Lords Sitting of 2 May 1918

Preamble
The Lord BLYTHSWOOD The Lord BLYTHSWOOD—Sat first in Parliament after the death of his father.
DEFENCE OF THE REALM (FOOD PROFITS) BILL.
Brought from the Commons; read 1a, and to be printed.

INCREASE OF RENT, &c. (AMENDMENT) BILL. [H.L.]
Order of the Day read for the consideration of the Commons Amendments.
Moved, That the Commons Amendments be now considered.— (The Lord Chancellor.)
LORD BALFOUR OF BURLEIGH: My Lords, I suppose it is no use making an appeal to the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack to give us more time, because I know that arrangements have been made to agree to these Amendments and to get the Royal Assent to the Bill to-day: but I think such a course is extremely unjust and unfair to the House. We parted with this Bill about six weeks ago. The Second Reading was taken in the House of Commons so long ago as April 17; the Committee stage was on April 24; and the Report and Third Reading were taken two or three days ago. I think we should have been given more time. The Amendments which the noble and learned Lord will have to explain are very important. I shall not go into them on the merits, but I must say that it is very hard upon this House that those of us who have interests in Scotland in connection with this matter have had absolutely no time to communicate with those interested in this Bill, and it has been quite impossible for those who are interested there to communicate with us. Consequently I think it is unfair to this House to proceed with the matter to-day.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD FINLAY): My Lords, I would point out to my noble friend that this Bill was sent down to the House of Commons on March 2. Then came the Easter recess. The Second Reading was taken in the House of Commons on April 17, the Committee stage on April 24, and the Report and Third Read-
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ing on April 30. There has been an abundance of time for correspondence with Scotland with regard to any particulars in connection with this Bill. It was perfectly well known what the Commons were doing and to what Amendments the Government had assented in the other House. In these circumstances I hope that my noble friend will see, as the matter is extremely urgent, the desirability of leaving the Bill to be dealt with as proposed.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, if the noble and learned Lord tells us that the matter is very urgent, far be it from me, of course, to contradict him; but the proceedings in the Commons do not look like it. The matter was not urgently pressed forward in that House. Weeks were allowed to elapse. The House of Commons was allowed to rise for the Easter recess without the Bill being passed into law. Nobody thought that this was improper; but when it comes back to this House, then the matter must be settled in twenty-four hours. I cannot understand that kind of urgency—an urgency which exists only at this end of the corridor and not at the other. An urgency which is one of place and not of time appears to me to be a very strange form of urgency. If my noble friend Lord Balfour, who has paid special attention to this subject and who knows that it interests his friends in Scotland, desires more time to consider the Amendments to this Bill which have come from the Commons, I must say that I think he is entitled to have it. If the Bill had been rushed through the Commons in, say, a week, and sent back to your Lordships' House, one could have understood it; but in the circumstances of the case I think we might respectfully ask for a little more explanation from the Government before we allow the Bill to proceed.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: With your Lordships' permission I might say that it was proposed to take the Bill yesterday, but it was postponed until to-day at the request of my noble friend Lord Balfour of Burleigh in order to give him more time. With regard to the delay in the House of Commons, the noble Marquess will recollect that it was only on March 20 that the Bill was sent down to that House.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: That is six weeks ago.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: Yes; but it was desirable that the question of making the Bill retrospective should be considered. That question has been considered, and the result will be seen. In the circumstances I hope that Lord Balfour of Burleigh will recognise that we have endeavoured to meet him as far as possible, and that nothing will be gained by taking further time for inquiries which might have been made while the Bill was in the Commons.
LORD BALFOUR OF BURLEIGH: I can speak again only by the indulgence of the House. The noble and learned Lord is not absolutely accurate in saying that the postponement until to-day was made at my request. I requested that the Bill should not be taken yesterday, which thought was a scandal in the circumstances; but my appeal was really for a longer time and not until to-day. However understand that the Government are determined to go on to-day; therefore it must be so. If will not take the responsibility of making it impossible now to consider the Commons Amendments, but I shall say something upon their merits when they are moved.
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COMMONS AMENDMENTS.
[The references are to Bill No. 7.]
Clause 1, page 1, line 10, leave out ("twelfth") and insert ("thirtieth")
Clause 1, Page 1, line 11, leave out ("March") and insert ("September"), and leave out ("eighteen") and insert ("seventeen")
Clause 1, Page 1, line 15, at end insert ("and the provisions of the said subsection with respect to orders made but not executed before the passing of that Act, shall apply to orders made but not executed before the passing of this Act, as if this Act had been substituted for that Act in the said subsection.
"Provided that this enactment shall not apply in any case where the court is satisfied by certificate given by or on behalf of the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries (or as regards premises in Scotland by the Board of Agriculture for Scotland, or in Ireland the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction for Ireland) that the premises in question are required for the occupation of a person engaged or employed in agricultural work of urgent national importance").
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, I beg to move that we agree with the Commons in these Amendments. This Bill originated in consequence of a letter which was sent to me by the chairman of the Military Pensions Committee in Buck-
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inghamshire, pointing out the great hardship on tenants of small houses—in many cases the families of soldiers serving—in consequence of the practice which had grown up nullifying to a great extent the beneficial effects of the Act passed on December 23, 1915, chapter 97, of 5 & 6 George V, for preventing the increase of rent of small houses of £25 a year, £30 a year, and £35 a year according to the part of the country in which the houses are situate. My attention was called to the fact that since the air raids upon London had begun a great many people had taken to purchasing these cottages from the landlords with a view of getting the tenants out under the terms of a clause to which I am going to call your Lordships' attention.
The general scope of the Act to which I have referred was, as your Lordships are aware, to prevent the rent being increased beyond the standard rate at which it had been before circumstances altered so much; and it was to prevent the termination of the tenancy and the creation of a new tenancy which would have nullified altogether so far as the tenant was concerned the beneficial effect of the Act. Section 1, subsection (3), contains this provision—
"No Order for the recovery of possession of a dwelling-house to which this Act applies or for the ejectment of a tenant therefrom shall be made so long as the tenant continues to pay rent at the agreed rate as modified by this Act and performs the other conditions of the tenancy, except on the ground that the tenant has committed waste or has been guilty of conduct which is a nuisance or an annoyance to adjoining or neighbouring occupiers, or that the premises are reasonably required by the landlord for the occupation of himself or some other person in his employ, or in the employ of some tenant from him, or on some other ground which may be deemed satisfactory by the Court making such Order …"
The material words for the present purpose are—except in the case where the premises are wanted by the landlord "for the occupation of himself or some person in his employ." In order to take advantage of that provision it was alleged—I believe with great truth—that in very many cases the owners of cottages where poor people, many of them dependants of soldiers, lived, were asked to sell to people who wanted them for their own occupation where they would be safe from the effects of air raids, principally in the West of London. I took the matter up, and after consultation with the Department concerned prepared a Bill which had the effect of providing that for the purposes of this subsection a purchaser

