and for small holdings which are submitted for confirmation by the Board of Agriculture. But that is not the root of the difficulty at the present time. There may be good reason for it, but in many cases the Act is not working with the celerity and smoothness which one would wish to see, not because of any desire to work it in an incendiary way, but because there are parts of the country where it has not been taken up in the spirit of which the noble Marquess the Leader of the Opposition would approve.

The noble Earl opposite asked us to tell him, the Act of 1908 having been carefully considered while it was in this and in the other House of Parliament and this provision deliberately adopted, why it is now proposed to alter it. For a very good reason. It very often happens that in initiating legislation you start off by providing against something which seems to be an object of terror, and which turns out not to have been justly so regarded. Nobody desires, and I do not think even the keenest critics of the system as it is going on have ever alleged, that there has been any disposition to seize the land of the small holder, the man who has fifty acres, and annex it. Nobody has said so, and I am sure that neither on the part of the county councils nor of the Board of Agriculture is there the slightest disposition to institute any such policy.

But something else has turned up, not perhaps to any great extent, but to an extent which requires to be recognised and to be dealt with. This Act puts a legal restriction against taking a holding of fifty acres or a less extent. That is a simple legal proposition. And to that extent the holding cannot be taken, no matter what its genesis was, or how created or acquired. If you put into an Act technical provisions of that kind, it is always certain that there will be some people who will use them, not as a barrier against the evil which you intended to guard against, but for some other purpose. My noble friend Lord Carrington has given cases in which this restriction has been used as a technical instrument for defeating a portion of this Act. It is perfectly obvious, if you leave the words as they stand, that they may be used to create a plurality of holdings of fifty acres or less virtually under the control of one holder, in whose nominees they stand vested as tenants, and in this way that owner is enabled to defeat the purposes of the Act. I do not say that happens often or is a common case, but if it happens half a dozen times it is amply sufficient for asking whether you cannot correct the machinery of the Act by getting rid of what your Lordships and the Legislature never intended should be placed in its way.

In the particular section of the Act which contains this restriction there is an immediately preceding subsection which shows that it is the duty of the Board of Agriculture and of county councils not to take away the land of a person who will be treated oppressively. I am only paraphrasing, but it says you are to look at the question of the rest of his holding before you take any land from him. Speaking for myself, after the experience we have had of the working of the system, I would infinitely prefer to rely upon the way in which the county councils and the Board of Agriculture are carrying out the duties imposed upon them in making these selections and exercising the discretion which is left to them, than rely upon the legal provisions of the three subsections which create the technical difficulties of which I have spoken, which enable things to be done which were never intended to be done, and which give room for a far more elastic application of the Act than would be the case if this Bill which the noble Earl the President of the Board of Agriculture has introduced were passed into law. It is absolutely certain that neither the county councils nor the Board of Agriculture will abuse this provision.

The noble Earl, Lord Camperdown, said he preferred an Act of Parliament to anybody's discretion. I agree as a general rule. But there are a great many cases with which you cannot deal on any rigid principle in an Act of Parliament, and there are countless instances where it is necessary and prudent to give discretion to some responsible body. In a case of this kind I submit that it would work far less injustice to rely upon that procedure, which is a perfectly safe one, than to leave in existence a subsection which it turns out is used for a purpose never intended, and may in a few cases prevent the working of a system in which the noble Marquess said not only the authors of the Act upon this side but noble Lords on the other side of the House are interested.

LORD HENEAGE

My Lords, I think if it is intended to take this restriction away we ought to see what is the object of the restriction. In the case which was mentioned just now one of two things happened. Either it was a bona fide subdivision of the farm, in which case the person was doing no harm; or it was a single and solitary case in which this person fraudulently evaded the law by taking a farm of 250 acres and cutting it up into five holdings. In that case surely what you want is to amend the law in a way which would prevent that taking place, and not to take away the protection of the small owners. See what would happen in this case. You are going to set up two different classes of small occupiers. Those under the county councils will be protected by the law, but not so the other small occupiers of fifty acres and below, whose farms may have been held in their families years before ever Mr. Jesse Collings's "three acres and a cow" and long before the Small Holdings Act introduced by the noble Earl were heard of. Any farmer who holds a small holding of fifty acres directly from a landlord can have the very best field or the whole farm taken away from him if this protection is removed, whilst those who hold under county councils are protected by the law. I oppose this Bill because I prefer the interests of the 200,000 or more small holders who now enjoy the protection which the Act gives them, and who ought not to be deprived of that protection because of some case of evasion in Buckinghamshire. If the noble Earl were willing to limit the removal of this protection to Buckinghamshire I for one would have no objection. Funny things happen in Buckinghamshire that do not happen in other counties. I do not think any case has been made out, beyond the one or two cases in Buckinghamshire, why this protection should be taken away. I shall therefore oppose the Second Reading.

