§ Order of the Day read for the consideration of Commons Amendments to Lords Amendments and Commons Reasons for disagreeing to certain of the Lords Amendments.
§ THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF EDUCATION (EARL STANHOPE)My Lords, it may be for the convenience of the House if, very briefly, I deal with the situation in which we find ourselves to-day. I understand that your Lordships inserted some 117 Amendments in the Coal Bill, and with the exception of eight they have all been accepted by another place. Of these eight, one has been returned with the object of its being redrafted by your Lordships; a second has been accepted, but transferred to another place in the Bill; two others were amended in a manner with which your Lordships are not likely to disagree; a fifth was considered unnecessary owing 833 to a subsequent Amendment which was made at a later stage by your Lordships in this House; and only three have been rejected by another place. Of these, I have reason to think we are likely to find agreement as to the first of them, and I shall move that we shall not insist on the Amendments in the other two cases.
As regards the Amendments which have been accepted by another place, many of them were of a drafting character, but quite a number were of very considerable importance. To mention only one, the question of damage effected by subsidence. In another place that was represented entirely as a claim by landowners, but I am glad to think that the point was taken from an entirely different point of view by the noble Lord opposite, Lord Strabolgi, because I have a distinct recollection, and I have refreshed my memory on the matter, that on the Committee stage he felt that the question of damage by subsidence was of such importance that he wished to place it directly as an obligation under the Coal Commission itself. He recognised, as of course we all recognise, that the question of subsidence is not merely one that affects landowners but one that also affects tenants of houses, very often the miners themselves, and, of course, local authorities. I hope the noble Lord opposite will not only endeavour to instruct your Lordships but will also instruct his own Party on the importance that we attach to the question of damage by subsidence, so that they may perhaps become better informed than they are in another place at the moment.
LORD STRABOLGMay I make this matter quite clear at once? I entirely agree with what the noble Earl says. I got my facts in the matter from our colleagues in another place, who are mining members of the House of Commons and who know a good deal about it.
§ EARL STANHOPEIt seems unfortunate that they were not in another place when this subject was discussed, or at any rate did not then express similar views. But I do not want to go into the question of divisions in the noble Lord's Party; that is a matter I must leave to him. As regards other Amendments, I spent rather long hours last night reading through the debate which took place in another place; and I found 834 that consistently your Lordships had been attacked for putting in Amendments solely for the benefit of royalty owners, of which this House is supposed to be entirely composed. Now as Leader of the House I feel it my duty to make the situation somewhat clearer than it appears to be to some people at the present moment.
It is of interest to recall the first two Amendments which were considered in another place. The first was a redraft of Clause 2, in which we had put in a provision to give power to the Commission to take such action as is necessary to preserve a mine in good order at the end of a lease. That was obviously a provision to increase the powers of the Coal Commission, and I cannot quite see how that could be supposed to affect the position of royalty owners to whom the coal mine would no longer belong. The second point which they discussed immediately afterwards was a matter which was discussed here at great length, as regards the responsibility of the Board of Trade for the safety of mines. The whole point that was made by your Lordships—and it was insisted on particularly by my noble friend Lord Crawford—was that this would be a duality of powers, and therefore might not ensure such safe conditions being imposed in mines as exist under present circumstances. That has come here for your Lordships to redraft in a way that I hope will meet the point that was made in another place. But I only mention it as showing that there, again, your Lordships were not the least concerned with the question of royalty owners and their profits, but with the question of the safety of those who work in mines. A third point that was conceded in this House related to the interests of copyholders. Now copyholders, as I understand it, are almost all what I might describe as small men, and once again your Lordships were considering those interests rather than the interests of some of your Lordships who may have interests in coal mines.
I mention these points not because I think your Lordships mind very much what is said about you in another place, but there are people who read the debates which take place there and they may think, if no answer is made, that no answer is possible. Therefore I thought it right as Leader of the House to point out, not to your Lordships, but to people 835 outside this House, that we were not only concerned with royalty owners' rights or landowners' rights or the rights of any particular class, but were concerned also to make this Bill a better Bill than it was when it came to us in the first instance, and to look after the little people, if I may so call them, and particularly those who work in mines, quite as much as any of the other interests which were concerned.
