RAILWAY FIRES ACT (1905) AMENDMENT BILL. (Hansard, 28 June 1923)

§ LORD HASTINGS
My Lords, this also is an amending Bill which I desire to bring to your Lordships' notice. Under the Railway Fires Act, 1905, the damage for which a railway company was liable was limited to £100 in the case of fire having occurred among standing crops, or crops that had been reaped but not removed from the ground. Under this Bill the limit of damages is raised to £200. I should like to say one word on the general point of damages payable by railway companies. For my own part, I am unable to understand why there should be any limit to the amount of damage payable. In every other case of an individual, company or firm doing damage to somebody else's property the liability is limited only by the amount of damage caused, and it seems very peculiar that a railway company should enjoy a specially favourable position by such a limitation of liability.
This Bill was accepted in another place, and I trust that your Lordships will not desire to amend it by increasing the liability, for if this were done the Bill would, undoubtedly, be lost. It is a two-clause Bill. The second clause does not alter the statutory time within which a claim shall be made against the railway company: the time was seven days and it remains seven days. But this Bill increases from fourteen to twenty-one days the time during which the amount claimed may be stated. Those are the only alterations which this amending Bill proposes. I do not suppose your Lordships will think it necessary for me to go further into the matter. The Bill explains itself and is extremely simple. I therefore beg, without further comment, to move that it be now read a second time.

§ LORD STUART OF WORTLEY
My Lords, owing to recent changes the interest in railway companies which I used sometimes to manifest before your Lordships has become more academic than it was, but at the same time I do take an interest in this Bill. The question asked by the noble Lord who 696 moved the Second Reading as to why there should be any limit to the amount paid by railway companies does, I think, demand an answer. It must be remembered by your Lordships that any damage inflicted upon crops or upon woodlands by railway engines is inflicted in the exercise of statutory powers and, indeed, in the discharge of statutory duties; and, further, it may have been inflicted notwithstanding a total absence of any negligence on the part of those using the engine, and in spite of the exercise of the greatest care and of all available scientific means for preventing any such damage.
There are some cases in which the Legislature has said that those using powers of that kind should be placed in the position of insurers, notwithstanding the total absence of negligence, and that has made it a proper answer to give in a case of this kind as to why the amount of damage is limited. I hope the mover of the Second Reading of this Bill will not object to my attempting to remove the prejudice which attaches to this Bill. There will be no opposition to the Second Reading from myself or those with whom I have been accustomd to act in past times on Railway Bills, but if there should be any attempt to restore in Committee a provision for longer notice than is found in this Bill I cannot promise that there will be such a smooth passage through the Committee stage as I hope will be given to the Second Reading.

§ THE EARL OF ANCASTER
On behalf of the Ministry of Agriculture I wish to express their cordial approval of the Bill, and I hope your Lordships will give it a Second Reading.