Lords Sitting of 21 June 1932

Preamble
The House met at a quarter past four of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
HIRE PURCHASE AND SMALL DEBTS (SCOTLAND) BILL.
Brought from the Commons; read 1a; and to be printed.
MINISTRY OF HEALTH PRO- VISIONAL ORDER (WATFORD) BILL.
Brought from the Commons; read 1a; to be printed, and referred to the Examiners.
BURY CORPORATION BILL.
Read 3a, with the Amendments, and passed, and returned to the Commons.

BARMOUTH AND DISTRICT ELECTRICITY ORDER, 1932.
THE PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY OF THE MINISTRY OF TRANSPORT (THE EARL OF PLYMOUTH): My Lords, I beg to move in reference to the Barmouth and District Electricity Order, 1332, that the Special Order, as reported from the Special Orders Committee on Tuesday last, be approved.
Moved, That the Special Order, as reported from the Special Orders Committee on Tuesday last, be approved.—(The Earl of Plymouth.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

ROAD TRAFFIC BILL. [H.L.]
Amendments reported (according to Order).
Clause 1:
Negligent driving resulting in death or bodily injury.
1. Any driver of a motor vehicle who, owing to his negligence, kills any person, shall be liable on conviction to imprisonment for a period not exceeding two years; and any person driving a motor vehicle who, by his negligence, causes bodily injury to any person, shall be liable on conviction to imprisonment for a period not exceeding one year or to a fine not exceeding one hundred pounds, or to both, and in both of the cases referred to in this section the person driving the motor vehicle shall on conviction as mentioned above be disqualified from holding or obtaining a licence for such period as the court thinks fit, but not less than twelve months from the expiration of his term of imprisonment, if any, or, where no term of imprisonment is imposed, from the date of conviction.
THE EARL OF HALSBURY THE EARL OF HALSBURY moved, after "above", to insert "unless the Court for special reasons think fit to order otherwise." The noble Earl said: My Lords, in the regrettable absence of Lord Atkin I beg to move this Amendment which stands on the Paper in his name. The words which it is proposed to insert are no new words. They have been used

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in other Acts of Parliament. What they mean in effect is that there shall not be an absolute hard and fast penalty which in no circumstances whatsoever can be altered. Those of us who have had to deal with Courts of Law know that every Court, whether composed of Judges, magistrates or juries, is human, and there is a general feeling in all Courts of dislike of bringing in a verdict of guilty when it is known that there is no sort of elasticity in what may happen to the accused person. Therefore these words have been put in many other Acts of Parliament. For these reasons I ask your Lordships to adopt the words here and I beg to move the Amendment on the Paper.
Amendment moved—
Clause 1, page 1, line 15, after ("above") insert ("unless the Court for special reasons think fit to order otherwise").—(The Earl of Halsbury.)
LORD BUCKMASTER: My Lords, the real defect in the noble Earl's argument lies in this: that he assumes that we are satisfied with existing legislation. We are not. We think it has failed. We think it is essential that punishment should be certain and should be severe, and that unless that happens we shall have no mitigation of the terrible accidents that disgrace our roads. That is our view. None the less I understand that the noble Earl and some others who think with him would like to have this elasticity—of which I must say I do not approve—introduced into the Bill. I have no desire to occupy your Lordships' time by entering into what would be nothing but an unprofitable discussion, and so, if the noble Earl wishes to insist on the Amendment, I shall not oppose it.
On Question, Amendment agreed to.
LORD DARLING LORD DARLING moved to add to the clause:
"Provided that it shall be a good defence to any such charge if it shall be proved in evidence that the person killed or injured owing partly to the negligence of the accused was himself guilty of contributory negligence without which the death or injury, respectively, would not have occurred. But no person shall be deemed to be guilty of such contributory negligence who has not at the time of the accident attained the age of twelve years."
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move the Amendment standing in my name on the Paper. It is simply designed to apply the doctrine of contri-
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butory negligence as defence to this newly-constituted crime. This Bill establishes a new criminal offence. My Amendment is intended to make that a defence which would be a defence if there were an action in the Civil Court in which the same circumstances could arise. Clause 1 of the Bill says:
"Any driver of a motor vehicle who, owing to his negligence, kills any person"
or causes bodily injury to any person shall be guilty of various offences which are set out. At present such a person would not be guilty if he killed or injured any person when he was driving a motor vehicle unless he was guilty of much more than mere negligence. The law of manslaughter is well-known in this country. For hundreds of years Judges have directed juries in terms something like this: that mere negligence, if proved, will not justify a verdict of guilty. In order to justify a verdict of guilty there must be what the jury consider criminal negligence. Criminal negligence is absolute carelessness as to consequences of negligence; it means that the person must be so negligent that he really does not care whether he injures another or not.
This Bill is going to alter all that. It is going to say that if the driver of the vehicle is guilty of negligence—such as would support a claim for damages—that shall justify finding him guilty of a crime. It seems to me that there is injustice in the Bill as it stands, and if a law looks unjust and those who administer it come to the conclusion that it is unfair, we all know what happens. The words I want to put in are these:
"Provided that it shall be a good defence to any such charge if it shall be proved in evidence that the person killed or injured owing partly to the negligence of the accused was himself guilty of contributory negligence"—
that is a term well-known to the law—
"without which the death or injury, respectively, would not have occurred. But no person shall be deemed to be guilty of such contributory negligence who has not at the time of the accident attained the age of twelve years."
I do not desire to be bound by the word twelve, but by the law as it stands children, on account of their youth, are not supposed to be capable of so deciding what is the right or the wrong thing to do as to be guilty of negligence or contributory negligence. To preserve the

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law in that matter I have put in those words. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 1, line 20, at end insert the said proviso.—(Lord Darling.)
LORD BUCKMASTER: My Lords, it is a wise and well-established rule of your Lordships' House that only one speech is allowed on the Report stage of a Bill. For that reason I paused before answering the noble Lord since it would be obviously impossible for me to reply to arguments which I have not heard. As no other arguments have been advanced I assume that if there be any noble Lords who support Lord Darling, his arguments will cover their views. In order to deal with this Amendment it is necessary to call attention for a moment to the situation that led to the introduction of this Bill. It was found that at the present time conviction for killing or maiming a man upon the high road could only be obtained if the person charged was found guilty of negligence of such a gross degree that it was assumed to be criminal negligence, but no one in the Courts or in your Lordships' House has ever ventured to give a definition of what that gross and criminal negligence may be. Some Judges have said that it was a great crime against the State and others have used equally solemn language, but no one can lay down the definition. That being so, and juries being left to decide as between two classes of negligence, they invariably selected the lower class and let the man go free.
I have submitted to your Lordships and I still submit that the result of that mistimed leniency has been reflected in the terrible toll of accidents on the road. It was for that reason that, I introduced my Bill, which sought to prevent distinction between the two classes of negligence on a criminal charge of killing or maiming. Your Lordships accepted the principle on Second Reading, but modified it in Committee at the instance of Lord Danesfort, whose Amendment I did not oppose, and who, instead of making the ordinary killing by negligence manslaughter has made it a criminal offence subject to certain distinct and independent penalties. If, therefore, the Bill passes as it stands there would be two classes of negligence. There would be the gross criminal negligence for which a man might get any sentence of imprisonment
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up to imprisonment for life and there would remain the conviction for causing death or injury by negligence, and for that this modified penalty is to apply. The Amendment is to introduce into the latter a principle wholly unknown to the other. On the one charge the defence of contributory negligence is not open; the charge is simply, aye or no, did this man cause the death by the negligence which you call criminal? If the Amendment is introduced the result will be that on a criminal trial for death by negligence, as to half the charge evidence would be admitted which as to the other half it would not, and you would have to split the trial into two or you would be in a position of embarrassment from which the most highly skilled intellect could not rescue you.
The noble Lord says that this doctrine of contributory negligence has been in our Courts for centuries. I think if he had said a century and a half he would have been right. "Been in our Courts," yes; but have you any notion of the confusion it has caused? Although that doctrine has been argued and re-argued through every tribunal in the land, again and again, it is only a few months back that the matter came before us, sitting here in our judicial capacity, and we had once more to consider what was the proper thing you were to say to a jury when the charge of negligence was answered by a charge of contributory negligence. After we had settled that, as I thought once and for ever, it has come up again in the last few weeks, and I venture to say that the spectre of contributory negligence has not been set at rest. If you want to administer the law properly you would abolish the plea of contributory negligence in civil cases, and leave to the jury the question "Aye or no, was it the negligence of the defendant which caused the accident?" and in answering that every circumstance must be taken into consideration.
If this Amendment is introduced, the chaos and confusion which exists at the present moment in the Civil Law would be introduced into the Criminal Law, where above all things clearness and certainty are required. If the Bill is passed as it now stands there will be one thing, and one thing only, for the jury to consider. "In the light of everything you have heard, was that man killed by the negligence of the man in the dock?

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If 'Yes,' your verdict must be guilty, and if No,' then you must acquit him. "I beg your Lordships not to allow the Criminal Law to get into the state of confusion which must arise if this Amendment is passed.
THE EARL OF HALSBURY: I speak subject to correction by the House and not of one noble and learned Lord, but I do not understand why, on the Report stage or any other stage, the noble and learned Lord should assume that nobody else was going to speak.
LORD BUCKMASTER: I only assumed it upon this hypothesis, that as I was the only Peer in charge of the Bill, if I was to answer the arguments it was only fair and proper that they should be advanced before I sat down.
THE EARL OF HALSBURY: I am extremely glad to hear that the noble Lord is the only noble Lord in favour of this Bill.
LORD BUCKMASTER: I did not say that. I said I was in charge of it.
THE EARL OF HALSBURY: There are certain passages which I do not quite follow in the noble and learned Lord's argument. Apparently he suggests that there has been a large legal argument, going back for some time, into the difference between "negligence" and "gross negligence." The only case that I know of is the leading case in which it is pointed out that the word "gross," in relation to "negligence," is merely a meaningless and vituperative adjective, and does not alter the meaning of negligence in any way whatsoever. As I have always understood, the only proper charge to the jury on the question of negligence is: "Was it negligence or not?" I agree that the next charge, which it has over and over again been said is the proper charge, is: "Did that negligence cause the accident or not, and did it cause the damage or not, or the death or not?" Again, I am perhaps in a little difficulty, because naturally I am not in a position to argue a point of law with a person in the position of the noble and learned Lord, still more as I have been merely brought up in the lax methods of the Common Law, and not in the iron steel bars of equity. But when I read the particular wording of this Bill, which is supposed to give such a perfect exposi-
8
tion that after it is passed there will be no doubt about the law, it strikes me as odd that when dealing with killing it says: "owing to his negligence kills any person" and when dealing with injury goes on in quite a different way and says: "who, by his negligence causes." If it is going to be so simple, why not deal with the two things in the same way? Why in one case say "owing to his negligence," and in the other "by his negligence causes"?
What is the suggestion? The suggestion is that we might put into this what is a defence in any Common Law action if it is a question of getting damages, and that is that it is a good defence if it should be proved in evidence that the person killed was killed owing partly to the negligence of the accused and partly owing to the fact that the person killed was himself guilty of contributory negligence. That is a defence in every civil action. Why are you going to take away that which is a defence in a civil action in order to create a new crime? I ask your Lordships to say that the Amendment is a perfectly reasonable one, and one which should be incorporated in this Bill.
VISCOUNT CECIL OF CHELWOOD: I hope your Lordships will not accept this Amendment. I was a little amazed at the opening observations of the noble Earl, when he suggested that there was only one kind of negligence. The whole of this Bill is founded on the well-known doctrine that for the purpose of manslaughter you must have, as the law stands, not only negligence but criminal negligence. I saw it mentioned in a case reported to-day, or yesterday, in which that point was perfectly clearly laid down, and if it were not so there would be no purpose in the Bill at all. However, that does not appear to have much bearing on the rest of the argument put forward. The argument was this, that since contributory negligence is a defence to a civil action it ought to be equally a defence to criminal proceedings. With the greatest respect I do not agree with the noble Earl. You punish a man for a crime because he has done something which is from the point of view of the law reprehensible. It does not matter from that point of view whether the actual event was contributed to by the man who suffered or not.

