Sitting of 20 June 1928

Preamble
The House met at a Quarter before Three of the clock.

ELECTION OF SPEAKER.
Hon. Members, having repaired to their seats, the Sergeant-at-Arms (Admiral Sir Colin Keppel), came with the Mace, and laid it under the Table.
The PRIME MINISTER (Mr. Baldwin)(addressing himself to the Clerk, who, standing up, pointed to him, and then sat down): Sir Lonsdale Webster, I have to acquaint the House that His Majesty, having been informed of the resignation of the Right Honourable John Henry Whitley, late Speaker of this House, gives leave to the House to proceed forthwith to the choice of a new Speaker.
Sir ROBERT SANDERS(addressing himself to the Clerk, who, standing up, pointed to him, and then sat down): Sir Lonsdale Webster, we owe immediate attention to the Gracious Message just received from His Majesty, and it becomes our duty and undisputed privilege to proceed to the election of a. Speaker. Therefore, I beg to move, "That Captain the Right Honourable Edward Algernon FitzRoy do take the Chair of this House as Speaker."
Yesterday, we regretfully said farewell to one who by his conduct in the Chair has earned the esteem, the respect, and the affection of every one of us. Of him, I need merely say that the tributes that were offered to him by the Leaders of the various parties in this House found an unusual unanimity of response in the minds of private Members. Individually, we all feel that by his departure we have lost a good friend: collectively, we are grateful to him for the way in which, during times that were never easy and were often very difficult, he upheld the honour, reputation, and the traditions of this House. Those traditions are dear to everyone of us. They are the unique
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inheritance of this great Assembly. We all come under their spelt and often those of us who come to this House most enthusiastic for everything that is new gradually, unconsciously, perhaps sometimes unwillingly, but nevertheless inevitably, come under their mellowing influence.
It is in the belief that he will worthily uphold those traditions that I am submitting the Motion to you to-clay that. we should appoint my right hon. and gallant Friend as Speaker of this House. He himself is the child of tradition. He comes of one of those families that for generations in various capacities have performed useful service to the State. He is a descendant of a Prime Minister who had the distinguished honour of obtaining even more than his share of the scurillity of Junius. I find, on consulting the historian of the period, that he says this:
"Still, in spite of every disadvantage and defect, he continued through a long life much respected by all who knew him for the uprightness and integrity of his public motives."
To come to later years, it is only about 70 years ago that a near relative of my right. hon. and gallant. Friend held the position of Chairman of Ways and Means in this House, and it may be interesting to the House to know that he was the first Chairman of Ways and Means who was allowed to take the Chair as Deputy for the Speaker. Of my right hon. and gallant Friend himself, perhaps, in this particular week, I may be allowed to say t hat in adopting him we shall not be backing a dark horse. His public form is well known. It may be pleasing to those who sit for agricultural constituencies to reflect that his first experience in the Chair was when he presided over the deliberations of the Agricultural Committee of this House, and that he practised his 'prentice hand in curbing the exuberance of bucolic loquacity. From that position he, in 1922, was appointed to the Deputy-Chairmanship of Way and Means. In that position we have all seen his work. We have seen him often in positions of difficulty, but we have never seen him lose his temper, and we have never seen him lose his head.
It. is not for me to enter into the vexed question of whether that Chairmanship

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ought to be a necessary stepping stone to the Speakership, but perhaps I may be allowed to say that when a man has successfully been through that ordeal we may apply to him the misquotation of the late Lord Salisbury, by saying that he is, Omnium consensu capax imperii, guamvis imperasset. I will interpret: "We all think he is fitted for the Chair, because we have seen him as Chairman."
There is one other thing I should like to say about him. We have elected to the Speakership in past years well-known landowners, eminent lawyers, and, in the last instance, a distinguished man of business. Never before, I believe, have we elected to the Chair a member of the Army, and I hope that outside the House it will convey the impression, which is perhaps sometimes necessary, that in adopting my right hon. and gallant Friend we are showing that We have not forgotten the gratitude which we owe to the regular soldiers of this country, and, furthermore, it may be gratifying to many of us to think that by passing this Motion we shall be giving employment to an ex-service man who was wounded in the War.
For all these reasons,, I beg to commend this Motion to the House. I hope and believe that it will be carried with unanimity.
One thing further. By carrying it, we shall not only be conferring a great honour on my right hon. arid gallant Friend, but we shall be also placing on his shoulders one of the: heaviest responsibilities that any man can undertake. We believe that he is equal to the responsibility, but it is my earnest hope that every one of us will do all that in him lies to make that burden as easy as circumstances can permit and that by thought, word and deed, we shall do all in our power to assist him to obtain that successful term of office we all so earnestly wish him to-day.
Mr. BOWERMAN(addressing himself to the Clerk, who, standing up, pointed to him, and then sat down): Sir Lonsdale Webster, I rise to second the Motion now before the. House. I do not propose to follow the remarks of the right hon. Member for Wells (Sir ft. Sanders), but I should like to refer to the late Speaker for a moment—the great Gentleman who vacated his high office yesterday. In almost his closing words to the
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House, he addressed a question to hon. Members as to whether or not as Speaker he had been a true guardian of the liberties of this House. Only one reply can be made to that, and that is that no man who has occupied this great office in years past has been more zealous than Mr. Whitley in guarding the liberties of this House. Those are words that cannot be used with impunity; they are not a mere formality. Those words embody the living heart and soul, not only of this House, but of the nation as represented in this House by hon. Members. Therefore, I say that those words dare not be used in any mere formal or perfunctory manner. A visitor has only to pass through the corridors of this House and look at the pictures on the walls to realise what the liberties of this House must mean to him and his fellow citizens.
With regard to the gentleman whom the House will honour this afternoon, I know I am right in saying that in his capacity as an Officer of this House he has shown great self-possession. tact, and judgment.. If with these attributes is combined just a little streak of what Mr. Lowther used to term "the saving grace of humour, "this House can rest assured that his occupancy of the Chair will be a great success. With regard to that saving grace of humour, I need hardly say how well it has stood previous Speakers in good stead, for when any little disturbance has taken place and the offending Member has been reproved in those gentle terms which Mr. Whitley used, that Member had no feeling of resentment against the Chair.
May I also say that the incoming occupant of the Chair will have two very great advantages? First, he will be in that Chair at the unanimous desire of every Member of this House. It has not always been so. But, if the honour is great—and it is—it is infinitely greater when the right hon. and gallant Member knows that he has the unanimous support. of every Member of the House. He will have a further advantage. Mr. Whitley—if I may refer to him again—has created an atmosphere of friendship probably unexampled in the history of the Chairmanship of this great body—an atmosphere of friendship and goodwill that is not only enjoyed by every Member of the House, but that has also made its way

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into the country, for by means of those Councils that bear the honoured name of Whitley he has done a great deal towards producing that peace in industry about which some of us talk so much at the present time. Therefore, the right hon. and gallant Member will have those two great advantages.
I can only hope, indeed I am sure, that the House looks forward with confidence to the Speaker who will occupy the Chair in a very few minutes. It is a great honour and a greater responsibility, for, as Mr. Whitley has said, the work in this House and the work of Parliament does not become lighter as the years go on. It will become heavier and probably more complex. With the knowledge that the right hon. and gallant Member will take the Chair with the unanimous consent and desire of every Member of this House, he will not only he strengthened in his determination to follow the splendid example set by his predecessor, and by Mr. Lowther who preceded Mr. Whitley, hut he will know that he has the support of every party in this House, and with that knowledge I feel sure he will be strengthened in his desire and determination to uphold the rights and the liberties of Parliament.
Captain FITZROY: Sir Lonsdale Webster. I rise, in accordance with the ancient usage and custom, to submit myself to the will of the House. I am sure that no man could stand in the position that I occupy to-day without feelings of emotion, more especially after having listened to the generous terms in which the proposal has been made to confer upon me the great honour of Speakership of this House. All that I can do and all that anyone can do is to determine that, whatever circumstances arise, he will do his best. That is my attitude to-day. To attain the eminence which previous distinguished Speakers have held in this House and this country is obviously the object to aim at, but it is a difficult one to achieve. I say deliberately that not one of those Speakers has shown a finer example than has the Speaker to whom only yesterday we regretfully bade farewell. In my case, I cannot altogether claim inexperience in the duties which I may be called upon to perform, should this House elect me as Speaker. But, at the same
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time, I do feel some satisfaction in realising that, had they not appreciated to some extent my efforts, they would not now be asking me to fulfil a much higher position than that which I have hitherto held.
May I say at this time that any merits that I may have shown in the past, during the five years that I have occupied the position of Deputy-Chairman of Ways and Means, have been due almost entirely to the example that has been shown to me, the assistance that I have received, and the advice that I have been given by my right hon. Friend the Member for Central. Sheffield (Mr. James Hope)? I say frankly that, had that right hon. Gentleman not expressed the desire not to have his claims considered with regard to the Speakership of this House, I certainly should never have stood in his way.
During the period that I have had the honour of filling the position in the Chair, I have gained a great deal of experience, and I have learned that whereas, as a general rule, "a soft answer turneth away wrath," there are occasions when a much sterner rebuke is required; but the greatest example of generosity and good will in this House is that when that stern rebuke has been administered, and when sufficient time has elapsed for the incident to have been forgotten, none are more ready to forget and forgive than those upon whom the rebuke has fallen.
There are, I agree, certain drawbacks to those who are called upon to fill the Chair as Speaker in this House. To my mind, the chief one is the isolation which is enforced upon the occupant of the Chair. My best friends tell me—I think sometimes that they are wrong—that I am not effusive. Be that as it may, I have a great love for my fellow Members of this House, and we must remember that a warm heart is often concealed beneath a frigid exterior.
A Speaker's duty is to defend the rights, privileges, traditions, and independence of this ancient Parliament. I love and venerate the House of Commons. But I know and I realise, and I believe every Member of this House realises, that it is only with the assistance of the House of Commons that those objects can be attained. If I have the privilege to be elected to this honourable position, I feel

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certain that that assistance will be assured to me. Should the House be willing to place me in the Chair, it will be my object, throughout whatever period I may hold that position, so to conduct the duties which I may be called upon to perform, that when the time comes for me to relinquish this office to my successor, I may hand it over, as it has been handed to me, unsullied and untarnished by any action of mine. I pray God to give me strength to fulfil that determination.
The House having unanimously called Captain the Rt. Hon. Edward Algernon FitzRoy to the Chair, he was taken out of his place and conducted to the Chair by Sir Robert Sanders and Mr. Bowerman, and, standing on the upper step, he expressed his sincerest acknowledgments to the House as followeth:—
Mr. SPEAKER-ELECT: Before I take the Chair as Speaker of this House, I want to express my extreme gratitude and thanks to the Members of this House for the great honour they have conferred upon me, and to assure them that so long as I retain their confidence I will give my whole strength to the service of the House.
I should like to say also, that I take this opportunity of thanking the Gentlemen at the Table for the assistance and courtesy which they have always given and shown me, during my term of office as Deputy-Chairman of this House.
Mr. Speaker-Elect sat down in the Chair, and the Mace was placed upon the Table by the Sergeant-at-Arms.
The PRIME MINISTER: Mr. Speaker-Elect, I am glad that it falls to my lot to be the first Member of this House to offer you, formally, my congratulations and the congratulations of those for whom I am entitled to speak on the signal mark of confidence which the House has to-day reposed in you. I know quite well that the thought which comes to your mind to-day is:
"Let not him that girdeth on his harness boast himself as he that putteth it off."
I am the more pleased to say these few words because, perhaps, there is no man in this House who has known you longer than I have. It is 50 years ago next year, since you and I first met as very small boys, sitting on a very hard form, learn-
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ing a very hard lesson, and in those days we believed, as probably small boys do to-day, that when we once came to years of maturity the period of lessons would cease. We have learned that lessons never cease. There is a period of further learning before you, Sir, now, but we all have every confidence that you will learn that lesson and when the time comes, as come it will, when you have to make way for someone else, the House will be able to say to you, as they said yesterday:
"Well done thou good and faithful servant"
Sir, the House will have learned from the speech which you have just made to-day what I have known for long. They I have no doubt, feel a passing regret that a. man who can express himself as you have done will no longer be heard in this House, except in the brief communications that have to be made from that Chair. But they will learn, perhaps they have never been able to learn, anti could not learn from anybody occupying the position which you occupied, of your deep affection for this House and the broad humanity that there is in you, which will preserve you in the place where you are, and which will help you every day. I am sure every one of us re-echoes that prayer with which you concluded, and we believe in our hearts that it will be answered.
Mr. RAMSAY MacDONALD: Mr. Speaker-Elect, I rise to voice the congratulations which my colleagues on this side of the House would like to offer you upon your election to that very high and dignified office. I join with the Prime Minister in expressing the great gratitude with which we listened to the speech which you delivered to us just now, and in which, in such splendidly clear tones, you announced your love for the House and your loyalty to its traditions. Sir, I am afraid we are going to call you to an office which it is not always easy to till. There have been Speakers, predecessors of yours, who have had to show very vigorous efforts in the maintenance of the liberties of this House. I do not think yet. will be called upon to tread any hard and uneven road like that; but still the office of Speaker, always difficult, bas to be filled by men who, until they have occupied it, have very little opportunity of showing the quali-

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ties which have to be shown in it. Therefore, the election of a new Speaker is always in the nature of an experiment. It is always an excursion into the unknown—so much so, Sir, that, occasionally, election to the office has been made the subject of Divisions.
I want to say to you without any reserve that we on this side of the House do not believe it is fair to the House, or fair to the man who is to be chosen as Speaker, to put him into that office by a majority, however large. Therefore, we associate ourselves with the invitation which has been given, first by your own immediate colleagues. We associate ourselves most whole-heartedly with it, and I rise to assure you of our co-operation and our good will in helping you to make your term of office conspicuously successful.
Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: Mr. Speaker-Elect, I think this is the third time that I have taken part as a Member of this House in the election of a Speaker. I rise to join with the two Party Leaders who have already spoken in hearty congratulations to you upon your elevation to that very exalted and influential position, a position which is becoming, with the exigencies of events, more and more important in every Parliament. The primary responsibility for choosing a Speaker when the Chair is vacated must always rest, in the first instance, with the majority of the House of Commons, with the party that constitutes the majority and their leaders, but the success of the occupant of the Chair will depend upon his securing, by his administration of that great office, the confidence not merely of the party which constitutes the majority but of every party and of every section of the House.
I wish to say to you, Mr. Speaker-Elect, after the few years' experience of your occupancy of a less important but still very important office, that my
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colleagues sitting behind me and myself wish to acknowledge the uniform courtesy and conspicuous fairness with which you have treated us, the smallest section of this House. That is no small matter to a small group in the House of Commons which is always orderly. Mr. Speaker-Elect, my experience of this House shows that there is always a temptation, when time has to be saved and harmony to be restored, and when sacrifices have to be made for that purpose, to do so at the expense of those who make the least trouble. So, Mr. Speaker-Elect, the fact that you have treated us with conspicuous fairness is certainly an element which enters into the warmth and the sincerity of my congratulations upon your elevation to that office. Whether you possess the rarer qualities which will be demanded in the course of your occupation of the Chair, time alone can show I agree with the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition that every choice of a Speaker must be in the nature of an experiment, but I should like to say that my impression is, after hearing the short speech that you have delivered, that those qualities will not be lacking.
The PRIME MINISTER: Mr. Speaker-Elect, I have to signify that it is His Majesty's pleasure that this House should present their Speaker to-morrow, Thursday, 21st June, in the House of Peers, at a quarter before Three of the clock, for His Majesty's Royal Approbation.
Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn."—[The Prime Minister.]
Mr. SPEAKER-ELECT thereupon put the Question, which being agreed to, the House adjourned accordingly, until Tomorrow; and Mr. SPEAKER-ELECT went away without the Mace before him.
House adjourned at Twenty-four Minutes after Three o'clock until to-morrow (Thursday).

