Sitting of 6 May 1931

Preamble
The House met at a Quarter before Three of the Clock, Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair.

PRIVATE BUSINESS.
Lowestoft Water and Gas Bill [Lords],
Read the Third time, and passed, with Amendments.
London County Council (General Powers) Bill,
As amended, considered; to be read the Third time.
London Midland and Scottish Railway Bill,
As amended, to be considered Tomorrow.
Public Works Facilities Scheme (Acton Swing Bridge) Bill,
Considered; to be read the Third time To-morrow.

NEW WRIT.
For the County of Lanark (Rutherglen Division), in the room of William Wright, esquire, deceased.—[Mr. T. Kennedy.]
ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS.
  CHINA.

    FATHER TIERNEY (DEATH).
    Sir KINGSLEY WOODasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he can now give the House any information concerning the safety of Father Tierney?
    The SECRETARY of STATE for FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Mr. Arthur Henderson): I regret to say that Father Tierney died of illness, while in capitivity on 11th March. In his letter communicating this information, the Minister for Foreign Affairs expressed deep regret and stated that the provincial authorities had been given orders
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    to apprehend within a fixed period the bandits who bad captured Father Tierney.

    BRITISH SUBJECTS, NANKING.
    Sir K. WOODasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs bow many British subjects have been captured and how many have been murdered during the last two years in that part of China which is under the jurisdiction of the Nanking Government; whether he is satisfied that there is in such area adequate protection of British subjects; and whether he proposes to take any further steps in this connection?
    Mr. A. HENDERSON: During the last two years 15 British subjects have been captured in China, all of whom escaped or were released. Eight others have been murdered, and one has died in captivity. As I informed the right hon. Gentleman on Wednesday last, the National Government realise their responsibility for ensuring the adequate protection of British subjects, and discharge it as far as they can. Most of these outrages occurred in remote places where the Government, though they have jurisdiction, do not exercise effective control. As regards the last part of the question, the British authorities in China can be relied upon to afford to British subjects such measures of protection as is within their power. I have no reason to conclude that any further steps need yet be considered.
    Mr. WARDLAW-MILNE: Is every care being taken to tell those who may be contemplating going to these districts where, as the right hon. Gentleman says, the administration is not effective, that it is unwise for them to proceed there?
    Mr. HENDERSON: It is very difficult to say what steps we can take. Assistance is given in every way in these matters.
    Sir AUSTEN CHAMBERLAIN: Does the right hon. Gentleman not think that there might be a warning to the missionary societies and the missionaries generally?
    Mr. HENDERSON: I know that the missionary societies do not like to have

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    any outside interference in these matters. The missionaries go as a matter of conscience and take the risk.

    EXTRA-TERRITORIALITY NEGOTIATIONS.
    Mr. DAYasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether the negotiations regarding extra-territoriality carried on between His Majesty's representative in China and the Chinese Government have made any further progress since his last statement on the subject?
    Sir K. WOODasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs the present position of the negotiations on extra-territoriality; and whether he has any information concerning any new regulations prepared by the Chinese Government for governing the adjudication of foreign cases under which foreign nationals would be amenable to the various grades of Chinese courts?
    Mr. WARDLAW-MILNEasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether any other countries are still negotiating with the Chinese Government regarding question of extra-territoriality?
    Mr. A. HENDERSON: The position with regard to the extra-territoriality negotiations is that agreement has now been reached on a large number of the details of a treaty providing on the one hand for the transfer of jurisdiction over British subjects in China from British to Chinese courts, and on the other hand for safeguards relating to the administration of justice, calculated to give a feeling of confidence and security to the British nationals and British interests under a new regime. A serious obstacle to the speedy and successful conclusion of the negotiations has, however, arisen in connection with certain important treaty ports, which in the view of His Majesty's Government must be excluded from the operation of the treaty until such time as necessary changes have been effected in the municipal administrations at those ports to meet the new situation created by the abolition of extra-territorial rights. This attitude on the part of His Majesty's Government was influenced not only by consideration of the chaos which must ensue from any sudden change in jurisdiction at the ports in question, but also by the fact that they could not alone decide the
    364
    question, having regard to the fact that other Powers were also concerned. As a way out of the difficulty, His Majesty's Government recently suggested to the Chinese Government that they would be prepared, immediately on the conclusion of the treaty, to agree to the appointment of a special commission which would proceed forthwith to a study of the whole problem of the reserved areas with a view to finding a satisfactory solution.
    Unfortunately, the Chinese Government have not seen their way to agree either to the point of view of His Majesty's Government on the question of the reserved areas or to the appointment of the suggested commission. His Majesty's Government, however, have not abandoned hope that, if time is allowed for further discussion, a satisfactory solution of this one outstanding difficulty will be found, and I need not emphasise our sincere desire to reach a friendly settlement. With regard to other Powers, I have seen a statement in the Press by the Chinese Minister for Foreign Affairs, but as yet I have no official information as to the final position of the negotiations between the Chinese Government and these Powers. The House will, I am sure, agree with me in recognising the devotion and ability with which Sir Miles Lampson has conducted these long and complicated negotiations.
    Sir A. CHAMBERLAIN: I am sure that everyone on this side of the House will desire to be associated with the tribute which the Foreign Secretary has paid to the services of Sir Miles Lamp-son. May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he can now lay Papers on this matter showing the course of negotiations and the attitude taken up by the different parties? We have been afraid of pressing for this information until the negotiations had reached such a point that it was possible to give it. I hope the right hon. Gentleman will now be able to give it.
    Mr. HENDERSON: I am quite prepared to give the same serious consideration to that suggestion, but in one paragraph of my reply I have said that we are not without hope that even now we may be able to proceed to a settlement, and I will take that into consideration

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    at the same time. If the right hon. Gentleman desires to put another question, I will give a considered reply.
    Sir K. WOOD: Will the right hon. Gentleman answer the last part of Question 8, as to whether it is a fact that the Chinese Government have made these regulations purporting to deal with the adjudication of foreign cases in their own Courts?
    Mr. HENDERSON: I have seen a report in the Press of a set of regulations which are supposed to be official, but as yet I have no official information on the point. If the right hon. Gentleman will put a question down next week I will see if we can get it in the meantime.
    Mr. DAY: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether Sir Miles Lampson is still detained in Hong Kong, or whether he is actively carrying on these negotiations?
    Mr. HENDERSON: I was not aware that Sir Miles Lampson was at Hong Kong.
    Mr. DAY: Did not the right hon. Gentleman, in answer to a question a few weeks ago, say that he was unavoidably detained in Hong Kong?
    Mr. HENDERSON: I do not remember the question.

  RUSSIA.

    BRITISH SERVICE ATTACHES.
    Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHYasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether, in view of the forthcoming Disarmament Conference, it is intended to appoint naval, military, and air attaches to His Majesty's Embassy in Moscow?
    Mr. A. HENDERSON: The answer is in the negative.

    DISARMAMENT CONFERENCE.
    Lieut.-Colonel Sir FREDERICK HALLasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether the Soviet Government will take part in the next Disarmament Conference at Geneva; and if he will arrange for a White Paper to be circulated to the House giving particulars, in such detail as is available, of
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    the present strength of the army, air force, and navy of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and the annual expenditure which is now being incurred on the maintenance and development of these forces?
    Mr. A. HENDERSON: I have no reason to suppose that the Soviet Government will not take part in the Disarmament Conference of 1932. As regards the second part of the question, I would refer to the reply returned by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for War to the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Marjoribanks) on 24th February. The hon. and gallant Member will find full information in the League of Nations Armaments Year Book, and I do not therefore consider that the expense of the publication of a White Paper would be justified.
    Sir F. HALL: Considering the importance of this question, and the cost of issuing a White Paper, does the right hon. Gentleman not think that the House is entitled to information? Is it not the fact that the Soviet Government is raising a large number of soldiers, sailors and airmen at the present time?
    Mr. HENDERSON: I am not belittling the importance of this question, but if the information is already available in the document to which I have referred, I think the hon. and gallant Member should take it into consideration.
    Mr. MARJORIBANKS—[Interruption
    Mr. SPEAKER: Does the hon. Member rise to a point of Order?
    Mr. MARJORIBANKS: Yes. The right hon. Gentleman has referred to me. Am I in order in asking a supplementary question?

    CANADIAN GOODS AND SHIPPING.
    Commander BELLAIRSasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs the terms of the order issued by the Soviet Russian authorities prohibiting all Soviet import organisations and trade delegations from buying goods originating in Canada or shipping goods by Canadian ships?
    Mr. GILLETT (Secretary, Overseas Trade Department): According to my information, the order in question, which

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    was issued on 18th April by the People's Commissar for Foreign Trade in virtue of a decree of the Council of People's Commissaries of October, 1930, forbids all import organisations and all trade representatives to purchase any goods whatsoever of Canadian origin, and likewise forbids the employment of Canadian ships.
    Mr. MARJORIBANKS: Does the hon. Member intend to make representations, or ask the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs to make any representations on behalf of this Dominion?
    Mr. GILLETT: I am not aware that the Dominion desires us to make any representations.
    Mr. SANDHAM: Has not the time arrived when in the interests of this House and the nation as a whole the Government should approach Mr. Spahlinger and get some vaccine to deal with this anti-Russian complex?

    IMPORTS, GREAT BRITAIN.
    Sir F. HALLasked the Prime Minister if he will appoint a committee to investigate and report upon the economic difficulties which have arisen owing to the circumstances in which Russian goods are now being imported into this country to a rapidly increasing extent, and the bearing upon the problem of the different labour conditions under which these goods are produced, compared with the conditions prevailing in this country or in those parts of the British Empire with which Russia is now competing for British markets?
    The PRIME MINISTER (Mr. Ramsay MacDonald): I do not see that any useful purpose would be served by the appointment of a committee of this kind.
    Sir F. HALL: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware of the enormous increase in the importation of goods from Russia, and considering that they are produced under conditions of labour that would not be tolerated in this country, does he not think the matter might be looked into?
    The PRIME MINISTER: That is not my information.

    TRADE CLEARING HOUSE.
    Mr. de ROTHSCHILDasked the Secretary to the Overseas Trade Department the facts which have led His Majesty's Government to the conclusion that the setting up of a clearing house to deal with Russian purchases and sales transactions would be impracticable?
    Mr. GILLETT: Apart from the great practical difficulties involved in the running of a system of the kind contemplated by the hon. Member, it would be impossible to institute it without having recourse to discrimination in regard to imported goods of Soviet origin. This, as explained by my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade in the Debate on the Consolidated Fund Bill on 25th March last, would be incompatible with our obligations under the Temporary Trade Agreement of 16th April, 1930.
    Mr. de ROTHSCHILD: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the balance of trade at the present time is very much in favour of the Soviet Union, and will he confer with the Soviet Union in order to establish some system of this sort; or failing this, will he press on this Government when the present agreement lapses—it is a temporary agreement—to come to a different agreement which will consider this matter in the light of this question?
    Mr. GILLETT: I am aware of the facts stated by the hon. Member. The matter is constantly under consideration.
    Mr. T. WILLIAMS: Is it not the case that the majority of the goods imported from Russia are raw materials, and that the majority of goods exported to Russia are manufactured goods?