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If, in point of fact, it was the motorist's negligence which killed the man, the crime is complete. Whether somebody else, the unhappy victim, also was guilty of negligence and added to the negligence of the motorist in this case is really irrelevant. The point is this: Did the motorist's negligence kill the man? That is the whole issue. If he did not kill him the motorist was not guilty, and if he did kill the man it does not matter that the victim was guilty of contributory negligence. Lord Darling appeared to have been impressed by that consideration, because he said that when a child was killed this doctrine would not apply. Why not? If it relieves the man of criminality because the victim was guilty of negligence, it relieves him whether the victim was a child or a grown-up person. Indeed if you have a different law applying to children and to grown-up men you might have a different state of things—
LORD DARLING: I pointed out that the law at present distinguishes between grown-up people and children in this matter, and I desired merely to preserve that.
VISCOUNT CECIL OF CHELWOOD: I do not pretend to be a lawyer any longer, and no doubt the noble and learned Lord is perfectly right in saying that the law does make that distinction. If he says so, I accept it, but I am reluctantly of the same opinion as Mr. Bumble. I see no reason for the distinction. And in point of fact just look at what happens. There is a shocking case in this morn
ing's newspaper. A lorry went on to the footpath. It killed two children, and it very seriously injured—probably killed—also the father. If my noble friend's Amendment were passed no offence would have been committed in the case of the father if it could' have been shown that he did not jump out of the way quickly enough, or something of that kind. But in the case of the children a complete crime would have been committed, though it was actually the same act. The criminality would have been complete in the case of the children, and not in the case of the grown-up person. That seems to me to be an absurdity when dealing with the Criminal Law; what would be true of the Civil Law I do not know.
In this case it is quite clear. If, in point of fact, a man has used his motor car in such a negligent way as to produce the death of a foot passenger, that is a thing Which ought to be punished by the law, and the action of the victim is of no importance, unless it can be shown that it was not the act of the motor car or the motorist which caused the death, but the act of the victim. If that can be shown, then of course that is a complete defence. But if the motorist has caused the death, and caused it by negligence, it surely is quite unnecessary to consider whether the victim was also guilty of negligence at the same time.
On Question, Whether the said words shall be there inserted?
Their Lordships divided Contents, 27; Not-Contents, 30.

CONTENTS

Argyll, D.

Bertie of Thame, V.

Fairfax of Cameron, L.

Wellington, D.

Churchill, V.

Hay, L. (E. Kinnoull.)

Hereford, V.

Luke, L.

Bath, M.

Marley, L.

Linlithgow, M.

Askwith, L.

Mount Temple, L.

Biddulph, L.

Phillimore, L.

Halsbury, E. [Teller.]

Clanwilliam, L. (E. Clanwilliam.)

Ponsonby, L. (E. Bessborough.)

Mar and Kellie, E.

Morton, E.

Darling, L. [Teller.]

Sinclair, L.

Peel, E.

Desart, L. (E. Desart.)

Swansea, L.

Ellenborough, L.

Wharton, L.

NOT-CONTENTS.

Marlborough, D.

Onslow, E.

Lincoln, L. Bp.

Strafford, E.

Salisbury, M.

Amulree, L.

Denbigh, E.

Allendale, V.

Banbury of Southam, L.

Doncaster, E. (D. Buccleuch and Queensberry.)

Cecil of Chelwood, V. [Teller.]

Buckmaster, L. [Teller.]

Chaworth, L. (E. Meath.)

Iddesleigh, E.

Mersey, V.

Cranworth, L.

Midleton, E.

Ullswater, V.

Danesfort, L.

Dickinson, L.

Lamington, L.

Rhayader, L.

Dynevor, L.

Meldrum, L. (M. Huntly.)

Snell, L.

Gainford, L.

Monckton, L. (V. Galway.)

Stanmore, L.

Greville, L.

Monteagle of Brandon, L.

Strachie, L.

Howard of Glossop, L.

Moyne, L.

Treowen, L.

Jessel, L.

Redesdale, L.

On Question, Amendment agreed to.

Resolved in the negative and Amendment disagreed to accordingly.
Clause 2:
Penalty for failure to stop, &c., after knowingly causing damage or injury.
2. Any driver of a motor vehicle who has to his knowledge caused damage or injury to any person and who does not stop to render aid and give information, shall be liable on summary conviction to imprisonment for a period not exceeding six months, and shall be disqualified from holding or obtaining a licence for such period as the court thinks fit, but not less than twelve months from the expiration of his term of imprisonment, if any, or, where no term of imprisonment is imposed, from the date of the conviction.
THE EARL OF HALSBURY THE EARL OF HALSBURY moved, after "shall" ["shall be disqualified"] to insert "unless the Court for special reasons think fit to order otherwise." The noble Earl said: My Lords, this Amendment is consequential on the Amendment which your Lordships agreed to make in Clause 1.
Amendment moved—
Page 1, line 25, after ("shall") insert ("unless the Court for special reasons think fit to order otherwise").—(The Earl of Halsbury.)

RIGHTS OF WAY BILL.
Order of the Day for the House to be put into Committee read.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord Buck-master.)
House in Committee accordingly:
[The EARL OF ONSLOW in the Chair.]
Clause 1:
Public use of way for twenty years conclusive that way is a public highway.
1.—(1) Where a way leading from one public place to another upon or over any land has been actually enjoyed by the public as of right and without interruption for a full period of twenty years, such way shall be deemed to have been dedicated as a highway unless there is sufficient evidence that there was no intention during that period to dedicate such way, or unless during such period of twenty years there
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was not at any time any person in possession of such land, including access to the sea, capable of dedicating such way.
(2) Where any such way has been enjoyed as aforesaid for a full period of forty years, such way shall be deemed conclusively to have been dedicated as a highway unless there is sufficient evidence that there was no intention during that period to dedicate such way.
(3) A notice by the owner of the land over which any such way passes inconsistent with the dedication of the way as a highway, placed before or after and maintained after the commencement of this Act in such a manner as to be visible to those using the way, shall, in the absence of proof of a contrary intention, be sufficient evidence to negative the intention to dedicate such way as a highway, and where a notice has been placed in the manner provided in this subsection and is subsequently torn down or defaced, notice in writing by the owner of the land to the council of the county and of the borough or urban or rural district council in which the way is situate that the way is not dedicated to the public shall, in the absence of proof of a contrary intention, be sufficient evidence to negative the intention of the owner of the land to dedicate such way as a highway.
(5) Each of the respective periods of years mentioned in this section shall be deemed and taken to be a period at any time before the commencement of proceedings including arbitrations to test the right of the public to use a way.
(6) Any court or other tribunal shall, before determining (a) whether a way upon or over any land has or has not been dedicated as a highway, or (b) the date upon which such dedication, if any, took place, take into consideration any map, plan or history of the locality or other relevant document that is tendered in evidence, and such weight shall be given thereto as the court or tribunal consider justified by the circumstances, including the antiquity of the tendered document, the status of the person or persons by whom it was made or compiled, its purpose, and the custody in which it has been kept and from which it is produced.
(8) This section shall not apply to land for the time being belonging to the council of any county or any borough (including a. metropolitan borough) or urban or rural district.
LORD BUCKMASTER LORD BUCKMASTER moved, in subsection (1), to leave out "leading from one public place to another." The noble Lord said: This Amendment needs for its explanation a short recital of the circum-

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stances in which the proof of highways stands at the present time. The Bill is designed simply for one purpose, to limit the period of time over which acts have to be proved and from which dedication of a highway can be assumed. As your Lordships know, private rights of way are proved by user and public rights of way are proved by dedication. Dedication is established by acts of user but they are of a different character to those that affect private rights of way. In all cases it is dedication that you have to find and the object of this Bill is to secure that the period of time over which you have to look for acts of dedication should in ordinary cases be twenty years or, where an estate is settled, forty years. There are subsidiary provisions with which I need not trouble your Lordships because I discussed them on Second Reading, although to a rather scanty House.
I do not think that people have quite realised that the object of this Bill is to leave the law as to what is a highway absolutely untouched. It is only to limit the period of time during which acts can be put in evidence to show that the dedication has taken place. If you come across conditions, as you sometimes do, where a track cannot be a highway because it does not lead from one public place to another, that will still be the same if you make it clear in the Bill, as the Amendments I move seek to do. The words I seek to leave out are words introduced by someone who, having heard that a highway runs from a public place to a public place, thought it necessary to introduce them. The words as a definition are wholly wrong. If you go down Oxford Street, there is Stratford Place, which does not lead from one public place to another public place, and there is Clanrickarde Gardens. I could mention numbers of well-known streets which are indisputably highways but which do not run from one public place to another. The fact that a track does lead from a public place to another public place is, of course, a vital factor in many cases. But, if you leave these words in, in attempting to define the law as it stands at the present moment you will simply confuse it. My object in this Bill is to keep the law relating to highways untouched, but simply in the interests of the landowner and the public to limit the period of time during which proof will be permitted.
Amendment moved—
Page 1, lines 6 and 7, leave out ("leading from one public place to another").—(Lord Buckmaster.)
LORD BANBURY OF SOUTHAM: I have an Amendment down on this question and it might save time if the noble Lord, Lord Buckmaster, would accept it instead of his own. This was a Private Member's Bill introduced in another place and the words that Lord Buckmaster desires to leave out were put in with the consent of the member who was in charge of the Bill. I am prepared to meet Lord Buckmaster as far as this. If he leaves out those words, I propose to insert the following:
"not being of such a character that user thereof by the public could not give rise at Common Law to any presumption of dedication."
The effect of Lord Buckmaster's Amendment might be this. A person has a private lane leading only to two or three houses and gives permission to people to use that lane. If they use it for twenty years, then, under Lord Buckmaster's Amendment, the public could acquire a right to do so. Take an even stronger case. If an owner of a park or garden were to allow the Public free access along its drive and take no steps by putting up notices or shutting his gates occasionally, the clause apparently might operate to turn his drive into a, public highway.
Again, take the case of a cul-de-sac or mews down which the public are allowed to wander occasionally. At present such freedom does not give rise to the presumption that the owner has intended to dedicate the cul-de-sac to the public unless it has been repaired or lighted by the local authority at the expense of the public. Another case is where one owner has two or three fields and another owner has two or three fields and a farmhouse and the two or three fields of the first owner are between the public highway and the farm of the second owner. The first owner has kindly allowed the workmen of the second owner to go across his fields instead of going some little way round. Unless my Amendment is inserted, Lord Buck-master's Amendment would make a public highway of the farm belonging to the man who has allowed people to walk across his fields, not to go to a public highway but to someone else's farm.

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That would become a great nuisance. I hope, therefore, that the noble Lord, Lord Buckmaster, will accept my Amendment.
LORD DYNEVOR: As my noble friend Lord Banbury said, if these words are taken out, the landowner who has permitted persons to walk or drive in a park or on any private property would be liable to find that they had established public rights of way. These words were inserted in the Committee stage in another place to prevent that injustice being done, and therefore I hope your Lordships will not allow this Amendment.
LORD BUCKMASTER: I am placed in a difficult position because my noble friend Lord Banbury says: "Accept my words and the Amendment becomes intelligible," while the noble Lord, Lord Dynevor, asks unreservedly that my Amendment should be rejected. The right plan would be to take the three Amendments on the Paper together and then we should know where we are. With your Lordships' permission let me say a word about them. I suggest meeting the whole of those difficulties—and I am satisfied that I do so—by the introduction of the three words "as a highway" after "enjoyed." It has got to be enjoyed as a highway. It is often a matter of reproach to lawyers that they use twenty words where two will do, a reproach which is not wholly baseless. On this occasion I have, at least, the advantage of being able to retort that the noble Lord has used four lines for the exact equivalent of three words. I think his four lines have been badly prepared. The law with which he supports them is so deplorable that, if my legal feelings could be shocked, I should have been aghast to hear such propositions enunciated as propositions of law. But it does not matter. The noble Lord is satisfied with these words. I have no paternal feeling of affection for my own, and I am quite prepared that my offspring should be sacrificed on the altar of a good understanding about these clauses.
THE LORD CHAIRMAN: Does the noble Lord, Lord Buckmaster, withdraw his Amendment?
LORD BUCKMASTER: No, on this hypothesis my Amendment is accepted.
LORD BANBURY OF SOUTHAM: I beg to move, in subsection (1), to insert, instead of "leading from one public place to another," the words "not being of such a character that user thereof by the public could not give rise at Common Law to any presumption of dedication."
Amendment moved—
Page 1, line 6, insert the said words.—(Lord Banbury of Southam.)
LORD DYNEVOR LORD DYNEVOR moved, in subsection (1), after "full period of twenty years," to insert "after the date of the passing of this Act." The noble Lord said: I should like first of all to express my regret that I was not able to be present in your Lordships' House when the Second Reading debate was on. I was away in the country fulfilling engagements I had made some time before, otherwise I should certainly have had something to say on this Bill during Second Reading. This Bill upsets the existing law on rights of way, especially where land is in settlement. People have been allowed where land is in settlement to walk in many places, because the owner knew that he had no power to dedicate, but all this is altered by the Bill and the public may lose heavily. Landowners may have property in more than one county, and they may not have taken the trouble to find out where people have been walking, because the land is in settlement, but they must now find out with very great care where the public have walked in the past.
In the Bill, as I read it, a claim that the land is in settlement cannot be made in Clause 1, subsection (2), but it can be made under Clause 1, subsection (1). Suppose there has been a settlement for one hundred years, and during that period there has not been any one in possession of the land capable of dedicating such a way under subsection (2), if somebody comes forward and says he has enjoyed the way for forty years, although it was in settlement all the time, a right of way will be proved, although under subsection (1), if the claim is for a period of twenty years and the land was in settlement, then the claim would fall to the ground. Therefore, I came to the conclusion that the best way of dealing with this Bill is not to allow it to be retrospective, and the twenty years mentioned in subsection (1) and the forty