§ EARL STANHOPEAs regards the Amendments as a whole, I think it would not be to the convenience of your Lordships that I should go into them now, but that we should deal with them as we come to them, one by one. I do not know whether there is likely to be a very long debate on them. On the whole I thought perhaps it might be to the convenience of your Lordships to make these few preliminary remarks as to the position, and to point out that your Lordships have indeed succeeded in making a very large number of Amendments to this Bill which have been accepted, many of them, as I say, of a drafting character, but others of very considerable importance, which we believe have made this Bill a better Bill than it was when it came to this House. I beg to move that the Commons Amendments and Reasons be now considered.
§ Moved, That the Commons Amendments to Lords Amendments and Commons Reasons for disagreeing to certain of the Lords Amendments be now considered.—(Earl Stanhope.)
§ LORD SNELLMy Lords, we have now reached a stage in the story of this somewhat storm-tossed Bill when we have to consider whether it has to continue its journeys between this House and another place or whether we shall accept and pass the Bill in its present form. So far as my advice is of any value, I very strongly urge your Lordships to pass the Bill. Previous attempts to amend it have been unfortunate in many respects, and continued mutilation of the Bill might have repercussions which your Lordships would wish to avoid. I merely want briefly to re-state our position, which only requires a few words because it is absolutely clear. We do not like 836 this Bill, and we would have been ashamed to profess the belief that it would have any serious influence upon the position of an essential industry, or that in it the full interests of either the nation or the mine workers have been considered. It omits, in our judgment, things that we regard as essential. We do not believe that the miner will benefit from its operation, and we do not believe that it will be effective as an instrument of unification in the industry. We believe also that nothing short of a well-considered scheme of nationalisation will in the end be successful. We are grateful to the noble Earl for his admission that some advice from this side of the House was welcomed and acknowledged as being useful. I hope the noble Earl will continue to lend a sympathetic ear to our advice. If he does, that will be beneficial in the future.
But the hesitations that I have expressed about the Bill have to be placed in the balance against such advantages as the Bill undoubtedly contains. It affirms a principle that we regard as valuable, and we believe that that principle is destined to find a definite place in all future legislation dealing with monopolies of whatever kind. It will be quoted as a precedent. It is in the nature of foundational legislation, and probably on that foundation many a good thing will come for the alteration of the structure of the State. I promise your Lordships that we shall not forget the principle that this Bill contains, and on suitable occasions we shall remind this most respectable Government of what they are proposing to do this day. What is to be the future of this Bill? The Bill has some enemies and none of its friends like it. It is neither effective unification nor honest confiscation. We shall presumably pass this Bill as an act of faith, and we shall support the passing of the Bill on this side of the House as an act of policy.
I am concerned to know what the gallant band of brothers propose to do in regard to it. I shall be interested to see whether they will stand by the threats that they have made, or whether, lest worse befall them at a future date, they think it prudent to agree with their adversary whilst they are yet in the way with him. Personally I hope the noble Lords will stand firm. Nothing is more distressing than to see the desertion of a widely- 837 advertised principle except the non-fulfilment of valiant threats. I confess I should not like to see the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, having led his gallant men to the top of the hill, lead them down again without having put up a fight on this occasion. I believe that in the previous battle of Hastings, in "1066 and all that," the defenders fought to the very last. I ask the noble Lords to take encouragement and example from ourselves. We never give in on these Benches. We are rather like the man of the Border Ballads who, when his legs were beaten under him, fought upon their stumps. I very much hope that the noble Lords will follow that great precedent. Now, having done all I possibly can as agent-provocateur to stimulate the noble Lords into rebellion, I have to say that we propose to vote with the Government, and I hope they will accept our votes without being too suspicious of our motives.
