PUBLIC WORKS LOANS BILL. (Hansard, 19 March 1946)

§ LORD HENDERSON

My Lords, I think I may be a little more fortunate with the second Bill which it falls to my lot to recommend for a Second Reading this afternoon. It is a measure far simpler and more routine in character. We used to pass a Public Works Loans Bill annually before the war. During the war naturally, in the circumstances which existed these Bills were no longer an annual event but only occasional and sporadic in their appearances. With the return of peace, however, we may well expect that local authorities who are faced with large programmes of capital expenditure for reconstruction, housing, education, and other services open to them, may seek for considerable sums out of the fund provided under this Bill.

We are asking for £150,000,000, because we think that that will be adequate to meet the demand, but if this figure should prove to be an underestimate the Government will have no hesitation in asking Parliament for further capital for the fund. The present Bill provides for writing off loans which are judged irrecoverable, and we have taken this opportunity, as you will see from the Schedule of the Bill, to write off loans amounting to £50,000 under the Agricultural Credits Act, 1923. I should remind your Lordships that though these loans are written off so far as the Local Loans Fund is concerned, the Exchequer continues to press so far as is practicable for the liquidation of these debts.

There is one further point to which I would call your Lordships' attention, namely, that under Clause 1 we make a departure from precedent. We are reducing the number of the Commissioners of the loans to twelve and are no longer appointing them by name in the Act of Parliament, a procedure 206 which we consider to be out of touch with present [...] day requirements. Clause 1 accordingly proposes that the Commissioners will be appointed by His Majesty and hold office for a term of four years and retire in rotation year by year except during the initial period when they will retire three at a time during each of the first three years, and thereafter, according to their appointment, at the end of every fourth year.

I should not like to let this occasion pass without conveying our appreciation of the services of the Commissioners who receive no remuneration and who have given single-minded and devoted service to the public. As my honourable friend the Financial Secretary to the Treasury said in another place, "they play a very valuable part in the financial relations between the Government and the local authorities" It is only right therefore that we should take this opportunity to acknowledge their disinterested and public-spirited service and pay tribute to their ability and to the devotion with which they have served the State. I beg to move.