Preamble
The House met at a quarter before four of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
LORD MELCHETT.
The Rt. Hon. Sir Alfred Moritz Mond, Baronet, having been created Baron Melchett, of Landford, in the County of Southampton—Was (in the usual manner) introduced.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE.
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY): My Lords, I desire to acquaint the House with the fact that owing to what has happened in another place to-day there will have to be a slight modification in the time of our sitting to-morrow. As your Lordships are aware, there will be a Royal Commission to-morrow for the purpose of confirming the election of the Speaker. That will necessitate our meeting rather earlier and I ask your Lordships, if you are willing, to meet, therefore, at 2.45 to-morrow with a view to the Royal Comsion and the confirmation of the Speaker. Then it would seem to be for the convenience of the House that we should not adjourn but should proceed with our ordinary business immediately thereafter. I do not anticipate, from the appearance of the Order Paper, that the ordinary business to-morrow will take very long. That is all the more reason why we should proceed with it immediately.
VISCOUNT HALDANE: Can the noble Marquess say whether the proceedings on the confirmation of the Speaker will be more than formal in this House?
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: They will be nothing more than formal.

ABERDEEN CORPORATION ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL. [H.L.]
Read 3a(according to Order), and passed, and sent to the Commons.

SLUMS.
THE LORD BISHOP OF SOUTHWARK THE LORD BISHOP OF SOUTHWARK rose to ask His Majesty's Government to state how many persons in the United Kingdom are now living under slum conditions; how many have been removed from such conditions since the Armistice by slum clearance schemes; how many will be affected by schemes already approved by the Ministry of Health, but not yet carried into effect; further, to ask whether His Majesty's Government have any proposals to hasten the abolition or the improvement of slum property; and to move for Papers.
The right rev. Prelate said: My Lords, towards the end of the last Session I asked His Majesty's Government if they could give us any information as to when they would introduce a Measure facilitating the clearance of the slums. I asked that question because at the opening of this Parliament, in the gracious Speech from the Throne, a definite promise was made in this respect. I would remind your Lordships of the words which were used in the Speech from the Throne:—
"The housing problem is not merely one of overcrowding, but also of the existence of large numbers of houses which fall below modern standards of propriety and sanitation. Something is already being done under existing legislation to clear the worst areas and to remedy sanitary and structural defects in those which remain. As new building increases it will be possible largely to develop this process, and My Government will take every opportunity of pressing it forward with vigour."
The Government have been carrying out very faithfully their promise to build a large number of additional houses. The success which has been attained in this respect has indeed been remarkable. But the more successful the Government have been in building new houses the nearer they must come to the time when they carry out the other part of their promise—namely, to introduce legislation or measures for the clearance of slum areas.
The noble Viscount who replied to my Question at the end of last Session was, I thought, quite encouraging. He told us that the Minister of Health considered that the problem "must be tackled in a much more comprehensive manner if any considerable improvement is to be effected within a reasonable time." He also stated that a scheme was under consideration. We are now in the fourth
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Session of this Parliament. It is therefore natural and reasonable that we should ask His Majesty's Government to tell us when they propose to take the steps which were outlined in the gracious Speech from the Throne. The problem, no doubt, is one of remarkable difficulty and extent. The extent of the problem can only be described as enormous. In every town, large and small, you will find slum districts. I may be asked how I define the word "slum." I think perhaps the best definition is that given in Murray's English dictionary:—
"A thickly populated neighbourhood or district where the houses and conditions of life are of a squalid and wretched character."
In every one of our towns you find in a larger or smaller degree districts in which people are living together under conditions of a squalid and wretched character.
I need not trouble your Lordships with statistics showing how detrimental the existence of these districts is to the wellbeing of those who live within them. It is agreed on all sides that where you have a slum there you have a higher death rate and a lower standard of health than in any other district. Nor need I argue the point that from these slums there is danger not only to physical but also to political health. They becomes centres of unrest, discontent and disaffection. But the Question I want to ask His Majesty's Government is whether they can give us any information as to the number of people who are living under these conditions. I realise that it may be impossible to give a very definite clear-cut answer to that question; still, we ought to know the extent of the problem and we ought to be told, approximately at any rate, how many of our fellow countrymen are living under these conditions.
Unless there is some official statement on the subject exaggerated and highly coloured statements will be made, and have been made time after time. I noticed that a year or two ago at one of the Trade Union Congresses the statement was made that "there were three million of our people living in disease-ridden, fever-stricken slums." I do not know how the speaker arrived at that figure. It may or may not be accurate. It is a very serious statement to make and it has been repeated time after time.

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If it is an over statement we ought to have some figures by which to correct it. But I am quite sure that whatever figures are given they will show that a very large number of people are living under these conditions. Taking London alone, quite apart from the 26,000 people who have been or will be dealt with under the slums clearance scheme adopted by the London County Council, there are, we are told, at least 100,000 people living in London under insanitary conditions; that is to say, a population as large as you would find in a City like Wolver-hampton. When you find the total number in the Provinces as well as in London who are living under these conditions the sum total will be nothing less than appalling. I hope it will be possible for the noble Lord who is to reply to give your Lordships' House some figures as to the number of those who are living under these conditions.
Turning to my second point, serious as the problem is, no existing methods of dealing with the housing question are affecting to any very large extent the condition of the slums. This is true, I think, of the large housing schemes which have been carried out during the last two years. The Government were perfectly right, if I may say so, in putting first the building of new houses. That was essential, and that part of their programme has been carried out with the utmost vigour. It is a great achievement that over a million houses have been built in the time. But I fear that the building of these new houses has so far effected very little indeed for the people who are actually living in the slums. This is partly due to the fact that the rents are too high. Men who are earning £3 or under a week cannot possibly afford a rent of 20s. or 23 s., which is charged in many cases for the new houses that are built under some of these schemes. Then to the cost of rent there has to be added the inconvenience and cost of moving backwards and forwards from the house in the suburbs or in the environments of a big town to the place in which the man is working. Those who are living in the slums more often than not are living fairly close to the place in which they find their employment. If they have to move out to some of those distant new towns that have sprung up it costs them, I am told
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by a competent authority, very frequently 5s. a week in moving backwards and forwards to their work.
It is a significant fact that the Chairman of the London County Council—and that Council has done admirable work in respect of housing—a few days ago stated that on the Becontree estate there were between 600 and 800 houses at the present time unoccupied. He went on to give the reason for this. The reason was that a very large part of the population could not afford to leave where they were now living because they could not pay the rent and could not afford travelling expenses, and he added that only 5 per cent. of the people living in very overcrowded conditions could, or would, leave the locality in which they were living. Great as the new housing schemes have been, so far they have not relieved to any appreciable extent, the pressure on the slum districts.
There is a more direct way of dealing with the slum—the method of slum clearance. This undoubtedly is the ideal plan to deal with slum districts. Sweep away the rotten insanitary buildings and re-house the people elsewhere, and then build on the space which has been so cleared. That is the ideal policy, but it is a policy which is very slow. It is a policy which takes a long time to execute. Often there is local opposition. There is always the question of cost, very often the cost being very high. From time to time, also, the question arises of possible injustice in compensation when a house which has been kept in good order is compensated on the same terms as the surrounding insanitary houses. Difficulties of various kinds arise, and these schemes of slum clearance are carried out very slowly. Reforms have been effected in this respect in London, but even now in London a number of approved schemes have not been carried out, and a number of districts which have been condemned for years still remain in existence. I am very anxious to know from His Majesty's Government how many schemes have been submitted for approval since the Armistice from the whole of the United Kingdom. There is another question which I also want to ask and to which I should like to press for an answer. Out of those schemes which have been approved how many have actually been carried out?

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A large number of schemes may have been approved, but many of them simply remain on paper, and nothing has been done to carry them into effect. I am afraid the answer will reveal that only a portion of the total number of local authorities have applied for confirmation of any scheme, and out of those schemes which have been confirmed only a portion have actually been carried into effect. I am not for a moment blaming the Ministry of Health for this. The Ministry of Health is as anxious and keen on this matter as any one else, but the Minister of Health himself recognises that progress in this respect is very slow. Speaking in another place last month, he said:—
"Really when one thinks of the vast masses of people who to-day are compelled to live under slum conditions, one cannot help feeling impatience that up to now so little has been done to help."
Then it may possibly be urged that a great deal is being done at the present time to recondition houses. I think I am right in saying that the Minister of Health, in the speech to which I have just referred, pointed out that action had been taken in a large number of districts by the sanitary and medical authorities which had resulted in the reconditioning of a number of houses. I must remind your Lordships that that word "reconditioning" is a very wide word indeed. There is a kind of reconditioning which I believe would go a long way towards solving this problem—the complete transformation of a house or a district, and the subsequent, management of that house or that district by the local authority under what is called the Octavia Hill assistance scheme. That kind of reconditioning or reconstruction was advocated by the Committee on Unhealthy Areas over which Mr. Neville Chamberlain presided some seven or eight years ago. But there is another kind of reconditioning which goes on year after year—very valuable, very important, and indeed quite necessary to prevent buildings from deteriorating into slums—but a great deal of this reconditioning is concerned with quite small details, putting a few tiles on, putting some paint on part of a house, stopping a wall from showing signs of collapse and so on. I am not for a moment under-estimating that kind of reconditioning. It is quite right that it should go on, but it hardly touches the
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slums at all, for this kind of reconditioning cannot deal with the structure of the house, nor can it deal with the environment of the house, and the result is that, though a temporary reform may be carried out, the slum as a whole remains untouched.
I think I have said enough to show that the position is a very serious and difficult one. You have this great problem and at the present time none of the existing housing schemes are really dealing with it. I ask His Majesty's Government if they can tell us when they propose to produce some measure dealing with this extremely difficult and anxious matter. This is not one of those matters on which we ought to delay year after year. Every year's delay means another year of suffering and misery and unhappiness. I hesitate to quote to your Lordships' house some of the actual cases, there are so many. I will venture to quote only two cases, which have recently come to my notice. The first is the case of a vast tenement building—three blocks of flats, five storeys high, each containing about one hundred flats. Each block contains four staircases. Each flat has its own w.c. but the sanitation is very defective and the smell intolerable. Owing to the height of the building and the closeness of the blocks to one another, many of the lower flats get no sunlight at all, and have to be lit by artificial light all day, whilst mothers living at the top have to carry their babies up and down four or five flights of steep stone stairs. Many flats are shared by several families. There you have several hundred people living year by year under conditions which every one of us would regard as absolutely intolerable.
The other case is somewhat different. It is the case of a much smaller building, a building which was once intended for one family only. Now it is occupied by several families. One family is living in the basement. A family of five persons—two adults and three children—live in two rooms in the basement. The rooms are so damp that everything is covered with mildew. One boy, aged eleven, contracted rheumatic fever and may be a permanent invalid. Those are not exceptional cases. Those are the things which are happening up and down the country. That is why it makes some of us so impatient, so

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bitterly disappointed when year after year passes and no comprehensive scheme is brought forward for dealing with this problem which affects the health and happinness of so many of our fellow countrymen. The Government have faced courageously the question of providing additional houses. I hope that with equal courage in the near future they will do their utmost to remove the slums which too long have been a real scandal to our civilisation, which remain persistent centres of unhappiness and discontent and which are a danger to morality and to the health and political welfare of our country.
LORD GORELL: My Lords, I feel that we must all be extremely grateful to the right rev. Prelate for having brought forward a second time this subject before your Lordships' House and in a speech so thoughtful and so temperate. The right rev. Prelate has the advantage that he can raise a topic of this magnitude without coming under any suspicion of Party bias or that he has any other end to serve than the good of the community. The fact that within a brief space he has again pressed the Government upon this topic is a sign that the country at large is very anxious about the absence of progress in dealing with this problem.
This is a matter which transcends all Party questions and I for one would never make the mistake of assuming that the Ministry of Health was not anxious to get rid of slum conditions. But it seems to me that there is a vast difference between the attitude of the Conservative Party and the attitude of those with whom I am associated upon this problem. The Government take the view, it would seem from the facts, that progress is desirable but that it is one of a great number of matters on which progress is desirable. To the Labour Party, on the other hand, this problem is absolutely fundamental. We regard the question of housing and the complementary question of slum clearance as underlying every one of our social problems. We would prefer to see every effort and all expenditure directed first of all to clearing away these conditions, because until that is done there is no real chance of social progress in a general way I imagine that I myself would not be accused of want of zeal in favour of education, but I would gladly see a halt called for a time
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in educational progress if that was a means of enabling us to deal more adequately with such a problem as that of slum clearance. I have had the privilege of going into many of the necessitous areas in London to look at schools and it is perfectly astounding to see the results achieved by the teachers and the measure of progress made by children coming from homes which are hardly fit for human habitation. But it is obvious that all progress in education, all progress in hygiene and in sanitation and everything else, depends upon the steps taken to deal with slum areas.
The right rev. Prelate has put to the Government certain specific questions. I notice that only one of those questions deals with the past, one deals with the present and two deal with the future. I hope that in response to his appeal the Government will be able to give us the figures for which the right rev. Prelate asks. It is clear that we have a right to have them laid before us. But I hope that the noble Lord who replies for the Government will deal as far as it is possible with the two questions of the right rev. Prelate which deal with the future. We do not want merely statistics of houses built or a statement that these matters are still under consideration, receiving the earnest consideration of his right hon. friend the Minister of Health. We admit that in the last few years great progress has been made in the erection of houses but, as the right rev. Prelate pointed out, that is only one part of the problem and it is not the greatest part.
I would venture to quote from a report made by the medical officer of health for St. Pancras, which bears out this point. He says:—
"Although an enormous number of houses have been erected in and around London during the past three years, the greater portion have been designed for the use of what may be termed the middle classes, and the majority of these houses has been built for sale only—not to be let."
It is obvious from a statement such as that, which could be duplicated and amplified in many quarters, that the erection of houses by itself is not a full or adequate means of dealing with this problem. It is, of course, related to the clearance of slums but it is only in indirect relation and it is perfectly obvious from these reports that slum conditions