THE MARQUESS OF CREWEMy Lords, I cannot profess to find myself in entire agreement with everything that has fallen from the noble Lord who leads the Opposition, except in the one respect with which he began his speech—the hope that the Bill would pass in its present form as returned from another place. It is true that in a humorous passage which closed his remarks he expressed precisely the contrary opinion, and trusted that the noble Lord below the gangway who is in opposition to certain features of this measure would die in the last ditch.
For myself, I may say that I do not think that your Lordships have anything serious to complain of in the manner in which the Amendments made here were treated in another place. A large number were accepted after argument—and often, I think, after a Division—and a certain number, as the noble Earl opposite has pointed out, were rejected and have returned here. I do not think your Lordships' House can be quite so grateful to the attitude of the Opposition in another place. The mere fact that all owners of mineral royalties are regarded as being a band of voracious vampires may not greatly matter. That is the concern of the royalty owners themselves, and not of your Lordships' House. But I think you may be tempted to resent the implications which were so prominent there—one, that practically every member 838 of your Lordships' House is an owner of mineral royalties and thinks of nothing but the effect of this measure on his own pocket, and the second, which was even stranger, that all the royalty owners of the country are assembled here in your Lordships' House. That was the general effect produced on my mind by reading the observations made by the highly instructed Opposition members in another place.
If I might for a moment, for reasons which I will try to explain later, go back to the principle on which the first Part of this measure is based, I would venture to repeat what I was able to say at a quite early stage of the Bill, that it appears to me that the actual principle on which the purchase of the minerals of the country is based is a purely factitious principle. The royalty owners have been treated as though they were engaged in an ordinary business. I think the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack compared their position with that of a grocer parting with his business. Royalty owners, I believe, have always maintained that they are not engaged in a business at all, but that they are selling year by year some piece of property which belongs to them, which it is agreed by most people to be their absolute property, and that they are parting with it in just the same way as the owner of a collection of works of art or of a library may sell some object each year, thereby parting with that portion of his capital possessions.
Therefore it is argued that the basis of taking these sales which have taken place over a certain number of years and multiplying those sales by the figure of a certain number of years' purchase is not an altogether fair one. It is almost comparable with a proposal to buy up for the National Gallery or the British Museum all the private collections of works of art or valuable books, whereby the sales during a certain number of years by Messrs. Christie or Messrs. Sotheby would be taken and multiplied by an arbitrarily-fixed figure of years' purchase, and the sum estimated by such a calculation would be the sum to be divided rigidly among the owners of works of art or of libraries. The analogy is closer in some ways than might appear at first sight, because there are very few collections of works of art and few libraries of which portions have not been sold of recent years. It is also true that 839 the fluctuation in value of such things varied as completely as the fluctuation in the price of coal during the last ten or twenty years. This is a point of view which I think it is reasonable to take. It is not in one sense relevant to the Amendments that have been sent down from here and considered in another place. I only mention it because of its bearing on what I think may be regarded as the principal Amendment which has been rejected in another place and returned here—the modification which was made here in the vesting date.
I can say quite frankly that I realise that the arguments against the acceptance of that Amendment which were used here and also used in another place are extremely strong, for the reason that the acceptance of such an Amendment would, I feel it must be agreed, render almost nugatory the adoption of a system of valuation at all. Unless some date is fixed, for reasons which would take too long to elaborate, the system of valuation could hardly be carried out. I am bound to say that, had I been able to be in the House when that Amendment was considered here, I should not have felt able to support it. I trust, therefore, that when it comes up for consideration here, noble Lords who made that Amendment when it was before the House will not consider it necessary to insist upon it, although I have no doubt they have not altered their opinion as to the justice of some such arrangement.
I will not go into the detail of any other possible Amendment which has to be considered, and my noble friend on this Bench will no doubt speak on the question of arbitration, which was favoured here and in one instance was dismissed in another place as unsuitable for the particular purpose for which it was desired. I will not attempt to elaborate that, but will merely once more express the opinion that, in spite of the strong views which have been expressed here upon several subjects with which this debate is concerned, in all the circumstances it would be found wiser to accept the position as it now stands after the return of the Amendments from another place.