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from the lessor should not be deemed to be the landlord—that is to say, you would prevent a man who had bought from the lessor from giving notice. This was in order to put an end to the most objectionable practice of these cottages being bought up, sometimes for a price paid down and sometimes for a certain sum paid down and then weekly or monthly payments; because if that practice became extensively pursued the result would be that the persons for whose protection this Act was passed would be ousted from the benefit of the Act altogether. When the Act was passed, what was intended to be provided for was the fact of the landlord (the lessor) wanting the premises for the occupation of himself or of somebody in his employment, and I do not think that the case was ever considered of its being possible that there should be froth special causes, such a run upon property of this description that the Act would be in effect nullified by such purchases.
The Bill having been drafted on the lines with which your Lordships are now familiar—that is to say, excluding from the meaning of the word "landlord" in that section the purchaser from the landlord—I found that the very same evil existed to a very great extent in Scotland, and before the Bill was settled I had the advantage of a consultation with the Scottish Office and with the Lord Advocate. I found that the civil in Scotland did not assume exactly the same character. It was not that people were anxious to get cottages to escape from air raids, but that, particularly in the neighbourhood of Glasgow, there was a great run upon property for the accommodation of munition workers. In many cases it was the munition workers themselves who, getting excellent wages, bought the cottages either outright or by the payment of a sum down and instalments. What the proportion of such cases relatively was I do not know. In other cases the cottages were purchased by contractors who were desirous of providing accommodation for their workers. The evil in Scotland, I found, was in the opinion of the Scottish Office quite as serious as, perhaps more serious than, that in the neighbourhood of London.
Your Lordships will recollect that before this Bill went down to the House of Commons more than one member of your Lordships' House expressed a strong desire that it should be made retrospective on the ground that if the Bill were not retrospec-
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tive a great many cases would be unredressed—that is to say, that there were cases of purchases which had taken place within a certain number of months before the introduction of the Bill where eviction might yet take place. Your Lordships will observe that the whole scope of the Bill in amending the Act of 1915 was to prevent eviction—that is to say, that process should not be granted for turning a tenant out except on the ground specified in the subsections which I read to your Lordships a few minutes ago; and accordingly it is desired that tenants still in possession of these premises should not be exposed to eviction. It is not proposed by the Amendment for making the Bill retrospective to interfere at all with possession that has been taken by purchasers. It may be hard, but still possession has been taken, and it would upset arrangements too much to turn out a man who has entered, and in cases, it may be, where the tenant who has been evicted has made other arrangements for his occupation. All that the Bill before your Lordships protects the tenant from is process in the future, with one qualification arising out of an Amendment made in the Commons, to which I will call your Lordships' attention presently. A man who has possession wants no protection, nor does it matter whether that possession has been obtained by arrangement with the tenant or by execution followed by his taking possession.
In answer to the representations that the Bill ought to be made retrospective I pointed out that there was prima facie strong objection to retrospective legislation, but I admitted that there might be cases justifying it, and I said that I thought the case should be considered carefully during the progress of the measure through the Commons. It has been considered, and the Government Departments concerned—the Local Government Board and the Scottish Office—came to the conclusion that they ought not to resist the desire of the House of Commons that the Bill should be made retrospective. Various dates were suggested. One proposal was, I think, that it should relate back to January 1 of this year. Another proposal was that it should date back to May of last year. A third form of Amendment was proposed by the hon. and learned Member for the Ealing Division, who suggested that it should relate back to September 30, 1917. The Government ultimately decided in the