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are, to a very large extent, unrelieved still all over the country.
I will quote, with your Lordships' permission, a few extracts from reports of medical officers of health for the last year for which I have been able to obtain them—namely, 1926—taking different parts of the country. This is what the medical officers say:—
Birmingham: "The practical fact is that there is still great distress because of house shortage."
Cardiff: "The extent of overcrowding found in the houses coming under the observation of the officers of this department shows little or no abatement."
Leeds: "The housing riddle remains unsolved and as far as outward appearances go the solution is as far off as ever."
Ipswich: "The slum problem is more pressing at the moment than ever before."
Smethwick: "Housing conditions are becoming more acute if anything."
Sheffield: "The overcrowding in the City is still deplorable."
One could go on quoting from the reports of medical officers of health and I find in other reports similar sentences with which I think it is unnecessary to burden your Lordships.
I will only add one from the report of the Scottish Board of Health for 1926–7, dealing with Glasgow. That report says:—
"It is impossible to draw any picture which could adequately describe the conditions under which we found human beings living in practically the whole of the houses we inspected. There were, it is true, differences in degree, but all were hopelessly unfit for habitation."
Yet the report of the Scottish, Board of Health can go on to refer to "gathering the impression that in a number of districts the period of really acute shortage is past." Words of that kind leave one with the fear that there is a sense of complacency creeping into Government Departments because of the number of houses that have been built. You have sentences such as this one attributed to the chief engineer of Cardiff:—
"Overcrowding is worse than at the last census. Nor is Cardiff the only town where complacency has been but partially effective in avoiding the descent to Avernus."
I give these quotations merely to show that all over this country, great as is the number of houses that have been built, both the problem of housing and the correlative problem of slum clearance
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have hardly yet been begun to be solved, and from this quarter of the House we most earnestly hope that the noble Viscount who will reply will be able to answer specifically the questions which the right rev. Prelate has addressed to him. I should like to add another question in reply to which the noble Viscount may be able to give us some information.
It seems to me that it is a mistake to speak as if this problem were wholly urban. Of course the greatest and most condensed areas of slums are in our great towns, but there are slum problems in rural areas just as vital to those who are living in those conditions and as to which we should be very glad to have some information from the Government. There the problem is difficult and different. It is one that is less concerned with masses of people than with habitations unfit for human use in poor localities. It would be unfair, of course, not fully to recognise that this is a very real and difficult problem. It would be unfair to attempt to lay it to the charge of any one Government. It is a problem that has faced many Governments and it is one for which many generations must bear responsibility. What one is anxious to have from the Government is, not so much a statement of what has been done in the last few years in the matter of building houses, as a precise and explicit answer to the Question that has been asked as to what they are intending to do. After all, His Majesty's Government have had a tenure of office that is coming towards its end, and we may hope that, whatever may be their prospects, they will be in a position to tell us precisely what they are proposing to do in the near future. I would ask the Minister of Health and those associated with him in the Government to imitate the reputation of Adam Smith, of whom it was said that "he had a capacious and insatiable mind, deeming that nothing had been done while aught remained to do." I imagine that this spirit is the only one in which any effective results can be achieved in tackling this problem, which demands steady and resolute persistence spread over a large number of years. I hope that we shall have from His Majesty's Government something more than generalities, some attempt to deal precisely with the questions that have been addressed to them.
THE EARL OF CRANBROOK: My Lords, it is with great diffidence that I venture to address your Lordships' House, but there is one point with regard to slums that I should like to make. I think it is generally accepted that slum conditions and overcrowding generally are due not only to economic factors but also to the general lack of houses that has been experienced since the War. In the northern and eastern districts of London, in particular, this lack of houses has been largely increased by houses in residential districts being turned into workshops and factories. I have looked into the subject and obtained as much information as I can, and I find that, for instance, in the Borough of Hackney no fewer than 460 houses, which at one time were used as dwelling houses, are now used as factories. These are large houses which, if turned into flats, are capable of housing two or three working-class families. Very much the same conditions obtain in the surrounding boroughs.
I know that it will be urged by some that this moment, when trade and industry are starting to get on their feet once more, is not a time to hinder that revival, but the workshops and factories which are found in these houses are not of a type that should be encouraged. The houses were originally built for residential purposes and are entirely unsuited for workshops. Moreover, the local authority usually does not find them out for some time after the change has been made, and as a result you find the workers working in overcrowded conditions, in ill-ventilated rooms and very often under conditions of sweated labour. The Government have already recognised in its Town Planning Acts that some system of zoning is necessary in districts which are not yet built upon, and I hope that they will give some consideration to the town planning of built-on areas, so that at least such powers may be given to enable local authorities to stop this evil as they had under Section 6 of the Housing (Additional Powers) Act, 1919.
VISCOUNT GAGE: My Lords, the right rev. Prelate brings this subject to your Lordships' notice at regular intervals, and I have no doubt that he will continue to do so with perfect justification until the tragic circumstances to which he has given such eloquent testimony are mitigated. I do not intend to follow him
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into these details, nor, I think, would it be proper that I should do so. My duty is to try to give your Lordships such facts as are available. I should perhaps mention that this does not indicate that the Minister is not very sympathetic to the points which the right rev. Prelate has made. I think that any one who studies the utterances of my right hon. friend, and, indeed, the quotations which the right rev. Prelate gave from them, will feel that they indicate the sympathy and urgency with which he regards this problem. The right rev. Prelate has asked for certain statistics about slum conditions. I am afraid that a certain difficulty arises at once—namely, the difficulty of defining what slum conditions are. This is an expression that is frequently used and conveys tolerably well to everybody's mind what is meant, but the right rev. Prelate himself has found it necessary to quote from a dictionary and the noble Lord opposite, Lord Gored, has brought in the question of slums in rural areas, which do not, I think, fall within the definition of slums in the Housing Acts.
There are really two separate problems. One is overcrowding and the other is insanitary conditions; and it does not necessarily follow that because insanitary conditions are remedied overcrowding difficulties will be solved, any more than it follows that when overcrowding is solved insanitary conditions also will be remedied. As regards overcrowding, I am afraid that the statistics for which the right rev. Prelate asks are not really sufficiently complete to be of any real value to the House. The latest returns date from the Census of 1921, and since that time conditions have greatly changed, there have been considerable movements of population and, of course, large numbers of houses have been built. A little more information is available from Scotland, but that again is not very accurate. If the noble Lord desires it, however, I can quote from the latest Report of the Royal Commission on Housing that dealt with conditions of housing in Scotland. I must remind your Lordships that in Section 35 of the Housing Act, 1925, the description of property that could be dealt with under improvement or reconstruction schemes was hardly covered by what I may describe as the sanitary definition.

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It has been brought out in the debate that all houses are inspected by local sanitary authorities whether they are overcrowded or not, and I think it is only right that I should give the figures of these inspections. It has been said that it does not really touch the problem of slums, but the action of the local authorities in issuing notices and getting defects remedied has a considerable bearing upon the question of insanitary conditions to which the right rev. Prelate referred. In the last year for which statistics are available over a million houses were inspected for housing defects, and 13,260 were found to be unfit for human habitation. A further 352,643, or 30 per cent. of the number inspected, were found to be unfit in certain minor respects. The houses, however, were presumably capable of being made fit, and the local authorities are taking, or have taken, the necessary steps, by issuing notices and by negotiations, to secure their repair. I am afraid that I cannot give statistics as to the population of these houses. As a result of the inspections previously referred to, the local authorities, as I have said, have secured the repair of a large number of houses found to be defective. During each of the past few years remedial works have been carried out, and as a result of action taken by local authorities in 1926, 600,000 houses were repaired and put info a correct sanitary condition. It does really appear that the local authorities are taking energetic action where houses can be made fit, to secure the execution of the necessary repair works, and arrears in this respect, I am informed, are being rapidly overtaken.
The right rev. Prelate also asked how many persons have been removed from slum conditions since the Armistice by slum schemes. This is a difficult question to answer, because there is no certainty that people removed from slum areas return to those areas after reconstruction has taken place, but I may state, in connection with schemes which have been already confirmed by the Minister of Health since the Armistice, that some 6,600 new houses hare been completed, to replace houses demolished or to be demolished. These new houses would probably accommodate between 29,000 and 30,000 persons. The right rev. Prelate said that these schemes very often existed merely on paper; in other words, that
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they had reached a stage where nothing further happens and when either the schemes have not been confirmed by the Minister or no work has been undertaken after confirmation has been received. I have here the particulars of every clearance scheme that has yet been undertaken. I have not the totals properly made up, but I can assure the right rev. Prelate that in the vast majority of cases considerable work has already been carried out, and if he cares to ask me with respect to any particular schemes, I think I could give him sufficient particulars for his purpose as to the position which those schemes have reached.
He further asked how many persons will be affected by slum schemes already approved, but not yet carried into effect. I said a minute ago that about 30,000 persons had been accommodated in reconstructed houses, and the total number of persons to be covered by reconstructed houses up to April 1 last was 69,000. If you deduct the 30,000 persons for whom provision has already been made, it will be seen that some 39,000 persons have yet to be provided for. Your Lordships are aware of the machinery whereby slum clearance schemes are undertaken. The local authorities make representations to the Ministry of Health, and a local inquiry is instituted. Then the question of compensation has to be gone into, and very often the total time occupied in the preparation of schemes is very large. Lord Gorell gave a quotation from the medical officer of St. Pancras. I think I can take as an example the slums clearance scheme of St. Pancras. The date of the official notice of the scheme was January, 1925. In February, 1925, the scheme was made, and it was submitted in June of that year. In August the inquiry took place, and the scheme was confirmed on April 27, 1926. That scheme covered 8 acres and 321 dwellings, and the number of occupants who had been displaced and who required re-housing was 2,557.
This indicates the great difficulty which exists in making a scheme, and shows that it is a very long and difficult process. The intervals are due to the great care which has to be taken to avoid any injustice to owners. Some of the houses in this particular scheme were inspected three times, and the Ministry of Transport also had to be consulted with regard to a road site. I mention the considerable

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difficulty attending these schemes because I would like to point out that since the War 123 slum schemes have been submitted, and 113 have so far been confirmed. I understand that there are twenty schemes which the Ministry know of as being considered by local authorities. If I compare this with what took place before the War I do not think I can be accused of self-complacency in describing it as not unsatisfactory. Before the War, for a period of about a quarter of a century, only forty-four improvement schemes, and twenty-eight reconstruction schemes relating to small areas, were confirmed. As these schemes approved since the Armistice have had to be undertaken during a time of very acute labour difficulties, I think that the figure of 113, which I have mentioned, is not altogether unsatisfactory. One cannot be self-complacent about a subject like slums, but I submit that it must be borne in mind that these houses have not suddenly become insanitary since the War, but that these conditions did exist long before the War.
I am afraid that I cannot answer very effectively all the questions in regard to the future. It must be apparent to your Lordships that the Ministry of Health have before them the whole of the programme connected with the rating and valuation scheme, which will take a great deal of their time, and when it comes before Parliament it will take a great deal of Parliamentary time. The promise in regard to Section 46 and the promise in regard to the reconditioning which was made last year still hold good. But I am afraid that I cannot now give the dates at which these Bills will be brought in. It must be apparent that it would really be of very little value to give any pledges in the present congested state of Parliamentary business. I regret it very much and I can only ask the right rev. Prelate and the noble Lord, Lord Gorell, to accept the very serious promise of my right hon. friend that he will bring in these Bills as soon as the Parliamentary position and the state of the programme give him an opportunity. He has this question just as much at heart as the noble Earl and the right rev. Prelate.
EARL BEAUCHAMP: My Lords, I think you will agree with me that the debate has been particularly distinguished
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by two speeches, first of all, that in which the right rev. Prelate initiated the discussion, and I should like to say in passing that I think your Lordships' House are under a real debt of gratitude to the right rev. Prelate for the way in which he has more than once brought this urgent matter before the attention of your Lordships' House. The other speech was, I think, almost the maiden speech of the noble Earl, Lord Cranbrook, to whom I hope I may say with perfect sincerity that I hope he will on more than one occasion in the future join in our deliberations. He contributed on this occasion a very practical and a useful suggestion, of which I have no doubt that His Majesty's Government will take some notice.
I do not think it is very easy to exaggerate the importance of this matter. On the Order Paper this afternoon there is another Bill down for discussion dealing with the liquor question. Now, the liquor question would never loom so large if it were not for the existence of the slums. It is because of the bad conditions in which so many people live that they go and drink too much, and it would have a real effect on the drink bill of this country, and cut it down considerably, if we could provide for the population proper homes in which to live. The importance of figures is really almost paramount. In any question that you deal with you desire to know the size of the problem before you really try to set about it, and I am disappointed that His Majesty's Government have not seen their way to give us more figures, especially in view of a Report which they issued themselves as long ago as 1921—the Report of the Unhealthy Areas Committee, of which no less a person than Mr. Neville Chamberlain himself was Chairman.
It is a rather vague, but an interesting, document, and at the end of it there is an appendix written by the secretary, who, dealing with London alone, spoke of 92 wards in the Metropolitan Boroughs possessing on an average over two hundred residents each per acre, and he distinguished four particular areas—dark areas, which averaged from two hundred to two hundred and forty-nine persons per acre; darker areas, averaging from two hundred and fifty to two hundred and