17
years mentioned in subsection (2) should all commence from the passing of the Act. This will give time to the landowners to see that their old rights are not abolished. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 1, line 9, after ("years") insert ("after the date of the passing of this Act").—(Lord Dynevor.)
LORD BUCKMASTER: The two Amendments of the noble Lord who has just sat down undoubtedly hang together. He seems to have considered every argument in their support and has only overlooked one thing and that is the pitiful brevity of human life. If his Amendments were passed the result would be that this Bill would begin to come into operation so far as settled land is concerned at the expiration of forty years, a time when I imagine all those whom I am addressing will have gone down the broad way that all may equally tread, and will be no longer interested in these concerns. What is the reason of it? I have pointed out already that this Bill does not affect the character of the user in the least degree. It still is just as essential to prove that the user was as it was before. Nor does it make twenty years necessarily the time. It cannot be more, but at this moment, as your Lordships know, you can dedicate a highway in a week. The dedication is the evidence of intention which is assumed from acts, and acts uninterrupted for twenty years are, if the man is the owner in fee simple of the land, assumed to be the equivalent of a dedication by the owner of that right.
If the land is in settlement great difficulties have arisen hitherto, because, although a highway may unquestionably have been used as a highway, I think may even have been repaired by the local authority, yet none the less, if the land happened to be in settlement, and the person was the tenant in tail, or the tenant for life, as the law says dedication cannot be assumed in those cases. It is not dedicated. This Bill is to put an end to that, I trust your Lordships will think, most unreasonable position. Although the noble Lord said he was anxious to have heard the Bill read a section time, may I point out that in 1913—nineteen years ago—a Bill in this form with a few of the Amendments put in by the Com-
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mons not only passed your Lordships' House but was referred by your Lordships to a Select Committee, presided over by a distinguished lawyer, who reported in favour of this Bill, and there was no opposition. Nineteen years have gone by and the noble Lord says, that is nothing; add another forty years, what does it matter? Let us go on and on, until at last when nobody cares much, at a moment when it may be that all these rights will vanish, you then may be able to establish your night in this way.
I submit to your Lordships that that is a most irrational thing. This Bill is really a pure question of evidence which is desirable in a Court of Law. It is not, as is assumed by the noble Lord, merely in the interests of the public. It is in the interest of the landowner as well, and in several ways. The noble Lord says he was not here for the Second Reading. I regretted his absence. There was a case not long ago in which owing to the unrestricted ambit of the evidence, which you can spread over any length of time, the case lasted an interminable period, and was decided against the landowner, who had to pay £16,000 in costs. If there is one thing that at this hour is a grave reproach to our administration of the law it is the intolerable and protracted length of legal proceedings. It is of the utmost consequence that they should be made as brief as is compatible with hearing everything that has to be said and for deciding the real issue. This Bill is designed to secure and to effect that object. It is to prevent you from wandering for ever into the past. It is to limit this period of time. Twenty, forty years are abundant. Further, this Bill expressly provides that you can stop the user at this moment by exhibiting a notice to show that it is no longer to be enjoyed as a right. If the landowner was entitled to put up the notice that would defeat the whole right. It is open to your Lordships to take one of two courses. You can accept this Bill as your Lordships' House accepted it before the War, of you can reject it. But to accept the Bill and to introduce this Amendment is, I submit, to take a course which is really incompatible with the sober consideration of your Lordships' House.
LORD MOUNT TEMPLE: I do not think the noble and learned Lord, Lord Buckmaster, has quite answered the point

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which I understand was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Dynevor. I apprehend that as far as the Bill concerns land which is in freehold—or whatever is the legal term—there is no objection to its provisions, and I personally see no objection at all to what is going to happen except what is likely to happen in the case of settled land. As I understand the Bill—and if I do not understand it you must excuse me because I am not a lawyer—if a tenant for life, relying upon the practical impossibility of a right of way being established over his property, had neglected before this Bill becomes law to stop people using the footpath across his estate, then if they could prove that user it would become a public right of way. That seems to me to be very unfair to the owner of settled estates. He relied before this Bill was passed on the practical impossibility of the right of way being established, and you now come along and say: "Oh well, we will do away with that practical impossibility and we will enable the right of way to be established." I quite see the point of the noble and learned Lord that you do not want to wait forty years for the simplification of the law in the case of settled estates, but it does seem to me that some Amendment might be proposed either by him or by Lord Dynevor to safeguard the position of the owner of estates who, in the past, relied upon the law preventing a right of way being established and now finds that safeguard swept away by this Bill.
VISCOUNT BERTIE OF THAME: The noble and learned Lord, Lord Buckmaster, says that all that a landowner has to do now is to put up a notice. But nineteen years and eleven months or more may have run, and this Bill may not have been brought to his notice. Yet if he does not immediately put up a notice he is done.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: Some of us in this quarter of the House have been anxiously waiting for the noble Lord, Lord Buckmaster, to answer the question put by the noble Lord, Lord Mount Temple. We want to know whether in point of fact when a landowner has allowed a pathway to be used across his park for twenty years, the estate being settled, the fact that he was good natured in that way can be now used to his damage. The moment the
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noble and learned Lord's Bill passes into law he finds he has granted a right of way, although he did not know he was doing it, because his land was settled and he thought he was protected. Very likely the noble and learned Lord has a complete answer to that, but if he has not I think it is incumbent upon him to propose some Amendment to meet Lord Dynevor's point.
LORD BUCKMASTER: The noble Marquess says twenty years, but in the case of settled laud it is forty years.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: Very well, forty years.
LORD BUCKMASTER: I appreciate the readiness of the noble Marquess to accept the difference, but I ask your Lordships to think for a moment of the position. For forty years this right of way has been used as a right—remember that is the whole point—and used in circumstances from which the law assumes dedication. After forty years the right of the public is to be defeated merely because the land happens to be in settlement. It seems to me that the wrong done the other way is far greater. There has been nothing to prevent the person in possession under settlement from putting up a notice.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: But he did not know he had to put up a notice.
LORD BUCKMASTER: If he does not want his action to be treated as an act of dedication it is wise to put up a notice.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: But not when the land is settled?
LORD BUCKMASTER: I do not wish to waste time and I do not wish to reargue the matter. If your Lordships think the Amendment should be accepted I tell you frankly there is an end to the Bill and the labour expended on it and the labour of your Lordships' House nineteen years ago is all wasted. But there it is, it cannot be helped. If your Lordships think the Amendment should be inserted it must be done. I only want to make plain what would be the position.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: The noble and learned Lord mistakes me. I have no desire to kill the Bill. If the Amendment of the noble Lord, Lord

21
Dynevor, goes too far then it must not be inserted; but when my noble friend makes a point which seems to appeal to the sense of justice in your Lordships' House, and when my noble friend Lord Mount Temple puts a question to the noble and learned Lord, then I think that unless he can find an answer to it it is incumbent on him to promise to consider whether he can meet the point in some way. The case I am putting is of a park across which a pathway has been used for many years. The park has been all that time settled land. The pathway has been a convenience to the neighbours of the owner of the park and they have used it. He has not been called upon to put up any notice. He knew his land was settled. Why should he put up a notice? Then suddenly the noble and learned Lord comes along and passes this Bill, and the morning after the Royal Assent has been given the owner suddenly finds that this convenience which he had allowed all these years is to be brought up against him, that power has gone from him and that it has become a right of way. That is inequitable, and I am sure that the noble and learned Lord, who is a most just man, will see that it is inequitable. If he will say that he agrees that it is inequitable and that he will do his best to find words to protect the owner in such a case, then I have nothing more to say.
LORD MOYNE: It seems to me that it ought to be possible to find a compromise between these two points of view. I think that no one wants to hang up the effectiveness of this Bill for forty years, if that would be the result of the Amendment, but at the same time there is a great deal in what my noble friend Lord Dynevor has said. People who have allowed public access to settled land should have time to take remedies against their good nature being made into a legal right against them. Could we not get over the difficulty by the noble Lord withdrawing his Amendment and substituting "prior to January 1, 1940" or any other date which might seem reasonable to your Lordships. If that date were accepted it would give an owner about eight years to look round.
LORD BUCKMASTER: The noble Marquess has done me the compliment of saying that I try to be just. So I do,
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but I must say that this particular grievance strikes me as a rather artificial one. It assumes a case where a tenant for life has for thirty-nine years and eleven months before the passing of this Bill into the law permitted people to use a right of way as a right of way—because it must be done as a right. Then he finds that thereby he has dedicated it. The Bill does not come into operation until 1933. That gives six months during which he can put up the notices which are provided for by subsection (3). After all, you must remember that people with settled estates are people who have lawyers. Those lawyers are fully alive to this Bill and will tell them at once if they are in that position that they ought to put up notices. Beyond that I do not see how we can proceed if you desire this Bill at all.
LORD BALFOUR OF BURLEIGH: With very great respect to the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, I do not feel, as a landowner accustomed to having people walking across my land, that this is a grievance so far as the landowner is concerned. I understand the technicality about settled estates, though I confess I really do not quite know what that means apart from freehold; but when I found people beginning to walk across my land, or if it had been going on for a number of years, I should take good case to put up a notice. If anyone who owns land allows the public common user and if the public walk across his land for thirty or forty years, he has no one but himself to thank if it becomes a right of way.
LORD AMULREE: May I suggest to the noble and learned Lord that the proposal which has been made should meet the circumstances of the case? It has been pointed out that the Act is to come into operation on January 1, 1933. If that were postponed to January 1, 1934, it would give everyone ample notice. It seems to me that it would be a simple way out of the difficulty and would not create the apprehensions that were put forward.
LORD DANESFORT: I think the suggestion just made would meet the difficulty. The noble and learned Lord says the Bill would not come into operation until the 1st January of next year. That leaves rather a short time to put up notices and so on. If you gave a year

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and a half, as suggested, that really ought to get over all possible injustice, because the moment the Bill is passed any agent who is worth anything will inform the owner and he can take steps to put up notices to protect his rights.
LORD BUCKMASTER: The difficulty about these auctions is always to know whether the auctioneer can deliver the goods. If I understand what has been suggested to be the opinion of the House and that the noble Lord will withdraw his Amendment I should be prepared to accept the suggestion, but it is no use my saying I will accept it with this Amendment in front of us and the probability that there may be a Division upon it. If I understand that the noble Lord who moved the Amendment is prepared to substitute a provision that the Bill shall come into operation on the 1st January, 1934, I would accept it.
THE MARQUESS OF BATH: I should like to support the suggestion that the Bill should be postponed until 1934. I understand that the noble and learned Lord is prepared to agree to that suggestion if my noble friend withdraws and I gather that in that case the goods would be delivered. But I suppose we cannot tell till we come to the last clause of the Bill, when the matter would be corrected.
LORD DYNEVOR: I have no idea what the effect of this suggestion is or how it is to come in here. Even if some Amendment be put in relating to 1934, what about subsection (2)? I would suggest that we take your Lordships' opinion on this question and then, if Lord Buckmaster likes to make some other suggestion on Report, we could consider it, but I should like to take the opinion of the House.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: I am rather sorry for the concluding observation of Lord Dynevor. I am not prepared to vote for his Amendment as it stands. I far prefer an Amendment such as that which has been suggested by Lord Amulree and the noble Marquess, Lord Bath. I would venture to hope that your Lordships will not be called upon to divide on the present Amendment because I do not think many of us could support it. On the other hand, I feel certain that if Lord Buckmaster will express himself willing to consider an
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Amendment postponing the date, we will take care that he will have the opportunity of doing so by putting one down ourselves on the Report stage.
LORD BUCKMASTER: I was proposing that this Amendment should be withdrawn merely to move in Clause 5 that there shall be substituted 1934 for 1933. If you look at Clause 5 you will see that it will only require the alteration of one figure.
LORD DYNEVOR: After what has been said by the noble Marquess, Lord Salisbury, I cannot go to a Division, but I hope that on Report something satisfactory will be settled.
LORD BUCKMASTER: The noble Lord seems to have misunderstood me. I have said that if this Amendment be withdrawn I will move now that there be introduced into the Bill 1934 instead of 1933 and that, I understood, was suggested by Lord Amulree and supported by the two noble Marquesses. That is what I propose to do.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: That is so, but of course the House is at liberty to consider the whole question on Report.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
LORD BUCKMASTER LORD BUCKMASTER moved, in subsection (1) to leave out "including access to the sea." The noble and learned Lord said: I have been wholly unable to understand what these words mean. I have asked many to explain them and have got no explanation. Unless some one of your Lordships here is more gifted and can explain them I suggest they had better be left out.
Amendment moved—
Page 1, lines 14 and 15, leave out ("including access to the sea").—(Lord Backmaster.)
LORD DYNEVOR: I saw those words had no meaning and so I also put down the Amendment.
LORD AMULREE: I think in justice to the Committee it should be said that these words, as far as I read the clause, have been misplaced. They should have come in after the words "any land"—"from one public place to another upon or over any land." I agree they should be struck out.
LORD AMULREE LORD AMULREE had given Notice of an Amendment to leave out subsection (2) and insert:
"(2) Where a way upon or over any land has been used by the public openly as of right and for the full period of forty years, no presumption as to the dedication of that way as a highway, which would arise if an intention to dedicate that way were established or could be inferred by the court, shall fail by reason only that it is shown that there was not at any time during that period any person capable of making an effective dedication of that way."
The noble Lord said: I do not propose to move this Amendment. There have been so many alterations in subsection (1) that I do not know that it would now fit in. Accordingly I do not move now and perhaps may be allowed at a later stage to bring it up again.
LORD DYNEVOR LORD DYNEVOR moved, in subsection (3), to leave out "in the absence of proof of a contrary intention." The noble Lord said: Subsection (3) says that a notice by the owner of the land, whether placed before or after, shall be sufficient evidence to negative the intention to dedicate such way. Then there appear the words "in the absence of proof of a contrary intention." I think those words are unnecessary. If the owner of the land puts up a notice that he does not wish the way to become a right of way, that should be sufficient.
Amendment moved—
Page 1 line 25, leave out ("in the absence of proof of a contrary intention"). —(Lord Dynevor.)
LORD BUCKMASTER: The difficulty is this. The noble Lord assumes that the putting up of a notice is complete and conclusive and final evidence that there is no dedication. It is evidence, unless you can show by other means that there was a dedication. Suppose there had been an effective dedication, then the putting up of such a notice ought not to destroy that dedication. If you are to have Courts of Justice to try these points, it should be possible to consider proof of a contrary intention.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
LORD STRACHIE LORD STRACHIE moved, after subsection (3), to insert:
"( ) (a) The owner of any land shall be at liberty to deposit at any time after the commencement of this Act with the council of the county and with the council of the borough, urban district or rural district in which the said land is situate—
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(i) a map on a scale of not less than six inches to one mile on which such land shall be delineated; and