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House of Commons to accept that date, as striking a mean and as being in their judgment a fair date to take. There is very little doubt that that date was suggested to the hon. and learned Member for the Ealing Division by the fact that just about that time the pressure of the air raids was beginning to make itself felt in the West of London—that is to say, a demand for cottages was springing up in consequence of the air raids. In that way it seemed a very suitable date so far as London and the neighbourhood of London were concerned.
This date happened also to suit Scotland very well, for this reason. In England most of these tenancies, or at all events a great many of them, are weekly tenancies. In Scotland they are half-yearly tenancies, and you get a man out either on November 28, or, I think it is, May 28; and if any man had purchased before September 30 presumably he would have recovered possession in the interval, during the forty or fifty days that elapsed between the end of September and November 11 (the date for which the notice had to be given), the actual possession being got on November 28. Forty days notice is provided for by the Scottish law. Therefore you have coming on in May, towards the end of this month, a very considerable mass of demands for evictions in the neighbourhood of Glasgow, and September 30, though suggested from the English point of view, happened to suit the Scottish point of view very well. In these circumstances the clause, as passed by the House of Commons and sent up to your Lordships, substituted September 30, 1917, for March 12, 1918, the date of the introduction of the Bill.
There is only one word I have to say in regard to this Amendment. In the House of Commons there was a Motion made that words should be inserted giving a discretion to the Court. It was proposed to insert in the Bill on page 1, line 10, after the word "not" the words "except with the consent of the Court." Your Lordships will observe that that Amendment would have been a little odd in its framing, because the Bill says that "landlord" in these circumstances shall have a certain meaning, and to say that it shall have a certain meaning "except with the consent of the Court" is a little odd in form. That is a matter rather of style than of substance. In substance, however, there is an objection to giving that arbitrary discretion, as no lines were laid down on which it should be
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exercised, and in a great many cases the jurisdiction in England would have to be exercised by the magistrates. Consequently, the Government felt that it was certainly not desirable that this entirely arbitrary discretion should be conferred either upon the magistrates or the County Court Judges, and the Amendment to introduce these words was defeated in the House of Commons by, I think, 140 to 53. As I submit to your Lordships, the House of Commons took the right view when they refused to introduce that qualification.
The second Amendment your Lordships will see is this—
"and the provisions of the said subsection—"
that is, the subsection in the Act of 1915, part of which I read to your Lordships—
"with respect to Orders made but not executed before the passing of that Act, shall apply to Orders made but not executed before the passing of this Act, as if this Act had been substituted for that Act in the said subsection."
That means simply this. You may have a case where a man has obtained judgment in the County Court for possession but it has not been executed. In these circumstances it would be very hard if there were no power in the Court to modify the decree so as to give effect to the intention of the Act as if it had been in force at the time when the proceedings were taken. Accordingly, by reference to that provision at the end of subsection (3) of Clause 1 of the original Act of 1915, this power is given.
The third point to which I should call attention arises in the next paragraph of the Commons Amendments, and it is a point of some importance. It was raised by Members interested in agriculture in the House of Commons, who said there may be cases where in the public interest, in order to provide cottages for agricultural labourers who are urgently wanted upon the land, it may be desirable that the present tenants should go. For that reason this Amendment was introduced—
"Provided that this enactment shall not apply in any case where the Court is satisfied by certificate given by or on behalf of the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries (or as regards premises in Scotland by the Board of Agriculture for Scotland, or in Ireland the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction for Ireland) that the premises in question are required for the occupation of a person engaged or employed in agricultural work of urgent national importance."
To that Amendment, the importance of which on national grounds is very obvious,