  BRITISH SCHOONER "DEAUVILLE" (SEIZURE, UNITED STATES).
  Colonel GRETTONasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he has information of the seizure by the United States Government of the British vessel "Deauville," with a cargo of liquor, in December last, and the imprisonment of the crew for several weeks before release for want of evidence of smuggling; what has become of the vessel; and what action has been taken by the British Government?
  Mr. A. HENDERSON: According to my information, the British schooner "Deauville," loaded with a cargo of approximately 1,000 cases of liquor, was seized on 29th December last by the United States coastguard cutter "Dallas" when lying at anchor at a point variously estimated to be between 11–18 miles off the coast of Alabama. The schooner was escorted into Mobile where her master and crew were detained in the county gaol, bail being fixed at $7,500 for the master and $2,500 for each of his men. On 26th January the master and crew were released, criminal charges against them not having been substantiated. Proceedings have, however, been instituted for the forfeiture of the schooner and her cargo, which are now lying under attachment pending a decision of the Courts. The British Vice-Consul at Mobile has arranged with the United States authorities that no action will be taken for the deportation of the master and crew, who are allowed to live on board their vessel. So far as I am aware, no decision has yet been taken in this case by the Courts.
  Mr. THORNE: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether the liquor in question was Bass or Guinness?
  Mr. BARR: Will the right hon. Gentleman and the Government consider taking steps to prevent our ships from seeking to break down the laws of a friendly Power?
  Colonel GRETTON: Do the Government in such cases take care that no irregular or illegal steps are taken where British subjects are not liable to conviction, and that vessels are not confiscated unless there is full evidence that attempts at smuggling have been made?
  Viscountess ASTOR: Does the right hon. Gentleman not think that it was because they were trying to do something illegal that they were arrested?
  Mr. HENDERSON: The supplementary questions, put together, suggest that I should not add to the answer that I have already given.

  URUGUAYAN BONDS (BRITISH HOLDERS).
  Mr. HANNONasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if his attention has been called to the proposal of
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  the Government of Uruguay to invite the consent of holders of Uruguayan bonds to suspend the sinking fund for the discharge of the bonds consequent upon the fall in exchange; and if he will take appropriate measures through diplomatic channels to safeguard the interests of British interests in those bonds?
  Mr. A. HENDERSON: His Majesty's Minister in Uruguay has reported that in a recent address reviewing the financial situation of the country, the President of the Republic suggested the possibility of suspending the amortisation of foreign loans. I understand, however, that there is no question of giving effect to this proposal without the consent of the bondholders.
  Mr. HANNON: Will the right hon. Gentleman see that no effect is given to it without consultation with his Majesty's Government?
  Mr. HENDERSON: I thought that the bondholders are rather more concerned.
  Mr. HANNON: Yes, but is it not the duty of the Government to protect the bondholders in this case?
  Mr. HENDERSON: If those who are concerned say that they will not proceed without consulting the bondholders, I think the bondholders should be allowed to protect themselves.

  NAVAL ARMAMENTS.
  Captain EDENasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he can make any statement as to the present state of the Franco-Italian naval negotiations and as to the attitude of the Government in the matter?
  Commander SOUTHBYasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he can make a further statement regarding the state of the negotiations between the French and Italian Governments on the subject of naval armaments?
  Mr. A. HENDERSON: The position up to 29th April last was given in the reply returned on that date to the hon. and gallant Members for Lewes (Rear Admiral Beamish) and the Isle of Wight (Captain Macdonald) and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Woolwich (Sir K. Wood). The answer of the Italian Government to the French

  371
  Government's memorandum of 20th April was delivered on Monday last, and a copy has been communicated to His Majesty's Government. I am now awaiting the reply of the French Government. When this has been received, both replies will be most carefully considered.
  Commander SOUTHBY: Will the right hon. Gentleman say how he reconciles the present state of affairs with the statement made on his return and that of the First Lord from France and Italy that complete agreement had been reached?
  Mr. HENDERSON: I have tried to explain in repeated answers to questions that there is said to have been a misunderstanding, but I can assure the House that the negotiations so far as they have gone have been conducted with the utmost good will, and we are not without hope that a settlement will be reached.
  Commander BELLAIRS: May I ask whether these negotiations take into consideration the large number of warships which are being built in Italy for foreign countries?
  Mr. HENDERSON: If the hon. and gallant Gentleman will permit me to say-so, I can see no connection at all between his question and my answer.

  TRADE AND COMMERCE.

    Austro-German Customs Union.
    Sir NICHOLAS GRATTAN-DOYLEasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what is the present position of the negotiations for an Austro-German Customs union?
    Mr. A. HENDERSON: I understand that negotiations between Germany and Austria are suspended pending the discussions which will take place at Geneva in the course of the present month.

    IMPORT AND EXPORT BOARDS.
    Mr. CHARLES WILLIAMSasked the Prime Minister when the Government propose to introduce legislation for the purpose of establishing Import and/or export boards?
    The PRIME MINISTER: No, Sir, not at present.
    Mr. WILLIAMS: Will the right hon. Gentleman be in a position to give me an answer next week?
    The PRIME MINISTER: The future is the future.

    MARINE MOTORS (PRODUCTION AND IMPORT).
    Mr. MORLEYasked the President of the Board of Trade if he will give the figures of the volume of production of marine motors in Great Britain for the years 1920, 1921, 1922, 1923, 1924, 1925, 1926, 1927, 1928, 1929, 1930, and 1931, and the volume of retained imports of marine motors during those years; and the volume of exports?
    The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD of TRADE (Mr. W. R. Smith): I regret that I am unable to supply my hon. Friend with all the particulars for which he asks, but I am having the available figures extracted, and will circulate them in the OFFICIAL REPORT as soon as possible.

  POLAND (GERMAN MINORITY).
  Mr. BEN RILEYasked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether any reply has been received by the Council or the Secretariat of the League of Nations from the Polish Government to the resolution sent by the Council on 24th January, 1931, relating to the situation of the German minority in the provinces of Silesia, Poznan, and Pomorze?
  Mr. A. HENDERSON: So far as I am aware, no reply has yet reached the Secretariat of the League of Nations. But I have reason to believe that the Polish Government will report to the Council at the forthcoming Session the steps which they have taken to give effect to the Council's resolution.
  Mr. RILEY: Is it not a fact that a reply to this Resolution is expected almost immediately?
  Mr. HENDERSON: That is exactly what I have said in my reply.

  ROYAL NAVY.

    NON-BRITISH CADETS, DARTMOUTH.
    Mr. MATTERSasked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether the admission to Dartmouth Naval College of

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    the son of King Alfonso is subject to his undergoing the educational, physical, and other tests and examinations which cadets are ordinarily required to pass?
    The FIRST LORD of the ADMIRALTY (Mr. A. V. Alexander): The admission of foreigners to courses of naval training and instruction is never subject to the ordinary tests and examinations.
    Mr. MATTERS: May I ask whether this lad will in due course be entitled to enter the Navy and receive pay in the service of this country?
    Mr. ALEXANDER: I should like to have notice of that question.
    Mr. THORNE: May I ask you, Mr. Speaker, whether the man in question should be designated ex-King or Mr.?
    Mr. MARJORIBANKS: Grossly impertinent!
    Mr. SPEAKER: The language of the question seems to me to be very suitable.
    Mr. THORNE: Are you aware that His Majesty's Government have recognised the Spanish Republic?
    Mr. BRACKEN: Is it not a fact that this boy's father was a true friend of innumerable English men and women during the War?
    Mr. MARLEY: On a point of Order. In view of your Ruling, Mr. Speaker, that the designation in the question is quite correct, may I ask of where is he King?
    Mr. MARJORIBANKS: Is there no chivalry in the Labour party whatever?
    Mr. SPEAKER: The language of the question does not suggest that he is King of anywhere.
    Mr. AYLESasked the First Lord of the Admiralty the number of non-British cadets at present at Dartmouth Naval College; the conditions under which they entered; and whether the college is open to all non-British people under such conditions up to the college capaciity?
    Mr. ALEXANDER: Prince Juan of Spain is the only non-British subject at present at the college. With the exception of certain foreign princes, foreign subjects have not ordinarily been admitted into the college, primarily owing to considerations of accommodation and to the fact that the alternative facilities
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    in His Majesty's Ship "Erebus," for the purely naval training generally asked for, have been found more suitable.
    Captain W. G. HALL: Are not the regulations really strict, and only British-born subjects of pure European descent are eligible for entry into Dartmouth?
    Mr. ALEXANDER: That is not the position. We have precedents like the case of the Belgian Prince for admissions of this character.
    Mr. OLIVER BALDWIN: Is it not the case that he is a Prince and the other is not called a Prince at all?

    OFFICERS (ENTRY).
    Commander SOUTHBYasked the First Lord of the Admiralty if he is now in a position to make a statement regarding the findings of the committee which has been considering the question of the entry of officers into His Majesty's Navy?
    Mr. ALEXANDER: The findings of the committee in question have not yet been received. I understand, however, that the committee are now engaged in drawing up their report.

    RETIREMENT SCHEME.
    Commander SOUTHBYasked the First Lord of the Admiralty the number of lieutenant-commanders who have taken advantage of the special scheme of retirement recently announced?
    Mr. ALEXANDER: Up to the present 40 lieutenant-commanders have been allowed to retire under the scheme in question. In addition, five lieutenants have retired under the scheme.

    VISIT, KIEL.
    Sir N. GRATTAN-DOYLEasked the First Lord of the Admiralty what are the circumstances in which certain British vessels are visiting Kiel as the guests of the German Government; and whether it is proposed to extend a similar invitation to German vessels to visit British waters?
    Mr. ALEXANDER: Following on several visits by ships of the German Navy to British ports in the Dominions, the German Government have suggested that they would be glad to welcome His Majesty's ships at their ports. An informal visit to Kiel by His Majesty's

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    Ships "Dorsetshire" and "Norfolk" has accordingly been included in the programme of the Baltic cruise of the Atlantic Fleet, and it is hoped that visits to ports in the United Kingdom will be paid by ships of the German Navy when their programmes permit.

    NEW CONSTRUCTION (BRITISH EMPIRE AND JAPAN).
    Commander BELLAIRSasked the First Lord of the Admiralty what has been the total expenditure on new construction for Japan and the British Empire respectively, for the period 1921–31, using sums voted for years where the actual expenditure it not yet known?
    Mr. ALEXANDER: With the hon. and gallant Member's permission I will circulate the figures in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
    The reply is as follows:
    The total expenditure on new construction (including armament) was:—

    Great Britain:

    £

    1921

    …

    …

    5,003,512

    1922

    …

    …

    3,719,660

    1923

    …

    …

    5,533,370

    1924

    …

    …

    7,271,897

    1925

    …

    …

    8,208,980

    1926

    …

    …

    9,035,316

    1927

    …

    …

    11,176,527

    1928

    …

    …

    10,587,655

    1929

    …

    …

    8,288,220

    1930*

    …

    …

    6,277,627 (a)

    1931*

    …

    …

    5,972,406

    * Estimates.

    (a) Including Supplementary Estimates.

    Canada:

    $

    1928–29

    900,000

    1929–30

    1,700,000

    includes re-vote of $800,000.

    1930–31

    Not yet received.

    Australia:

    £

    1921–22

    326,149

    1922–23

    50,000

    1924–25

    2,000,000

    1925–26

    1,500,000

    1926–27

    1,000,000

    1927–28

    2,900,000

    None since 1928.

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    India:

    Rs.

    1928–29

    …

    …

    …

    10,67,000

    1929–30

    …

    …

    …

    8,07,000

    1930–31

    …

    …

    …

    12,53,000

    Japan:

    Total votes for new construction (including armament).

    Yen.

    1920–21

    …

    …

    231,882,440

    1921–22

    …

    …

    273,301,360

    1922–23

    …

    …

    225,269,240

    1923–24

    …

    …

    116,262,480

    1924–25

    …

    …

    88,000,000

    1925–26

    …

    …

    88,000,000

    1926–27

    …

    …

    88,000,000

    1927–28

    …

    …

    90,000,000

    1928–29

    …

    …

    88,000,000

    1929–30

    …

    …

    88,000,000

    1930–31

    …

    …

    81,623,720

    NOTE.—Money voted is always expended in the following if not in the current year.

    SEAPLANES (RESCUE WORK).
    Sir RENNELL ROODasked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether consideration has been given to the advisability of carrying a seaplane on board aircraft carriers which could be held in readiness to proceed to the rescue of the crews of aeroplanes reporting engine or other trouble at sea when at a distance from the parent ship; and, if not, whether he will take this question into consideration?
    Mr. ALEXANDER: The suggestion of the right hon. Member has been fully considered with many others, but the Board of Admiralty is satisfied that the present arrangements are the most effective. The matter is under continuous review, and any changes proved to be effective would, of course, be immediately adopted.
    Sir R. RODD: Would it not have been of great assistance in the difficult situation which occurred the other day, in connection with His Majesty's Ship "Glorious," had there been a seaplane available, instead of the ship being obliged, herself, to go to the rescue?
    Mr. ALEXANDER: I think that we have to take a great many other technical considerations into account, and before the right hon. Member forms a final conclusion, I would ask him to await both the full findings of the Court of Inquiry and the result of any subsequent proceedings.