(ii) a statement indicating what ways he admits have been dedicated as highways.

(b) In any case in which a deposit under paragraph (a) of this subsection has been made, statutory declarations made by the owner aforesaid or by his successors in title and lodged by him or them with the councils aforesaid at any time prior to the expiration of six years horn the date of such deposit or prior to the expiration of six years from the date on which any previous declarations were lodged under this paragraph to the effect that no additional ways (other than any specifically indicated in such declaration) over the lands delineated on the said map have been dedicated to the public since the date of such deposit or since the date of the lodgment of such previous declarations (as the case may be) shall in the absence of proof of a contrary intention be sufficient evidence to negative the intention of the owner or his successors in title to dedicate any such additional ways as highways."
The noble Lord said: This Amendment is rather a long one, but I think it pretty clearly explains its object. It seems to me that both the public and the landowners would benefit by such a provision. There are very many landowners who have no objection to members of the public reasonably using short cuts and other paths across their property, provided they do no damage and acquire no rights. Under the present law they are bound to stop persons for fear of rights being acquired. I had an experience of my own not long ago. The postmaster applied for leave for a postman to go through one of my principal coverts and take a short cut. I was, of course, only too glad to accede to the request, but I was warned that it would be necessary for me to have a declaration in writing from the postmaster at Bristol, in which this area was, that no right of way should be acquired. I was told that if I had not got that declaration the mere fact of giving facilities to the Post Office would establish a right of way through this wood. That might be very objectionable in many cases.
The Bill deals with this point to a limited extent by providing for the placing of notices negativing the intention to dedicate. It is, however, impossible, particularly in rough heath land, where access by the public is least objected to, to place notices at every track or possible track crossing it. In any event the provision of such notices will greatly deface

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the countryside. My Amendment, I venture to suggest, would get rid of that difficulty entirely. This Amendment is entirely optional on the part of the landowner and the local authority. Without the Amendment it would be necessary to put up these notices, which may very often be thrown down. I venture to think this would be an improvement of the Bill, and I hope the noble Viscount will accept it. It could do no harm to the Bill and I think would rather strengthen it.
Amendment moved—
Page 2, line 10, at end, insert the said new subsection.—(Lord Strachie.)
LORD BUCKMASTER: One difficulty which I see about this Amendment—I do not say it is an insuperable one—is that this deposit is only to operate one way. It is not a deposit which is to establish existing rights of way, but simply to show that after that date no additional rights shall be obtained. I am not going to occupy your Lordships' time in discussing the Amendment in detail. I do not think it is going to do much good but on the other hand it does not seem to me it is going to do much harm.
LORD BUCKMASTER LORD BUCKMASTER moved, in subsection (5), to leave out "at any time" and insert "each of the respective periods of years mentioned in this section shall be deemed and taken to be the period next before the time when the right of the public to use a way shall have been brought into question by notice as aforesaid or otherwise." The noble and learned Lord said: The critical date is when the right of way is called in question, and not when the writ is issued. It is when the act arose which gave rise to the quarrel which the writ is issued to settle.
Amendment moved—
Page 2, line 20, leave out ("at any time") and insert the said words.—(Lord Buckmaster.)
LORD AMULREE LORD AMULREE moved to leave out subsection (6). The noble Lord said: I propose to leave out this subsection, which deals with evidence as to maps and ancient documents, and such matters, for the purpose of transferring it to a section by itself. On a reasonable construction of Clause 1 of the Bill, including subsection (6) as it now stands, it might be
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said that all this evidence referring to maps, public documents, and so forth, would relate to a right of way which had been claimed as a Highway under this clause. It seems to me that this very valuable provision should be free from any restriction of that kind, and that it would be more appropriate if subsection (6) were placed as a new section by itself, later in the Bill. It is purely a matter of procedure, but it seems reasonable and would remove any doubt as to whether the subsection is confined to particular rights of way.
Amendment moved—
Page 2, line 23, leave out subsection (6).—(Lord Amulree.)
LORD BUCKMASTER: This is a pure matter of arithmetic. I do not in the least mind whether it is a subsection or an independent clause. If you like to make it into an independent clause by all means do. It cannot affect the Bill.
LORD HANWORTH: May I ask what the purpose of the clause is? Any Court or tribunal before determining the facts does take into account the evidence which is relevant, and it often happens that it takes account of maps and so on. I always object to any clause which appears to focus attention on such a matter to the exclusion of something else. I can recall recent cases in which maps and relevant documents all had to be carefully examined, and the Court had tendered to it a good deal of evidence which had not been previously discovered. I should have said subsection (6) is a bad subsection altogether, because it indicates something which the tribunal has to do which would be followed in the ordinary course, and I object to having a particular direction. I very much prefer to leave it to depend upon the relevant evidence.
LORD BUCKMASTER: I think the noble and learned Lord has misunderstood the purpose of this subsection. At the present moment, it is perfectly true, if you are going to decide questions relating to the highways, maps which are properly admissible in evidence are of the greatest value, but there are a large number of maps which would be of the greatest value if you could look at them which are excluded by the rigid rules of evidence. That is the whole trouble. One of the most valuable of all maps, the tithe apportionment map, is not admissible in evidence for this purpose. This Bill does

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not provide that those maps should prove anything, but that they may be considered; at the present moment they may not. And when the noble and learned Lord says this is directing the Courts to do what they already do, I respectfully suggest it is enabling the Court to do what now they cannot. And in cases of this kind it is frightfully hard if you are going to exclude a certain set of maps, instead of doing what you ought to do—look at every map which is authentic, give it its proper weight; do not say it is conclusive, but consider it. And that is what this provision is intended to effect.
THE LORD CHAIRMAN: I think that Lord Buckmaster's next Amendment and those of Lord Amulree and Lord Strachie are all cognate, and perhaps it would be convenient to your Lordships to take the discussion on all three together.
LORD BUCKMASTER LORD BUCKMASTER moved to leave out subsection (8). The noble and learned Lord said: There is no conceivable reason why, if this Bill is to pass at all, the land belonging to a county council or borough council or an urban district council should not be included in it. If the point be to shorten and simplify and consolidate legal evidence, why in the world should not it be so shortened and simplified and consolidated against the local authority, just as it is against anybody else? I have the greatest respect for local authorities, but I think sometimes they suffer from hyper-sensitiveness and they think they ought to be exempt from the ordinary rules of law that affect other mortals, and I can see no reason why.
Amendment moved—
Page 2, line 40, leave out subsection (8).— (Lord Buckmaster.)
LORD AMULREE LORD AMULREE had on the Paper an Amendment to leave out subsection (8) and insert:
"(8) This section shall not apply to any land for the time being belonging to any local authority, joint board, company, body or person authorised to supply water by any Act of Parliament or Order having the force of an Act of Parliament and held by them for the purposes of their water undertaking."
The noble Lord said: The subsection I propose to insert in place of subsection (8) is one dealing with land belong-
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ing to water authorities, the gathering grounds of local authorities which are water authorities, the gathering grounds of bodies which happen to be joint boards, or the gathering grounds of a water company's joint property. This is a matter of public health, and therefore the local authorities generally throughout the country are vitally interested in it. The object of the Amendment, therefore, is to prevent a public right of way from being acquired under the Bill by user over the land of the water authority, and this relates chiefly to the gathering grounds surrounding a reservoir.
The local authorities and water companies have been compelled to go far afield for their water supplies. The Corporation of Birmingham have their waterworks in the mountains of Wales, Liverpool also obtains its water supply from Wales, Manchester from the Lakes, and Leeds and Harrogate from the Yorkshire moors. Many other local authorities and water companies have their gathering grounds in remote places. They not only require land for the reservoirs, but in order to purify the water they require to purchase large tracts of land so that they can not only get the water supply but, as far as possible, obtain it in a pure state. So far as may be consistent with the interests of public health the general public are permitted a reasonable amount of access to these gathering grounds. It is greatly feared, however, that if in these and similar cases the operation of the Bill were not excluded, the public might obtain a right of way across these gathering grounds, and might use that right to such an extent as seriously to menace the purity of the water supply. If a footway across the gathering ground became under the Bill a public highway, it may be said it would be no particular danger to persons actually using the footpath, but the danger would be there. The existence of a public footpath would probably encourage picnic parties, and the risk of pollution arising from parties picnicking is very serious.
I know that in many cases there are public roads across the gathering grounds of the water authorities I also know that those public roads are a source of grave anxiety to the medical officers of health of those authorities; and the water

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authority itself is put to great expense in maintaining and protecting the water from any impurity. In recent years, acting on medical advice, water companies are taking greater care to preserve their gathering grounds from public trespass, and in certain cases no land in the vicinity of a reservoir is being let for grazing purposes. It is therefore important that water undertakers should be protected under the Bill. Happily there are not many instances in this country where the public water supply of a town has been polluted, but, in instances where the water has been polluted and an epidemic has ensued, the epidemic has been of a grave character giving rise to claims for compensation against the water authority.
It may be said that subsection (7) gives certain protection to a statutory body or corporation from dedicating a way across their land which is incompatible with the purpose for which it is used. That, in the opinion of the advisers of the Association of Municipal Corporations, affords no adequate protection. The Association of Municipal Corporations are interested in this matter from a twofold point of view: first, as water authorities; and secondly, as guardians of public health. There is no authority, so far as I know, for the definite statement that a corporation in possession of land for its water supply would be incapable of dedicating a way over such land on the ground that it would be incompatible with the purpose for which it is held. In any case it has been laid down by the Courts that whether the use of the land is or is not incompatible with the purposes for which it is held is a question of fact. The municipal corporations have been advised that subsection (7) affords no adequate protection. It would only give a probable protection, which could only be ascertained after long and costly litigation. On these two grounds, the necessity of protecting the purity of water and the interest of public health and because subsection (7) gives no adequate protection, I propose to move this Amendment.
LORD MOUNT TEMPLE: I am informed that this Amendment is quite unnecessary as subsection (7) was framed by Lord Alverstone, Lord Chief Justice, in 1913 to prevent these water companies dedicating these rights of way.
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I submit that it adequately protects the authorities concerned and that such an Amendment is quite unnecessary.
LORD STRACHIE: I do not propose to oppose the Amendment, but I regret that my noble friend Lord Buckmaster wants to leave out the whole subsection. It seems to me that some protection of local authority is needed in this matter and I should propose to add at the end of Lord Amulree's Amendment an Amendment in the following terms: "or to any joint board or joint committee duly constituted in pursuance of any Act of Parliament upon which such councils or any of them are represented." My object is to protect the county councils in this matter because it would be very undesirable indeed that, where a county council has a lunatic asylum with a large tract of land of many hundreds of acres worked as a farm by lunatics who are sane enough, the public should acquire a right of way over that farm. I hope that the noble Lord will accept my Amendment.
THE LORD CHAIRMAN: Does the noble Lord propose to move his Amendment as an Amendment to Lord Amulree's Amendment to come in at the end after the word "undertaking"?
LORD STRACHIE: Yes.
THE DUKE OF BUCCLEUCH: I hope that the noble Lord will not accept these Amendments because, if he accepts either, he might as well scrap the Bill. There are these large areas but, in spite of what Lord Amulree says, if people walk across them it does not cause pollution. If it does, those of us who live in these areas must be in a bad way. I have had experience of these districts and I have never heard that it caused pollution. If these Amendments are accepted, the whole Bill will be destroyed and I hope that my noble friend will not accept them.
LORD BUCKMASTER: I find myself in this difficulty over these Amendments, the difficulty of the lady who went to hear a Highland preacher and, on being asked what she thought of him, said that the whole trumpets of wrath were all blowing together. I have to deal with all these Amendments together. The first Amendment is plain. It says that there shall be an exception to this Bill in favour of local authorities. I have not heard a single word to suggest any reason

