LORD RAGLANMy Lords, I wish to ask His Majesty's Government whether they can give any information with regard to contracts for harbour works recently entered into by the Government of the Gold Coast Colony and whether it is a fact that the contractors are receiving a Government stipend in addition to the usual fees and commission. My information on this Question is to the following effect: The harbour works now being undertaken under the direction of the Government of the Gold Coast are to cost a million and a quarter sterling, but I understand that they will be of little use until the whole scheme is completed, which is to cost £6,000,000, and this will provide the Colony with harbour works which they neither require nor can afford. As regards the second part of my Question, I understand that the unusually favourable terms granted to the contractors have been the subject of much unfavourable local comment.
THE EARL OF CRAWFORDMy Lords, this subject has been discussed with the utmost care both by the authorities in London and by the authorities on the Gold Coast, and my answer traverses in substance everything that Lord Raglan has said. No contract for these works has 270 been entered into. The work at present being clone on harbours in the Gold Coast consists in the construction of a deep-water harbour at Takoradi, at an estimated cost of £1,600,000, and certain improvements to the existing harbour at Accra, at an estimated cost of £100,000. These works are being carried out by the Public Works Department in the Gold Coast, under the supervision of Messrs. Stewart & Mae-Donnell, who have been appointed consulting engineers to the Gold Coast Government for that purpose. Their remuneration is fixed at £70,000, and will be paid at the rate of £20,000 a year from July 1, 1921, and they receive no other fees or commission of any kind.
The reasons which led to the decision to carry out the works departmentally rather than by putting them out to contract are briefly as follows:—(1) The project was finally approved in June, 1921. In the uncertain conditions then prevailing in the industrial world, there can be little doubt that no contractor would have bound himself to any reasonable figure. (2) Intending tenderers would have required opportunity to make an independent study of conditions and of the locality, which would have involved considerable delay, which it was most undesirable to incur. (3) The present consulting engineers' remuneration is fixed, and they stand to gain nothing (as would be the case were the tenders placed on the usual percentage basis) if the cost were exceeded. The objections to which Lord Raglan referred have been most carefully considered. The Colony considers that it can afford the outlay which is proposed, that the construction of the total work now being undertaken will be extremely profitable to the Colony, will develop its trade, and will in every way be of benefit to that country; and that the works about to be carried out will not in any way prejudice future developments which are expected to be required before many years have passed.
§ LORD EMMOTTMy Lords, it is extraordinarily difficult on a matter of this kind, when one has very grave doubts as to the course which the Government is pursuing, in face of such a statement as that which we have just heard, to expect that one can impart one's own doubts to your Lordships, and, as it were, overcome the view put forward by the Government. But on this particular case, as the matter 271 has been raised by the noble Lord opposite, I beg leave to say a word or two more. The cost of this harbour scheme has been given by the noble Earl who has replied for the Government as £1,600,000, but the cost of these other schemes for linking up the railways, which will be required to make the harbour scheme effective, will be over £2,000,000 for the Takoradi to Kyea Railway, and £2,250,000 for the Takoradi to Wioso Railway. It is said that without those railways this scheme cannot be effective, but it is also said that the finances of the Colony do not justify such expenditure. Commodities raised in the Colonies now are being exported, and the cost of the present Gold Coast Railway is higher than that of any other railway.
§ LORD EMMOTTYou are going to add to that by spending immediately another £1,600,000. That expenditure will probably involve, eventually, from £5,000,000 to £6,000,000. The total debt of the Colony will then be something like £13,000,000, and the annual charge over £800,000, whereas in 1913 it was only £90,000, for interest on the Public Debt. In those circumstances I say that the Government is pursuing a highly dangerous course. The noble Earl says that the Colony consents to this, and that the Government consent, but what about these Export Duties which are killing the trade of the Colony, and which, if this is bad finance, will be made permanent. I cannot conceive that these Colonies can go on if you maintain these Export Duties. I believe that schemes such as this will mean that the Public Debt of the Colony will be so large that the export trade and the users of the railway will not be able to pay the cost of the new amount that is being borrowed and that the Gold Coast, which before the war was one of the most promising and progressive parts of the British Empire, will cease to be prosperous at all.
THE EARL OF CRAWFORDI did not know that more than the bare facts of the case were going to be invited; otherwise, I would have developed considerably more detail. I have exhausted my right to speak and I do not propose to make a further speech, but I will record for the satisfaction of Lord Emmott that this 272 thing has not been blindly entered upon. It has been the subject of prolonged and most exhaustive inquiry in the Colony itself. All these points were gone into, including the high cost of the railway. One of the reasons of the high cost of the railway is that it is a bottle-neck; there is no issue from it. No ship can get near the harbour; everything that is loaded or unloaded has to be put into surf boats, which damages the imports and exports. The matter has been gone into in a very thorough and businesslike way, approved by a very strong and representative Committee, and it has the cordial endorsement of the Governor of the Colony.