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ninety-nine persons per acre; very dark areas, averaging three hundred to three hundred and forty-nine persons per acre; and black areas, averaging three hundred and fifty per acre or over, and covering nineteen wards. The present population of those nineteen wards is estimated as 295,860, and the number of residences of all kinds upon them is calculated to be 37,930. In view of those figures, which were already available in the year 1921, I think the right rev. Prelate had some reason to expect that we might have had still further information given to us on the present occasion.
The estimate has been made, and I think with some authority, that there are no fewer than 3,000,000 people in this country living now in slum areas. In Birmingham there are no fewer than 40,000 back-to-back houses, and there remain in Birmingham vast areas still occupied by houses which can scarcely be considered fit for human habitation in their present condition. In Leeds there are 72,000 back-to-back houses, something like seventy to eighty houses per acre. In Tyneside, according to the 1921 Census, there were 277,003 people, equal to 34.95 per cent, of the population, living in overcrowded areas with more than two people per room. Then the medical officer of health for Glasgow says that in 4,000 houses there are more than three people per room; in 14,131 single-roomed tenements there are four to six people per room; and in 21,139 one- or two-roomed tenements there are seven to nine people per room.
VISCOUNT GAGE: The noble Earl says that in 14,000 tenements there are from four to six persons occupying one room. Is that correct?
EARL BEAUCHAMP: I understand that is what appeared in the last report of the medical officer of health for Glasgow. All medical officers of health, as the noble Viscount no doubt knows, make a report.
VISCOUNT GAGE: I was asking for the date.
EARL BEAUCHAMP: The last available date. But I have something still better. Here is an answer made by the Secretary of State for Scotland, who, replying to a Question on July 26 last year, said that in the Camlachie Division there were 1,300 houses condemned by the sanitary authorities, and the medical
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officer of health in his report for 1927 said that in the Northern Division there were several single-room houses with thirteen people in each room, and in one two-roomed house in the South-Western Division there were twenty-nine people. It reminds me of the old story of the East End of London, where there were four families living in one room. Each had a corner of the room, but they did not mind until one corner was beginning to take in lodgers, and then they thought it time to protest against the overcrowding.
The Scottish Board of Health Commissioners' Report on Glasgow Housing in 1926 states:—
"Damp was present everywhere, the walls and ceilings of a large number of houses being literally soaking. Everywhere we noticed an almost total lack of sanitation, conveniences being few and for the most part being out of repair, and even in some cases leaking downstairs and even into the houses. Practically every property inspected was absolutely bug-ridden. The food itself will not keep owing to the damp and verminous condition of the holes in the walls in which it is kept. … In addition to the insects I mentioned we found evidences of perfect menagerie life, including lice, rats in great number, mice, cockroaches, snails and even toads. Can it be wondered that such places breed an unhealthy and discontented population?"
The right rev. Prelate has a perfect knowledge of the overcrowded areas in his own diocese. Let me take a place which is not very far from your Lordships' House—Fulham. Here we have a very interesting report, published in October 1927, on the housing conditions in the Metropolitan Borough of Fulham, compiled by Irene T. Barclay and Evelyn E. Perry, and done under the auspices of a very responsible set of social workers—the President of the Fulham Christian Social Council and their honorary secretary, Miss Moberly Bell, the Warden of the Bishop Creighton Settlement and so on. Let me make some quotations from the report because it seems to me that we must realise that these things are going on to-day, and that it is of no use to be content with mere generalities in matters of this kind.
First of all, I will take Stamford Place; they naturally do not give the numbers of the houses. Here is an example of overcrowding:—
"The tenant (a woman) who has three daughters, ages 17, 13 and 10, retains the

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first floor front and ground floor front for her own use, and sublets the ground floor back and first floor back to her two married daughters and their respective families. In order to reach her own front room, she has to go through her two married daughters' rooms. This is an appalling example of overcrowding. In the ground floor back roam, which measures 10 ft. 6 by 9 ft., live a man, his wife, and five children, ages 7, 6, 4, 3, and 4 months. The room itself is nothing more than a passageway, and contains one bed, a table, and a chair. Other bedding has to be put down at night. The tenant keeps her room spotless."
This shows the dreadful condition to which people are reduced who long for better conditions of life:—
"The tenant keeps her room spotless. The husband is a painter by trade but is at present out of work.
Living in the first floor back, which measures 10 ft. 6 by 9 ft., is a man, his wife, and two children, and again, this room is merely a passageway."
Let me take Field Road:—
"A man, his wife, and seven children, girls aged 18, 15, 14, 7, and 1, and boys of 10 and 5 years, occupy the first floor front, that is, nine people in one room."
Then I take Aintree Street:—
"One basement room—a man, his wife and six children, one boy and five girls, that is eight people in one room."
Then of a house in Cassidy Road the report says—
"In the ground floor, consisting of two small rooms and a kitchen (6 ft. by 10 ft.), is a man, his wife, and eight children, boys aged 12, 7 and 5, and girls aged 21, 19, 17, 14 and 3. The man is employed on the Fulham Borough Council as a dustman. The tenant states that they have to do their own repairs because the landlord will not do any."
These are harrowing cases, but I think it is only right that your Lordships should be occasionally brought face to face with the sufferings of these people and the conditions under which they live.
I will take two more cases, the first in the Fulham Road:—
"This basement was badly flooded after recent rains, and backwash from the sewers was added to the storm water. … In this basement lives a man, his wife and four children, boys aged 7 and 3, and girls 10 and 5 years. They are particularly nice people, and want desperately to move. The father, a baker's roundsman, has been to a sanatorium and is still attending the local tuberculosis centre."
No wonder he is still attending the local tuberculosis centre if he is living in conditions of this kind. The second is in Rock Avenue:—
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"This basement is dark and damp. The paper is peeling from the walls, and repairs are neglected. The flooring is badly worn, and has holes in places. Conditions are made much worse in this instance (as in many others) by overcrowding. The front basement is occupied by a widow (who earns her living as a cook) and four children, girls aged 15 and 9, and boys aged 11 and 4 years. The room is quite unfit for sleeping purposes, and especially for children."
It is obvious that people living in conditions like those have a large and what I would call an exaggerated infantile death rate.
Figures which it is easy enough for any of your Lordships to get hold of in the reports of the medical officers of health of any of our big cities, will show that practically speaking in the slum areas and the areas where the housing is bad there is twice the amount of mortality amongst infants which occurs in those districts where the housing is better. And all this exists in spite of admirable infant welfare work. Do not let us think that nothing is done for these people. There are a great many admirable agencies which do their very best for the children who are brought into the world in these un fortunate circumstances. The fact that that is so, and that there is so much infant welfare work being done, goes to prove that it is the housing conditions which are at fault. Certainly I take that as an example. The difference in the infantile mortality between the bad areas and the good areas is shown by the fact that it is 20 per cent. in the one and 11 per cent. in the other. We lose in this country a large number of lives of children under one year of age because of these conditions and we lose a large number in every subsequent year, differing perhaps in numbers as the children get older. I associate myself with what has been said by other noble Lords that we do not in this matter wish to say that it is entirely the fault of His Majesty's Government. All Governments are to blame, the whole community is to blame for not having realised the importance of ameliorating these conditions. What we want to know is whether His Majesty's Government are prepared to take action now while the conscience of the nation is being awakened to the serious nature of the problem.
Some of these people live there of course, we admit, partly because of their own fault. They waste in drink the

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money which might go in rent. We do not say that is the fault of any Government. Some of them live there because they have not enough money to live elsewhere. Some live in these places simply because there is nowhere else for them to go to; they would like to go to other places. I must admit that when I hear so much about the importance of visiting the Empire, I cannot help thinking it is sometimes necessary that people should visit London as well as the Empire, and wondering whether, perhaps, an occasional meeting of the Cabinet in one of these overcrowded slum areas might not stimulate action on the part of His Majesty's Government.
It is owing to the size of the problem, of course, that it is very difficult to see how the matter is to be improved. There are a number of lines of treatment. We must, of course, begin if possible by wiping out the slum areas and we must replace the population near their work. The right rev. Prelate, with his almost unrivalled knowledge of these matters, pointed to the importance of these people being housed near the places where they are going to work. That is why it is that I, as I think all of us should do if we can, wish well to these garden cities where factories are combined with better housing conditions. I do not believe that we want to have only houses isolated and put by themselves; but that, if possible, they should be combined with the possibility of factories. I have naturally in my mind such instances as that of Port Sunlight, where you have factories together with the houses, all properly planned out on a good scheme. I think that the authorities should unite to do their best to prevent houses from lapsing into conditions of this kind. There are a large number of paper safeguards existing already—but they are inadequate, partly because there is no alternative. There are new dwellings. It may be necessary that these new dwellings should in seine cases be subsidised—about which I shall say a word in a moment. Then dwellings should be reconstructed with a minimum of decency. Thirdly, there should be better control. I think we are almost bound to admit that private enterprise in this matter is inefficient. It is inadequate and we must turn to the public authorities. I am hound to say this in exculpation of His Majesty's Government,
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that if the full powers of the law were used there would be a great deal of improvement immediately in the condition of a great many of these slum areas. The local authorities have powers which they do not put into full force. The Minister of Health, in answering a question in another place on October 12 last, said that there were eight schemes which included from 900 to 1,000 houses only, which were being dealt with in twelve months. That does not seem to me to be a very large amount or to be an indication that as a nation we are grappling with the problem in anything like an adequate fashion.
But that does not finish the question. There may be those schemes mentioned by the noble Viscount who responded for His Majesty's Government, but how many more schemes there are which local authorities would be willing to seek sanction to carry out if it were not that they found schemes of this kind were disapproved of by the Ministry of Health, the authorities being told that there is no money with which these schemes could possibly be financed! £100,000 in three years is all that the Exchequer has found to spend upon these slum areas. I see that Sir Kingsley Wood, answering a question on November 24 last year, said that since 1924, £103,000 was all that had been spent by the State upon the slum areas. Now His Majesty's Government tell us that rating and valuation are absorbing the attention of the Department, and that we must wait still longer before anything more is to be done. The official optimism of the noble Viscount who spoke for His Majesty's Government will not, I feel, be shared by other noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. We need economy, but is it not the truest economy to get rid of these plague spots in our midst? I am certain that a great deal would be done to mitigate the expense upon such things as illness and hospitals if plague spots of this kind did not exist. The noble Marquess (the Marquess of Salisbury) before now has been prepared to laugh at me for preaching economy at one moment and at another moment exhorting His Majesty's Government to spend money. I can assure him that if he will spend money on objects like this he will get no criticism from me. It is expenditure upon armaments which I criticise, as he well knows, rather than expenditure upon social reform.

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We need, I am sure, measures to prevent this condition of things getting worse than it has been in the past, and I would venture to make one suggestion to the noble Marquess. Although I cannot expect him to give me an answer at once, I would ask him to be good enough to think it over. Is not the position as bad as it was when a Royal Commission was appointed towards the end of last century in order to go into the housing of the working classes? Has not the time come when a new Royal Commission might be set up to go into the matter, and try to co-ordinate all the various schemes and methods which exist for dealing with this problem and recommending which is the most hopeful line of advance? We all remember how His late Majesty, King Edward, then Prince of Wales, did invaluable service to the nation by serving upon that Royal Commission. I believe a new Royal Commission, set up now, might give us some hope of a big scheme being carried out by the nation in the near future, and of something being done to get rid of these slum areas, which, as has often been said, but always said with truth, are really a reflection upon and a disgrace to our civilisation.
LORD MELCHETT: My Lords, I do not know whether you would excuse my presumption on my first day as a member of this House in taking part in a discussion, but my excuse is that I may claim to have some expert knowledge upon the subject under debate. When I was Minister of Health in the Administration of 1921 and 1922 one of the problems that was presented to me was the question of slum clearances, and the very Committee from whose Report the noble Earl has just quoted was set up by me when I was Minister at that time. I think, to get a true perspective of the present position, there are one or two important factors which have to be borne in mind. One is that we were faced at the end of the War with a very acute housing shortage, unrivalled in our history, and since that time successive Governments and local authorities have been struggling to remedy and get abreast of the housing shortage which existed. No country has spent the amount of money or undertaken the financial obligation which this country did in connection with the housing scheme that was launched by
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Dr. Addison when he was Minister of Health and to which I succeeded.
It involved upon this country, I believe—I am speaking from memory—a standing charge of some £9,000,000 a year, due to the subsidy given by the Government to local authorities. Although I should think every Minister of Health in turn would be glad to see subsidised building at an end, not one of my successors has been able to achieve that object. We have erected in this country a vast number of new houses, which are superior in type and very expensive, and which are laid out in a new way. I will not say that I altogether approve of it, but there it is. The number of houses so erected is unparalleled in the history of this country, and I have no hesitation in saying that if a new Royal Commission were appointed it would find that, speaking generally, the working classes of this country are housed to-day in a manner far superior to that which existed in any previous period in this country's history and far superior to that in which the working classes in any other country in Europe are housed to-day. Having said that do not wish to be understood as not agreeing that the slum problem still leaves a great blot on our whole social system. I went into the matter when I was Minister of Health and I was astonished to find how relatively small the problem was—how relatively small the areas concerned were, and how relatively small was the amount of money involved. In those days we lived under the dread of the Geddes' axe, and I was put in to effect economy, but even then I remember a grant of £500,000 being extracted from a reluctant Treasury for the benefit of the Ministry of Health to enable us to offer local authorities a subsidy.
The figures which the noble Earl gave to us reveal the melancholy fact that in spite of the money being available local authorities on the whole have not put themselves in a position to earn this money, and, speaking as an ex-Minister of Health, I say that I do not think it is the Department which is so much to blame as the local authorities themselves, for it is through the local authorities that the Department has to work. I remember having long discussions with the Chairman of the Building Committee of the

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London County Council. That Council has an enormous building programme. There are a number of slum areas which the Council set out to clear in a systematic way. We can understand that, overwhelmed as they were, they found a difficulty in proceeding more rapidly. I am sure the present Minister of Health, who has always been one of the most zealous and active workers in this field (and was so long before he entered the Government) would be only too glad if local authorities would enable him to do more. I think more ought to be done. It is a scandal that in this twentieth century people should be living under the conditions in which they live in slums. But there are two or three practical difficulties which are extremely hard to solve.
One is that people who live in slum areas by no means are so anxious to leave them as people sometimes believe. I remember an inquiry held by the Ministry of Health not long ago amongst occupants of slum property, and it was found that they protested vehemently against being displaced. They lived in tumble-down houses with back yards in which they kept dogs, rabbits, pigeons, and where the sanitary arrangements were exceedingly bad, but they were used to it and liked it, and did not in the least welcome the idea of being displaced. But of course you cannot allow those people to stand in the way. One great difficulty is that they have to be housed somewhere while you are rebuilding the houses that you have to pull down. I know that local authorities, when requests have been made to them to move more quickly, have answered that they do not know where to put these people in the intervening period. We all know that during the War we learned to house large numbers of people very rapidly in all kinds of temporary buildings. Although such a process is not economical—on the contrary, it is costly—I still believe that for this purpose it should be adopted.
Then there is another difficulty, the difficulty of housing people close to their work, and that is a growing demand. I think that you will have to adopt some method by which people will be induced to live in blocks of buildings instead of in isolated cottages. It is impossible to spread the population of great towns
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like London over endless garden cities. It is equally impossible to take the great industries that surround the Port of London and spread them all over the countryside. What is possible is to recreate in your slum areas modern conditions, conditions to which we are all becoming accommodated after all in the West End, and create them on such modern lines as to make them comfortable to live in, to make less work for women, to make them healthy for children and to prevent children from running about the streets by giving adequate playing ground inside. In that way you may induce your population to live close to their work under good conditions. I remember very well that when I was First Commissioner of Works I had a very able staff working out a scheme of that kind which would have been much cheaper per room and much more convenient than any isolated cottages or even rows of cottages. But the first thing that you have to deal with is the conservatism of the British workman, which is very intense. You have to persuade him to live in this kind of dwelling, but I am perfectly certain that that is the direction in which we ought to move. I do hope the Ministry of Health will not postpone the question or let it be interfered with in any way by the Rating and Valuation Bill. Speaking as one who was in charge of that Department, I ask why the two should be in any way connected or why staffs should not be created to deal with this problem.
VISCOUNT GAGE: I should like to point out that it is not a question for the Ministry of Health but a question of Parliamentary time. The formulation of a scheme of this nature would take up Parliamentary time and it is not possible to fit it in.
LORD MELCHETT: But why should you not proceed on administrative lines? As one noble Lord has pointed out (and it is a matter that ought to be borne in mind) local authorities have very wide powers to deal with slum conditions. It does not require action by the Ministry of Health at all. The medical officer of health in Fulham can condemn a house and the local authority of Fulham have power to compel a landlord to put the house in order or close it. The local authority have power to come in and put the house right. They have the widest