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an Amendment was moved, with the object of which every one, I think, must sympathise. It was an Amendment for the purpose of excepting from the operation of such a certificate given by the Board of Agriculture cases where the premises were occupied by the families of soldiers or sailors. A long discussion took place upon that Amendment. In columns 1423 and 1424 of the Commons Hansard for Tuesday, April 30, 1918, appear the observations of the President of the Local Government Board in dealing with this Amendment, the effect of which I have stated to be to except the cases of cottages occupied by dependants of soldiers. The President said—
"The number of cases where a landlord might desire to turn out the tenant of a cottage who happens to be the wife or dependant of a soldier or sailor likely to arise under this Bill is not very large, and I doubt if it would be possible to find any words which would absolutely secure what is aimed at by the hon. Member who moved the Amendment. But after consultation with the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Agriculture, I can give an undertaking that the Board of Agriculture will not issue any certificate to any man by which he can obtain possession, for a ploughman or anybody he desires to employ, of a particular cottage without first considering whether it is a matter of grave national necessity from the point of view of carrying on the farm that he should obtain possession of the cottage. That will have to be most carefully considered, and at the same time it will also be considered whether or not suitable and adequate house accommodation can be obtained for the person proposed to be evicted. I hope that this undertaking will satisfy the House, and I am assured by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Agriculture that the Board is really inspired by a desire to act in that spirit."
After some further discussion the Motion, which was persevered in, was defeated by 123 to 71, and I submit to your Lordships that the course taken by the Government in this matter was a right and reasonable one, and that your Lordships should take the same view on this matter that was adopted by the House of Commons after a full debate. I submit that the matter ought to be allowed to rest on the undertaking given by the President of the Local Government Board on behalf of the Board of Agriculture. I think I have stated all the facts that are neessary to enable your Lordships to form an opinion on these Amendments, and I beg to move that they be now agreed to.
Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendments.—(The Lord Chancellor.)
LORD BALFOUR OF BURLEIGH: My Lords, I have no challenge to make with regard to the last of the Amendments, but I think it would have been more convenient if we had taken the Amendments separately. It would have perhaps saved time. I want to make it quite clear that so far as the last part of the noble and learned Lord's speech was concerned, I have no criticism to make and no challenge to offer. The Amendment made in the House of Commons was made with singular judgment and was absolutely right. I entirely agree with the decision which was arrived at.
The only point I desire to challenge is that of making the Bill so largely retrospective as has now been done. Even upon that point I frankly state that I do not criticise the statement of facts which the noble and learned Lord has made from the Woolsack. As every one would have expected, he made his statement of facts with absolute accuracy, except perhaps on one small point—the dates which were selected for debate in the House of Commons were not quite correct. The main point is that the Amendment now makes the Bill retrospective to September 30 of last year. I think that this will inflict enormous hardship upon a large number of very innocent persons. I should have said nothing about it if there had been an impartial tribunal set up, such as was indicated in one of the Amendments in the House of Commons, in order to decide between the various conflicting interests. I frankly admit that there are difficulties either way. Things have been done by unscrupulous people, both owners and tenants, which ought not to have been done, and difficulties have arisen. But the method which has been taken of amending this Bill will, beyond all question, inflict great hardship on many innocent people, and to my mind it is a great blot on the Bill that there is no impartial tribunal provided to adjudicate upon the merits of the cases that might be brought before them.
If I had had time, the line which I, personally, should have been inclined to take would have been to move an Amendment to the Commons Amendment to enable this House to pass a judgment as to the merits of this particular issue. There will be great hardship on owners, in some respects at least equal to those inflicted on tenants. There will be extreme hardship

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to bona fide purchasers of houses for their own use, the purchase of which was effected during the last six or eight months. I will give two instances which I have had sent to me—I have had scores—and I have every reason to believe they are absolutely accurate and not in the slightest degree over-stated. I think your Lordships will agree that there ought to have been some provision for a judicial decision in regard to them. In one of the letters I have received this instance is given—
"We have one case where a cottage house of £30 was purchased by an invalid in January last, solely on health grounds. If the Bill is passed with the present date she will be unable to get possession of the house. Apart from this case, the retrospective nature of the measure will cause many hardships. Many purchasers have given up their present houses and will be homeless if the tenant of the purchased house does not remove."
The other letter runs as follows—
"On March 11 I bought a small cottage with the intention of occupying it myself. I did not know until a day or two afterwards of the existence of the Bill in question, and I gave up my present abode, which is now let to another party. The seller of the cottage wished the cash, and the sale took place in the open market to the highest offerer, the present tenant of the cottage being aware of the transaction, but declining to offer. He now takes advantage of the provisions of the Increase of Rents Bill, and says that if it is made sufficiently retrospective to suit him, he will decline to move away."
He adds that be is neither an alien nor a munition worker, but is trying to succeed by the Scottish ideal of making the best of circumstances. The Bill, if it goes back to September 30, 1917, will leave him without a home as the reward of diligence.
I feel bound to say that making the Bill retrospective is extremely unjust. It is a new precedent in our legislation, and I do not believe it is in itself reasonable without some Court to decide on the circumstances of individual cases. A great deal has been made of the injustice of owners raising rents. If an owner takes advantage of air raids unduly to raise rents on existing tenants, I fully agree; but it is not an injustice for an owner of a small house to raise the rent in order to meet the necessary cost of repairs as they now exist. Take the case of a house let at £25 a year five years ago. The repairs to-day cost three or four times as much as they did then, so that, if the rent (£25) paid an interest of 5 or 6 per cent. on the capital, the increased cost of repairs, possibly of interest on mortgages, of rates and of public burdens,
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will reduce the income of the owner to less than nothing, and this from no fault of his own. If you interfere with contracts and make your interference retrospective, you ought to provide an easy access to some tribunal which will say whether the effect of the interference you have made is just or unjust. Why should there not be an appeal to art impartial tribunal? In most cases it is the good owner who is suffering. A tenant may go, but the owner cannot change his tenant. It seems to me that it is the best of the men who are suffering because they will have no remedy. Surely in these times we must face the economic facts of the situation, and why not make a reasonable allowance if the owner wants to raise the rent reasonably in order to compensate for the increased cost of repairs, where the contract provides that the repairs shall be done by the landlord? As a matter of form, I shall move that the first of the Commons Amendments be not agreed to.
Amendment moved—
"That this House doth not agree with the Commons in the first Amendment.".—(Lord Balfour of Burleigh.)
THE EARL OF CAMPERDOWN: My Lords, the matter has been so fully discussed that it is only necessary for me to say one or two words. What Lord Balfour of Burleigh has said to the effect that an owner ought to be allowed to raise rents reasonably may be quite true, but it is contrary to the Act of 1915 with which we are now dealing. The object of that Act was to forbid rents being raised, and to preserve the right of a tenant to remain in the house so long as he paid the rent agreed upon. Unfortunately many owners have taken advantage of certain words in the Act which said that they might require their house if they wanted it for their own purposes. If that part of the Act had been fairly interpreted and administered by the owners, I do not think that anything could have been said, but a great many owners took advantage of those words to give notice to their tenants that they required the house for themselves when as a matter of fact they did not so require it, but wanted in most cases to sell, and thereby make a profit which it had been the purpose of the Act of 1915 to prevent. In these circumstances, unless this proposed Bill remains retrospective to some extent at all events, the Act of 1915 would be defeated