    PAINTING CONTRACT, DUNDEE.
    Mr. SCRYMGEOURasked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty whether he is aware that six general labourers instead of painters are being employed painting the "Unicorn" at Dundee; that the work has formerly been done under contract with a painter; that the difference in the wage rate is sevenpence per hour; that the departmental inspector reported conditions as satisfactory, although informed that 62 painters were idle; and have steps been taken to rearrange matters as desired by the painters' society?
    Mr. ALEXANDER: Further inquiries are being made into this matter, and I hope to let my hon. Friend have some information before very long.
    Mr. SCRYMGEOUR: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the whole thing is in contravention of the agreement with the unions; and has any definite action been taken?
    Mr. ALEXANDER: My hon. Friend does not. I am sure, expect that I, personally, can look into every small contract for £300 or £400, before it is made. In this case, I have asked that the matter should be looked into at the Admiralty.
    Mr. SCRYMGEOUR: Does the right hon. Gentleman understand that this business has been going on for some time?
    Mr. ALEXANDER: I saw the papers dealing with the matter this morning, and action is being taken to inquire into it.

    HIS MAJESTY'S SHIP "ACHERON" (PRO PULSION MACHINERY).
    Commander SOUTHBY(for Mr. ROSS) asked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether the recent trials of new types of propulsion machinery in His Majesty's Ship "Acheron" were successful?
    Mr. ALEXANDER: The answer is in the affirmative.
    Commander SOUTHBY: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether any difficulty has been experienced with the metal for the turbine blades of vessels fitted with this new type of machinery?
    Mr. ALEXANDER: If the hon. and gallant Member wishes for information on technical details he ought to give me private notice, but the experiments so far carried out have given satisfaction.

    DOCKYARDMEN (LEAVE).
    Viscountess ASTOR (for Mr. HORE-BELISHA)asked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether he is aware that leading men have always been entitled to nine days' leave with pay on occasions when they choose; and that since the week's leave with pay has become applicable to all dockyardmen the leading men have become obliged to take their leave at the fixed period; and whether he will take steps to remove the disadvantage under which they labour at present as compared with the option they previously enjoyed?
    Mr. ALEXANDER: The grant of leave to all classes of Admiralty employés has always depended on the exigencies of the service, and the week during which the dockyards are closed is, from the standpoint of the Admiralty, the most convenient time to grant a week's leave to all employés, except those who are required to maintain essential services. The position of the leading men is not different from that of similar classes of workmen and of salaried dockyard officers.

  HONG KONG (CIVIL SERVANTS' SALARIES).
  Mr. EVERARDasked the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies how many civil servants in Hong Kong are affected by the alteration of their remuneration from the sterling to the dollar basis; and what reduction of income this entails?
  The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for the COLONIES (Dr. Drummond Shiels): The number of civil servants affected by the new rates of converting sterling salaries into dollars is approximately 930. The reduction in income calculated in dollars is 16⅔ per cent. in each case.
  Sir ROBERT HAMILTON: Is it a fact that these civil servants were appointed on a sterling basis; and has-their consent been obtained to payment on a dollar basis?
  Dr. SHIELS: I have explained this matter, in reply to previous questions. As the hon. Member is aware, the financial position in Hong Kong is very serious, and arrangements were made to make the readjustment as easy as possible, and with every consideration for those who have remitted part of their salaries. A financial commission is at present in Hong Kong investigating the currency position, and it will all be reconsidered at an early date.
  Mr. HANNON: Does this really mean a breach of contract with the civil servants?
  Dr. SHIELS: No, Sir, I do not think that that statement can be justified at all. As hon. Members are aware, Hong Kong has a special currency and, under local conditions, it went down to a very low level. I do not think that this could be termed a breach of contract.
  Sir R. HAMILTON: Will the hon. Gentleman answer my question? Was the consent of the civil servants obtained to the change-over to the dollar basis?
  Dr. SHIELS: I should require notice of that question.
  Mr. HARRIS: Is it not a rather mean way of bringing about a reduction of their salaries?

  WEST INDIAN SUGAR INDUSTRY.
  Mr. C. WILLIAMSasked the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies what steps his Department are taking to improve the position of the West Indian Sugar industry?
  Dr. SHIELS: I would refer the hon. Member to the statement of the policy of His Majesty's Government in regard to sugar which was published last year, and has on several occasions been explained in this House and in another place. Three free grants have been made by the Empire Marketing Board and two on the recommendation of the Colonial Development Advisory Committee for research and development work, in all amounting to £14,575. In connection with relief work in British Guiana considerable sums, amounting last year to £40,000, have been and are being provided by way of loan for improvements on sugar estates, mainly in
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  housing and sanitation. The hon. Member will be aware that very substantial assistance is being given to several West Indian sugar colonies in the form of deficiency and relief grants.
  Mr. WILLIAMS: Could not the hon. Gentleman do something to encourage the consumption of British-grown sugar in this country?
  Mr. HANNON: Is there any possible means of assisting this industry except increased preferential treatment by this country?

  AVIATION.

    AIRSHIPS.
    Mr. DAYasked the Under-Secretary of State for Air whether he is now in a position to announce the Government's decision with regard to the disposal of the R.100?
    Captain PETER MACDONALDasked the Under-Secretary of State for Air whether he can now make a statement as to the policy of the Government in regard to airship construction?
    The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for AIR (Mr. Montague): In view of the fact that a final decision by His Majesty's Government on these matters is being postponed pending a report by the Committee on National Expenditure, I am not in a position to make any further statement at present.
    Captain MACDONALD: As the Government seem quite incapable of coming to a decision on this matter—[HON. MEMBERS: "Order!"]—may I give notice that I shall raise the question on the Adjournment?

    LOW FLYING.
    Captain MACDONALDasked the Under-Secretary of State for Air whether, in view of the further complaints made as to the nuisance and danger of low flying by aircraft, he will now consider making stringent regulations in this matter?
    Mr. MONTAGUE: The subject is one to which my Noble Friend has given close personal attention, as he is most desirous of preventing any serious cause for complaint. This is indeed in the best interest of flying itself. Further

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    orders on the subject were issued to the Royal Air Force only a few weeks ago, supplementing the stringent regulations already in force. They prohibit flight over any city or town except at an altitude which will enable the aircraft to land outside the boundaries, should any mechanical breakdown occur. They also prohibit trick or exhibition flying over a populated area and, in general, flyng in such a way as to cause unnecessary danger to persons or property on land or water. All complaints of low or dangerous flying by Service aircraft are promptly and carefully investigated by the Air Ministry and strict disciplinary-action is taken whenever the facts justify it. Where civil pilots are concerned, the institution of proceedings is a matter for the police, but the Air Ministry investigates any complaint brought to notice and is ready to co-operate with the police as necessary.
    Captain CAZALET: Is the hon. Gentleman aware of the great inconvenience caused to the ordinary householder who happens to live on the direct line between London and Paris, by this low flying?
    Mr. MONTAGUE: I am aware of all the difficulties, but I think that my answer covers that point.

    MUNICIPAL AERODROMES.
    Sir N. G RATTAN-DOYLEasked the Under-Secretary of State for Air how many towns in Great Britain have established municipal aerodromes?
    Mr. MONTAGUE: Eight towns have established municipal aerodromes.

    EXPERIMENTAL AIRCRAFT.
    Captain BALFOURasked the Under-Secretary of State for Air the number of experimental types of civil aircraft owned by the Air Ministry; the uses to which such aircraft are put; the ultimate purpose for which they are to be utilised; and if any further experimental civil aircraft are to be constructed for the Air Ministry during the present year?
    Mr. MONTAGUE: There are at present no experimental types of civil aircraft owned by the Air Ministry, but five aircraft of such types are now under construction to the Air Ministry's order.
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    These aircraft—a large float seaplane, a freight-carrier landplane, a flying boat, a monoplane landplane and a biplane landplane—are intended to achieve definite advances in design over existing types. On completion they will be flown experimentally under operational conditions, and the ultimate use to which they will be put will depend upon the results of these experiments. The question of selecting and placing orders for further experimental types of civil aircraft is under consideration.
    Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: Among these types of experimental construction, is there any aeroplane on the auto-gyro principle?
    Mr. MONTAGUE: Not in those to which I have referred.
    Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: Is it intended to experiment with one?
    Mr. MONTAGUE: I cannot anticipate any future experiments. I have answered the question fully as to existing experiments.

  ROYAL AIR FORCE.

    POTATOES (SUPPLY).
    Mr. RAMSBOTHAMasked the Under-Secretary of State for Air what steps have been taken during the past 12 months to ensure that all potatoes supplied for the Royal Air Force have been home-grown?
    Mr. MONTAGUE: Potatoes required by Royal Air Force units at home are not purchased by the Air Ministry. Purchases for airmen's messing are made by the units themselves from the Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes, and I understand that, with the exception of early potatoes and a few cases where home-grown potatoes are too expensive, all potatoes so supplied are home-grown.

    AUXILIARY SQUADRONS.
    Captain BALFOURasked the Under-Secretary of State for Air whether any new auxiliary Air Force squadrons are to be formed during 1931; and, if so, whether he will consider one for the county of Kent?
    Mr. MONTAGUE: No new auxiliary Air Force squadron is being formed during 1931.

    OVERHEAD ELECTRIC CABLES.
    Captain BALFOURasked the Under-Secretary of State for Air if he can make any statement as to the result of negotiations between the Air Ministry and the Electricity Commissioners regarding the guarding of aircraft from danger of contact with overhead high-tension cables by means of lighting of pylons or some other means?
    Mr. MONTAGUE: Meetings have taken place between representatives of the two Departments, and the technical aspects of the subject are under active consideration. A programme of experiments is being drawn up.
    Captain BALFOUR: If I put down a question again in a month's time, will the hon. Gentleman be able to give me any more information?
    Mr. MONTAGUE: I anticipate that an answer can then be made.
    Earl WINTERTON: Has the hon. Gentleman's attention been called to the large amount of flying over the Downs of Sussex and the great danger there is, on the testimony of pilots, owing to the existence of these pylons?
    Mr. MONTAGUE: We are aware of these conditions.

  TRANSPORT.

    RAILWAY ELECTRIFICATION (LEVEL CROSSINGS).
    Rear-Admiral BEAMISHasked the Minister of Transport whether, in the proposed railway electrification, precautions are to be taken against injury to stock and human beings at existing railway farm-crossings and others where protecting gates are not installed?
    The MINISTER of TRANSPORT (Mr. Herbert Morrison): The hon. and gallant Member may, I think, rest assured that in carrying out any future electrification all necessary precautions against risk of injury at level crossings will be taken.
    Rear-Admiral BEAMISH: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether in fact the electrification will be overhead or by means of live rails?
    Mr. MORRISON: I think the Weir Committee report assumed that the best system would be overhead.

    MANCHESTER-LIVERPOOL ROAD.
    Mr. TINKERasked the Minister of Transport what progress has been made in the construction of the Manchester-Liverpool road; if any part of it is completed and in use for public traffic; and when it is expected that the whole of it will be completed and ready for use?
    Mr. HERBERT MORRISON: The part of the Liverpool-Manchester road two miles in length, which lies within the Liverpool County Borough has been completed and opened to traffic since April, 1929. No portion of the work in progress within the administrative county of Lancashire has been completed, but the contract provides for completion by-November, 1933.
    Mr. TINKER: Can my right hon. Friend say if the time given for completion is the time that was understood in the contract?
    Mr. MORRISON: I am speaking from recollection, but it appears to be part of the original contract. I am not, however, certain.
    Mr. TINKERasked the Minister of Transport how many persons are employed on the construction of the Manchester-Liverpool road at the present time; what is the greatest number employed upon it at any one time; and can he state at what period the highest number will be employed upon it and what that figure will be?
    Mr. MORRISON: The approximate number of persons now employed directly on the construction of the road is 1,128. The maximum number employed at any one time was 1,300. It is not anticipated that the number of men now employed will be increased in the future.