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powers for preventing the existence of insanitary conditions. Really what is wanted is to make local authorities exercise their powers. Parliament has passed endless Acts since the Public Health Act of 1872. The Statute Book is full of provisions and yet those provisions are not put into action. It seems to me useless to ask Parliament to burden itself with the work of putting more provisions on the Statute Book when energy might be better employed in dealing with the law as it is.
There is one amendment of the law which is wanted, and wanted badly, because for want of it clearance schemes are being held up. In the time of the Coalition Government an Act was passed which dealt with the subject of compensation to be paid to the owners of property in slum areas. I would like noble Lords to remember that a slum area does not include merely a certain number of houses or premises which constitute a slum. A slum area is scheduled, and included in that area are factories, shops, public-houses and houses which are in every respect perfectly all right—a large amount of property which is not slum property at all. But under the law, as passed then—I am afraid that during the period just after the War there was a good deal of hasty legislation passed without the consideration which in more leisurely days it would have received—local authorities have power to declare an area a slum area and to pay compensation which is very unfair to the owners of property. I must confess that when one instance came before me as Minister of Health it seemed to me to be perfectly outrageous.
Local authorities themselves feel the law to be so unfair that they hesitate to put their powers into operation. A very short amendment dealing with the Act, I think of 1900, which relates to this question, which would prevent shops in a slum area being destroyed without any compensation for disturbance and which would not enable property, which is not slum property, to be taken at slum prices, would be a great step forward and would be of great assistance in many of these areas to the local authorities. We have in this country a rooted objection to inflicting injustice on any class of the population, even on landlords. Therefore I find that that provision of the law actually stands in the way. I do hope that this
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question will be considered worthy of the attention of this House and that the interests of the people of the country will not be lost sight of. In all the agitation that is directed against our social system there is nothing which proves more useful to the agitator than the existence of slum property. To take a few examples of hardship and argue from them to the general social condition is a favourite line of controversy by the Socialists and Communists. For the sake of our social stability we cannot do anything better or wiser than to make even large financial sacrifices to wipe out, once and for all, as far as possible what still remains a stain on a great country.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, we have certainly a great advantage this afternoon in welcoming amongst our numbers the noble Lord who has just sat down and who has contributed to our debate upon a subject of which he is himself a master and of which he has great experience. I almost think that what he said relieves me of a good deal of the task of replying upon the debate and of answering the important speech of the noble Earl, Lord Beauchamp. None of us would wish to yield to the noble Earl in the desire to remedy the state of things which he has described. I have been personally familiar with the circumstances for very many years. I have from the first taken great interest in it, as most of your Lordships have done, and it is really almost a commonplace to say that these odious conditions exist.
The question is not whether they exist but how can they be removed. That is the real problem. The noble Earl said: Why not appoint a Royal Commission? I admire the innocence of the noble Earl. Does he really think at this time of day that reform is achieved by Royal Commissions? They certainly perform a useful function in collecting statistics and facts, but I should have thought that nothing was more established now than that Royal Commissions by no means always lead to reform and very often delay it. A long inquiry, perhaps two years, a thick volume which very few people read—that has been my melancholy experience over many years of political life of Royal Commissions. I do not believe that the facts require to

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be elucidated. I think they are known. The noble Earl gave many instances—no doubt extreme instances, as he himself said—and the facts, the whole proportions of the problem, are pretty well recorded, I think, in the archives of the Ministry of Health. The question is how the difficulty can be remedied. My noble friend who has just spoken said that he did not think that legislation was required. I hesitate to differ from my noble friend, who is a master of this subject, but I should have thought that even his own speech revealed a necessity for legislation if the problem of slum clearance is to be really grappled with, because he himself pointed out that the law of compensation in respect of slum clearance was so inequitable in parts that it acted as a serious handicap to the solution of the problem. That, of course, can be remedied only by legislation, though I quite agree with him that a great deal more might be done if the local authorities would only use their powers.
Let me say one word on behalf of His Majesty's Government. The noble Lord, Lord Gorell, I thought rather criticised the plea that had been made by my noble friend who represents the Ministry of Health in this House that the housing policy of the Government had gone a long way towards mitigating the evil. I cannot quite follow the noble Lord. Does he really say that the provision of a million houses has had no effect in diminishing overcrowding in this country? Where does the population come from to occupy a million houses?
LORD GORELL: If the noble Marquess will permit me, what I did was to quote the opinion of a number of medical officers of health—one could have given many more—who said that the position was just as acute now as it had ever been.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: I do not know where the quotations came from, but it appears to me to stand absolutely to reason, whatever these reports may say, that the provision of a million houses must have beneficially affected overcrowding in this country. It is quite true that a great many of the new houses are too large for the people whom it is desired to house. I am afraid that great mistakes have been made in the standard of the houses that
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have been put up, but even if many of the houses are not altogether fit for the working classes, yet the people who come to occupy these houses must themselves vacate other houses which, in their turn, become available for the working classes, and so, indirectly if not directly, these houses have a beneficial effect on overcrowding.
On the other hand, the effort of providing these new houses, beneficial as it has been, has directly militated against dealing with slums. I want the House to realise that fact. I had a personal experience of it. I forget the actual year, but some time after the War my attention was called to certain property of my own in Liverpool which was not fit for habitation. When I suggested that the houses ought to be pulled down, they said: "Oh no, the local authority will not allow you to pull them down. What will become of the population? You cannot get builders to build for you because they are all occupied in the new housing schemes of the Corporation." Nothing could be done at that period. I do not say that such conditions continue now, but the example shows that, while the new housing programme was in full blast and before the building trade had become adapted to it, you were not even allowed to pull down houses or slums that were unfit for habitation, even when this was obviously required. I hope that this period has passed away, but my illustration shows that it was physically impossible to carry through the great new housing effort and at the same time to remedy the slum evil in many towns in this country.
I earnestly hope that an effort will be made in the future course of new housing to provide, not a bad house, but a smaller and cheaper kind of house which is more suitable to the working class. I know that this is the hope of my right hon. friend the Minister of Health, and I think it was very notable that the right rev. Prelate himself called attention to the lamentable condition of things at Becontree, where there are a large number of new houses built but unoccupied, as he himself said, partly because of the amount of rent that it was necessary to charge for the class of house that had been built. This is a great lesson to us not to try to do too much, not to try to build too high a class of house, of

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a standard that is not really suitable, at any rate so far as the rent is concerned, for the kind of population that we and the right rev. Prelate want to relieve. We want local authorities to act with greater vigour, but I am afraid I cannot accept from the noble Earl the charge that the Ministry of Health has restrained local authorities. I do not know where he gets the facts upon which he founds that charge, but I am instructed that there is no foundation for his accusation. I would ask him if he can—not now, but at any convenient time—to produce instances of a local authority desiring to remedy its slums having been restrained by the Ministry of Health. I am told that the statement is not accurate and I earnestly hope that it is not accurate, as, I am sure, does the noble Earl himself.
I would only like to say further that I welcome very much the little speech which the noble Earl, Lord Cranbrook, made to us just now, and, like the noble Earl opposite, I am very glad indeed that he should have taken part in this debate. I shall certainly convey to my right hon. friend his suggestion that some of the powers in the Town Planning Acts might possibly be extended to existing housing so as to prevent overcrowding being increased by the conversion of dwellings into places of business and, as he described them, very inadequate and ill-adapted places of business. That seems to me to be a very valuable suggestion.
Let me say in conclusion that what we are really considering is whether we cannot find some better way of providing a remedy, rather than these vast schemes of slum clearance and rebuilding. They are difficult, they are expensive, and they present all sorts of obstacles. If we could only re-condition houses which are capable of being re-conditioned, then a much shorter road, and a much cheaper road, would be found for achieving our aims. That particular problem has been under consideration by the Government for a great many months, but, like all legislative projects, it presents great difficulties of its own. I hope that my right hon. friend will add to his other achievements on this subject a solution of the problem on those lines, and that he will be able to produce some proposals by which the re-conditioning of
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houses which can be re-conditioned may be achieved. I do not want to be misunderstood. There are many houses so bad that to re-condition them would be only throwing good money after bad, but that is not the case by any means everywhere in admitted slum areas. There are houses which can be made good for a comparatively small sum of money, and if the machinery can be constructed by which that end can be achieved, then I think we shall have found a better road to our aim than by the more drastic system to which reference has generally been made in this debate. May I join the noble Earl in thanking the right rev. Prelate for his repeated efforts in bringing this matter before the public? Nothing but good can come from those efforts, and I earnestly hope that they may be attended with success.
THE LORD BISHOP OF SOUTHWARK: My Lords, I have no intention of asking the House to divide on my Motion. I asked for various figures and many of them have been given, although the noble Viscount explained that it was impossible to give at the present time the full figures of those who are living in slum areas. I would, however, call the attention of the House to the significance of the figures which have been given. We are told that since the Armistice schemes dealing with slum areas have been prepared which will affect 69,000 people. In London alone there are something like 126,000 people living in slum conditions. Of those schemes affecting 69,000 people, at the present time, according to the figures given, schemes affecting only 29,000 persons have actually been carried into effect. Those figures, I think, speak for themselves, and show the gravity of the position. I hope very much that the noble Marquess the Leader of the House will press upon the Minister of Health the general feeling expressed on every side that steps should be taken as soon as possible to deal with this problem, and that no other matter, however intricate, should be allowed to stand in the way of the fulfilment of the promise of the Government that they will take every opportunity of pressing forward with vigour the attempt to hasten the clearance of slums.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

LIQUOR (DISINTERESTED OWNER SHIP AND MANAGEMENT) BILL. [H.L.]
Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
LORD BALFOUR OF BURLEIGH: My Lords, I hope your Lordships will not consider that the bringing forward of this Bill is a matter which calls for any apology. Your Lordships have had during the last few years a number of debates on the licensing question, but we have never, of late years at any rate, had any opportunity of discussing a Bill which has approached the matter quite from the point of view of the Bill which I am bringing before your Lordships to-day. I should like to say at the outset that it is really not so much a temperance reform Bill as a public-house reform Bill, and the first point that I wish to impress upon your Lordships, quite without discussing the merits or demerits of prohibition, is that at all events that question does not arise on this Bill. There is nothing in the shape of prohibition in this Bill, either national or local, compulsory or optional, if there is such a thing, partial or complete. There is no prohibition in this Bill in any shape or form.
The justification for the Bill is the extraordinarily low standard of the public-house in this country. I venture to state that the standard of the public-houses in this country is in itself a condemnation of the system which has given rise to them. It must be borne in mind that 90 per cent. of the public-houses are either owned by or tied to brewery companies. I am not going to take up time in describing the poor class of public-house which abounds in the slum areas of great industrial towns. That is really, as I know your Lordships are fully aware, the real heart of the difficulty. I will only say that the sort of public-house which I have in mind is a house which is structurally bad, cramped in space, and in which there is no provision really for the comfort of the customers, no facilities for recreation, and very often not even sufficient seating accommodation. That is the kind of house which for short it is fair to describe as the "slum pub," and it is no exaggeration to say that something like 75 or 80 per cent. of the public-houses in this country come under
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that category of "slum pub." We have heard a great deal about bad housing, and I think it is very deplorable that many thousands of respectable people in this country should have no better place to which to go for a drink and a smoke in the evening than houses of this class; and it is because I believe that the only way to raise the standard is to alter the system under which the trade is carried on that I am bringing forward this Bill.
The title of the Bill is the Liquor (Disinterested Ownership and Management) Bill. Disinterested management is really the traditional policy of your Lordships' House in this matter. There was a Select Committee of this House on Intemperance in 1879, and one of the recommendations of that Committee was some kind of local option on the subject of disinterested management. In more recent years disinterested management was the subject of praise from every side of the House in 1912 and 1913, when the present Scottish Temperance Act was under discussion here. The late Lord Lansdowne described himself as a convinced believer in disinterested management, and the House inserted in the Scottish Bill a disinterested management option. It was unfortunately not accepted in another place, and when it returned here your Lordships agreed to accept the Commons Amendment, and that option was not put into the Bill. I say without hesitation that the Scottish Act would have been a very much better Act than it is if your Lordships' House had had its way and the disinterested management option had formed part of the law to-day.
But I would like to put to your Lordships two sentences which were spoken by the noble Marquess the Leader of the House in November, 1912, on the subject of that Bill. In the first place speaking on behalf of himself and his colleagues, he said:
"We believe that the time has come when the effort which has been made for many years towards disinterested management in a spasmodic sort of way should receive a more official sanction, and we hope that before the Bill passes into law an Amendment in that direction may be inserted."
That was, as I have stated, actually done. On the next day he uttered some words which, I think, have a very excellent