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why there should be. When you remember that this Bill expressly provides that they should be at liberty to hinder the acquisition of a right of way by putting up a board and that the public authority can do so at the public expense, I cannot see why there should be an exception in their favour. That is my reply to the proposal to leave out the subsection.
As to the water boards and water companies, I am in a state of bewilderment. They sent me the Amendments. I looked at them and I said I could not undertake them. They seem to have sent to Lord Amulree, who undertook them, a long discourse about their water rights. What have they got to do with the Bill? Let me point out one fact of enormous importance in connection with a highway. The exercise of permission to wander from place to place never can prove a highway. It is the whole point and essence of a highway that it must run in a track from a spot to a spot. If you can wander and prove your right to wander, you have instantly destroyed your right to the highway. The noble Lord, Lord Amulree, suggested that you could acquire highways by wandering with polluted boots over the whole watershed of the places whence these worthy local authorities derive their water supply. If you wander for ever it cannot be so, and to introduce this exception in the clause, which suggests that it can be so, is a most mischievous thing to do.
The same argument applies to the Amendment of my noble friend Lord Strachie. If there be people who are in the habit of wandering across a lunatic asylum when the lunatics are at large and if they did it long enough, after forty years you might assume dedication. But these bodies would be in the same position as a person who had a private lunatic asylum and a public asylum can put up notices like any one else. This attempt to make these exceptions in favour of local authorities and local boards who manage our affairs has, so far as I know, no precedent in law and no foundation in justice.
LORD AMULREE: I would like to correct one or two of the misstatements of the noble Lord, Lord Buckmaster. He suggested that I said that a person might acquire a right by wandering over land. I said nothing of the kind. I said that, if people wandered over the water way,
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there was a danger to public health, and I repeat it. With regard to the statement of the noble Lord, Lord Mount Temple, that subsection (7) gives adequate protection, I endeavoured to point out that it gives no adequate protection whatever. Further, whether it was protection or not, it has been laid down by the Courts, and is clearly decided law, that whether a particular dedication of way was incompatible was a question of fact, and that fact could only be determined by a jury in a Court of Law. That means in all these cases you must have litigation. I suggest to your Lordships that we should allow this proposal to stand; it will do no harm. If local water authorities are protected under subsection (7), then subsection (8) will not affect the matter. It will make them secure. Municipal corporations have been advised by responsible lawyers that they would need this protection. I submit in those circumstances the new subsection ought to be accepted.
Amendment moved—
Page 2, line 40, insert:
("(8) This section shall not apply to any land for the time being belonging to any local authority, joint board, company, body or person authorised to supply water by any Act of Parliament or Order having the force of an Act of Parliament and held by them for the purposes of their water undertaking.")—(Lord Amulree.)
On Question, Amendment negatived.
Clause 1, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 2
Savings.
(2) Where a way has become a highway under this Act the owner of the land over which the way passes shall not be subject to any liability for the maintenance or repair of such way, or in respect of anything arising from neglect to maintain or repair the same, which he would not have been subject to if this Act had not been passed.
(3) Nothing in this Act shall be construed as having the effect of imposing on the council of any county, county borough, or district, or any other highway authority, any liability for the repair of any road which they would not have been liable to repair if this Act had not been passed.
LORD BUCKMASTER LORD BUCKMASTER moved to leave out subsections (2) and (3). The noble and learned Lord said: The explanation is this. Somebody has thought of doing something in this Bill to guard local authorities against the liability for main-

35
tenance of a highway. I cannot understand why anybody should think that the mere establishment of a way as a highway put the local authority under any liability to maintain it. If you think so, it is absurd. Supposing a man chooses to dedicate a pathway across a swamp and dedicates it to the public, as he is at liberty to do: there is no liability on the local authority to repair it, or to drain the swamp, or put down metal. They confuse two things here. They confuse the liability of the local authority to maintain and keep in repair roads they have taken over and a highway which they have not taken over. I can see no reason whatever for subsections (2) and (3) being put in, because nothing in this Bill would have created any such liability. It certainly does not expressly do it, and it could not by any possibility create it by implication. If you think for a moment it is fantastic to suggest that when you have merely limited a period of time during which tradition is to operate the result of that is to create a liability to repair. These two subsections, I submit, are quite senseless and ought to be left out.
Amendment moved—
Page 3, line 11, leave out subsections (2) and (3).—(Lord Buckmaster.)
LORD MOUNT TEMPLE: I am in entire sympathy with the noble and learned Lord as to subsection (3). I can quite appreciate that you are not placing any liability on the council of any county, county borough or district, or other highway authority, for the repair of any road which they would not be liable for if this Bill were not passed. But in regard to subsection (2), am I right in assuming that at present, if a right of way is established over some one's land, that the landowner thereafter becomes liable for the repair of that right of way, even though it is done against his wishes?
LORD BUCKMASTER: I am wholly unaware of such a law. I would point out that, whatever the law may be, it is not affected by this Bill.
LORD MOUNT TEMPLE: I think it is. I have had an experience myself. Let us assume that a right of way is created either by dedication or by negligence, or by anything else, then the owner of the land has a liability not only to maintain the pathway but to maintain any bridges there may be where the right of way has
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been asserted. Personally I have always thought that extremely unfair on the landowner. It may well be that the right of way has been established, but if a right of way is established it has always seemed to me that the people who use that right of way should be the people, through their local council, to keep that right of way in repair, and not the unfortunate landowner who, through his negligence or other cause, has had a right of way made over his land. What I wanted from the noble and learned Lord was some guidance if he would give it to me. As this Bill makes it easier for the public to establish rights of way, will the rights of way which will be established in future be maintained by the landowner or by someone else?
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: Perhaps the noble and learned Lord will allow me to elucidate this point. I know of a case where there was a right of way, and the right of way became a track, and even something in the nature of a road, but it got into great disrepair, and the local authority wrote to the landowner and said in effect "You will either repair this track or we shall go over your land. We will tell the public to go over your land on the other side of the track, because they have a right of passage, and, therefore, if you cannot keep the roadway in good repair they have a right to go anywhere else they like in order to get through." I admit that the landowner resisted that contention, but there did not appear to be any means of ascertaining what the law upon this subject really was. I confess there certainly does appear to be some doubt whether, once a right is established, the landowner may not be compelled to keep it in good order, otherwise carts and other things may go through his fields.
LORD BUCKMASTER: The noble Marquess has propounded an interesting legal conundrum. I think the local authority or the lawyer was right. There is no obligation on the landlord to maintain the road that crosses his land that has been dedicated to the public, but if there is a way dedicated to the public across his land and the public cannot go that way they can go to either side of it. That is as old as William the Conqueror. This Bill does not apply to that at all. This clause is to suggest that the acquisition of a highway is to create no liability. I

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would point out to the noble Lords who are interested in large estates it is a most undesirable clause in their interests, because it suggests that an ordinary highway, when it has been dedicated, is a highway which the landlord is liable to repair, and proposes that this highway, established by this evidence, shall not be so liable to repair, and that, therefore, the general highway is. In the interests of those who have vast estates—it does not interest me—I would suggest that what I am proposing to do is to help them and not to hinder them, and that these subsections ought to be left out.
Clause 2, as amended, agreed to.
LORD AMULREE LORD AMULREE moved, after Clause 2, to insert:—
Provision as to evidence.
"3. Any court or other tribunal shall, before determining (a) whether a way upon or over any land has or has not been dedicated as a highway, or (b) the date upon which such dedication, if any, took place, take into consideration any map, plan or history of the locality or other relevant document that is tendered in evidence, and such weight shall be given thereto as the court or tribunal consider justified by the circumstances, including the antiquity of the tendered document, the status of the person or persons by whom it was made or compiled, its purpose, and the custody in which it has been kept and from which it is produced."
The noble Lord said: The Amendment which I propose is the reinsertion in the Bill of subsection (6) which was taken out of Clause 1. I propose that it should be reinserted in the Bill as a separate clause.
Amendment moved—
After Clause 2 insert the said new clause. —(Lord Amulree.)
Clause 3 agreed to.
Clause 4:
Extent of Act.
4. This Act shall not apply to Scotland.
LORD BUCKMASTER LORD BUCKMASTER moved to insert at the end of the clause "or Northern Ireland." The noble and learned Lord said: This Amendment is simply to add Northern Ireland, which ought to have been in before.
Amendment moved—
Page 3, line 37, at end insert ("or Northern Ireland").—(Lord Buckmaster.)
Clause 4, as amended, agreed to.
Clause 5:
Commencement of Act.
5. This Act shall come into operation on the first day of January, nineteen hundred and thirty-three.
LORD BUCKMASTER LORD BUCKMASTER moved to leave out "nineteen hundred and thirty-three" and insert "nineteen hundred and thirty-four." The noble and learned Lord said: The reason for this Amendment has already been given. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Page 3, line 39, leave out ("nineteen hundred and thirty-three") and insert ("nineteen hundred and thirty-four").(Lord Buckmaster.)
Clause 5, as amended, agreed to.
Remaining clause agreed to.

CONGO BASIN TREATIES.
LORD CRANWORTH LORD CRANWORTH rose to call attention to the Congo Basin Treaties and to ask His Majesty's Government whether their continuance is in accordance with the present policy of the Empire, and, if not, what steps are being taken to effect their denunciation; and to move for Papers. The noble Lord said: My Lords, even at this late hour I make no apology for bringing this subject before the attention of your Lordships, and that for two reasons. The first is that this is not a matter on which I desire to make en harangue. I ask this Question for the sake of getting information. The second reason is that this is a matter of the very greatest importance to a great many people. It is of the very highest importance to our East African Colonies who are now in grave financial straits. It is of the highest importance to the cotton spinning industry both in Lancashire and in India, and without exaggeration I think it may be said that on the answer to this Question depends the success or otherwise of the Conference which is to take place in Ottawa.
I wish to put the facts of this case as shortly as I can, but I may have to occupy some few minutes because what are called the Congo Basin Treaties are an agglomeration of some forty Treaties of various kinds starting at an early date. The facts that I shall give you I take in the main from a memorandum prepared by Sir John Sandeman Allen presented to the Joint East African