    TRAFFIC CONTROL SIGNALS.
    Mr. EVERARDasked the Minister of Transport when the Oxford Street traffic control signals will be in operation; whether these installations are of foreign manufacture; and what is the reason for the delay in their completion?
    Mr. HERBERT MORRISON: I hope that traffic control signals will be in operation in Oxford Street by the end

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    of June. Many authorities had to be consulted and the preliminary arrangements have taken some time, but since the order for the material was placed there has been no delay either in delivery or in the work of erection. The signalling apparatus (as distinct from poles, cables, etc.) is to be of foreign manufacture because, when the question of controlling traffic in this way in Oxford Street was first investigated, no British firms were manufacturing or had any experience of the type of signals required. I am glad to say that in this respect the position has improved and in connection with future installations importance is attached to encouragement of British manufacture so far as possible.
    Mr. EVERARD: Will the right hon. Gentleman give us an assurance that in future only British firms will be allowed to supply these signals?
    Mr. MORRISON: I have indicated to the hon. Gentleman to-day, as I have before, that every endeavour will be made to secure signals of British manufacture, but I cannot go further than that.
    Mr. R. A. TAYLOR: Will my right hon. Friend not consider the safety of the public first?
    Mr. HANNON: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that signalling apparatus of the highest efficiency is now being made in Birmingham?
    Mr. EVERARDasked the Minister of Transport the total number of installations of automatic traffic control signals which have been approved for grants by his Department; how many of these are of foreign and British manufacture, respectively; and what is the average length of time taken by his Department before approval is given?
    Mr. MORRISON: The total number of installations approved for grants up to 30th April is 333. Of these
    87 were of British manufacture;
    226 were manufactured by American firms who claim that their equipment is mainly of British manufacture;
    in 20 cases the selection of the equipment has not yet been decided.
    When the question of installing these signals first began to be considered, British firms had had little experience
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    in their designs and manufacture, but I am glad to say that the position has altered in this respect and preference is now given to home manufactures where possible. Taking the applications which had been received since the beginning of August last, the average length of time which has elapsed from the date of application to the date of the issue of grant has been 11 weeks.

    BRIDGE-BUILDING PROGRAMME.
    Mr. KINGSLEY GRIFFITHasked the Minister of Transport what action has been taken to carry into effect the recommendation of the Royal Commission on Transport that the bridge-building programme be speeded up at a rate of not less than 1,000 bridges a year?
    Mr. HERBERT MORRISON: I would refer the hon. Member to the answer which I gave on the 2nd February to a similar question by the hon. Member for Newport (Mr. Walker), of which I am sending him a copy.

    MILLWALL DOCK BRIDGE.
    Mr. MARCHasked the Minister of Transport whether he can report any progress with the London County Council and the Port of London Authority in respect of the Millwall dock bridge providing better facilities for vehicular traffic and pedestrians getting over the bridge without so much delay as at present?
    Mr. HERBERT MORRISON: I understand that the negotiations between the London County Council and the Port of London Authority respecting the reconstruction of Millwall dock bridge are making satisfactory progress, and I hope that an agreement will be reached at an early date.

    MEDICAL PRACTITIONERS (ROAD PASSES).
    Mr. MARJORIBANKSasked the Minister of Transport whether he will consider issuing to registered medical practitioners special road passes, or whether he will authorise the attachment of special signs, horns, or lights to the cars of registered medical practitioners so that police officers on point duty shall give them special facilities through traffic in cases of emergency?
    Mr. HERBERT MORRISON: I would refer the hon. Member to the reply which I gave on this subject on 25th Feb-

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    ruary to the hon. Member for Devonport (Mr. Hore-Belisha), of which I am sending him a copy.
    Mr. MARJORIBANKS: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that this has become a matter of public controversy since then, and is he also aware that Canada has adopted this system, that it has worked well, and that I believe the terms for penalties in the case of improper use have also worked well, and will he look into the matter, in view of Canadian experience?
    Mr. MORRISON: I have carefully considered the matter, but the number of priorities which would have to be issued would be so large that I am afraid it would involve serious interference with the free flow of traffic.
    Mr. MARJORIBANKS: Will the right hon. Gentleman look into the Canadian experience and see how it has worked?

  POST OFFICE.

    WORKMEN'S COMPENSATION (SAVINGS BANK DEPOSITS).
    Mr. TINKERasked the Postmaster-General the average amount of money deposited in the Post Office in 1930 under the direction of the court dealing with the allocation of the sums awarded under the Workmen's Compensation Act; the amount of interest paid on it; and the rate of interest?
    The ASSISTANT POSTMASTER-GENERAL (Mr. Viant): The average amount of the deposits made in the Post Office Savings Bank in 1930 as awards under the Workmen's Compensation Acts was £218, namely, 3,916 awards totalling £852,710 in the aggregate. The amount of interest paid cannot be ascertained without considerable inquiry. The usual rate of interest, 2½ per cent. per annum, is paid.
    Mr. TINKER: Is the rate of interest fixed, or does it fluctuate?
    Mr. VIANT: The rate of interest is fixed, at 2½ per cent.
    Mr. TINKER: Will my hon. Friend let this be known to the persons who have money put out in that way, as there is a lot of discontent about it?
    Mr. VIANT: I thought it was generally known, and that the information was generally available.
    Mr. TINKER: My hon. Friend may be right in that, but the applicants do not know about it, and I would like them to get to know.

  PRIVATE MEMBERS' BILLS (FACILITIES).
  Mr. SMITHERSasked the Prime Minister to what private Members' Bills, introduced during the present Session, special facilities are to be granted besides the Sentence of Death (Expectant Mothers) Bill?
  The PRIME MINISTER: The House will recollect that the Sentence of Death (Expectant Mothers) Bill was introduced under the Ten Minutes' Rule by my hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin Division (Miss Picton-Turbervill). Representations were made to me that not only was there no opposition to the Bill from any quarter, but that the Bill itself was not expected to occupy much time in Committee. On that assurance, the Government decided to adopt the Measure. The possibility of adopting other private Members' Measures is constantly under consideration with reference to the time available for the Government's general programme, but I fear that in the present congested state of business I cannot give any undertaking at this stage that it will be possible to grant facilities in other cases.
  Mr. SMITHERS: I thank the Prime Minister for answering the question in person.

  INDIA.

    MINISTERIAL VISITS.
    Mr. BRACKENasked the Prime Minister whether he, or any other Member of His Majesty's Government, proposes to make an official visit to India during the present year?
    The PRIME MINISTER: I would refer the hon. Member to what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said in the course of the Debate of 12th March last, to which I have nothing to add.
    Mr. BRACKEN: Cannot the Prime Minister give a plain, straightforward answer to this question?
    HON. MEMBERS: Withdraw!

    NORTH-WEST FRONTIER OPERATIONS.
    Major-General Sir ALFRED KNOXasked the Secretary of State for India whether a medal will be given to the troops who have taken part in recent operations on the North-West Frontier?
    The SECRETARY of STATE for INDIA (Mr. Benn): I have not received a recommendation from the Government of India in this matter.

    MAINTENANCE OF ORDER.
    Sir A. KNOXasked the Secretary of State for India if steps will be taken to impress on the other Provincial Governments in India the necessity of taking measures to maintain order on the same lines as those recently announced by the Governor of the Punjab?
    Mr. BENN: The policy which is being pursued is that the ordinary law should be administered as in normal times, without relaxation on the one hand or unnecessary rigour on the other.
    Sir A. KNOX: Is it not possible for the right hon. Gentleman to suggest that they should carry out the law more rigorously to prevent events such as that at Cawnpore?
    Mr. BENN: I have stated the policy of the Government, and that policy is being pursued by the governors.

  AGRICULTURE (GOVERNMENT POLICY).
  Viscount WOLMERasked the Prime Minister whether his attention has been drawn to the statement made by the Minister of Agriculture at King's Lynn, on 14th March, to the effect that the Government intend to submit proposals designed to put cereal growing on an economically sound basis, particularly in regard to wheat growing; and whether this represents the policy of the Government?
  The PRIME MINISTER: I would refer the Noble Lord to the statement of the policy of the Government which was made in this House on 1st August last, and particularly to the words:
  "But as soon as the conclusions of the Imperial Conference are known, the Government will undertake whatever practicable steps can be devised to put cereal growing in this country on an economic foundation."—[OFFICIAL, REPORT, 1st August, 1930; col. 892, Vol. 242.]
  Viscount WOLMER: Does not the right hon. Gentleman yet know the conclusion of the Imperial Conference?

  AFFORESTATION (CARNARVONSHIRE).
  Major OWENasked the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade, as representing the Forestry Commissioners, how many acres have already been planted with trees in the county of Carnarvon; how many acres it is proposed to plant this year; how many-forestry holdings have been created in the county; how many men are permanently employed in the forests; and how many are temporarily employed?
  Mr. W. R. SMITH: In the county of Carnarvon the Forestry Commissioners have already planted 4,045 acres. Next season it is proposed to plant 600 acres. Forty-six forest workers' holdings have been created in the county. The average number of persons permanently employed in the forests is 65, and the average number temporarily employed is 16.

  CENSUS.
  Mr. FREEMANasked the Minister of Health when the information obtained at the recent Census will be available for the public?
  The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the MINISTRY of HEALTH (Miss Lawrence): It is expected that the first figures obtainable from the recent Census will be made available to the public in the form of the Preliminary Report, within approximately two months from the present date.
  Mr. FREEMAN: Is it intended to publish a report, as on previous occasions, according to county areas, as soon as they are ready?
  Miss LAWRENCE: I must have notice of that question.

  VACCINATION.
  Mr. FREEMANasked the Minister of Health whether, in view of the fact that over 13,000 more parents claimed exemption from vaccination last year than those who allowed their children to undergo this operation, he will consider the desirability of amending the com-

  391
  pulsory powers of the Vaccination Acts and so avoid the necessity of applying to a magistrate, obtaining special certificates, and other forms of inconvenience and expense placed on the majority of the population, who have conscientious objections to vaccination?
  Miss LAWRENCE: My right hon. Friend regrets that at present he cannot add anything to the previous answers given to my hon. Friend on this subject.
  Mr. FREEMAN: Is not this a denial of the rights of democracy?

  BRITISH ARMY (HONORARY COLONELCY).
  Mr. O. BALDWINasked the Secretary of State for War whether ex-King Alfonso still retains the rank of honorary colonel of the 16/5th Lancers held when he was head of the Spanish State?
  The SECRETARY of STATE for WAR (Mr. T. Shaw): The answer is in the affirmative.

  NAVY, ARMY AND AIR FORCE INSTITUTES.
  Viscount WOLMERasked the Secretary of State for War the number of ex-service men who have been discharged from the Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes since the Government took office; and what steps he proposes to take to find employment for these men?
  Mr. SHAW: The employés of the Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes are not paid from public funds, and I have no information regarding details of the staff employed, which is a matter for the Board of Management.

  SCOTLAND.

    EASTRIGGS, DUMFRIESSHIRE (VALUATION).
    Dr. HUNTERasked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he is aware that there is dissatisfaction among the inhabitants of Eastriggs, in Dumfriesshire, in connection with the valuation of the area; and if he will take steps to enable a new valuation to be made?
    The UNDER-SECRETARY of STATE for SCOTLAND (Mr. Westwood): The answer to the first part of the question
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    is in the affirmative. A new valuation roll is made up by the assessor before 15th August in each year, and if any person whose name appears in it is dissatisfied with the valuation placed by the assessor on his property, he may appeal to the valuation committee of the county council. If he is dissatisfied with the decision of the committee, he may require them to state a case for the opinion of the Lands Valuation Appeal Court, whose decision is final. The matter is, therefore, wholly out with my right hon. Friend's jurisdiction.
    Dr. HUNTER: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the circumstances are very special in this case; that Eastriggs is the centre of what was recently the great Gretna munition area; that on account of the intensive development of industrialism in that area values were swiftly and artificially raised; and now that it has become a purely agricultural area, does not the right hon. Gentleman think that the values should be correspondingly reduced?
    Mr. WESTWOOD: My right hon. Friend is well aware of the exceptional circumstances of this particular district, but, as already pointed out in answer to the question, the matter is wholly out with the jurisdiction of my right hon. Friend.
    Dr. HUNTER: Will the hon. Gentleman ask his right hon. Friend to give his classic sympathetic consideration?