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and evaded in a not very creditable way. I am entirely opposed to retrospective legislation, and I see all the objections that there are to it. At the same time unless in this amending Bill you introduce retrospective legislation the Act would have no force whatever and would be merely waste paper. The matter has been so fully discussed by the Lord Chancellor that it is not necessary for me to take up your Lordships' time any further, but I would say that I think upon the whole the Amendments proposed by the Commons are Amendments to which your Lordships should agree.
EARL GREY: My Lords, I should like to call attention to one case which I think bears out a great deal of what fell from my noble friend Lord Balfour, and not only bears it out but also points to a considerable gap in what this Bill will achieve. I refer to the hardships that may be inflicted not only by an owner raising rent, but by a tenant letting his house at a very large increase of rent to a sub-tenant. I have one case which I should like to put before your Lordships. It is a case where a landlord owned 300 houses, and sought to raise his rent collectively by £200. He obtained the permission of the local authority to do so. This was challenged by the tenants in the Courts, and the decision of the local authority was reversed. The landlord, therefore, was not allowed to do what he wished, although it was proved that his tenants had sub-let the houses at a profit of £3,000. I quite agree that landlords ought not to seek to make house profiteering, but I also submit that there is a case for inquiry to prevent tenants sub-letting at a great profit to themselves. So long as you allow tenants to make that profit you will find that there are many cases in which landlords have been very unfairly treated.
LORD SYDENHAM: My Lords, I should like, to support what has fallen from the noble Earl, Lord Camperdown. Several cases—something like forty, I think—have occurred at Brighton. These are mostly cases of alien fugitives. Of these three have been mentioned to me in which the landlord had displaced the tenant and removed into the house in order that he might make over the house to an alien fugitive. I therefore hope that this Amendment of the House of Commons will be passed. Much as one dislikes the idea of retrospective legislation, I
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think that it is necessary in the interests of a great many people who have been very hardly pressed by this rush of aliens to the coast to get away from the air raids on London.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: My Lords, should like to say a word regarding what has fallen from the noble Lords who have spoken on this matter. The objection made by my noble friend Lord Balfour of Burleigh regarding the increase in rent by the landlord is not really an objection to this Bill but is an objection to the original Act of 1915. In the second place, your Lordships will see that there may be cases where the tenant is making some profit out of his house, and that is aggravating for the landlord to witness, but I should think, bearing in mind the class of house to which this Bill relates, that those cases are comparatively few. At all events, the evil that has arisen is not with regard to them but is in relation to sales by the landlord, and we felt that it was imperative to deal with the evil in the shape in which it presented itself to us. The Act relates only to very small properties of £35 annual value, and your Lordships will clearly appreciate that it does not affect any case where possession has been taken over by consent, or under the order of the Court, but deals only with the right to take proceedings in the future, and with the parallel right to have a decree that has been obtained before the Act passes but not executed modified so as to make it fair having regard to the terms of the Act. I shall not repeat what I have said as to the extraordinary difficulty of putting in the words which were proposed in the Commons but rejected that the variation of the Bill should be subject to the consent of the Court, for no guide could be suggested for the magistrates or County Court Judges who would have to administer the Act.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, no one in your Lordships' House objects to the principal Act which we are engaged in amending. It was accepted, I believe, without any dissent. Nor does any one object to the principle of making the Act retrospective in order to defeat the cases of those alien gentlemen to whom my noble friend Lord Sydenham referred. We are all agreed about that. But my noble friend Lord Balfour has called attention to the fact that in certain instances this enactment will work great hardship, and he has