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application to-day. Lord Salisbury said:—
"We care too much for the principle of disinterested management to defeat a good opportunity of promoting it merely because we do not agree as to the details."
The principle of disinterested management is seen at work in the Trust Houses and the People's Refreshment House Association houses, and I have nothing but praise for the work of those houses. It is indeed to extend that work that I bring in this Bill.
I believe it is the only way to do it, because unfortunately the Trust Houses have not had as much success as we should like in dealing with the "slum pubs." The reason for that is quite simple. These "slum pubs," although they are extremely unsatisfactory from the point of view of the consumer, are a great deal more satisfactory from the point of view of revenue to their owners. The brewery companies owning them are, of course, in acute competition between themselves, and the competition between the breweries which own the great majority of these houses has forced up the value of the houses to a very high figure. The value to the brewery is, of course, the value as an outlet for its product, and the profit they make as a wholesale profit is more important to the brewery than the retail profit. You have on the one hand a great redundancy of these houses, but the high value renders them difficult to put an end to under the compensation scheme, and at the same time it makes it impossible for the Trust Houses to compete because the Trust Houses, not having the wholesale profit to benefit by, have to rely upon the retail profit, and therefore naturally cannot compete with the brewery companies. The upshot of it is that in order to get a satisfactory result or to give disinterested management a satisfactory chance you must have a monopoly of the trade in any given area. It is interesting to note that it was the original intention of the Trust House movement that it should acquire a monopoly in an area, and it is unfortunate that it has not been able to achieve that result.
But we have an example of what can be done under disinterested management, even in a difficult area, when a monopoly is achieved, and that is the case of Carlisle. Here, again, I will not
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waste time over history. Your Lordships all know that during the War a large munition factory was set up not far from Carlisle. Owing to the large influx of workers it became necessary for the Liquor Control Board first to put on very stringent restrictions and regulations, and when they were not observed to take over the whole business in that area. The position went on under D.O.R.A. until 1921, when it was regularised by the Licensing Act of that year. Carlisle, from the point of view of public-house reform, was not a very good subject. It is a border town, and it has on the one side the whisky-drinking Scots and on the other side the beer-drinking English, and I believe the local custom leads to a compromise. The local drink is what is known as "the chaser," and when you have a "chaser" you have first the one and then the other. I believe the order is immaterial from the point of view of the inhabitants, but it does not make for great temperance.
Then again, as a border town for many hundreds of years, Carlisle was the scene of border fighting, and it has many small courts up back streets, with an entry on two main streets or streets with a court in between, and many of these public-houses were in these courts and exceptionally difficult from the point of view of police supervision. There were a very large number of them. Carlisle is an industrial town with textiles and biscuit manufactures, I believe engineering works also and, of course, a very important railway centre. All these things contribute towards difficulty from a temperance point of view. Nevertheless, in Carlisle very great success has been achieved under the State management scheme. Of the 119 houses in Carlisle 47 per cent. have been suppressed, and better service is now rendered by the sixty-three remaining houses in the opinion of the local people than was the case before. Grocers' licences have been suppressed, the "off" sale has been concentrated in various houses and provision for food has been made wherever it is required, and much more roomy places have been provided where people can sit and play billiards, and drink or not as they like.
A very good example of a public-house in a country district under the Carlisle scheme is at Annan, where there is a

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house which, I believe, is called Gracey's Banking. There are now three large sections of the house, one a beer hall, the second a large billiard hall, and the third a restaurant, and outside there are bowling greens, putting greens and so on. These putting greens and bowling greens are reached before you arrive at the place where you have to buy the drink, and the local minister, who has been there 25 years, has testified that the provision of this house and these facilities has completely changed the social life of the place. Such a thing is utterly impossible except under some form of disinterested management. With regard to the temperance result I am not going to speak, because my point is the improvement of the houses. The local people are unanimous, with very few exceptions, in saying that they would not dream of going back to the old system. The Chief Constable says so, and the successive Mayors say so, and responsible local opinion appears to be emphatic on the subject. I have no doubt the Southborough Report will be referred to in this debate, and therefore I say at once that the Southborough Report testifies to the value of the experiment, which has been carried out in Carlisle. It does not recommend its immediate and universal application to the whole country—that, would hardly have been prudent; but it does recommend the continuance of the experiment, and therefore it is precisely what this Bill gives the opportunity for carrying out.
The liquor trade may say, and do say, that they could do equally well what has been done in Carlisle but for the obstruction of the licensing benches. Well, if any one is going to make that argument it will be necessary to show that prior to the War there was a single application for an improvement in a public-house in Carlisle which was turned down by the local licensing bench, and I am assured by those who have made inquiry on that score that there is not a single case on record. You have to take it that the state of affairs that existed in Carlisle before the War was a state of affairs which was perfectly satisfactory from the trade point of view. I am not blaming the trade. The trade is a business, like any other. Its first duty is to its shareholders. It has to produce dividends. Those responsible would be other than human if they did not seek to maintain
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a state of affairs which provided a highly satisfactory result for their shareholders.
As regards machinery, the Bill provides for polls, but there is nothing obligatory about a poll. In order to have a poll you must have a request either by the local authority or else by not less than one-twentieth of the electors in an area. The areas are the Parliamentary voting areas and the simple question will be asked: Are you in favour of the adoption of the disinterested ownership and management of the liquor trade in this area? A simple majority will carry a resolution, and if a resolution is carried it will be in force for fifteen years. That may seem a long time to your Lordships, but it is necessary in order to give the finance of the scheme a chance. You must give time in which to pay off the amounts paid as compensation. If the resolution is not carried no other poll can take place for five years. After disinterested ownership and management has been in force for fifteen years a simple majority will carry repeal and the area can go back to the existing arrangement. If disinterested ownership and management is carried, a Board of Management is appointed which will take over complete control of the retail trade in the area. Arrangements are made for the exception of hotels and restaurants, and arrangements are also made by which the Board may, in certain circumstances, take over the manufacture—that is, the breweries. The reason for that is that it would not be fair to take away the whole of the tied houses of a brewery and leave it, so to speak, in the air. You must provide in common fairness for the taking over of the whole business, and provision is made that where 50 per cent. of the products of a brewery have commonly been sold in the area the brewery may, if it wishes, demand to be taken over and the Board have no alternative.
The members of the Board of Management will be appointed by the Home Secretary. They will be paid, and membership will be a whole-time job. They will be under specific rules that no commission may be paid to their managers on the sales of intoxicants, and they must provide adequate facilities for food and must see that redundant premises are suppressed. It is also provided in the Bill, and it is put in an optional way,

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that they may take over premises. Therefore, so far as the Trust Houses are concerned, there is no reason whatever why the Board of Management should interfere with the carrying on of those houses or the People's Refreshment House Association houses. There is no doubt whatever in my mind that the Board of Management Would leave those houses alone and that they would carry on as at present. The Board will be subject in every way to the existing law and will be different in that respect from the present Carlisle scheme which is run by State authority. The Board will be a statutory body. It will pay all rates and taxes, and it will be subject to every provision of the existing law with the exception of the necessity to take out justices' licences. It will have to have excise licences on which it will pay the duty, and it will be subject to every other law with regard to hours and so on just as any other trader.
The Central Board, which can consist of quite few people—two or three, or even one in the beginning of the scheme would appear to be ample—will, therefore, be quite inexpensive and cannot be denounced in any way as the setting up of an expensive bureaucracy. It will be guided in each area by a local advisory committee which will ensure that local needs will be adequately met. The local advisory committee will be an unpaid body and will be nominated as to half by the local authority and as to one-quarter from their own number by the licensing justices, and there will be two nominees of the local trade councils if there are any. The remainder can be appointed by the Home Secretary. There is no wicked intention behind that provision. It simply enables the Home Secretary to appoint a representative of any interest which otherwise is not represented. There are one or two other points about machinery that I should like briefly to mention. There is the question of clubs. Existing clubs will not be interfered with beyond the imposition of certain conditions at the discretion of the Board; but a new club will have to satisfy the Board that there is a social need for a new club before it can be allowed to start. That will do a great deal to check current abuses in the matter of clubs.
Turning to the question of finance, which is one of the most important in
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this Bill, provision is made for the payment of full cash compensation to the interests taken over. There are, as your Lordships know, two possible methods—either that of a time limit or that of cash compensation. In the Scottish Act the time limit was adopted, but in this Bill it seemed better for good reasons to make the compensation payable in cash, and that is the method adopted. The definition of "compensation" is taken from the Act of 1910, to which, of course, it came from the Act of 1904. One trade critic has raised the question as to whether the words in the Bill actually provide for full compensation. I am advised that the Bill as drafted does in fact ensure full compensation for an on-licence; but I am prepared to say at once that if any alteration is necessary to secure that I shall be only too glad to accept any necessary Amendments. It is the real intention of the promoters of the Bill to pay the full capital value of a licence at the time of the poll, and I am satisfied that the language of the Bill does effect that purpose. Off-licences will receive a sun of not less than one or more than three years' annual net profit. Other property will be taken over by agreement or, failing that, by arbitration.
On the question of where the money is to come from, a central fund will be established into which will be paid, in the first place, the profits of all disinterested ownership and management areas, including the Carlisle area, which is made a disinterested ownership and management area; and, in the second place, the proceeds from the sale of redundant premises. Your Lordships will understand, of course, that is a very important item where redundancy is impossible to deal with when the brewers are in acute competition one with another. It becomes easy, when you have the whole area in one hand, to close the bad houses and structurally improve those which you decide to keep.
On finance it is not only theory that we have to deal with, but the proved fact of the success of the Carlisle scheme. In Carlisle houses were taken over on payment of full compensation at the time of the War in 95 per cent. of cases by agreement, and the remaining few were settled, I think, by arbitration. The full value was paid, and the whole amount that

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was advanced by the Treasury, amounting, I think, to £800,000 or £900,000, has been repaid out of profit in the course of eleven years. The whole Carlisle undertaking now stands free of charge to the Treasury and is at the moment a revenue-producing asset. The test applied by the liquor trade is so often that of financial success. I do not claim for a moment that the State has made as much profit out of the business in Carlisle as the liquor trade would have made had it been left in control. But the test from the point of view of the State is the satisfaction of the consumer. The State has made sufficient profit to pay its way and to avoid putting any burden on the taxpayer, and it has, undoubtedly, provided a great deal more satisfaction to the consumer than would have been the case under the old system. With regard to one other point of finance, there is no levy on the trade of any sort or kind provided for. The old levy, of course, under the 1904 Act for the suppression of redundant premises will continue in areas which go on as no-change areas; but the finance of the scheme as it stands is independent of any sort or kind of additional levy to be raised from the trade themselves.
That is a brief outline of the machinery of the scheme, and I would like to mention the only two objections which so far as I know have been raised in any quarter as criticisms of the Bill. They both come from trade quarters. In the first place, the Bill is accused of being prohibition. That, of course, to any one who looks at it with an unjaundiced eye, is pure prejudice, and I should not have mentioned it but for the fact that in one of the trade papers an article on the Bill was headed "The New Teetotal Charter." It is just an example of the way whereby any one who ventures to interfere in any way with trade matters is at once dubbed a "pussyfoot" and prohibitionist. There is no question whatever, or sign or shape of prohibition in the Bill. The second objection is really almost as flimsy. That is that this Bill is Socialism. Socialism is almost as good a cry to raise prejudice as prohibition, but the accusation of Socialism is based, of course, on the theory that this Bill is in some way nationalisation of the liquor trade. In point of fact nothing could be further from the truth. To begin with you have nationalisation at this moment. In
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Carlisle you have a direct State-management scheme run by a Government Department. This Bill takes the matter out of the hands of the Government Department and puts it under an independent body. Nationalisation is a very vague term. I suppose there are three characteristics which are more or less constant in a nationalised industry. In the first place there is direct Government management; in the second place the Government Department which manages the scheme is free of taxation; and in the third place the profits, if any, accrue to the benefit of the State. On all these three tests this scheme is definitely not nationalisation. There is no direct State management. The profits cannot possibly go to the State. The statutory body is entirely independent of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the body running the trade is subject to the same taxation as any other trader.
The only possible circumstances under this Bill in which profits could go to the State would be if every area in the country had adopted a disinterested ownership and management resolution, and the thing had been a success all over the country, and there was a surplus in the central fund. Under those conditions it would become necessary to decide what was to be done with that surplus, and legislation could undoubtedly be passed whereby the Chancellor of the Exchequer of the day could take hold of it, but, without special legislation, as the Bill stands profits go first in payment of compensation, and secondly to the extension of the scheme. If that is Socialism, all I can say is this is a Socialist Government, for there is an almost exact parallel in the Board of the British Broadcasting Corporation. If that is Socialism, I suppose my noble friends Lord Clarendon and Lord Gainford are both Socialists. But I think the accusation is entirely absurd.
There is one other point. I said at the beginning that this is not a temperance Bill. There is a temperance aspect of the matter. We have had a great improvement in sobriety of late years. By common consent the main contributory causes have been shorter hours and higher prices. Viewed from the point of view of the trade those causes which have improved sobriety have necessarily been a cause of reduced sales. That is inevitable

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where you have a liquor trade run for private profit. That is why, if disinterested ownership and management came into force in many areas, you would undoubtedly remove from action a force which necessarily, in its own interests, is constantly working against such restrictions as shorter hours and higher prices which do tend to reduce its own sales and output. If you approve of the principle of disinterested management, which I believe you do, you have to face the necessity that it must be a monopoly. If it is a monopoly you must have coercion of the interests at present in charge. Pay them compensation and get rid of them. If you have coercion you must have a statutory body and that is the principle of this Bill. I ask you, by giving the Bill a Second Reading, to do no more than approve the principle of disinterested management I ask the noble Marquess the Leader of the House (the Marquess of Salisbury) to say on this occasion, as he said in 1912, that he cares too much for the principle of disinterested management to try to defeat a Bill giving effect to it, just because he disagrees on questions of detail. I beg to move.
Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Balfour of Burleigh.)
LORD BANBURY OF SOUTHAM: My Lords, I rise to move the rejection of the Bill, but before I enter upon arguments against it, I would like to raise a point of order. Clause 13 of the Bill deals with finance. I will refer to that at greater length later, but for the present I will read what is said in the Bill:—
"The loan shall be made at the minimum rate allowed for the time being for loans out of the Local Loans Fund."
Then it says:—
"Such sums as may from time to time be required by the Treasury for fulfilling any guarantee given under this section shall be charged on and issued out of the Consolidated Fund of the United Kingdom or the growing produce thereof."
Therefore the money which has to be raised is a charge, upon the taxpayer. The Consolidated Fund Bill, as your Lordships know, is the foundation of security for all Government loans, such as Consols, the War Loans, and other loans of that description. They are charged upon the Consolidated Fund, and, therefore, this is a charge upon the taxpayer. In addition to that it says:—
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"The Public Works Loan Commissioners may lend to the Board any money required by the Board for the purposes of this Act, and any loan so made shall be made from the Local Loans Fund in manner provided by the Public Works Loans Act, 1875 …"
If your Lordships will turn to Erskine May's "Parliamentary Practice," 13th edition, page 564, you will find that the Commons resolved on July 3, 1678:—
"That all aids and supplies, and aids to His Majesty in Parliament are the sole gift of the Commons; and all Bills for the granting of any such aids and supplies ought to begin with the Commons; and that it is the undoubted and sole right of the Commons to direct, limit, and appoint in such Bills the ends, purposes, considerations, conditions, limitations, and qualifications of such grants, which ought not to be changed or altered by the House of Lords."
There is a foot-note which says that the Nullum Tempus (Ireland) Act, 1876, Amendment Bill was withdrawn in the Lords, on July 20, 1893, "because it affected the public revenues." On page 565 it is stated that:—
"The privilege claimed by the Commons has also been held to include legislation affecting the Local Loans Fund …"
Again, if you look at the foot-note in the 12th edition—I cannot find it in the 13th edition—you will see it says:—
"The Land Purchase (Ireland) Bill, 1888, placed a limitation on the total amount to be advanced to any one purchaser. When the Bill was considered by the Lords an Amendment to restrict this limitation was withdrawn on the expression of opinion by the Lord Chancellor of England and the Lord Chancellor of Ireland."
Therefore, I hope that when I sit down we shall hear from the Lord Chancellor of England what his opinion is upon this question.
I am afraid that I am not very cognisant of the rules of order of this House, but I have some knowledge of the rules of order in another place, and if this Bill was unfortunately to receive your Lordships' assent, what would happen would be that the Speaker would call the attention of the House to the fact that the House of Lords had infringed the privilege of the Commons. It is true that the Commons may waive their privilege, but they have not very often done that. Presuming for the sake of argument that they did waive their privilege, unless the Government intend to take up the Bill—I hope there is no chance of that—the Bill could not proceed