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Board and through them to the Colonial Office. Sir John is known to be the best lay exponent of this difficult subject, and I believe the facts which I shall give you have not been contradicted up to the present time. The first Treaty which I must bring to the notice of your Lordships is the Treaty of Berlin of 1885. For a year or two prior to that the great Powers of Europe had been conscious of the importance of developing trade in the vast and then largely unexplored and still less administered territories of tropical Africa watered by the Congo and the Zambesi. In accordance with this feeling a Conference of the Powers was held and an International Treaty was signed by the following countries—Great Britain, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, France, Italy, Holland, Portugal, Russia, Norway, Sweden and the United States of America and ratified by all except the United States.
The first thing that they did was to delimit the area of this Congo Basin to which the Treaty applied, and they called it the Conventional Free Trade Zone. This zone extends right across Africa far beyond the Congo Basin and includes what is now the whole of the Belgian Congo, Kenya Colony, Uganda, Tanganyika Territory, Nyasaland, parts of Portuguese East Africa, Portuguese West Africa, Northern Rhodesia, French Equatorial Africa, the Sudan, Abyssinia and Italian Somaliland. The Treaty took the form of a general Act and embodied six decisions of which only one is germane to the present subject. That is a decision relative to freedom of trade in this area. It was decided by that Treaty that there should be no import duties imposed by any of the signatories. The period of the Treaty was unlimited. Between 1885 and 1914 there were literally dozens of Treaties and Conventions amplifying and extending this principle as between the various signatories.
Then came the Great War which put an end to all Treaties between such Powers as were engaged therein but did not affect the neutrals. At the end of the War it was agreed at Versailles that all African questions should be settled by a special conference at St. Germain-en-Laye. Accordingly Great Britain and her Allies —the United States, Belgium, France, Italy, Japan and Portugal—signed a Convention which neither the United States
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nor Italy ratified. This Convention came into force in 1920 for a period of ten years. After that I understand it was open to revision. I have here a summary of the clauses of that Convention. They are fifteen in number, but for the purpose before us now the first is by far the most important. It lays down the principle of complete commercial equality in the area it defines, but I wish to emphasise one great difference between the two Treaties. Under the Treaty of Berlin no duty could be imposed. Under the present Convention no preference can be given. With regard to Tanganyika the position is even more unfortunate both for that Territory and for the United Kingdom. Tanganyika Territory is governed additionally by the terms of the Mandate given in accordance with the Treaty of Versailles, which provides for complete equality of rights of every kind for all nationals of States Members of the League of Nations and its terms are more far reaching and definite than those which govern the Convention. Modification can, however, be effected by consent of the Council of the League and such consent can be given by a majority.
Those being, as I understand, the facts, the first question that I ask is what advantage has this country ever had from these Treaties? I venture to suggest to your Lordships that it has been remarkably small and for this reason: that whereas in our territories we had the will to carry out the Treaties we also had the power. Other countries who doubtless had the will did not have the power. I would like to give an illustration of this. In 1910 I went up from Nairobi to Abyssinia on behalf of the Government to open up a new trade route. The moment I got over the Abyssinian border I and my party were captured and held prisoner. We did not get out through any intervention by the signatories of these Treaties nor any intervention by the Government of Abyssinia. We got out somehow else and it was not much use our pointing out to those thousand or so of wild tribesmen who captured us that we were within the Free Trade zone. They did not understand the Congo Basin Treaties. What is more important is that if you take Customs equality, Kenya, Uganda, Tanganyika and Nyasaland are wholly within the zone and so is the Congo, but else-

41
where—in Portuguese East and West Africa, the Sudan, the French Equatorial Africa, Abyssinia and Italian Somaliland —the line of demarcation cuts across the territories and in every ease the principal ports and distributing areas are outside the zone. It follows therefore that in all these seven territories it is possible—indeed it is the fact—that they can give a preference to goods that come in, but when they cross an imaginary line they are supposed by this Treaty to give a rebate on their preference and clearly that must be impossible unless they have a regular Customs cordon, and I think the only place that definitely carries that out is Northern Rhodesia. It is true that we have had some advantages in the Congo with regard to trading. Twenty years ago I myself used to trade in the Congo and no obstacles were put in the way of trading there, although I must admit that our entertaining bill was of considerable dimensions. But I suggest that any advantages we have had in trade with the Congo could equally have been gained by a bilateral Treaty with Belgium.
I come to a second and more important question and that is as to the future. The nation has given this Government a mandate to go to Ottawa and there to negotiate or endeavour to negotiate methods to increase the reciprocal trade between this country and our Dominions. Everyone awaits the result with anxiety, but no one more than our East African Colonies who are now in financial straits which are, comparatively speaking, far greater than our own. It is vital to Nyasaland to sell more tobacco. It is vital to Kenya and Tanganyika to sell more sisal. It is vital to Uganda to sell more coffee and cotton, and on the other side it is all important to us to get a further market for cotton goods. I have the figures here and it, is only too clear how year after year the cotton goods that we supplied first almost entirely, and later on were supplied by this country and India, have gradually come almost entirely to be in Japanese hands. When we ask why, the reason is simple. It is not that our people are less skilful or hard working, but that the Japanese adopt a much lower standard of living than our operatives could possibly accept. That is why only the other day a hundred members of the House of Commons signed a petition asking that these
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Treaties should be revoked or at all events revised.
On the whole broad principle of Ottawa we are offering a share in our markets to our partners in the Empire in return for a share of theirs, and I think that, any of your Lordships who have taken part in the preliminary negotiations will have been struck by one thing, and that is that whereas we have a large and almost unlimited market to offer, when it comes to the other side the market is comparatively limited. One of the quite definite markets is that of our cotton goods in East Africa. It will be a very vital factor at Ottawa. It would be an exaggeration to say that if we went there with these Treaties still binding us we would be going into a fight with one hand tied behind our backs, but it would be no exaggeration to say that we were going into a fight with a sprained thumb. Therefore I wish to ask the Question standing in my name, and to amplify it in a somewhat more definite way I would like to put four questions to His Majesty's Government.
In 1928 and 1929 the joint East African Board asked that a Committee might be set up to consider this question. Was such a Committee ever set up and, if so, what were its conclusions? The Convention could, I understand, definitely have come up for revision and, I presume, revocation in 1930. Have any steps been taken in that direction? Thirdly, and this is a question on which I hope I may have a definite answer, have there been any secret negotiations since 1930 that have prejudiced the conditions relating to revocation or revision? There are several who have suspicions, wrongly I trust, that some such action has taken place and I hope the noble Lord who answers me will be able to say that those suspicions are ill founded. Lastly, I would ask, if the answer to the last question is in the negative, what steps the Government now propose to take towards revision or, as I believe would be better, denunciation of this Convention and its replacement by bilateral treaties wherever necessary. I beg to move.
LORD MOYNE: My Lords, the noble Lord has given us a very lucid account of an extremely complicated series of commercial and other agreements and I think there is no doubt that though the arguments may be nicely balanced for

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and against the abrogation of these agreements on wider grounds, from the point of view of Kenya and Uganda trade with the United Kingdom, there is no doubt whatever that the arguments are overwhelmingly in favour of a change. Kenya would profit very much by preferences which might reasonably be afforded. A most valuable crop is coffee, a luxury product upon which we, in this country, might well afford to grant an increased preference. Another very large crop, the marketing of which causes great difficulty at the present time, because it is a bulky crop handicapped by transport charges, is the crop of maize. We know that that crop very nearly got the benefit of preference, and it was a great disappointment to Kenya in its present difficulties that at the last moment that expectation was frustrated.
Kenya and Uganda could do a great deal to help the British producer. It is very disquieting to see how British exports have lessened in amount in these markets. I have here the report of the Trade Commissioner for Kenya and Uganda, and it shows, taking all cotton fabrics, that whereas in 1929 Japan and ourselves were each sending 24 per cent. of the total importation, in 1931, in two years, Japan had improved her position so that her imports are double ours. Instead of each getting 24 per cent. of the total Japan gets 38 per cent., and we have dropped to 19 per cent. I will not quote at length from this report, but after explaining the very serious drop ill our trade he says that in times of financial stringency the price factor naturally becomes a most important consideration, and to this fact may be largely ascribed the fall in the value of the United Kingdom trade in this market. There is no doubt that this trade could he greatly benefited by preference. The value per lb. of our unbleached cotton is 84 cents, whereas that of Japanese cotton is 69 cents, or only 15 cents difference between the two products, whereas the Import Duty is 30 cents per lb., and so within the existing duty it would be possible to give an effective preference. Unfortunately, in other cases the price discrepancy is much larger. For instance, in other printed fabrics there is a difference of 35 cents per lb. between British and Japanese prices.
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If this matter is to be dealt with it could be dealt with in various ways. Either British products could be put on the free list or the duty could be raised against foreign competitive importations. There are, however, disadvantages in both solutions. If you are going to put British products on the free list there is going to be very heavy loss of revenue, because these cotton products are bringing in £76,000 a year in Import Duties, estimated to be paid by the native population, and there are only two other items which represent more than £10,000 a year contribution from the natives—namely, tobacco, £45,000, and kerosene £14,000. If we are going to tackle cotton we should also have to do something for tobacco, because whereas the Netherlands are sending in a very large amount of manufactured tobacco, there is practically no trade with this country in that particular product.
It would be a very serious breach in the revenue system of Kenya to put these articles on the free list as regards home production, with a view of discouraging foreign competition, and if you were going to deal with it by raising the duties against non-Empire products of course there would be great difficulty in avoiding injustice to the consumer, because the consumer, especially the native consumer, is suffering very greatly from diminished purchasing power. It hits him most because he is paying a much larger proportion of direct taxation, which he cannot escape, and it would be very hard to give effective preference to this country by raising the total price, even if you could achieve your end, because my own impression is that the rates of duties in Kenya and Uganda are so high that they have passed the limit of a diminishing return.
If it should be considered best to keep these Treaties it is most imperative that Kenya and Uganda should not suffer. It is not their fault that in the interests of British trade there may be stronger arguments for maintaining the present system than for changing it. They are willing to do their part and give a preference, and they ought to be given such treatment at Ottawa as they would receive if, as I am sure they would gladly agree, these Congo Treaties were abolished and full preference were given to British products in their markets. Of

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course there are many reasons which make one very uneasy about the denunciation of these Treaties. The noble Lord described some of the complications. I do not know exactly what is the position of the neutral. We know that the Treaties were originally permanent. Belligerents found them automatically cancelled by the War. They still apply to neutrals, and I am not quite sure what would be the effect of denunciation in the case of trade with these neutral countries. And even among the victorious Powers who entered into the St. Germain Treaty there is a very great obscurity as to the position, because Portugal and Italy have either not ratified the Treaty or have done so subject to considerable reservations. The effect of the Treaties has been extended far beyond their original signatories by means of the most-favoured-nation clause.
Apart from these Treaties there is another and, from the British point of view, far more valuable bilateral agreement with France, which was signed, I think, in 1898, which lets us in on reciprocal terms to the Cameroons, French Equatorial Africa, and other French territory outside of the Congo Basin Agreements in return for their right of free trade in Nigeria and the Gold Coast. I understand that these are most valuable markets, and I would like to know whether the Government are taking steps to get the considered opinion of the exporting trades. I see that the Federation of British Industries, in their notes in connection with the Ottawa Conference, report in a very doubtful strain as to the advantage of abrogating these Treaties They admit that the arguments are very nicely balanced. In view of what they say, I very much doubt, whether the British exporter would like to see root and branch denunciation. It is most important that we should not by denunciation lose the benefit of our right of entry into the French Cameroons and Equatorial Africa.
And there is another complication that, if it be the case that in 1930 the late Government agreed that the Congo Basin Agreements should not be reconsidered till 1935, whereas the bilateral arrangement with the French can be denounced at any time after twelve months notice, if we give notice we shall lose, perhaps in twelve months, the very valuable privileges we enjoy in French territory, and
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it will be three years before we can begin to get any compensating advantage within the old area of the Congo Basin Agreements. It would appear that what would pay this country best would be to negotiate for a reciprocity in preference on the basis of equivalent value received. If it is practicable, could we not withdraw most-favoured-nation treatment, which has now extended the scope of these Treaties practically throughout the world, from those who are enjoying the advantage of these Treaties without any returns? Can we not limit this reciprocity to those who, either in their Colonies or in their home markets, will give us compensating advantages?
Of course, this would involve very large changes and very difficult and delicate negotiations, but I would suggest that, if the denunciation of these Treaties is found, after examination by our exporting traders, on balance to involve a loss of existing markets, it is quite consistent with Empire economic unity to maintain the existing arrangements. Our trade is in such a condition that it cannot possibly afford to block existing channels, and it is most necessary that they should be kept at full flow and that we should endeavour to dig new ones. The East African Customs Union must not suffer. We must give them most-favoured Empire treatment, but we ought in considering this matter to make sure that we are not proposing to abandon greater benefits to our exporters in the rich and more populous markets of Western Africa to achieve smaller preferences within the British territories, of East Africa.
LORD TEMPLEMORE: My Lords, I am sure we must all welcome the very able speech of my noble friend who initiated this debate. He has spoken with that authority and knowledge which we expect from him, whenever he addresses us on the subjects of agriculture and the Continent of Africa. His position as a member of the Joint East African Board also gives him additional authority to speak of these Treaties and other matters on which he addressed us. We have had another very interesting speech from my noble friend Lord Moyne. He and my noble friend Lord Cranworth seemed to me to differ in a large degree, because, whereas Lord Cranworth wished for the wholesale denunciation of these Treaties, I think my noble friend Lord