§ THE LORD CHANCELLOR (LORD MAUGHAM)My Lords, perhaps I may be allowed to make a few observations 840 in reply to the speech which the noble Lord, the Leader of the Opposition, very recently addressed to you. I suppose that everybody in this House is accustomed to the grudging admissions with which the Labour Party think fit to acknowledge any measure which they conceive to be a popular one and one which will please their own Party. It would never do for them to be generous in stating that the measure was valuable or would tend substantially to help the people of England as a whole: they might lose votes for their Party. Accordingly, any admission that is made here or elsewhere of anything that the National Government have done has necessarily to be couched in such phrases that nobody can possibly quote the admission on any public platform which members of the Labour party might be addressing. To that we are accustomed. But when the noble Lord goes on to assert that this measure is one which claims to "enshrine"—I think that is his word—a principle, which I take to be either the principle of nationalisation or, at any rate, that of interference with private property, then for my part I wish emphatically to register a protest against any such notion.
I have no doubt that precisely the same thing was said just about a hundred years ago, when this House, like the people in another place, passed such a measure as the Lands Clauses Act, or the other Acts which enabled, for public purposes, not mines beneath the surface of the earth alone, but any property belonging to any man in this country to be taken over, on payment of compensation, for public purposes. If it were not for the great respect which I owe to the noble Lord, I should say that it was complete nonsense to assert that this measure goes beyond the old principle in any respect whatever. In my submission, it is on exactly the same lines. If you once take the view, which for my part I take, that there is a very strong body of opinion that the unification of coal royalties is of benefit to the people of England, and particularly of benefit to the people engaged in the trade, and as that view is taken by all sorts of bodies, consisting of Commissions, and all sorts of political views, to my mind (and I ask your Lordships to agree), it is idle to suggest that this Bill enshrines a new principle. It is carrying out a principle which is at least a hundred years old.
841 Then the noble Lord suggests that this is a bad Bill, because it has many enemies and because its friends do not like it. In a case such as this, dealing with a matter of great complexity, and touching interests which have existed since the time of Queen Elizabeth, of a great number of people, is it likely that there would be a universal approval of the measure or that the proposals in it would not be subjected to criticism? I will only repeat what I have said before, that I think the criticisms of this measure were useful to it, that they were not ill-judged. Although they may have been wrong in their views of what the measure was proposing to do, I think the criticism which has been made against those members of this House who put forward Amendments to the measure has been most unfair, for the reasons already given by the Leader of the House. I venture to think that the form in which the measure now comes before your Lordships has been greatly improved, as compared with the form in which it originally appeared when it came up to this House in the first instance. Having said that I am content to leave the rest to the judgment of history, and to remind those who were not here that there was no Division upon either the Second or Third Reading in this House, that there has been on the whole a generous recognition of the fact that the evidence in favour of the view that the Bill is greatly wished for by a very large section of the community is sufficient reason why noble Lords should not put forward their own individual opinions.
§ LORD HASTINGSMy Lords, I had no intention at all of intervening at this stage, but the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack has provoked a reply to one remark which fell from him, which I find it impossible to resist. The noble and learned Lord said that this Bill enshrined no new principle. Throughout the debates on the Bill I never heard it suggested that the old principle, of the right of the State to acquire private property on the payment of compensation, had ever been disputed. It was never disputed throughout the debates. But there is a new principle enshrined in the Bill, in that compensation under the Bill is not to be paid to the individual on the value of his property, but it is to be dependent upon the value of other people's property. If 842 that is not a new principle I do not know what is. It is a principle that when once it is embodied in an Act of Parliament and put upon the Statute Book will stand as a nightmare and menace to every owner of every sort of property for all time. I could not allow the noble and learned Lord to claim that there is no new principle embodied in this Bill without protesting. This is the principle which has been the mainspring of our objections from the beginning.
§ On Question, Motion agreed to.