    HERRING FISHERIES.
    Sir R. HAMILTONasked the Secretary of State for Scotland whether he has considered the representations sent to him from public bodies in Shetland regarding the hardship that will be caused to the local fishing industry if the resolution recently passed by the British Herring Trade Association boycotting herrings cured before 16th June, the date fixed for the opening of the East Coast fishing, is enforced, although it is known that herrings on the west side of Shetland mature a fortnight sooner, and local fishermen and curers will consequently be debarred from securing the advantage of this early fishing; and, seeing that a member of the Fishery Board for Scotland was in the chair when the above resolution was passed, whether it has the approval of the board?
    Mr. WESTWOOD: As regards the first part of the question, my right hon.

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    Friend has asked the Fishery Board for Scotland to make inquiries as to the situation in the light of the representations which he has received. The hon. Member will no doubt appreciate that while the Fishery Board for Scotland will be glad to receive and consider all relevant information and representations, the measures which the curing or other sections of the industry may take for dealing with what is recognised to be a difficult situation are not subject to the approval or control of the Fishery Board. As regards the second part of the question, the member of the Fishery Board who was in the chair at the meeting referred to was acting not as a member of the board, but in his private capacity as vice-chairman of the British Herring Trade Association.
    Sir R. HAMILTON: Will the hon. Gentleman ask his right hon. Friend to use his influence with the British Herring Trade Association to secure a modification of the threatened boycott, which may seriously damage the interests of the fishermen and the curers of Shetland; and will he also assure me that there is no illegality in this proposed boycott?
    Mr. WESTWOOD: I will convey the request of the hon. Gentleman to my right hon. Friend.

  GIRL'S DISAPPEARANCE, SOMERSETSHIRE.
  Mr. LOVAT-FRASERasked the Attorney-General if the inquiries made as to the disappearance of Gwendoline Molly Phillips, in Somersetshire, have been concluded; and, if so, whether he proposes to take any action?
  Mr. CHARLES EDWARDS (Lord of the Treasury): My hon. and learned Friend has asked me to state that the inquiries are not yet completed, and that he would be obliged if the hon. Member would repeat his question in a week's time.

  EX-POLICE OFFICERS, DUBLIN (WIDOWS' PENSIONS).
  Sir A. KNOXasked the Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs whether he is aware that the Minister for Finance
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  of the Irish Free State has refused to grant the pensions of £30 per year claimed by the widows of ex-sergeant Patrick Cummins and ex-constable Jeremiah Brovnan, both of the Dublin Metropolitan Police; and whether he will inquire into these two cases in view of the joint obligations under the agreement of this country and the Irish Free State?
  The SECRETARY of STATE for DOMINION AFFAIRS (Mr. J. H. Thomas): I have received representations regarding the claims of these two widows to pension, and I am making inquiries in the matter.

  MILK CLUBS (SCHOOLS).
  Mr. R. S. YOUNGasked the President of the Board of Education whether he is taking any action to encourage education authorities to organise voluntary milk clubs in the schools of their respective areas?
  The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD of EDUCATION (Mr. Morgan Jones): Yes, Sir. My Department are actively co-operating with the National Milk Publicity Council, and every opportunity is taken of bringing the council's scheme to the attention of local education authorities and teachers.
  Mr. YOUNG: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that only 10 per cent. of the children in the country are now taking advantage of this excellent scheme, and will he therefore do his utmost to encourage this development throughout the country?
  Mr. JONES: I can assure my hon. Friend that every encouragement is being given. As a matter of fact, the National Milk Publicity Council say that this year they provided milk for 600,000 children as compared with 350,000 last year.
  Earl WINTERTON: Could the hon. Gentleman have a chart prepared and placed in the Tea Room showing the various areas that have taken advantage of this beneficial scheme?
  Viscountess ASTOR: Will the hon. Gentleman see that the Government advertise milk in the same way that brewers advertise beer?

  TANGANYIKA (PETITION, MR. C. M. MORRISON).
  Mr. LESLIE BOYCE(for Sir PHILIP RICHARDSON) asked the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he is aware that an old settler of Tanganyika, Mr. C. M. Morrison, has sent a petition to this country, through the usual channels, praying for a free pardon and compensation in connection with a sentence for alleged culpable homicide in respect of which he claims that there was a miscarriage of justice; and whether this matter is being investigated?
  Dr. SHIELS: The Governor has forwarded a new petition from Mr. Morrison, and this is being investigated.

  NORTH KILLINGHOLME (ADMIRALTY PIER) BILL,
  "to authorise the Admiralty to construct and maintain certain works in connection with the pier constructed by them under the North Killingholme (Admiralty Pier) Act, 1912, and for purposes connected with the matters aforesaid," presented by Mr. George Hall; supported by Mr. Ammon; to be read a Second time upon Monday next, and to be printed. [Bill 144.]

THIRD PARTIES (RIGHTS AGAINST INSURERS).
Mr. LLEWELLYN-JONES: I beg to move,
"That leave be given to bring in a Bill to confer upon third parties rights against insurers of third-party risks arising out of accidents on the road in the event of the death of the insured."
As the House is well aware, great public interest was taken in the insurance Clauses of the Road Traffic Act when that Measure was going through Parliament, a greater interest, probably, than in any portion of the Measure, with the exception of the Clauses dealing with the speed limits. For many years the public have been alarmed at the great increase of accidents involving personal injuries, and in many cases resulting in death, as the result of the negligence of drivers of motor vehicles. Before the Act of last year was placed on the Statute Book a very large number
396
of persons who were injured, and the dependants of victims of fatal motor accidents, were unable to obtain any compensation. The negligent driver may have been "a man of straw," and in a large number of cases he was not insured against motoring accidents. The Royal Commission upon road transport recommended that motorists ought to be compelled to insure against third-party risks, and the public generally thought that as a result of the Act risks arising from negligent driving would in future be covered, but, unfortunately, it has been revealed that there are cases where injured persons are still unable to secure compensation.
That position arises in cases where the negligent motorist is either himself killed in the accident, or dies before a settlement of the claim has been arrived at, Within the last few days there has been considerable correspondence in one of the leading journals in the country-drawing attention to this defect in the Act. There are three or four curious complications arising out of this position of affairs. It is perfectly clear as the English law stands at present, that if the owner of the car is himself driving and injures somebody, and dies before a settlement can be arrived at, the injured party has no remedy, but if a servant of his is driving in the course of his occupation and the owner of the car dies before a settlement is reached, the injured person would be able to get at the servant, and, as the Act provides for an indemnity, in that case he would have his remedy indirectly against the insurance company. There is another large number of cases where cars and motor omnibuses are owned by limited companies, in which no question can arise; but, undoubtedly there are a number of cases, though probably not a very large number, where the remedy is lost by the death of the person responsible for the injury thus enabling the insurance company concerned to avoid liability.
The position is due to a very old principle of English law that a personal action dies with the person. Nearly 100 years ago Parliament realised the hardship of this principle, and in 1833 passed an Act which enabled a person injured in respect of his property, whether real or personal, to have a right of action,

397
in certain circumstances, against the estate of the person who had committed the tort, should he die. Therefore, we are in this curious position. If I live in a house at the corner of a road and a large motor vehicle driven negligently damages my house—and there have been cases where a portion of a house has been taken away and the vehicle has landed in one of the rooms—and also kills me, should the driver himself also die my dependants have absolutely no remedy for the personal loss sustained by my death, although they may have a right of action against his estate for the damage caused to the house. Such a position as that is absolutely intolerable and indefensible.
I find that the Scottish law is very much more reasonable. In Scotland, the death of a negligent motorist does not deprive the injured party of a remedy, because the injured party has a claim against the estate of the motorist, and, as there is an indemnity under this Act, he would also be able to claim against the insurance company. I ask the House to agree to the introduction of this Bill in the interest of a very large number of persons who use the roads, and have no remedy in the circumstances which I have described. In the interests of the community at large, I think the law should be changed so as to give a remedy against the estate of the motorist who drives negligently, which, in effect, would be a remedy against the insurance company.
Question put, and agreed to.
Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Llewellyn-Jones, Sir Robert Newman, Mr. Graham White, Major Lloyd George, Mr. Mander, Mr. Arthur Henderson (Cardiff), Dr. Morris-Jones, Mr. George Oliver, Mr. Alpass, and Dr. Peters.

THIRD PARTIES (RIGHTS AGAINST INSURERS) BILL,
"to confer upon third parties rights against insurers of third-party risks arising out of accidents on the road in the event of the death of the insured," presented accordingly, and read the First time; to be read a Second time upon Monday next, and to be printed. [Bill 145.]

MESSAGE FROM THE LORDS.
That they have agreed to,—
Ministry of Health Provisional Order (East Elloe Joint Water Supply District) Bill, with Amendments.
That they have passed a Bill, intituled, "An Act to confirm a Provisional Order under the Private Legislation Procedure (Scotland) Act, 1899, relating to Alexander Scott's Hospital." [Alexander Scott's Hospital Order Confirmation Bill [Lords].]
Also a Bill, intituled, "An Act to confer further powers on the Epsom Urban District Council in regard to their water and electricity undertakings; and for other purposes." [Epsom Urban District Council Bill [Lords].]
Also a Bill, intituled, "An Act to empower the Mayor, Aldermen, and Councillors of the Metropolitan borough of Hackney to acquire lands for the extension of their town hall; to amend the provisions relating to the granting of superannuation allowances to their officers and servants; and for other purposes." [Hackney Borough Council Bill [Lords].]
Also a Bill, intituled, "An Act to provide for the transfer to the Gas Light and Coke Company of the undertakings of the Southend-on-Sea and District Gas Company and the Brentwood Gas Company; to confer various powers upon the Gas Light and Coke Company; and for other purposes." [Gas Light and Coke Company Bill [Lords].]
And also, a Bill, intituled, "An Act to incorporate and confer powers upon the Corby (Northants) and District Water Company for the construction and maintenance of waterworks; and for supplying water in parts of the counties of Northampton, Leicester, and Rutland." [Corby (Northants) and District Water Bill [Lords].]

MESSAGE FROM THE LORDS.
  MINISTRY OF HEALTH PROVISIONAL ORDER (EAST ELLOE JOINT WATER SUPPLY DISTRICT) BILL.
  Lords Amendments to be considered To-morrow.
  ALEXANDER SCOTT'S HOSPITAL ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL [Lords].
  Ordered (under Section 7 of the Private Legislation Procedure (Scotland) Act, 1899) to be considered To-morrow.
  EPSOM URBAN DISTRICT COUNCIL BILL [Lords].
    HACKNEY BOROUGH COUNCIL BILL [Lords].
      GAS LIGHT AND COKE CONPANY BILL [Lords].
        CORBY (NORTHANTS) AND DISTRICT WATER BILL [Lords].
        Read the First time; and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.

BILLS REPORTED.
Ministry of Health Provisional Orders (Accrington and Leicester) Bill,
Reported, without Amendment [Provisional Orders confirmed]; Report to lie upon the Table.
Bill to be read the Third time Tomorrow.
London County Council (Money) Bill,
Metropolitan Water Board Bill,
Reported, with Amendments; Reports to lie upon the Table, and to be printed.

(1) Lace and Embroidery on Net or Dissoluble Fabric.

Month.

Cotton Lace and Net, including Curtains.

Silk and Artificial Silk Lace.

Other Lace and Embroidery on Net or Dissoluble Fabric.

1930.