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quoted actual cases in which this would be so.
I observe that the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack did not attempt to deal with those cases. He did not say that my noble friend was under a misapprehension, or that he had no grounds for thinking that this Bill would not work injustice. All he said was that he did not think that an Amendment which had been proposed in the Commons would have been a workable Amendment. Does not that illustrate the extreme objection to the way in which we do our business in this House, to which my noble friend called attention at the beginning of the proceedings? Had we been given a day or two, or a few hours, after the Amendments were put into our hands in order to consider them, it is not at all beyond the bounds of possibility that noble Lords so expert in drafting Amendments would have been able to draw up an Amendment which would to some extent have mitigated the hardship of those cases to which my noble friend has referred. But your Lordships are given no opportunity of doing that kind of thing. The Government do not allow us the proper time to consider such points. Not that we want to stop the legislation, or that we object to the principle of the legislation or the principle of the Commons Amendments. On the contrary, we are all agreed about that. But it is what I cannot help describing as a headlong method of legislation when there is really no case and no reason for it, to compel your Lordships to pass things which ex concessis will do great harm to His Majesty's subjects. I think we have a real ground of complaint. If this Bill had been put off for two days it would not have made the slightest difference to its efficacy, and it would have given Lord Balfour an opportunity of trying his hand at drafting an Amendment, which he does not now possess.
I earnestly hope that we may not often have the spectacle that we now see when we come here to consider the Commons Amendments—the Throne is uncovered, and we are practically told, "There is no opportunity for you we have arranged that the Commons Amendments shall be taken at once." My Lords, you might as well none of you be here; we are all really a sham. I think this is a matter for genuine resentment on the part of your Lordships which I earnestly hope we may be spared in future.
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Amendment to disagree with the Commons first Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Then the original Motion—"That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said Amendments"—put and agreed to.

LOCH DOON AERIAL GUNNERY SCHOOL SCHEME.
LORD BALFOUR OF BURLEIGH LORD BALFOUR OF BURLEIGH had the following Question on the Paper—
To ask at what date and on whose authority the resolution was taken to establish an aerial gunnery school on Loch Doon; who was the engineer who was responsible for recommending the scheme; what local representations were made as to the difficulties in the way of carrying it out, and whether these representations have been justified in the result; and to move for a complete Return of the total cost to the public funds for materials, the cost of construction, of labour, of employment of prisoners, and the amount of compensation paid, and the probable amount of compensation and cost of restoration still to be met.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I spoke at some length a few weeks ago about the Question which stands in my name on the Paper, and although everything I have heard since confirms is what I then said, I do not intend to repeat my statement. I propose simply to put this Question, to make the Motion which stands in my name, and to move for Papers.
THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL (EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON): My Lords, in the absence for the time being of any representative of the Air Ministry in your Lordships' House, I have undertaken to reply to the Question of the noble Lord this afternoon. Indeed, it was at my instance, on the occasion to which he has alluded when the subject was raised before, that a further Question was put on the Paper by the noble Lord in order to enable additional information to be given from this Bench. I have investigated this matter to the best of my ability, and the circumstances, as I shall state them to your Lordships' House, throw a somewhat different light on the affair from that which was supposed by the noble Lord when he spoke on the matter a few weeks ago. I will give the House the sequence of events