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Moyne is much more guarded in his opinions, and thought that that might not perhaps be so easy or perhaps so advantageous.
At this late hour it is, I am sure, a matter of great satisfaction to your Lordships when I tell Lord Cranworth that to a large extent he made the first part of my speech for me. I was going to regale your Lordships with details of the different Treaties which have been made on these matters, beginning with the Berlin Act of 1885, then the Brussels Act of 1890, and winding up with the Convention of St. Germain-en-Laye of 1919. This last Convention was signed after a Conference of representatives of the British Empire, Belgium, Italy, Portugal, France, Japan, and the United States. I differ from my noble friend on one point here, because he said that Italy and the United States did not ratify this Convention. My advisers at the Board of Trade assure me that it was ratified by all the countries except the United States. The result of these instruments has been to assure equality of treatment for the goods, subjects, and shipping of all nations over a large part of Africa, and here I think that I can answer the first question which was put to me by my noble friend.
He asked what advantage has this country ever had from these Treaties. While we may lose in certain directions by being unable to establish preferential treatment for United Kingdom goods in our Colonies, we gain in other directions by the régime of equal opportunity extending over substantial areas belonging to or administered by foreign Powers. Other parts of the Empire are also concerned in trade into these territories, and due weight must be given to their interests. We must also bear in mind the interests of the Colonies concerned, though I have no doubt that if they were satisfied that British interests as a whole were best served by the determination of the Treaties they would readily accept that decision. In any case, the House will, I think, agree that the question must be regarded as a separate and distinct one, and the advantages of the present régime must be weighed on their merits against the disadvantages in the changing circumstances of the present time.
Apart altogether from the considerations which I have outlined, there are
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difficulties of another order which stand in the way of bringing the present régime to an end. Supposing we were to denounce these Treaties, I understand that the mandated territory of Tanganyika would be precluded by the terms of the Mandate from bringing Imperial Preference into operation. The Mandate, fortunately or unfortunately—it is a matter of opinion—is a permanent one, and, although it can be altered at our request by the Council of the League of Nations, His Majesty's Government do not anticipate that situation arising just at present. At present Kenya, Uganda, and Tanganyika have a close Customs arrangement, including a unified Customs tariff, and if Kenya and Uganda introduced Imperial Preference this arrangement would be upset and the trade between these territories prejudiced. Moreover, I am informed that there would be rather large international obstacles in the way of bringing the present régime to an end.
Now I come to the second question which my noble friend asked me, whether the situation has been reviewed by any committee since 1928. From the point of view of the trade of this country, I should explain that so lately as 1920, ten years after the Treaty came into force, when the occasion arose for reviewing the position generally, the whole question of the advisability of retaining the existing régime in the Conventional area was very carefully considered by His Majesty's Government in consultation with trading and shipping interests in this country and with His Majesty's representatives in the Colonies concerned. Among the bodies consulted were the Association of the British Chambers of Commerce, the Federation of British Industries, and the Chamber of Shipping. The general consensus of opinion at that time was that the existing position should be maintained. I anticipate my noble friend's objection. I do not at all intend to imply that they would necessarily be of the same opinion now as circumstances have changed.
The statistics bearing on the question are not easy to interpret one way or the other since they depend on so many hypotheses. Moreover, in the rapidly changing circumstances of the present time, it is doubtful how far figures relating to any past period are applicable. I hope I shall not be wearying

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the House if I refer to some of them. There is first the fact that the latest complete figures available are for the year 1030, the year in which the question was last considered, and that there are no separate figures for the large areas of Conventional territory which form only a portion of French, Portuguese, Italian and British territories. For the most important areas covered by the Convention however, the British and Belgian, some assessment of the comparative value of trade can be made. In 1930 the total imports into Kenya, Uganda and Nyasaland were £8,600,000 while imports into the Belgian Congo were 29,300,000. Turning to a comparison of the percentage of foreign and British trade in these areas I find that in 1930 the British Empire held 64 per cent. of the imports into Kenya, Uganda and Nyasaland. In Belgian territory, the only other largo block of territory for which separate figures are available, the British Empire accounted in 1930 for 23 per cent. of the imports and Belgian goods for 52 per cent. Thus in 1930 British Empire trade stood to lose in the Belgian Congo a volume of trade not very far short of the total foreign trade in the British Colonies, all of which they could not under any circumstances expect to gain.
Now I come to the third and, in a way, the most important question asked me by my noble friend. He asked if in 1930 any secret negotiations had taken place with foreign countries—I understood him to say with regard to this Convention. I am glad to give him the categorical answer for which he asked. No secret agreement of any kind was made in 1930 or any other year, but I must add something else. In 1930 a Conference to review the Convention was due to be held. As. a result of the review of the matter, His Majesty's Government informed the other Powers parties to the Convention that they saw no occasion for holding a Conference immediately. They accordingly suggested that it should be postponed until 1935. Some of the Powers accepted this proposal and others sent no reply. It is therefore difficult to say exactly what the position in regard to that is.
I think I have answered all the questions except the last of my noble friend, but, before I answer that question, I will deal with a question of my noble friend Lord Moyne, which does not exactly come
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within the terms of the Notice. He asked with regard to the denunciation of the Treaties whether His Majesty's Government were taking steps to get the opinion of exporting traders. The answer is in the affirmative. The matter is being discussed and they are trying to get this information.
The last question of the noble Lord, Lord Cranworth, was what steps the Government now proposed to take. I can only give what I suppose your Lordships will regard as a stereotyped answer, but it is perfectly true. His Majesty's Government are giving their earnest consideration to this whole matter, especially as regards its bearing on Ottawa and other Conferences that are taking place. I can promise the two noble Lords who have spoken that the points they have raised will not be lost sight of. Furthermore, may I assure my noble friend that I do not consider my duty finished when I sit clown in a few moments after having answered these questions? When a few months ago I was appointed to answer for this Department I happened to meet my right hon. friend the President of the Board of Trade and I had a talk with him. He is fully aware of the great knowledge of these questions of trade held by members of your Lordships' House and of the important and interesting debates which we sometimes have on these subjects. He expressed the wish to be kept fully informed of what went on in this House and I give this undertaking that I will, probably to-morrow but certainly without undue delay, convey to my right hon. friend, either by personal interview or by letter, the views which have been expressed to-day, the trend of the debate, and the remarks of the noble Lords who have spoken.
LORD CRANWORTH: My Lords I must express my thanks to my noble friend who has answered for the Government for the courteous and illuminating reply he has given me and I must also thank my noble friend Lord Moyne for his speech, which was to me of the utmost interest. My noble friend Lord Templemore was not quite right in thinking that we were poles apart, because, as a matter of fact, we were fairly near together. I would not dream of denouncing these Treaties unless I was able to secure bilateral treaties. At the same time we would keep the advantages

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which we already hold and it seems to me more a case of not being off with the old love before being on with the new than anything else. There is not really so much difference. The noble Lord has answered me very fully. He will hardly expect that he has given me every satisfaction, but he has given me some. I confess to a great feeling of disgust to find that, so lately as two years ago, the late Government entered into what does not appear to be a Treaty, but negotiations with various Powers on a matter of such close interest to our Empire without any more information to those who ought to have had it. In view of the answer I have had, I feel that no good purpose could be served by pressing my Motion and, with your Lordships' leave, I beg to withdraw.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

LONDON TRAFFIC LIGHTS.
THE EARL OF DENBIGH THE EARL OF DENBIGH asked His Majesty's Government what progress is being made in the general adoption in other parts of London of the red and green lights that have proved so successful in Oxford Street, and whether the delay in general adoption of this system is due to its being entirely at the option of the various local authorities. The noble Earl said: My Lords, I shall not detain the House more than a very few minutes in asking for this information. It is generally admitted by the public that the red and green lamps which have been fixed experimentally in Oxford Street for some time now have proved a very great success. They have greatly increased the speed of traffic, facilitated the duties of the police, and lessened the number of police required to regulate the traffic. They have also increased the safety of the pedestrians. The pity of it is that the number of these lamps is not increased in the other parts of the Metropolis, and from what I am told there seems to be a very great hesitation on the part of the local authorities.
I understand it costs about £300 to instal a set of lamps of that description at each of the four corners of a cross road, and that of that amount about 60 per cent. is paid by the Ministry of Transport and 40 per cent. by the local authorities. If that is so, it ought to give
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the Minister of Transport a very strong pull in putting pressure upon the local authorities not to obstruct the fixing of further lamps. But progress is very slow. Last year, I believe, only about 68 of these lamps were fixed in London. In New York, where about 8,000 are in existence, about 1,200 were fixed last year, and I think we might make a little more progress now than we have done in the past. I beg to ask my noble friend for the information, and also if he cannot do something in the interests of the public to put pressure upon the local authorities, if it is they who are holding up the matter.
THE EARL OF PLYMOUTH: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Earl for giving me an opportunity of referring to this very important question, and I shall attempt to explain to him the position as shortly and as succinctly as possible. The Minister of Transport, the Home Secretary and the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police have, as I am sure your Lordships are aware, been in close consultation on this subject for a considerable time past, and as a result of this consultation and of the experience gained from the working of the automatic electric signals in Oxford Street, the Minister has quite definitely come to the conclusion that it would be desirable to ask for similar systems to be installed in different parts of London where the traffic conditions are suitable. There is one point I should like to emphasise, and that is that I think it would be a great mistake to overdo these automatic signal systems and to scatter them broadcast about London where the conditions really do not warrant it. It would only aggravate and irritate the motorists. It might in fact lead to these signals being ignored, which, I think, would be an extremely unfortunate thing.
This automatic signalling has three primary objects in view. Firstly, to improve the traffic conditions; secondly, to reduce the number of the police that are required for traffic duty and in that way to release them for what are perhaps their more proper functions: and, in the third place, they are considered desirable in the interests of public safety and for the prevention of accidents. It is quite true, as the noble Earl has said, that the erection of these automatic signalling systems has not proceeded as quickly in London as

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it has in the provinces and elsewhere, and this is undoubtedly partly due to the special local government conditions which obtain in London. It has meant that the negotiations have been perhaps more complicated and more prolonged than they might have been otherwise. I think it must be borne in mind that until the Road Traffic Act of 1930 came into operation the highway authorities in London had no express powers to erect traffic signs or signals. That Act gave them those powers, and they are, therefore, now in a position to proceed. I also should like to make this point, that the conditions in London are peculiar and require very careful investigation and special treatment. I think it would have been disastrous if we had embarked upon a wholesale system of automatic traffic signals, which might have proved faulty owing to lack of sufficient consideration, and which might have, with a little more experience, been improved upon.
I think, therefore, it is natural that in these particular circumstances the local authorities should not wish to commit themselves until they were certain that the money which they would be called upon to expend in this connection would be spent in a satisfactory and proper fashion. I am glad, however, that recently things have been moving quickly with regard to this matter. In April last the Minister of Transport took the opportunity of meeting representatives from the Metropolitan Boroughs, when this question was fully discussed. He urged upon them the desirability of proceeding with the erection of further automatic signalling systems, and pointed out at the same time that the sums involved were comparatively small; that, in fact, it would be an economy to have a larger number of these systems in London. As a proof of the importance which we attach to this question, the highway authorities, as the noble Lord has stated, have been offered a contribution of 60 per cent. towards the cost of installing the signals, and towards the cost of their maintenance as well, leaving 40 per cent. to be found by the local authorities. I do not want to go into any detail, but I understand that the cost of installing the system at each junction is, in London, from £400 to £500,
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whereas the annual maintenance cost is in the region of about £60, all included.
As a result of further meetings, representatives of the Metropolitan Boroughs passed a resolution approving in principle the erection of more automatic traffic signals, and they approved of the financial arrangement, subject only to the details of the individual schemes. The position now is this, that all the Metropolitan borough councils have agreed in principle to the erection of signals, and nine of them have agreed to definite signal proposals. These nine are Chelsea, Deptford, Holborn, Lambeth, Paddington, Poplar, St. Pancras, Southwark and Westminster. It may interest your Lordships to know that in the case of Westminster the proposals are the following:—The signalling of Piccadilly from Stratton Street to Duke Street, of Trafalgar Square, of Albert Gate, the junction of Grosvenor Place and Hobart Place, and the junction of Eaton Square and Eccleston Street. Complete plans and specifications covering these installations have been prepared and sent out to tender. The tenders will be considered by a committee of the Westminster City Council on July 5, and their recommendations will go to the full Council on July 14. It is hoped the Westminster Council will approve the acceptance of tenders for each of these installations, which will enable an order to be placed for the work to be put in hand immediately after that date. I hope that what I have been able to tell the noble Earl will satisfy him, and also will show him that although this question has hung fire in the past, matters are now proceeding quickly and there will be in the course of a short time a considerable extension of the automatic traffic signalling system.
THE EARL OF DENBIGH: I thank the noble Earl for his reply.