£

£

£

July

…

…

95,290

54,175

105

August

…

…

87,779

39,877

278

September

…

…

79,197

41,153

148

October

…

…

77,387

44,900

14

November

…

…

70,373

36,806

159

December

…

…

64,298

29,348

138

1931.

January

…

…

84,407

45,398

19

February

…

…

75,666

32,060

32

March

…

…

70,203

31,865

49

ORDERS OF THE DAY.

  WAYS AND MEANS.
  Considered in Committee. [Progress, 4th May.]
  [Sir ROBERT YOUNG in the Chair.]

  LAND VALUES TAX.
  Question again proposed,
  "That there shall be charged for the financial year ending the thirty-first day of March, nineteen hundred and thirty-four, and for every subsequent financial year, a tax at the rats of one penny for each pound of the land value of every unit of land in Great Britain."—[Mr. P. Snowden.]
  Sir WILLIAM MITCHELL-THOMSON: We have had 48 hours to consider the scanty information which is embodied in this Resolution, and I remain of the opinion winch I farmed while I was listening to the Chancellor of the Exchequer when he introduced the Budget. The most remarkable thing is that these proposals should have been proposed at all. Only a few weeks have passed since the Chancellor of the Exchequer addressed to the country the gravest warning which probably the country has ever received. The right hon. Gentleman told us that, in his opinion, our one chance of escaping from the troubles which face us lay in the avoidance of further burdens on industry, in the practice of the most rigid economy and in the promotion by every means in our power of a return of confidence. Within a few weeks of making that statement, the right hon. Gentleman comes down to the House and propounds a scheme which imposes fresh burden" on every trade and industry in the country, which involves a large immediate expenditure without the prospect of any immediate return, which unsettles everyone to whom it will apply, and which, except for the employment of fresh tax-gatherers, will not put into employment one man, woman or child in the country. This is not taxation; it is tactics, and the country is really tired of the Government and their tactics. In our view, the country has already lost confidence in His Majesty's present advisers, and the people are only too anxious to have an opportunity of expressing their opinion in favour of a change.
  406
  I regard these proposals as a face-saving and time-wasting device; in other words, a red herring produced by the Government in order to distract the attention of the electors from the shortcomings of the Government. We regret that in this great crisis in national affairs the Government should now be proposing to waste 1931 as they have wasted 1929 and 1930, by proposing to occupy the time of Parliament with proposals which, on the confession of their authors, can produce no revenue for two years; which are, as I will try to show, unnecessary; which are ill-adapted for their professed purpose, and which are undoubtedly unsettling the trade and commerce of the country. In a word, the Government are "fiddling while Rome is burning."
  As the proposals have been tabled, I will examine them and endeavour to elucidate one or two points and make one or two general comments. Mr. Gladstone, the most illustrious of the predecessors of the Chancellor of the Exchequer used to lay down that there were certain canons of taxation to which every Chancellor should conform, and one was that the subject taxed should be clearly defined, that it should be certain in its incidence and that it should be accompanied by the definite statement of the results which are likely to accrue from its imposition. All those canons are violated by the proposals of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. They are imposed upon an imaginary abstraction and we do not know even now, and we shall not know until the Finance Bill is produced, exactly what are the imaginative proposals which we have to consider in order to arrive at this abstraction. Is it not putting the cart before the horse to ask us to agree in principle to a tax before we have been told how that tax is to be applied?
  4.0 p.m.
  We have not had the slightest forecast of the amount of revenue which the Chancellor of the Exchequer expects from these proposals. We can form some opinion, however, from our former experience. The Chancellor of the Exchequer was rather anxious—too anxious—to dissuade us from making any reference to the experience of 1909 and 1910. An hon. Member opposite, the other night said, with great truth and sincerity, that he hoped in the discussion

  407
  of these proposals we should get away from the bias and prejudice which might attach to the old struggles of 1909. But the Chancellor of the Exchequer in his opening remarks, so far from doing that, introduced bias and prejudice. We are dealing with an economic question, and in regard to all these questions we ought to approach the examination of them with new eyes, and having regard to the new conditions. Things have changed since 1909. That has always been the appeal in regard to a tariff policy made to Liberal and Labour Members; we are always trying to persuade right hon. and hon. Gentlemen that things have changed. And they have changed in regard to land just as in regard to everything else. There have been great changes in regard to the land since 1909, changes in urban and rural housing, changes in urban and rural development, changes in urban and rural rating and taxation, changes in transport, and, perhaps most noteworthy of all, changes in ownership. I am told, and I have no reason to doubt the truth of the estimate, that half the land in the country has changed hands in the last 13 years. I doubt very much whether it is an over-estimate to say that the number of landowners in the country to-day has increased by 60 per cent. over the number in 1909. In these circumstances one has to approach everything with a fresh outlook. But at the same time it would be folly on our part to ignore previous experience, just as it would be folly to ignore what are the declared objects of those who are putting forward these proposals.
  I am not going to say anything at length as to the result of our last experience, but I do say that the three land duties, the Undeveloped Land Duty, the Increment Value Duty, and the Reversion Duty, which, in the words of their distinguished author, were commended to the country as fertile taxes, as taxes that "would bring forth fruit," in fact brought forth so little fruit that they were grubbed up and thrown on the rubbish heap in 1920, with the assent of their distinguished planter. In the course of their growth they produced £1,300,000 to the Exchequer, at a cost in valuation and collection of £5,000,000 to
  408
  the Government. What it cost the taxpayer Heaven only knows.
  So much for the results. A few words now about the valuation. The Chancellor of the Exchequer said that what he called "the comparative failure" of the scheme of the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George)—that is a mild word—was due to the fact that the right hon. Gentleman attempted to tax at the same time as he was valuing. The Chancellor of the Exchequer said, "I am not going to make this mistake; I am going to complete the valuation before I start my tax." He estimates that the valuation, beginning in October, 1931, will be completed by March, 1933, a space of 18 months. I believe the right hon. Gentleman to be wholly wrong, and I say that because of the experience of the last valuation. If hon. Members who are interested will look at the report of the committee which inquired into the working of these land taxes in 1919—it was called the Land Valuation Committee—they will find evidence given by those who ought to know the facts, that is, by the Chief Valuer of the Board of Inland Revenue and by his immediate deputy. They pointed out that the valuation started in August, 1910. By the time of the outbreak of War on 31st July, 1914, only 79 per cent. of the first provisional valuations had got back into the office, and of that 79 per cent. a very large proportion, something over a quarter, had not taken their next step in the process of getting into touch with the taxpayer, that is, had not been served on the taxpayer. After July, 1914, everything slowed down, and it is not fair to make any comparison with that period.
  While the task of valuation had proceeded thus slowly the staff had multiplied like rabbits. The Valuation Department began in August, 1910, with a staff of 61. By 31st March, 1911, 10 months later, it had grown to 1,428. By 31st March, 1912, it had grown to 2,829, and at the moment when its activities were cut short on 31st July, 1914, the hierarchy consisted as follows: One chief valuer, one deputy-chief valuer, one chief valuer in Scotland, one assistant chief valuer in Scotland, 13 superinintendent valuers, one acting superintendent valuer, 120 valuers of the first class, 120 valuers of the second class, 200 valuers of the third class, and 123 clerks.

  409
  That was a total of permanent staff of 581. But of temporary staff there were 753 valuers, 1,581 valuation Assistants, 138 draughtsmen, and 2,171 clerks, making a total of temporary assistants of 4,623, or a total in all of 5,204. But that is not the end of the story. I have referred only to the headquarters' staff. In the provinces there was a large number of officers. I do not know what was the number for Scotland, as it is not stated, but in England, in addition to the 5,204, there was a number which is stated at 7,000. No wonder the valuation was costly!
  Mr. HOLFORD KNIGHT: How many million acres were they valuing?
  Sir W. MITCHELL-THOMSON: Sixty million acres. In these circumstances I suggest that the Committee can draw their own conclusions as to whether the Chancellor of the Exchequer's estimate that the valuation is likely to be completed in 18 months and is to cost from £1,000,000 to £1,500,000, is likely to be accurate. The Chancellor speaks of the general support which his proposals have received. But he rather muddles up his proposals with land values. It is quite true that in the past there has been a good deal of general support given to what is broadly known as the taxation of land values, but that is by no means identical with the Chancellor's proposals. Let us examine that aspect of the question. I think that there are a great many hon. Gentlemen in the Committee who have always felt that they supported the taxation of land values in a general way because they felt that there were two great classes of grievance from which people were suffering. The first grievance is that where the State or the local authority has spent large sums of money in making a public improvement, such as an arterial road, it is unfair that the adjacent landowners should reap the benefit of the enhanced values towards which they have contributed little or nothing.
  The second grievance is that round our large cities there are large tracts of suburban land, ripe or ripening for development, which are being held up by the owners for higher appreciation, at a time when the local authority wants them for public purposes and cannot get them except at a ransom price. These
  410
  grievances have been the motive of many in their general support of the principle of taxation of land values. If these grievances were real they would indeed be substantial grievances. But the first is only partially true, as I shall show, and the second has very little, if any, basis in fact. But for neither of these grievances is this proposal of the Chancellor an effective or appropriate remedy.
  Let me take the grievances separately. Take, first of all, the question of betterment. As a matter of fact the arterial road case is by no means the strongest case, because the Road Board has always had the power to schedule and acquire compulsorily at its then value land lying alongside the line of a proposed road for a depth of 220 yards on each side of the road. It is true that the board has not often exercised that power; I do not know whether it has exercised it at all. But the power is there, and that is an effective cure for a great part of the grievance regarding ribbon development. As regards the general principle of betterment, there is a very great deal to be said for it where you can definitely isolate the betterment and date it to a particular act by the State or a local authority. Recognition of that principle was enshrined for the first time in a general Act of Parliament by a Conservative Government in 1925. It is in the Town Planning Act.
  It is true that there is an Amendment to the Town Planning Act before a Standing Committee at the present time. The proposal to take away 100 per cent. of the enhanced value seem" to me to be rather doubtful wisdom. If you take away the whole of the enhancement in value, you will completely discourage the efforts of the speculative builder, and, whatever else may be said about him, the speculative builder has been a very good friend to the community. He has delivered the goods; he has provided the houses. He has chanced his arm. He does not always win; he does not always back the right horse. There are occasions when the speculative builder buys land and instead of betterment gets worsement.
  I do not think it is always safe to generalise too much about this question of betterment, because it is patent that there are some cases where the betterment is due not to any act of the State or of a local authority, but solely to the

  411
  enterprise of an individual. Take a case like that of Letchworth Garden City, or the case of Port Sunlight. Take even, in large part, the case of Eastbourne. In all those cases the undoubted rise in values was due, not to any act of the State or of a local authority, but to the enterprise of an individual owner. Indeed it may be a third party altogether. I remember a time when the land round part of Oxford could have been bought at agricultural value, and that land to-day commands a comparatively high price. Why? Not because of the action of the State or of the local authority, but because Sir William Morris invented the Morris-Cowley and the Morris-Oxford cars. The Chancellor says with great sententiousness, "Let us render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's," but what in effect he is suggesting is that we should render unto Caesar the things that are Pompey's.
  Nor is it always safe to say that the increase in values is of that large and, as hon. Members opposite would say, reprehensible magnitude which may be supposed. Apart from any sudden change in the value of money, which promptly produces large changes in value, there are quite a number of cases where what is called unearned increment is not really unearned increment at all, but is only deferred interest. Take the case of a man who 30 years ago bought land at £50 an acre and sells it to-day at £175 an acre. At first sight that appears to be a very large increase, the sort of increase that hon. Gentlemen opposite would say deserves a tax. But it may very well happen, and in hundreds of cases it does happen, that during all those years that man has been content to accept a very low rate of interest on his money—1 or 1½ per cent.—when he might have been getting 5 or 5½ per cent. in industrial or Colonial securities. If the case is looked at from that point of view, it will be seen that, although he gets £175 an acre for what he bought for £50 an acre, he is in the end getting, over all the period since his original investment, less than a normal rate of interest.
  Let me give another instance, a very up-to-date one. Last night I saw in the papers particulars of a case in which the Grocers' Company had got leave
  412
  from the court to draw from the court the last portion of the purchase price of an estate which they had bought with a legacy of £150 which was left to them in 1599, and the total price which they had received for the estate, including the last instalment, was £24,250. I saw a large headline: "£150 becomes £24,250," and I have no doubt that some hon. Gentlemen who saw it thought that that was a thing that they might make a note of for use in connection with these discussions. Observe, however, that if the Grocers' Company in 1599, instead of using old Peter Bloundell's £150 to buy a house and four gardens in Bishops-gate, had put it out at interest, not at 5 per cent., or 4 per cent., or even 3 per cent., but at 2 per cent., they would have had to-day more than three times £24,250.
  These are some of the points—only a few of them—which have to be remembered as general points in regard to this question of betterment, and again I repeat that this proposal of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whatever else it may be, is not an increment value duty and does not deal with these increments, and a great deal of the discussion during the Debate the other night was really wholly irrelevant to the tax proposed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. What is the use of talking about these high values in the centre of Liverpool, or London, or elsewhere? They are only relevant in so far as they are the measure of the injustice which the Chancellor of the Exchequer is proposing to inflict. The hon. Member for Central Bristol (Mr. Alpass) quoted a case where what I took to be a portion of a small frontage in Bristol had changed hands at an enormous figure, which he said was the equivalent of £350 a yard. I do not know the rights and wrongs of that particular case; I do not know how long the man who sold that property had held it, or what profit he made on the transaction; but all of that is irrelevant, because, whatever happened to him, the Chancellor's proposals are not going to affect him, but only the man who has paid full value for the property, and he is going to be told, "We will take Income Tax from you under Schedule A on the basis that you bought this property at £350 a yard; when you are dead we will take Estate Duty from your heirs on the