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as they have occurred in relation to the selection, in the first place, and, in the later stage, the abandonment of Loch Doon.
In the summer of 1916 it was considered very desirable to establish a school of aerial gunnery at some point in the British Isles. Certain conditions were necessary in the selection of such a site. It was desirable that the place should be a lonely and isolated spot where there would be little or no population, so that the requisite shooting practice could take place without risk to human life. Secondly, it was indispensable to get an expanse of smooth water. Accordingly a committee of experts went round the British Isles investigating the various possible sites that would answer to this description. They went over Scotland, Ireland, and the most likely parts of England, particularly the Eastern counties, Norfolk, and the Fen country in Lincolnshire. The first reconnaissance was made by them in the month of May, 1916, and their report, on which action was afterwards taken, was handed in during August of that year. They reported in favour of Loch Doon, stating that it was in many respects an almost ideal spot for the purposes that I have described.
Loch Doon itself, which I do not know, and of which I can speak only from hearsay, appears to be a long, narrow, extensive stretch of smooth water. It is surrounded by high hills, which were suitable for the target practice and other operations that were in contemplation. Shooting could take place there without the injury to human life of which I have spoken, because there was little or no human population to be disturbed. Accordingly the committee made this recommendation to the War Office. The decision in its favour was an Army Council decision—that is to say, it was a decision of the War Office, which was in charge of the matter at that time.
LORD BALFOUR OF BURLEIGH: May I ask at what date?
EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON: August, 1916. This decision was taken on the advice of Lieut-General Sir David Henderson, the Director-General of Military Aeronautics at that time; of Major-General Brancker, the Deputy Director-General, who twice visited the spot; of Brigadier-General Charlton, the Director of Air Organisation; and of other officers of
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the Royal Flying Corps, who had direct, personal experience both of flying in the air and of aerial gunnery. It was recognised from the start that certain—I will even say formidable—difficulties would have to be met, and, if possible, overcome. There were engineering difficulties, in the first place, arising out of the construction of a road or roads to the loch, and possibly of a railroad, should that be required. There was the difficulty that confronted the construction of the aerodrome itself, arising from the wet and marshy character of the ground on the borders of the loch, where obviously a good deal of drainage would be required. This difficulty, I understand, it was proposed to meet by placing the aerodrome, not on the borders of the loch, but rather lower down, a little distance from the loch and at the bottom of the hill. But the difficulty of the aerodrome was not looked upon in itself as of capital importance, because it was in the main for the experimental use of seaplanes rising from the water that this particular site was demanded.
Then also doubts were entertained in some quarters as to the suitability of the climate, in reply to which it was pointed out that the climate for aviation at Ayr, which is, I believe, only twenty miles distant, is among the best in any part of the British Isles. Thus, my Lords, there was at that time a very strong consensus of expert opinion in favour of the selection of this site. Apart from this—in reply to one of the Questions of the noble Lord—a local inspection was carried out by the Chief Engineer of the Scottish Command, Brigadier-General Stewart; by the Commanding Officer of the Royal Engineers in the Lowlands, Lieutenant-Colonel Molony; and, as regards drainage, by Mr. MacGregor, the county surveyor of the area. On the other hand, considerable stress was laid upon the gravity of the engineering difficulties (to which I have referred) by Major-General Sir George Moncrieff, the Director of Fortifications and Works; and he urged that in view of those difficulties some other site should, if possible, be preferred. But in the inability to discover any more suitable alternative, that officer reluctantly acquiesced in the choice of Loch Doon in deference to the opinion of the technical experts to whom I have referred. The next step before the final commencement of works on this spot was that it was visited by a committee of experts consisting of representatives of the

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Director of Fortifications and Works, the Director-General of Military Aeronautics, and the county surveyor whose name I have given. I might add that several of these officers—some of whom I have seen—still retain the opinion that the choice was a right and wise one, and that the mistake made was not in the selection in the first place, but in abandoning it at a subsequent period. I do not offer any opinion about that, because my information is only second-hand.
Now as to the point of the local representations, about which the noble Lord asks in his Question. Local representations of a kind were made, but they related mainly to the effect on the fishing and other amenities of the property, and were chiefly made by the firm of solicitors representing the principal owner of the property involved. Satisfactory arrangements were made with that property owner, a lady, no doubt known by name to the noble Lord. So far as I can ascertain, no other representations were made by, and no protest was received from, the local inhabitants, such as they were, in the neighbourhood. That was the position of affairs when the works were instituted. They went on during the course the past year. A great deal of money was spent—though not nearly so much, as I shall show in a minute, as has been stated in some quarters—until the matter came under revision on the creation of the new Air Ministry and the constitution of an Air Council in the beginning of the present year. The matter was looked into afresh by them. The climatic conditions, after the experience of a year, were again severely criticised, and were apparently not very successfully defended. It was found that the engineering difficulties had been under-estimated, and that the scheme had been very much more costly and had taken much longer in carrying out than had been anticipated. Your Lordships must, I think, in fairness remember that this is to some extent due to the great and obvious difficulty of obtaining labour and materials in war time. Had these works been undertaken under normal conditions in time of peace I think there is little reason to doubt that they could have been successfully carried through. But when you come to the fact that the works were being inevitably prolonged, that the date of opening seemed remote, that the difficulties of carrying them out were considerable, and that the cost was very large, it is obvious
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that the claims of other and competing public objects in connection with the war had to be considered and might have to be preferred in its place. Now as regards the cost. In our previous discussion upon the matter some noble Lord—I rather think it was Lord Balfour—from a letter which he quoted gave the gigantic sum of £3,000,000.
LORD BALFOUR OF BURLEIGH: What I actually said was that I had no information, but that I understood a sum of £3,000,000 had passed through the local branch bank, and that some large portion of that money was undoubtedly for these works.
EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON: The impression suggested was that if £3,000,000 had not been expended upon these works, at any rate £3,000,000 had been banked in a neighbouring banking institution; and the inference was that a considerable proportion of that sum had been devoted to these works. I will give the noble Lord the actual figures, which I have been careful to ascertain. The best estimate of the total cost which I have been able to procure is £433,229. That may be taken as the cost of construction. Of this sum it is estimated that about £152,000 represents the cost of labour, while the amount paid for employment of prisoners of war was £10,718. But it is fair to inform your Lordships that we have already credits estimated at £205,000 in respect of plant, timber, and other materials, to be set against the £433,000 odd that I gave just now. So that the net adverse balance is brought down, as will be seen, to £228,000.
Those are the facts as I have been able to ascertain them, and I think they may be held to establish the following propositions. First, the construction of such a school of gunnery, with if possible an aerodrome attached to it, was, and remains, a matter of capital importance; because I may add that in the failure of Loch Doon no site of similar qualifications, or with what are believed to be similar qualifications, has been found to take its place. Secondly, the selection of this particular site was preceded by a careful examination not only of this but of other possible sites in all parts of the United Kingdom. Thirdly, the site was selected, after careful examination and visits to the spot by expert authorities, as the most suitable for the purpose. Fourthly, the