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when the financial clauses were reached unless a Financial Resolution had been moved.
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, I do not want to interrupt my noble friend, but it is rather important that he should not be under a misapprehension. There are two totally different things—points of order and points of privilege. As far as I know a point of privilege is never a point of order. If it were a point of order it would be the duty of the majority of your Lordships, in accordance with the rules of our House—we keep order ourselves—to say whether there was a breach of order or not. As regards a breach of privilege, that is undoubtedly a matter for argument which my noble friend may advance. But really it is the affair of the House of Commons not of ourselves. It is their business. Whether it would be wise to allow the Bill to leave your Lordships' House, if it were agreed to, with a breach of privilege in it, is another matter. But there is at the end of the proceedings in your Lordships' House a proceeding by which Privilege Amendments are made and the Bill could be sent without these particular clauses to the House of Commons. My noble friend knows the orders of the House of Commons. I would point out to him that in your Lordships' House points of privilege are never points of order.
LORD BANBURY OF SOUTHAM: I am much obliged to the noble Marquess for informing me as to the rules and customs of this House, in which I am sorry to say I am not so well up as I ought to be. The point which I was going to explain was that apparently the Bill could not proceed because of a point of privilege. I have given two instances to your Lordships and I have given them also to the Lord Chancellor. I do not want to press that matter any further except to say—I hope I am not misrepresenting my noble friend—that assuming the question of privilege is raised, should the Bill receive the assent of your Lordships, then it will be sent down without any financial clause in it. That is a nice sort of Bill to be sent down. Here is a Bill which depends entirely for its working upon the financial clause and there is to be no financial clause. That is to be left to somebody
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else, and in another place a financial clause cannot be inserted except on the Motion of a Privy Councillor who has the leave of the King. Therefore, what it amounts to is that nobody except the Government can insert a clause dealing with finance. In those circumstances I venture to say it is useless to proceed with a Bill which cannot have any effect whatever unless there are funds for buying out the various interests of which the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Burleigh, does not approve.
Now I would like to raise another question. The noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Burleigh, says that it is not a temperance reform Bill; it is a public-house reform Bill. Of course it is not a temperance reform Bill. It has nothing to do with temperance. I have always been opposed to any legislation which will interfere with the liberties of the country. If a man or woman—as I think very foolishly—chooses to get drunk, it is his or her own look-out and it is not our business to deal with what they ought to do. I would quote the words of a well-known prelate—if I quote him wrongly the right rev. Prelate on my left will correct me—who said he preferred to see England free to England sober. That was said, I think, by Archbishop Magee. I personally agree with him. I can quite understand that there are certain people who are concerned with putting other people right, who really do honestly and sincerely think that it is their duty to see that nobody ever gets drunk or drinks too much spirits. Therefore they bring in temperance legislation. My noble friend, I think, has distinguished himself in supporting temperance legislation.
Why do they suddenly turn round and drop all temperance legislation and propose to do this? I wrote down some words which the noble Lord used when he was speaking. He said: "If this Bill is passed there will be a better place to go for a drink and a smoke in the evening." Here is the noble Lord, of all people, advocating that there should be a better place to which people can go to get a drink and a smoke in the evening. The noble Lord, of course, has never experienced the temptation of getting a drink. If a man gets one drink he is very likely to get another, especially if he is a smoker, because smoking, as I

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understand it—that is one reason why I do not smoke—makes you thirsty and consequently the more you smoke the more you want to drink. Here you are, in a pleasant place, with everyone surrounding you nice and pleasant, and the result will be, not that there will be less drinking but that there will be more drinking. There is another point with regard to that. There are to be no advertisements anywhere. Everything is to be perfectly plain. Walking along a street you will see a blank space. You will not see a public-house with Messrs. Whitbread's ales advertised or anything of that sort. You will see a blank space. It looks quite respectable. I believe the result will be that more people will go into public-houses because I believe a good many people are rather ashamed of going into a public-house when everybody can see they are going into a public-house. I believe that they will not mind going in if this change is made and that the result will be that there will be more people going into public-houses than there are at the present time.
The noble Lord said that the Southborough Report would be alluded to. I am going to say something about the Southborough Report. On page 17, in paragraph 44, the Southborough Report says:—
"The evidence before us was conflicting upon the question whether the schemes have reduced drunkenness in the areas in which they have been applied."
Then, on the next page, they say:—
"A comparison of the records of convictions for drunkenness in different towns is of doubtful value owing to the variation in conditions as between one town and another, but so far as this comparison can be made, it does not appear that any greater reduction in the number of convictions for drunkenness has been achieved in recent years in Carlisle than has been achieved in many other cities and towns."
Therefore, the example of Carlisle, to which the noble Lord has alluded, shows that—
LORD BALFOUR OF BURLEIGH: May I interrupt? I did not say anything about a reduction of drunkenness. What I said was that it had improved the public-houses in Carlisle.
LORD BANBURY OF SOUTHAM: Oh, I see. The noble Lord has completely changed his attitude from that of a year or two past when right rev. Prelates
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brought in Bills to prevent anybody drinking anything. Now the noble Lord wants to encourage people to drink. He wants to improve the appearance and the amenities of the public-house in order that more people may go in and drink. Let me deal for a few moments with the Bill. The local authority may have a poll. You cannot tell what on earth a local authority will not do. A good deal depends upon the people who were appointed to it at the election when they were last chosen. They may determine that a poll of the electorate shall be taken and then—
"If a majority of the votes polled are in favour of the resolution, the resolution shall be deemed to be carried"—
and it is to last for fifteen years. The noble Lord alluded to this and said that it was necessary because we must have disinterested management for fifteen years in order to find sufficient money to pay compensation. You must go on making money for fifteen years from that accursed thing, the drink trade! If the thing is wrong, it does not seem to me that it makes very much difference whether the profit is made by the State or by private individuals.
Then Clause 4 says:—
"The requisition for a poll shall be in the form set out in Schedule I to this Act and shall be signed by not less than one-twentieth of the electors in the area and shall be lodged in the month of March in any year with the returning officer, who shall thereupon insert in not less than two newspapers circulating in the area a notice of the receipt of such requisition and shall allow inspection of the requisition by any elector for the space of one fortnight after the same has been lodged; but after the requisition has been so lodged no signatures thereto may be withdrawn."
Evidently the promoters of the Bill think that a good many people will sign the petition without thinking and will then want to withdraw, and they take very good care that they shall not withdraw if it can be helped. The proportion is to be one-twentieth. What would happen? Take an area of 20,000 electors. One thousand are persuaded to sign a requisition for a poll, and the notice is inserted in two newspapers circulating in the area. That means some little local rag (may I call it?) which circulates in the particular area and which, in all probability, nineteen-twentieths of the people will not see. The consequence will

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be that nobody will know what has taken place and probably the majority of them will not know that there is a poll at all or take any notice of it. What is going to happen? At this moment the finances of the State are not in a very good condition and what we require is the reduction of expenditure and the cessation of borrowing. But here a small number of electors, quite innocently and without in any way realising what they are going to do, may commit the State to a vast expenditure which may or may not result in a profit. I will deal with that point a little later when I come to disinterested management.
How you are going to get profit out of any business run by disinterested people I do not know. I have had some connection with large undertakings—nothing to do with the brewing trade; what was in my mind was the Great Northern Railway—and my object was not to say to my officials: "Do not care anything about what is going on; be quite disinterested as to whether anybody uses the trains or whether they are punctual or not." What would have been the result of such an attitude as that? It would have been ruin. And yet you say that you are going to run public-houses and breweries in a disinterested way. How on earth do you expect to get enough to repay the money that has been advanced by the unfortunate taxpayer, who is already overburdened by an enormous weight of taxation? Then comes a provision that premises in the area shall be closed on polling day. I do not very much mind that. I do not quite know why it is put in, but I cannot see that there is very much objection to it. The expenses of the poll are to fall upon the rates of the district. At the present moment the Government are endeavouring to reduce the rates, and here we are going to put more upon the rates and so render ineffective the efforts of His Majesty's Government to reduce them.
When we come to the Board of Management I really do not know what words to use to describe these proposals. There are to be more officials and more paid officials. If we are ever going to get economy and a reduction of expenditure the first thing to do is to reduce officials. But under this Bill we are to have more. Clause 5 says:—
"The Board of Management … shall … be a body corporate, and … shall
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consist of a Chairman and such other members as the Secretary of State may from time to time appoint."
You are going to give power to the Secretary of State to appoint an undefined number of people, who will be paid. You are going to increase his patronage, and this, I venture to say, is a very wrong thing to do, especially at this moment. Then the clause says:—
"Provided that the Board, or any member thereof, shall be removable from office by the vote of both Houses of Parliament."
I do not quite understand what that means, but I rather think that you are going to put the Chairman and "such other members as the Secretary of State may from time to time appoint" into the position of His Majesty's Judges. I see a noble Lord close to me who is a distinguished Judge, and I think I am right in saying that no Judge can be removed except by a vote of both Houses of Parliament. You are going to put these gentlemen in exactly the same position as His Majesty's Judges. That practically means that they are appointed for life; for how on earth are you ever going to get a vote of both Houses of Parliament on a subject of this kind? Accordingly we are going to appoint more officials, we are going to take care that they are always to be there and that we cannot reduce them, and we are going to pay them a certain sum.
Then the clause goes on to say:—
"The Board may employ such managers and servants as they may consider necessary for the efficient conduct of the business entrusted to the Board,"
Just consider what that means. I presume that the noble Lord, Lord Balfour of Burleigh, desires that this Bill should be a success if it becomes an Act. Not only are you going to appoint officials with, I presume, high salaries, who cannot be removed except by the vote of both Houses, but you are going to appoint, if the Bill is a success, an enormous number of people who will be paid by the State. What happens at an Election when there are a large number of people paid by the State? I have had some experience of Elections—I do not think that the noble Lord ever stood for Parliament—and I remember the circumstances in 1906, when I was standing for Peckham. One of my canvassers said to me: "There is a postman in such-and-such a street who has always

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voted for you"—I had been Member for fourteen years—"but he is going to vote against you this time. He is a very nice fellow and you had better go and see him." I went to see him and said that I hoped that I should have the honour of receiving his vote. He asked: "Will you vote for an inquiry into our wages, so as to get our wages raised?" I said: "No, I will not; there have already been two or three inquiries, and they have always resulted in certain things being decided, and postmen and Post Office officials have always said: 'That is not enough, we want more.' Therefore I shall not vote for an inquiry, because it would not be a proper thing to do." He then said: "I am very sorry to vote against you, I have always voted for you for the last fourteen years, but 1s. a week is more to me than anything else, and unless you do this I shall vote for the Radical." And he did. Here you are going, not to achieve temperance but to enable people to go to a place where they can get more drink, and perhaps be happier, to create a large number of people who will put pressure upon the Secretary of State to have their salaries increased, and who will act upon that at Election time. You have 26 millions of electors, and I hope your Lordships will pause before you put such a temptation in the way of the large number of people who will have to be appointed if this Bill becomes a success.
The clause also says:—
"Provided that no such remuneration shall be by way of commission in respect of sales of intoxicating liquor."
What is the good of that except as eyewash? Supposing that no liquor is sold, how are you going to get the money to pay the interest on your borrowed money? And if no liquor is sold there is nothing for these people to do. Are you going to keep them there at the expense of the State, and pay them wages? Of course they must see that people will come into their places to buy what they have to sell, unless you are going to say to them: As long as this does not produce anything, we will pay you a salary, but if you try to sell liquor, and there is anything for you to do, we will get rid of you. Then Clause 6 says that:—
"no person shall without the authority in writing of the Board or except in accordance with any conditions attached by the Board under this Act to such authority sell or distribute any intoxicating liquor in the
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area, and no licence for the sale of intoxicating liquor shall without such authority be granted or renewed in respect of any premises within the area:"
I do, I must admit, have a whisky and soda for dinner, and in order to have a whisky and soda you must have some whisky, but in the area in which I live, as I read the clause, nobody would be able to sell me a bottle of whisky.
LORD BALFOUR OF BURLEIGH: May I point out to the noble Lord that line 5 of this clause says: "without the authority in writing of the Board."
LORD BANBURY OF SOUTHAM: But what is there to compel the Board to give authority? The Board may refuse to give authority. Why should I be dependent upon the authority of some Board appointed by some Secretary of State for whom I have no regard? Then the following proviso is rather contradictory, because it reads:—
"Provided that nothing in this section shall be deemed to prohibit the holder of a wholesale or manufacturer's licence in the area from selling intoxicating liquor in pursuance of such licence to a trader in the area for the purposes of his trade…"
Again I congratulate the legal profession, because I can see a considerable amount of litigation as to what these provisions mean. There is a new crime created, because I may draw the attention of Lord Balfour of Burleigh to subsection (2) of Clause 6, which says:—
"If any person sells or distributes any intoxicating liquor without such authority or in breach of any of the conditions attached to such authority as aforesaid he shall be liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding two hundred pounds…"
And the authority may be revoked. The noble Lord has had some experience of business, I know, but how would he like to conduct a business in which he has a Board with authority and a committee which consists of persons, two at least of whom must be women, nominated by the local authorities in the area, and by the licensing justices, two persons nominated by the local trades council and such other persons as the Secretary of State may select? These people are to give advice to the Board, and the Board is to take into consideration any advice or recommendation, or other representation, submitted or made by any local advisory committee. Their time will be wasted, instead of attending to their business, in listening to what this