EARL FORTESCUE

My Lords, there is, I think, some slight justification for this Bill. It is not unknown for a farmer who has a considerable farm under one landlord to take perhaps a field or two of the glebe, or a field or two from another landlord. These detached cases are technically "small holdings," and under proper safeguards there may not be any hardship in allowing fields of that character to be taken for the purpose of making what I may call genuine small holdings. I think if this Bill were altered so as to apply only to cases of that sort there would be very little objection to it. The case put forward by the noble Earl, Lord Carrington, as justification for this Bill seems to me a very flimsy one. He told us of a lady in Buckinghamshire who had cut up a farm of 250 acres into five holdings. If she has done that in order to get the better of the county council, I think her act is very likely to bring in due time its own punishment, for her tenants are not likely to die together, and unless they do she will be left with people holding detached fields, which will make it exceedingly difficult for her to let the farm or deal with it in any way.

VISCOUNT MIDLETON

My Lords, the noble Earl who has just spoken has put the matter on a very different footing from that stated by the noble Earl the President of the Board of Agriculture; and after the speech of the noble Viscount the Secretary of State for War everybody must have realised that if he had drawn this Bill it would have been in very different terms. Your Lordships listened to the cases of hardship put forward by the noble Earl opposite, but the noble Earl's method of warfare has been on previous occasions very much as it has been to-night. He puts down a very wide provision. He then expatiates, as Lord Camperdown said, on the fact that he is there, that the whole matter is an individual matter, and that we can rely on no hardship being done. It is true the noble Earl is there, but none of us know how long be may be spared to that sphere of usefulness. We are certain that under his superintendence no hardship will be done, but we cannot legislate in that way.

If this Bill is allowed to be read a second time it can only be on the clearest understanding that, when we go into Committee, the noble Earl will be prepared to furnish us with a list of these cases of evasion, so that your Lordships and the country may know what are the circumstances which cause a Minister to run counter to the express policy of Parliament and endeavour to undo what was deliberately done, after careful consideration between the two Houses, three years ago. I feel very strongly on this matter. I think the noble Marquess the Leader of the Opposition put no undue stress on the appointment of these Commissioners to continue the course, which this Government has been pursuing relentlessly in the last two or three years, of bullying the local authorities. The Board of Education has earned a most unenviable notoriety in this respect, and the Local Government Board has done it constantly to a degree never before known in the history of that great Department. They are in continual worry and trouble with local authorities all over the country, and the Board of Agriculture is not without some experience of the same kind. This policy of driving local authorities, who are representative and responsible to their constituents, to take action when they are not desirous of taking action, makes us look with some suspicion on the wide powers of this Bill.

If your Lordships are willing to allow this Bill to have a Second Reading with the object of meeting such cases as Lord Fortescue has spoken of—genuine cases of hardship and difficulty in obtaining land—I think that so far as my noble friend behind me (Lord Lansdowne) is concerned, he will be prepared to assent to that course and to vote for it. But it must be on the clearest understanding, as I said on rising, that the noble Earl will be prepared to show us categorically what are the cases of hardship and difficulty with which he wishes to deal, and that he will be prepared also to accept such restrictions of wording as will limit the Bill to those cases. Your Lordships should not be put in the position of withdrawing in 1911 the protection which was deliberately given in 1908 to the very class whom this Act was intended to benefit.

EARL CARRINGTON

I really am grateful to noble Lords opposite for allowing me to have the Second Reading of this Bill. I am sure that the Bill is a perfectly proper one. As regards what the noble Viscount has just said about not knowing how long I should be in my present sphere, I am confident that my successor would carry out his duties in the honourable and straightforward way in which all Unionist Ministers have discharged their responsibilities. The noble Earl, Lord Camperdown, told us about this clause having been very fully considered by Parliament. That is perfectly true; but what has happened was not contemplated, nor is it desirable. I shall be prepared, of course, to substantiate my claim. I had, of course, a great many other instances to give, but I did not wish to weary the House. I will do my best to adduce categorical cases, because the only object of this Bill is to remedy these cases of hardship.

On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.