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engineering difficulties were clearly underestimated by the engineers to whom I have referred, and were found as the work went on to be greater than had been anticipated. Finally, as to the decision for abandonment, I can, of course, offer no opinion, because I took no part in the discussions which led to that result; and I am all the more precluded from offering an opinion, even if I had one, by the fact that the matter is under investigation by a Committee of another place which is inquiring into this among other objects of national expenditure arising out of the war. I think it as well that your Lordships should await the Report of that Committee, because, as I mentioned just now, though some of those who are concerned in this matter might conceivably be held to be prejudiced, nevertheless they held the opinion very strongly indeed that the right choice was made, that it, ought to have been persisted in, and that the cost, of which so much complaint has been made, should have been incurred and continued to be incurred; and it is conceivable that when the Report of the other House reaches us some weight—I do not say how much—may be attached to that expression of opinion. Those are the facts of the case as I have been able to ascertain them. I have put them before your Lordships, I hope, with candour, and I trust that they give a sufficient reply to the Questions which have been asked by my noble friend.
LORD BALFOUR OF BURLEIGH: My Lords, I should like to express my acknowledgments to the noble Earl the Lord President of the Council for the evident care and pains which he has taken to investigate this matter and to give us the fullest answer that he thinks consistent with the public interest at the present time. I fully recognise some of the considerations which he mentioned towards the close of his speech, and I am perfectly willing to wait for the Report which he has indicated. I think, however, that he was in error on one point at any rate, when he said that the local representations were only as to sporting rights, fishing, and so on, which I personally in a matter of this kind would be perfectly willing to disregard and compensate for. The local representations, as I am informed, were really upon the engineering difficulties, and if I am not in error it was really these engineering difficulties which caused the abandonment of the
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scheme—engineering difficulties as to the impossibility of draining the depth of the peat area in this district; the extraordinary flooding which there is at times of the year owing to the peculiar configuration and the narrow outlet of the loch at the southern end; the, comparatively speaking, smaller area over which the water collects at that point, and the impossibility of getting the water away from the southern end of the loch. For weeks at a time it lies over the flat area on which some of these structures were intended to be built. My information is that all these points were put before those who were sent down to investigate, and that they did not receive the attention which they ought to have received. The noble Earl made a debtor and creditor account of the expenditure and of what it was expected to get back, but, so far as I could follow him, he did not mention anything about the amount of compensation paid for disturbance, either for sporting rights or other things, or the amount of compensation and restoration which may still have to be met. Therefore I think to that extent his answer was not complete. As far as my information goes—I had a letter from the owner of the estate at any rate within the last few weeks—no compensation has yet been paid, and the question of compensation and possible expenses of restoration has still to be met.
EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON: My Lords, in regard to the two points made by the noble Lord, of course I cannot speak as to what local representations may have been made to the officers visiting the spot. I could only ascertain whether such representations were made by seeing the whole of the officers. I have given all the information in the possession of the Air Ministry upon the point, and there is no record other than that to which I have referred. As regards the question of compensation, the noble Lord is, of course, quite right. I cannot give such figures because nothing has yet been paid. The amount remains for settlement and will have to be added to the adverse balance, as I have called it.
LORD BALFOUR OF BURLEIGH: Then we have not yet got the whole cost?
EARL CURZON OF KEDLESTON: No. The amount that may have to be given for restoration and compensation cannot be stated. At a later date, if the noble

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Lord requires the information, I will do my best to supply it.
LORD BALFOUR OF BURLEIGH: I ask the leave of the House to withdraw the Motion.
Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

WORKMEN'S COMPENSATION (ILLEGAL EMPLOYMENT) BILL.
House in Committee (according to Order): Bill reported without amendment.
House adjourned during pleasure.
House resumed.

ROYAL COMMISSION.
The following Bill received the Royal Assent—
Increase of Rent, &c. (Amendment).

PRIVATE BILLS, &c.
[From Minutes of May 1.]
BRITISH ALUMINIUM COMPANY (LOCHABER WATER POWER) BILL. [H.L.]
The Chairman of Committees informed the House that the Promoters do not intend to proceed further with the Bill: Ordered, That the Bill be not further proceeded with.
WANDSWORTH, WIMBLEDON, AND EPSOM DISTRICT GAS BILL. [H.L.]
Committee to meet on Tuesday next.

FEE FUND OF THE HOUSE OF LORDS.
The LORD CHANCELLOR The LORD CHANCELLOR acquainted the House that the Clerk of the Parliaments had laid on the Table the Annual Account of the Fee Fund of the House of Lords: The same was ordered to lie on the Table and to be referred to the Select Committee on the House of Lords Offices.
House adjourned at fifteen minutes past six o'clock.