WILTSHIRE HOUSING QUESTION.
LORD BANBURY OF SOUTHAM LORD BANBURY OF SOUTHAM had given Notice to ask His Majesty's Government whether their attention has been called to a report in the North Wilts Herald of May 27 of the proceedings at a meeting of the Wiltshire County Council, from which it appears that the Road Committee of the Council had bought four cottages for £2,587 from one of the members of the committee;

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whether members of the Council objected to this purchase, and whether the Road Committee insisted upon carrying out the purchase; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, in the local newspaper, the North Wilts Herald, of May 27, an account of the proceedings at the meeting of the Wiltshire County Council was given. At that meeting the minutes of the Roads and Bridges Committee were read, and the newspaper says that it appeared from the minutes that in connection with the widening of the London-Bath road it was necessary to acquire four acres thirty poles of land and four cottages at Overton. The district valuer had agreed with the seller, who was a member of the committee, for the payment of a sum of £2,582 17 s. in respect of the land and cottages and the committee in accordance with delegated powers had confirmed this. In his report the district valuer stated:
"The principal item making up the figure of £2,582 17 s. is in respect of the four cottages which had to be demolished."
The report of the district valuer then went on to say that the seller, a member of the committee, was a farmer who
"owns and occupies about 1,600 acres of land together with 36 cottages, and rents about 800 acres in addition, without cottages. He also rents two cottages from an adjoining owner. All those cottages are occupied by [the farmer's] own men, with the exception of one let to the widow of one of his workmen. Under these circumstances the four cottages in question are of peculiar value to the property, and … in my opinion entitles him to substantial compensation owing to the injurious affection caused to this adjoining property and interference with his business."
A special meeting of the Roads Committee was held to consider a resolution from the Finance Committee. The Finance Committee had by twelve votes to three resolved that the Roads and Bridges Committee be informed that the Finance Committee did not agree to the terms they proposed to make because there was no undertaking by the farmer in question to replace the cottages. The Roads and Bridges Committee resolved after full consideration to take no action with regard to the Finance Committee's resolution. Then at the meeting of the full council the Marquess of Lansdowne is reported as saying:
"It was most regrettable this should have happened … The broad facts were that as a revenue-producing proposition these cottages were worth very little money,
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but if they had to be rebuilt their value would be very much larger … there was no obligation whatever on the owner to replace them and it was generally asserted he did not intend to replace them."
Here I have to say that the owner was quite candid about the matter. He has declined to replace the cottages and he is going to put the £2,587 in his pocket. The newspaper report goes on to say that the Marquess of Lansdowne said he
"did not think a large sum of ratepayers' money should be handed over under those conditions when a valuation had been made on the basis of replacement."
Colonel Fuller, another well-known member of the council, said, according to the newspaper report, that
"he understood the owner of the property had given no undertaking whatever for the replacement of these cottages, although the council was actually paying the price for reinstating them."
Another member of the council pointed out
"that the Marlborough Rural Council were asking for assistance in building four houses at West Overton, and presumably they might be to take the place of those demolished."
Then the vice-chairman of the council said this:
"The very outside market value of these cottages was £600; to replace them would cost about £1,600."
Yet in face of that the Roads and Bridges Committee continued to insist upon giving the sum of £2,587 for cottages which, according to the vice-chairman of the council, were only worth £600 and which could be replaced for £1,600. I think your Lordships will agree that four labourers' cottages, four good cottages, could be built each with three bedrooms, kitchen and scullery, for £400 each. I believe as a matter of fact they could be built for less. Presuming, however, that they can be built for £400 each, that means that the cost of replacing these cottages would be £1,600 and not £2,587.
THE MARQUESS OF BATH: May I correct the noble Lord on that point? That sum includes 20,000 yards of land and the cost of replacing, I think 3,300 yards of fence. He is perfectly correct as to the value of the cottages, which is put at about £1,600, but the rest of the £2,857 is for other things.
LORD BANBURY OF SOUTHAM: About four acres of land has to be included, but I think the noble Marquess

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will agree with me that that land is on the borders of the downs. Downland is certainly not worth more than £15 or £16 an acre. Even if you put it at £20 an acre that means that the value of the land is £80 at the outside, and I am probably exaggerating the value of the land. I am a ratepayer in Wiltshire, and I do not want to have my rates increased unnecessarily even for the purpose of widening the Bath Road, which personally I think is absolutely unnecessary. I would point out to your Lordships that only yesterday we agreed to the Second Reading of a Bill which gives great power to local authorities to spend money. My noble friend who is going to reply for the Government will remember that only a few months ago there was an inquiry into certain circumstances at Hull where it was found that one member of the Housing Committee of the local authority had arranged with another man, a friend of his, to buy certain land and houses. He then proceeded to advise the local authority to purchase them at a very considerably enhanced price. That was stated at an inquiry which was held, I believe, by the Government, and it appeared that this man made several thousand pounds in that way.
I do not wish to say that anything of that sort occurred here, but we cannot forget that this price was given by the Roads Committee to one of their own members. If we are going to give great powers like this to the local authorities they should be, like Caesar's wife, above suspicion. I do not think that it can be doubted, first, that the price was excessive; and, secondly, that the idea of the district valuer that the farmer's property would be injured and diminished in value is not correct, because the farmer is not going to replace the cottages. It is clear, therefore, that he does not want them. If he did he would replace them. I might add that I have received a letter from the noble Marquess, Lord Lansdowne, in which I regret to say he states that he is ill and cannot be here to-day, but he is very glad I raised the question. He says that the value of the cottages is not more than £600.
THE EARL OF PLYMOUTH: My Lords, I think after what the noble Lord has said you will perhaps agree with me that this is really a domestic question between the Wiltshire County Council and one of its committees. But I will try to deal
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with the matter in so far as the Department which I represent is concerned. The terms of the purchase were recommended by the Valuation Department of the Inland Revenue. It is always the practice, I gather, to call in the district valuer in eases such as this and quite open for either party to go to arbitration if they think it necessary. The figures given by the noble Lord, as has been said, were perhaps inclined to be somewhat misleading. The actual terms recommended were as follows:—Four cottages and their land, £1,800; other land, £225 10 s.; payment in respect of fencing which is being provided by the owner, £529 7s.; payment for repair of twelve gates which is being done by the owner at 30 s. each, £18; payment in respect of reconstruction of Feeder and Field Bridge, done by owner, £10. This makes a total of £2,582 17 s. As a further illustration of the magnitude of the deal it may be mentioned that 20,000 square yards of land are included in the purchase besides the four cottages and that the length of new fencing to be constructed is about 3,300 yards. This gives a notion of the length of the road which will be improved as the result of the purchase from Mr. Swanton.
In his report the district valuer used words which my noble friend has already quoted. I think they are important words and I think they make it quite clear that this sum of £2,582 17 s. is what the district valuer in his considered opinion, and with his unrivalled experience of such cases, thinks the owner is justly entitled to in compensation. As regards the actual terms neither the Ministry of Transport nor the Wilts County Council are brought into consultation. In all cases of this kind we rely on the impartial expert advice of the Valuation Department and we do not enter into negotiation over the head of the district valuer. I think your Lordships will agree that this is the only possible course we could adopt. If we were prepared to reopen cases of this kind there would be no end to the time wasted and the complications which might ensue.
LORD BANBURY OF SOUTHAM: Do I understand that the district valuer is an official of the Inland Revenue?
THE EARL OF PLYMOUTH: I think that is so. I should like to pay a tribute to the district valuers. It is rarely indeed that we have any complaint with

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regard to the decisions of district valuers, and where there have been any complaints they have been on the ground that the district valuer has tried to drive too hard a bargain rather than that the compensation awarded has been on too generous a scale. I do not want to delay your Lordships, but I do want to emphasise the fact that the district valuer holds an entirely independent position and I am certain that he would not be swayed either by the County Council or by any individual county councillor. This is one of the great advantages which the local authority finds in employing the district valuer. In fairness to the district valuers I wish to add that their services are increasingly appreciated by local authorities who at one time were slightly prejudiced against them. Their rigorous impartiality has been demonstrated so frequently that local authorities are now apt to complain that their services cannot always be made available.
There is one further point I would like to refer to. Mr. Swanton, the owner of the property, is a member of the County Council and also a member of the Roads and Bridges Committee. There are apparently some people who think that this in itself renders the circumstances of the transaction somewhat suspicious. But I would point out that the Municipal Corporations Act, 1882, provides that a councillor shall not be disqualified by reason only of his having any share or interest in any purchase of land. I am informed that Mr. Swanton retired from the meeting of the Roads and Bridges Committee when this matter was under discussion.
I understand that the main ground of objection by certain members of the County Council to this transaction was that, while Mr. Swanton received full compensation for the property which he had to give up, he was at the same time placed under no obligation to replace the cottages which were demolished. That is so, but I do not think that this is a matter which concerns either the district valuer or the Ministry of Transport. I dare say-the district valuer may have thought that the injury which the owner sustained in this case could best be measured by the cost of replacement of the cottages. But I am sure that in arriving at the figure which he fixed upon he had to take many
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other considerations into account. I venture to say that the question of replacement, or making a condition of replacement, was one which the district valuer himself could not possibly deal with. He had nothing at all to do with that question. He is asked to state what he believes to be a fair sum to which the owner is entitled for the injury to his property, and it surely does not come within the scope of his powers to make any conditions such as were suggested by the noble Lord. If it was desirable to make such a condition this was a matter which the local authority might have taken into account in view of the fact that this is a scheme which is being carried out under the agis of the County Council.
I can only conclude by saying that I am absolutely confident that Mr. Swanton's position as a member of the County Council had no influence whatever upon the terms of the compensation. I believe they were fair terms, they were the terms which were settled by the district valuer who is entirely impartial and who has had very great experience in cases of this kind. I hope your Lordships will agree with me that the Department which I represent could not have acted in any other way in dealing with this matter.
THE MARQUESS OF BATH: My Lords, I think I state the case correctly in saying that the district valuer who, as my noble friend has said, is an official of the Government more than of the County Council, in taking into consideration the value to be assessed says that the damage suffered by the individual shall not be less than the reinstatement value of the cottages, and that if there is equal accommodation handy he would not get the reinstatement value. In this case there was no accommodation of this particular character that could be taken into account. I want, however, myself just to place the facts shortly before your Lordships, in view of the concluding words of the noble Lord's Question, and I can perhaps do it better than my noble friend on the Front Bench.
It was in March last that the Roads and Bridges Committee had the valuer's report before them. They then approved of the terms. I may say that the committee had the powers delegated to them in August, 1929, nearly three years ago, when the scheme, which nobody very much likes I think, was first put in hand.

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Acting under those powers they proceeded to approve of these terms. Then they reported them to the Finance Committee of the County Council, who met in April and expressed their disagreement with the terms and referred them back to the Roads Committee. The latter, however, decided to adhere to their decision, under the powers which had been delegated to them. Further than that, when the matter appeared on the agenda paper of the County Council at the end of May, there was further criticism expressed in the Council itself. I think I know what really was in the mind of the committee in approving of these terms, not having also got the undertaking of the owner of the land to reinstate. They were afraid of risking arbitration. They were afraid of a higher sum being awarded in case of arbitration, and I am bound in all fairness to say this, from all I can gather down there, that a reference to an arbitrator would probably have resulted in a higher sum. Still it is a question whether it would not have been better in the circumstances to have taken that risk.
It is perfectly correct, as my noble friend has said, that the owner of the land retired during the discussion. I most say this here, because, as I have said, it is perfectly open, it has appeared in the Press, and the opposition has been general to this transaction. I regret very much that the owner of the land in question has refrained from giving an undertaking to carry out what, I understand on all hands down in the neighbourhood, he will be practically compelled to do—namely, to find other accommodation for these four men, who are absolutely essential to his farm and whose cottages were only on the other side of the road from his farm buildings. His refusal to give that undertaking has caused the whole of this difficulty. If he had given that undertaking there is no question that the price would have been perfectly reasonable, but I am bound to say that it is clear to me and to others that the delegation given to the committee was too wide, and that the conditions under which that and others have been granted will have to be considered, with a view of seeing that the Finance Committee have control over expenditure of this character.
LORD BANBURY of SOUTHAM: I am extremely glad that I brought this Question before your Lordships, on account of the last few words just uttered by my noble friend Lord Bath. My noble friend Lord Bath has said that the result of this will be that in the future the Finance Committee will have control over these transactions—at least, that is what I understood him to say. That is an extremely good thing, especially in view of the fact that the Finance Committee, by twelve votes to three, opposed this particular resolution. I cannot see that because the valuer is an official of the Inland Revenue it is a good thing to give £2,587 for four cottages. The land was worth practically nothing, and you can construct a wire fence for very little, if you put up sleeper posts, which I find to be the most economical method. You can cut the posts in halves or even, as one noble Lord says, into three or four, and the cost of a fence like that—and I think I am correct in saying that in that part of the world there is a good deal of wire—with four or five rows of wire costs extremely little. I should think £100 would cover a fence of that description. I am glad that I have raised this case at the present moment.
There is another point. Presuming for the sake of argument that it was necessary to give this sum of £2,587 for four cottages and four acres of land, was it worth while doing it in order to widen the road? The road has been in existence for forty years, and was quite sufficient for the traffic. What is the use of widening it in order to allow people who do not belong to the county to drive at forty or fifty miles an hour along it? I am very glad of the conclusion to which the County Council have arrived, and I should like to make this quite clear, that I have never in any kind of way attempted to attack the County Council. They have behaved in a proper manner, and I have here in this newspaper five of the leading members of the County Council who take my view about the matter.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.
House adjourned at ten minutes before eight o'clock.