  413
  basis that you bought this property at £360 a yard; and, in addition to that, because you paid this high price, which is the full market value of the property, we will now put upon you a special tax over and above that." That is the measure of the injustice.
  If this were a proposal to tax future increments, it would at least be logical, however much it might be said to be contrary to public policy or, as past experience shows, to be difficult in practice. At any rate, it would then be logical, and everyone who bought would buy with fair notice. Under the present circumstances, however, to penalise the bona fide holder for value in the way that the Chancellor of the Exchequer proposes to do is both arbitrary and unjust. Nor can it be said that this proposal is really necessary in order to force undeveloped land on the market, because here again there have been the greatest of changes since 1909. In 1909 there were no powers under which local authorities could acquire land except the extremely cumbrous machinery which then existed. The price was always a matter of long negotiation and long legal wrangle. Ever since 1919, however, the Acquisition of Land Act and the provisions for compensation which have been imported into many other Acts have been available to local authorities, and they are available to them to-day; and I do not believe that in the course of these discussions one case will be brought forward in which it can truly be said that a local authority which rightfully desires to get land for public purposes is unable to do so at a fair market price. Even if there be such a case, all that the local authority has to do is to invoke the operation of these Acts, which are available on the Statute Book. If they cannot invoke the operation of these Acts, it must be because they cannot comply with the conditions of the Acts.
  I will go further, and point out to the Committee, although I do not wish to develop it now, that, so far as I can follow the operation of these proposals, they will, so far from encouraging the development of undeveloped land, actually induce a man rather to refrain from developing his land; for a man whose land is in a purely agricultural condition will retain it in that condition as long as he can, because he
  414
  knows that the minute he starts to put a road through it, the minute he starts to develop it or to do anything to make it more fit for building use, round will come the valuer, with the tax-gatherer in his train, and say to him, "Now your land has an element of building value, and we are going to tax you." If ever there was a case of proposing to tax a man on his own improvements, it is this proposal of the right hon. Gentleman. The proposal, as I have said, is neither an increment value duty nor an undeveloped land duty; it is a tax on all the land to which it applies, whether built on or not, whether developed or not, whether in the centre of the City of London or elsewhere, and its basis is that hypothetical figure which is called the land value.
  The land value is to be arrived at by taking the cultivation value away from what I may call the prairie value, and the prairie value is to be arrived at by imagining that the plot of land is stripped of everything except hedges, trees, grass and public works—not a difficult feat of imagination for the valuer. He is to come along and say, "Here is a plot of land. I have to imagine that some great cataclysm has overtaken this land, and has swept it bare of everything except the things put there by God and Nature and the county council." Having performed that operation, he has then to say, "This catastrophe has only occurred to this one single plot in Great Britain; everything else remains as it was." And not only that, but he has then to say, "This having occurred, this is the only plot of land in these conditions which is in the market in Great Britain at the moment." A whole valuation based upon assumptions like that bristles with fallacies. Let me point out only one, which arises out of the last point I have made.
  Take the case of a holding of 1,500 acres on the edge of a small town. The small town is growing at a modest rate, say 10 acres a year. That is as fast as it can grow. There is no question of holding up; the landowner is only too anxious to sell, but that is all that can be absorbed. Any competent valuer will no doubt put a selling value on these 1,500 acres, and, if he is an intelligent and imaginative valuer, he may be able to go through the process that the Government desire and arrive at the prairie

  415
  value, and so, ultimately, at the land value; but here let me pause for a moment to say that I do not think the Government have fully appreciated the fact that even the cultivation value is not going to be fixed, but that this also is going to slide from time to time. The more dumped Russian wheat that the Government let into this country, the lower the cultivation value will be, while when a saner agricultural policy is pursued the cultivation value will rise. Let us, however, imagine that the valuer can, perhaps, perform this operation. He may be able to do that, but no valuer can possibly tell you precisely which 50 acres are going to be absorbed in the next five years.
  Take another illustration. Any competent insurance accountant, by reference to his books of tables, will tell you in five minutes how many men of the age of 30 are going to be alive 20 years from now; but not all the accountants in the world can tell you whether Tom, Dick or Harry is going to be alive tomorrow. The essential fallacy is that you are valuing the whole of the remaining 1,450 acres at the same rate at which the first 50 acres are valued. A valuation based upon these assumptions is based upon a most unsound and insecure foundation. I might have added that you are valuing the other 1,450 acres on that estate, although in fact, at that rate, the last of those acres will not ripen for 150 years, and may never ripen at all. The truth is that it is now proposed to send out valuers to make at very great expense a cadastral survey of all the holdings in Great Britain, and they are to be told that they are to do this under hypothetical conditions which will only apply to one holding at a time. Any proposal for a tax which is based upon assumptions of this sort is purely arbitrary.
  When we come to the question of exemptions, even the exemptions themselves are somewhat arbitrary. I say nothing about the statutory exemptions, such as the limit of £120 of site value which the Chancellor of the Exchequer proposes to impose, because everything that I could say about that has already been much better said by the Chancellor of the Exchequer himself. If hon. Members will refer to the Chancellor's observations
  416
  in 1913, which they will see alluded to in the "Times" newspaper this morning, which are reported at length in the OFFICIAL REPORT, and which, I daresay, will be referred to in the Debates that are going to take place, they will see that he stated succinctly and clearly the reasons why, if you believe in the principle itself, it is difficult to draw the line at exceptions and to make exemptions.
  It is not to the statutory exemptions that I desire to draw the attention of the Committee, but to something that was said by the Financial Secretary to the Treasury. Apparently, in addition to statutory exemptions, there are to be permissive exemptions from valuation depending upon what the hon. Gentleman called the good judgment of those charged with the valuation. To give a discretion to the tax gatherer as to whether or not he shall proceed to start the machinery for taxation, appears to be a most remarkable principle for a Socialist Government. Three hundred years ago we were fighting the Crown in order to establish that this House alone should say what subjects were to be taxed, and how much they were to be taxed; but, at a moment when the Government are trying to get up an agitation against another place on the ground of invasion of the privileges of this House, they come down with a proposal that the question whether a subject is to be assessed to tax or not, and, indeed the question whether information is to be available upon which he may be taxed, is to be left in the discretion of His Majesty's servants. That is an entirely new proposal and if the Liberal party, who always tell us that they are the lineal successors of Pym and Hampden, will stand for that, they will stand for anything.
  May I say a word to hon. Members opposite. Some of them, no doubt, support this proposal because they really believe "Labour and the Nation" meant what it said when it declared:
  "The Labour party hold that private ownership is not in the best interests of the nation, and intend to extend the area of public ownership with the utmost rapidity."
  Or, as was much better said a good many years before by Henry George:
  "Private property in land is a bold, bare, enormous wrong."

  417
  That, apparently, is also, to some extent, the view of the Government, because the Chancellor of the Exchequer produced that remarkable phrase about asserting the right of the community to the ownership of land and went on to explain that, if they followed his proposal, it would make the ownership of land uncomfortable, and all through the Debate on Monday we had speech after speech hailing this as the first step, and urging the Government to go on taking succeeding steps up to 2d., 3d. and so on till you reach 1s. or 1s. 3d., at which point you take the whole value. May I draw attention to a very interesting dialogue that took place between my Noble Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (Lord Erskine) and the hon. Member for Burslem (Mr. MacLaren)? Unfortunately, it took place when the Committee was rather sparsely attended, but it deserves a wider publicity than it has had. This is what was said:
  "This is a method, not of imposing an equitable tax, but of confiscating the land, making it worth nothing and then national-ising it.
  Mr. MACLAREN: Hear, hear!
  Lord ERSKINE: Then why not say so?
  Mr. MACLAREN: I do say so."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 4th May, 1931; col. 90, Vol. 252.]
  The hon. Member says so, and many of his hon. Friends say so. As far a" I can gather, the Government 6ay so. What do the Liberal party say? Here is a proposal which is recommended and welcomed because it is declared to be the first step towards nationalisation, and a long step. The Liberal party have to make up their mind when they go into the Lobby, and I invite the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) especially to reply on this point when he speaks. There is no doubt either that a penny in the £ will make landowners, great and small, very uncomfortable, because, although a penny in the £ sounds a bagatelle—only a copper, as the right hon. Gentleman used to say—it is an annual charge and, if you take it at 5 per cent., it represents 1s. 8d. in the £ on the annual increment, or, if you take it free of Income Tax, as you ought to do, at 4 per cent., it represents 2s. 1d. in the £.
  Let me point to another aspect of these proposals. For a generation it has been the aim of housing reformers to extend
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  light and air, to get the people away from congested areas in the cities out to the suburbs, and to encourage in the suburbs the garden type of house. Are you going to encourage the garden type of house by these proposals? Many of them you are going to tax and some you will tax out of existence. It is not only gardens but golf courses, bowling greens, tennis courts, playing fields, allotments if they are owned privately, almost every factory in the country, a large number of shops and offices, banks, warehouses, even builders' yards and yards used for stacking timber for seasoning to build houses. Do you think you are going to stimulate housing by these proposals? The experience of the last experiment ought to let the House know what the effect on housing is likely to be. You had inquiry after inquiry. You had Commission after Commission, including the right hon. Gentleman's own inquiry and his own Commission, which all arrived at the same conclusion, that is was largely the operation of these duties which killed housing by private enterprise stone dead. When the Chancellor of the Exchequer speaks about the general support which his proposals have received from municipalities in the past, I reply that a large part of this support was given when these proposals were still in the air and before they had ever had any practical experience of the operation of any of the land taxes.
  But what have the municipalities to say about the operation of the right hon. Gentleman's land taxes? On the 28th July, 1917, the Local Government Board sent a circular round to local authorities to know what their opinion was as to the effect on housing of the land value duties. There was not a single local authority that had a good word to say for the proposal. A large number condemned them, and a large number of municipal corporations, including Epsom, Carmarthen, Chester, Crewe, Hull, Lewisham, Wandsworth, Wallsend, York, and 48 rural and urban district councils, passed an identical Resolution asking the Government to repeal Part I of the 1910 Act at the earliest possible moment. In these circumstances, so far as the effect on housing is concerned, I believe the effect of the present proposals is likely to be damaging, and that if they were ever put into operation they would

