§ Amendments reported (according to Order).
§ Clause 4:
§ Short title, commencement and extent.
§ 4—(1) This Act may be cited as the Statement of Rates Act, 1919.
§ (2) This Act shall come into operation on the first day of January nineteen hundred and twenty.
§ (3) This Act shall not extend to Scotland or Ireland.
§ LORD SOUTHWARK moved to add to Clause 4 a subsection providing that "This Act shall not apply to the City of London." The noble Lord said: My Lords, I am sorry to trouble your Lordships, but this Bill would cause the Corporation of London a great deal of work and unnecessary expense, and I therefore beg to move the Amendment of which I have given Notice. The City 195 of London is a small and unique area. I am sure we shall all agree about that. It is also a non-residential area, and the small residential ratepayer is practically unknown there. The City of London does not compare with any other city or town in the Kingdom, and it is for that reason that I ask that this Bill, if it becomes an Act, shall not apply to the City. The Corporation of the City of London are very anxious to be relieved of a lot of unnecessary trouble and expense. I appeal to my noble friend Lord Sydenham, who is in charge of the Bill, to consent to the passing of this Amendment. It could do no possible harm to the rest of the country, because, as I have said, the City of London is a unique area, and practically this measure would not apply to it but would give unnecessary trouble and expense.
§ Amendment moved—
§
Clause 4, page 2, after subsection (2) insert the following new subsection:
(3) This Act shall not apply to the City of London."—(Lord Southwark.)
§ LORD SYDENHAMMy Lords, I venture to think that this Amendment is somewhat belated. Your Lordships have already passed two Amendments desired by the City of London and, of those Amendments, that which excluded the markets was, in the opinion of the Local Government Board and my own opinion, quite superfluous. The rentals of all these markets are fixed by statutory conditions and there is no question in their case of the landlord, who also happens to be the assessing authority, arranging with the tenant to compound for his rates. Therefore, the Bill would not apply in the slightest degree to those cases to which the noble Lord referred, or to the big blocks in the City. But if, after accepting two Amendments which the City of London proposed and desired, we then accepted a third Amendment excluding the City of London altogether from the operation of the Bill, should we not be stultifying the Amendment and, perhaps, even stultifying ourselves? There is a further reason against the Amendment. That is that if the Bill goes back to another place and it is seen that the City of London is excluded, almost any city in the United Kingdom—because in every city there must be conditions exactly the same as those in the City of London, although on a smaller scale—might 196 claim a like exemption and it would be very difficult to refuse that claim. If all these big cities were excluded then the bottom is knocked out of the Bill altogether and the Bill becomes futile. I therefore beg my noble friend not to press the Amendment.
§ LORD SOUTHWARKI am grateful to the noble Lord for the assistance he has given to the Corporation in this matter. I cannot persevere with this proposal after what he has said, but I should like to say, in reference to his concluding observations, that there is no other town or city which could put forward such a case as the City of London. I beg to withdraw.
§ Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.