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committee have a right to suggest to them. Really the Bill is so very bad that it is necessary to expose some of its wickedness.
Subsection (2) of Clause 9, as I read it, gives the Board power to buy up all the hotels. There is nothing to prevent the Ritz Hotel being bought up by the Board. Where they are going to get the money from I do not know, but there is nothing to prevent it. The noble Lord says the Bill is not nationalisation. What you are going to do is to provide that the Secretary of State may appoint certain people who may buy up all the breweries, all the hotels, and all the public-houses, and run them in a disinterested manner. Whether they will ever be able to pay the interest on the sums they have borrowed, and whether the taxpayer will not have to put his hand in his pocket, is, I think, extremely doubtful. There are other clauses which are so evidently bad that I do not think I need refer to them. Then there comes the financial clauses, to which I have already alluded. They provide that the State shall provide the money, and yet the noble Lord says this is not nationalisation. First the State provides the money and makes the interest a charge upon the taxpayer, then people who administer the property are to be appointed by the Secretary of State and are not to be removable except by votes of both Houses of Parliament. If that is not nationalisation, I do not know what is the meaning of the English language.
I must call attention to the compensation, because it is simply confiscation. The Bill says:—
"The compensation payable shall be a sum representing the value of the premises calculated on the basis that the same were not licensed premises at the date of the taking of the poll, together with such additional sum as represents the increased value of the premises by reason of their being licensed premises, calculated as if the licence were subject to the same conditions of renewal as were applicable immediately before the passing of the Licensing Act, 1904:"
The effect of that is to give them no compensation at all except for the value of the house as if it was a house without any licence—because that was the position before 1904. In 1904 an Act was passed which did provide for some compensation.
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Now the noble Lord repeals the Act of 1904 and goes back to the conditions which were in existence before then.
If noble Lords will look at Clause 17 they will see again repudiation and the breaking of contracts. It seems inseparable from these Bills. The clause says:—
"In apportioning any such compensation among the holders of shares, stock debentures or other securities … the Commissioners of Inland Revenue … shall not be bound to give effect to the priorities subsisting under the regulations of the company or otherwise as between different classes of shares, stock, debentures or securities."
What does that mean? A very large number of breweries have borrowed money at a very low rate of interest. I should say that in the case of the majority of debenture stocks borrowed by breweries the interest has not been above 4 per cent., and in some cases lower. I remember a brewery 4 per cent. debenture stock being issued not long ago above par, and I think you may take it that 4 per cent. is the interest which the people who have advanced the money are receiving.
What does that mean? A, on behalf of the shareholders in a brewery, says to B: "Will you lend us money? We will only pay a small rate of interest, but we will give you excellent security. Your security shall rank in front of everything, and should any misfortune befall this brewery the proceeds of the sale of the brewery shall first go to pay you your money." Now, the noble Lord comes and says "No." The money having been lent on that understanding some person appointed by the Secretary of State, or somebody else, is to say: "No, we do not agree with that. We will give the debenture holders"—who have only been receiving 4 per cent.—"a certain amount, and the rest we will give to the shareholders"—who have been receiving 10, 15 or 20 per cent., and who borrowed the money which has enabled them to receive that 10, 15 or 20 per cent. on the condition that if they paid it off they would pay the whole amount in full. All that undertaking is broken, and the unfortunate debenture holders are to receive what they can get, while the other people who have no claim whatever on this money are to be paid some of it. I think that clause alone is sufficient to induce your Lordships to reject the Bill. I beg to move.
Amendment moved—
Leave out ("now") and at the end of the Motion insert ("this day six months").—(Lord Banbury of Southam.)
LORD LAMINGTON: My Lords, the noble Lord who has just spoken has made merry rather at the change of attitude of my noble friend who moved the Second Reading. I congratulate my noble friend Lord Balfour of Burleigh on what I conceive has been his courage in bringing forward a measure of a very moderate character which was not likely to be supported by those with whom he has previously worked in this matter of licensing reform. There are two or three very notable changes in this measure as contrasted with the Bills which have previously come before your Lordships' House. One is that there is no compulsory poll, there is no question of prohibition, and also there is a fairer term for disinterested management than the word "reorganisation" which was employed in the Bill of a year or two ago. Lord Balfour of Burleigh said it was not so much a temperance measure as a change of licensing policy, particularly in view of the elimination of the poor "pub."
He was good enough some time ago to send me a pamphlet with a synopsis of this measure, in which he explained that it was not a Licensing Amendment Bill but a Bill to facilitate the reproduction in other areas of the main features of liquor sale, management, and control which has strikingly justified itself in the City and district of Carlisle and other smaller areas in Great Britain. I have often said in your Lordships' House that I am not an opponent of disinterested management as a possible policy, so long as it can be proved that it is likely to be effective in improving the conditions of public-houses. I can remember being at a public meeting in Glasgow under the presidency of the noble Lord's distinguished father when this subject was discussed, and I myself am connected with a Trust Company which also employs as managers those who have no immediate interest in, and receive no commission from, the sale of alcoholic liquors. Therefore, I am no enemy of disinterested management in itself, if it can be proved serviceable. I also obtained the appointment, of the Southborough Committee to examine
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what is known as the Carlisle system to see whether it was working fairly and equitably, and after a great deal of difficulty I also got the publication of the Report of that Committee. I only say this to show that I am not hostile to disinterested management as a possible policy.
The Report of the Southborough Committee says:—
"Whether this form of management is, in fact, disinterested is open to question, and was questioned by much of the evidence which we heard. It was urged that any system of management of public-houses must aim at conducting its business on a commercially remunerative basis; if it undertakes to supply intoxicating liquor it must be with a view to making a profit on that supply, and to this extent it must necessarily be interested."
Therefore the Southborough Committee is very dubious as to whether there is any such thing as disinterested management in itself. Of course, this system obtains in Trust Houses, and in many public-houses nowadays I understand the manager gets no profit on the sale of alcoholic drink. People seem still to believe that it is in the interest of the public-house keeper for a man to drink as much as he can. There is no person who has more cause to discourage drunkenness than the manager of a public-house, who knows that he may get his licence suspended, or a black mark put against him.
My noble friend Lord Banbury read to your Lordships a paragraph from the Southborough Report showing that drunkenness had not been reduced in Carlisle in any greater proportion than it had in any other town of a similar character. My noble friend might have read the next paragraph, which says:—
"As regards the consumption of intoxicating liquor in Carlisle, it does not appear to us to be established that the reduction of public-houses by approximately 50 per cent. and the improvement of those retained has led to a reduction in the quantity of intoxicating liquor consumed beyond that common to the rest of England, Scotland and Wales in the post-War period."
That would seem to show that the very elaborate system in Carlisle—the good intentions of which one fully recognises—has not produced any particular result as regards increased temperance in that area. I might quote a paragraph in the Report of which my noble friend Lord Balfour of Burleigh made rather light;

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because he said that the Southborough Committee did not suggest that the whole country should be brought under the operation of any such system as the Carlisle system. May I call his attention to the words of the Report—
"We are not satisfied that a case has been established for the extension of the schemes to any other particular area or place."
Not to the whole country but to any other particular area or place. That rather looks as though there is sufficient justification for saying that there is really no need for the introduction of a measure based on the Carlisle experiment.
The noble Lord had to admit what every one else who is a slight observer of human nature admits—that sobriety in this country has increased of late years in an extraordinary way. Mr. Snowden, at a Band of Hope Union breakfast, an occasion when people, I imagine, do not indulge in exaggerated statements, said he really believed that there was a boom in temperance at the present time. If he has only just discovered it I think he is rather slow in the exercise of his powers of observation. Everybody knows that there is an extraordinary increase in sobriety. In pre-War times there was a tendency for temperance to increase in every class of the population, and that has markedly developed since the War. Yet time after time you see it stated that £300,000,000 a year are spent in drink and what a calamity it is that it should be so! People who make that statement forget that the State takes a large proportion of that sum. In 1925 a sum of about £315,000,000 was spent on alcoholic liquor; but the Government took £141,000,000 of that by way of Customs and Excise duties. That made a terrific hole in what was represented as a ghastly drink bill of £315,000,000.
I should like to draw your Lordships' attention to some figures showing the amount of beer and spirits consumed in different years. It must be remembered, of course, that money differs very much in actual value in the periods given. In 1913 35,000,000—I leave out the hundreds of thousands—standard barrels of beer were consumed. In 1921 there was a consumption of 24,000,000 standard barrels of beer, a drop of 11,000,000 barrels. The number of proof gallons of spirits consumed in 1913 was 31,000,000, while in 1921 it was 18,000,000. Coming to the
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post-War period and taking only Great Britain and Northern Ireland, in 1922 20,000,000 standard barrels of beer were consumed and in 1925 22,000,000. In 1923—I have not the actual figures for 1922—the consumption of spirits was 14,000,000 proof gallons and in 1925 16,000,000 proof gallons. Those figures show a small increase; but it must be remembered that the population of the country increased during that time and presumably, therefore, the consumption was greater. My noble friend, Lord Balfour of Burleigh, said that the increase in temperance was, no doubt, largely owing to shorter hours and higher prices.
LORD BALFOUR OF BURLEIGH: Hear, hear.
LORD LAMINGTON: No doubt those were large factors; but the temperance movement began long before those two new factors were introduced into our licensing system. It must be remembered also that the strength of spirits is enormously reduced and I fancy that of beer also, but I am not quite certain. It would seem, therefore, that the present system is working extraordinarily well in the direction of sobriety, and that a very strong reason indeed is necessary for the making of a vital change in that system. The Association with which I am connected advocates the improvement of public-houses—which is really the object of this Bill—thereby to increase temperance. It is owing in many instances to the action of the licensing justices that such improvements have not been carried out. The Southborough Report mentions that fact in these terms:—
"We are satisfied from the evidence submitted to us that many brewing firms are anxious to improve the public-houses owned by them, but are prevented from doing so by the attitude taken up by licensing benches in many parts of the country, who refuse to give their sanction to plans for improvement and enlargement of premises and in some cases insist that the licensee shall be a tenant and not a manager."
I need not trouble your Lordships with it again but the Committee points out in another paragraph how essential it is that improvements should be made by brewers in public-houses with the permission of the licensing justices.
That seems to me to be very strong testimony to the policy that I and

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others have followed for many years, and if we could only influence the licensing benches in that direction a great deal could be done under the present system. I hope it will be possible for the Government to introduce some day or other legislation with that object. Encouragement must also be given to the owners of public-houses to improve those houses. Again, the noble Lord's Bill gives very considerable support to that object because it provides that if any district adopts disinterested management as its licensing system it should be given fifteen years so as to afford a reasonable opportunity for the liquidation of initial capital expenditure. It applies also—I will be quite fair to the noble Lord—to the provisions for compensation. It must be recognised, of course, that improvement cannot be expected in public-houses unless some support and encouragement is given to the owner, and that is really what I and others have advocated for a long time past.
I object to the passing of this measure, or rather to the adoption of this system, because the holding of the suggested local elections every five years would infuse a spirit of bitterness into the community. As soon as the questions of drink and temperance are raised, everybody seems to be infected with the virus of excitement and of hostility one to another. I believe that the gain would be very small, and it is a question whether it is desirable to have a local election so often as every five years. I do not see why if you have fifteen years for one purpose you should not have a similar period for the other. The noble Lord, Lord Banbury, attempted a definition of nationalization, and I think my noble friend Lord Balfour of Burleigh admitted that if the whole country adopted this principle it would be nationalisation.
LORD BALFOUR OF BURLEIGH: I did not make any admission of that kind. I would not agree to that for a moment.
LORD LAMINGTON: I must leave the noble Lord and the noble Lord, Lord Banbury, to fight out what constitutes nationalisation. The experience in that direction which has been obtained by two other countries shows that the policy has had no very good effect. I congratulate
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my noble friend on introducing what is comparatively a very moderate measure of this character. I am afraid I could not vote for the Second Reading for reasons which I have already given, but, as he may imagine, I am not hostile to him for bringing forward this measure, for I think the principle is one which ought to be considered and discussed. For that reason I would not vote against the Second Reading, but if the Bill should go to Committee there are many points upon which I feel I must oppose my noble friend Lord Balfour of Burleigh.
I do not understand why he is so insistent upon a monopoly. I can understand powers being given to a local authority to enable them to run a public-house, particularly in a poor quarter where it would not be remunerative for the brewer or the owner of the house to undertake the great expenditure of improving that house. If my noble friend took away the monopolistic character from the Bill I should be much more inclined to support him. I have always understood that before we make any departure from our present licensing system it was thought in all quarters that it was desirable there should be another very thorough examination of the whole question of licensing both in this and other countries, so as to find out the best way of promoting those improvements which we wish to see carried out in order to bring about a reduction of excessive drinking. However moderate my noble friend's 'Bill may be, I do not think he has sufficiently made out a case to warrant its being passed. At the same time I should not vote against it, because it introduces for discussion a principle which I think is well worthy of examination.
LORD CLWYD: My Lords, at this hour of the evening my intervention will be of the briefest character. I rise for the purpose of pointing out in a sentence the position of those with whom I am associated in licensing matters in Wales. The Bill relates to England and also to Wales, and my purpose in rising is to remind the House that for 50 years and more Wales has claimed special treatment in licensing reform. Welsh Licensing Bills have been introduced in the House of Commons Session after Session and have been supported by overwhelming majorities of the Welsh Parliamentary

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representatives. Further than that the claim of Wales to special licensing treatment has already been recognised by special licensing legislation relating to Wales. Whatever may be the merits or the demerits of the central principle of this Bill, there is in Wales an acute difference of opinion and the largest body of licensing opinion in Wales is against, at all events, the principle of this Bill in its present form. The noble Lord will therefore not be surprised if I say to-day that in the event of the Bill reaching the Committee stage it will be my duty to move the exclusion of Wales from its operation.
VISCOUNT SUMNER: My Lords, I beg to move that this debate be now adjourned.
Moved, That the debate be now adjourned.—(Viscount Sumner.)
On Question, Motion agreed to, and debate adjourned accordingly.

CONSOLIDATION BILLS.
LORD MUIR MACKENZIE: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in
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my name that the Earl of Malmesbury be added to the Joint Committee appointed to consider all Consolidation Bills in the present Session.
Moved, That the Earl of Malmesbury be added to the Joint Committee appointed to consider all Consolidation Bills in the present Session.—(Lord Muir Mackenzie.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

COPYRIGHT ORDER CONFIRMA TION (MECHANICAL INSTRU MENTS: ROYALTIES) BILL. [H.L.]
Committed for to-morrow.

MINISTRY OF HEALTH PROVISIONAL ORDER (GODALMING EX TENSION) BILL.
The Committee to be proposed by the Committee of Selection.
House adjourned at a quarter past seven o'clock.