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  be catastrophic. The truth is that this is not a genuine attempt to tackle the problem of betterment. It is not a genuine attempt to deal with the development of undeveloped land. It is a fresh direct tax upon hundreds of thousands of small people. It is a fresh addition to the cost of housing.
  It may have been designed—very probably it was—with the idea that it would harass one particular class, but it will oppress and harass every class in the community. The Chancellor may have aimed at the leading bird. What he has done is to brown the whole covey. The Government are deluding hon. Members behind them—I have given my reasons for thinking so—when they tell them that the valuation can be easily, quickly and cheaply accomplished in 18 months. If they get it done in four years, they will have done more than twice as well as the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs. There may have been some hon. Members opposite who thought they were setting out to redress the grievances of which I have spoken. There have been other hon. Members who thought they were setting out "to do the dukes down." The Government have let their followers down. They have sold them a pup. They have tabled a scheme which will impose a new direct fresh tax upon every factory, every shop, every trade and industry, and upon hundreds of thousands of small houses, and it will be directly reflected in almost every rent that is paid. Let the Government go on with their proposals. Let them see them through. You will get what is coming to you from the electorate. If after two years of the most profound cogitation you can only produce this as an alternative to a tariff against a foreigner, you can go right now and buy your mourning bands for the corpse of Free Trade.
  Mr. MacLAREN: I am sure the right hon. Baronet has been very thoroughly enjoying himself. Let me take his final note, which was that this was an alternative to taxing the foreigner and keeping him out. My reply to that—and it will be the reply of my colleagues on these benches—is that, if an election takes place at any time, we will ask the voters whether they are in favour of taxing food or taxing land values. It is
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  interesting to note that the right hon. Baronet allowed the truth to escape occasionally. He said that, if foreign food came in, the price of agricultural land would fall but, if you had a tariff to keep it out, the value would go up. But who is getting it? Now you will understand why there is an alliance between Protection and land monopoly, and why there is a close connection in the reasoning which leads me to believe that there are two substantial pillars upon which any State must stand. The first is Free Trade and the other free production, free exchange between nations; no barriers between labour and the right to use the land. Another interesting thing is this: The right hon. Baronet tried to draw the harrow over our nerves about the poor man who might have invested money with a view to obtaining an annual return, and another who put his money into land and did not exact from the community high interest.
  That is an interesting psychological feature of the Conservative way of reasoning. They will persist in mixing money invested in the production of wealth—money put into industry to produce wealth—and money spent to buy the right to keep your fellow man from using a piece of land. A man buys a good site and keeps it until the community wants the land, and then he takes the whole value of his patience. I cannot imagine how any man can stand in the House at this time of day, address an intelligent audience and mix up the two things, the investment of money in the production of wealth and buying a right of control over the land and the right to exact from his fellow man a full toll if he wants to use it. How he thinks he is going to capture votes by that reasoning and put the Labour party out of office, I do not know. He says that things have changed since 1909. They have. I remember those days, because as long as I can remember I have been a single-taxer. Many men in this House have wandered through various phases of political ideas and theories, but I am still the same. Land values taxation was then, and still is, my chief interest. I can well remember 1909, when you had only to mention the taxation of land values to arouse a thousand devils of opposition against you. Who would have thought that hon. Members opposite, in fairness to themselves to-day, cannot

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  argue against the hard facts facing them in everyday life? Who would have thought that the Leader of the Conservative party in the House of Commons would have said that the same fact is facing them in the development of the arterial roads, and that they notice that corporations who want to extend and make their towns better are up against the gentlemen who have been "investing" in land and looking well ahead? These gentlemen are not investing money in an industry, but are levying their toll upon local authorities. These things are not arguable. They are self-evident to any hon. Member, it matters not to which party he belongs. I would rather the change had taken place as the result of a process of reasoning, and of deduction from unchallengeable premises. Would to God men would reason, and not be driven into acceptance of principle by the force of hard economic circumstances! Those who are opposed to us have had to wait till they were driven by sheer experience.
  Let me come to what the proposition is that the Government are trying to put forward. What is behind the idea outlined in the speech of the Chancellor of the Exchequer? Constantly throughout the speeches that have been made in this Committee one hears reiterated the statement that these are to be taxes upon land. Will the Committee forgive me if I say that that is not so? The whole idea behind the taxation of land value is that we are anxious to remove taxation from off industry and off the food of the people, and that we are anxious to remove rates from off the houses of the people—rates that are making housing impossible. We are anxious to take the brake off industry, and to call upon ground rent to pay its toll. This is not taxation upon industry, but it is taxation upon rent or land values.
  Who creates the land value? We have heard to-day that sometimes private individuals create it. We lay it down as an unchallengeable proposition—for we challenge anyone to take it up and meet it—that the value of land is created not by any individuals, but by the action and requirements of the community at large. It is a value that you cannot say belongs to A or B. You cannot cut it into pieces and parcel it out and say: "This piece of land value belongs to A
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  and that to B." It is an indivisible entity. Land value is the economic expression of the demand of the community to use certain pieces of land. With regard to the idea that any private individual can create land values, we are told to look at Letchworth, at what Sir William Morris is doing at Oxford, and to look at Bournville. The reply to that is easy, very easy indeed. If any private individual believes that he can create, by his own individual effort, communal value in land, then why does he not go to the Sahara Desert? Why does he not go to the top of Ben Nevis?
  I will put it this way. The value of any improvement created by an individual is determined by the value of the site in which he places it. No man would be mad enough to go to the Sahara Desert, and I knew that hon. Gentlemen opposite would resent my proposition. On the face of it, it is laughable. The reason why Sir William Morris goes to Oxford, or someone goes to Bournville or Letchworth, is that there is a communal demand for the use of that site for certain purposes. [HON. MEMBERS: "No!"] I am speaking entirely of land values. At the outset we are anxious to segregate and keep apart the value produced by labour, organisation and brains, from that value which is indivisible, and which is caused by and due to the presence of the demand of a community round about a given area. Go to the centre of any large city. Is it not a fact that business men prefer to invest a considerable amount of capital in rearing great improvements in the heart of your cities? Why? Because the value of the site requires such an improvement. The value of the improvement is an expression of the value of the site upon which it stands. To say that individuals create a land value by going here or there or elsewhere, is not true to facts. The value of the land will determine the operations of industry on that particular site, and the land value belongs by right to the community.
  The whole process of modern taxation has to be challenged, either to-day or at some future date. We listen to Debates upon Budget after Budget and to hon. Members objecting to new imposts because they will hinder the development of industry. At the present moment there are currents of thought

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  running throughout the country, one of which says that direct taxation has come to the point of diminishing returns. What is the alternative? If you will not have any more direct taxation, under the present canons of taxation, it can only mean that you are asking for more indirect taxation, which means reducing the wages of the working class, and means an attack upon the standard of living of the people. All the canons of our modern system of taxation stand condemned.
  The Chancellor of the Exchequer the other day, rose in his place to give a warning speech to the nation. It was interesting to watch the faces of hon. Members on the other side. They know that taxation is inevitable. More taxation is required. If they will not listen to those of us who say, "Stop putting this dead-weight upon the industry of the nation and indirectly upon the necessaries of the people," they must traverse the suicidal road of continuing to tax industry. There is no escape from it. I am sure that the more the public of this country, I mean the working people, become conscious of the ways of this House, the more they will come to see the devilry of indirect taxation and how it operates against them. If, as the result of a strike or a lock-out, they get one farthing more an hour, they may claim a great trade union victory. But a Chancellor of the Exchequer, on a quiet night, standing at that Box, may increase indirect taxation and take their advantage from them. When the working-class people know that there is a dead set being made for no more direct taxation but for more indirect taxation, I can assure hon. Gentlemen opposite that we shall not fear at any moment going to the country on the taxation of land values. There are only two ways: Either that you shall turn the weapon of taxation upon the value of the land, or that you shall continue on the ruinous road from which you cannot turn unless you have an alternative basis on which to levy your taxation.
  Take local rating for a moment—because it is correlated with national taxation. We heard the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Croydon (Sir W. Mitchell-Thomson) say that the present taxation system has
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  ruined housing. It would not be fair if I were to reiterate the story often told in this House of how our present system of housing in the local areas is directly attributable to the suicidal form of rating in those areas. I cannot illustrate the point better than with a parable that used to be told in 1913 by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George). He said in a memorable speech in Middlesbrough:
  "You can imagine for a moment that I am an assessor "—
  No doubt the town would quake at that—
  "operating under the modern rating system and that when I go outside Leeds, to the moors, I come across the owner of the moors. I say to him 'What are you doing with this land?' 'Oh,' he says, 'I am just holding it up for so many years' purchase, because the Leeds Corporation want it for a reservoir for the Corporation.' And I, as assessor, say, 'Give me your hand. I suppose you want that money for that land because it is disturbing your pheasants.'"
  HON. MEMBERS: Grouse!
  Mr. MacLAREN: Oh, grouse is it? You see, I am not accustomed to shooting. Make it "disturbing your 'pheasants,'" or your "grouse," whichever you like. I would rather that hon. Members paid attention to the point of the story than to the details. The assessor was saying:
  "Such men as you make the country rich.
  Coming down the road I then meet a certain manufacturer in the town who has improved his factory. He has made it more spacious and more comfortable for the workers. I go along and I say: 'Have you improved this factory? '—
  That was before the De-rating Act!
  "When he says he has, I make a new valuation, and levy an increased rate on the man because he has improved his factory.
  Then I meet a man who has put a bathroom into his house. I say: 'Have you put a bathroom into your house?' 'Yes,' he replies, 'Well,' I say, 'there is another couple of pounds on your rate for daring to do so. Do not let me hear of your doing it again!'
  Then I go down to the slums, and when I meet the owner of the slums I say to him: 'Have you improved the property since I was here five years ago? 'He replies, 'No, Sir!' So I say: 'Well done, thou good and faithful servant. Go down to the rating office, and ask them to reduce your rates 12s. 6d. in the £.' "

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  The right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs, after giving that parable in 1913, said:
  "Do you think I am caricaturing? That is the rating system."
  If you build houses, you are rated and penalised for doing so. Leave the land vacant, and under the administration of the late Government you pay no rates at all. Then you wonder why we have a housing problem.
  So much for the viciousness of local rates. [Interruption.] I would say this directly to the Noble Lady the hon. Member for the Sutton Division of Plymouth (Viscountess Astor). She is extremely anxious, and I recognise that, within the ambit of her reasoning on these matters, she has done extremely able work. She devotes much time to hospital work, and to the sort of casualty work which mankind stands in need of. I would say to her, and to those who are opposed to us on this matter: "How much of the disease which you are trying, in your humanitarian way, to remove, is directly attributable to the bad results of housing due to the rating system of this country? "
  5.0 p.m.
  Viscountess ASTOR: I do no hospital work at all. The things in which I am personally interested are open-air nursery schools, housing, temperance and education. I do not believe in dealing with things after they are done. I want to go to the roots.
  Mr. MacLAREN: I would not misrepresent the Noble Lady. I noticed once or twice while I was speaking that she seemed to resent my saying what I said.
  Viscountess ASTOR: Oh, not at all!
  Mr. MacLAREN: I thought that she was particularly interested in those enterprises. I have noticed in this House how extremely anxious and enthusiastic she always is in getting the Ministry of Health to support such enterprises.
  Viscountess ASTOR: Yes.
  Mr. MacLAREN: I would ask the Noble Lady to notice what I have said, that millions of public money are spent and millions of taxation levied upon the industries of this country in order to try to cure diseases which are constantly perpetuated
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  by the housing system of this country, and directly attributable to the vicious local rating system. I will take Stoke-on-Trent, which I represent in this House. There we can build a house of three rooms, a kitchen and a bathroom, for 10s. a week, but when we levy our rates upon it, the sum jumps to 19s. 6d. a week, and we cannot let it unless at an uneconomic rent.
  I suppose that for a very long time men will be emotional and sentimental. They will shed sad tears when they see men moving down the centre of the stream. They will devise many well-intentioned schemes to pull those fellows out of the stream, but they will never think of going up the stream to see who threw them in. With regard to the whole system of land holdings, the contrast has become clearer by virtue of modern or recent administration and the passing of Acts by this House. There was a time when you were able to go to a country district and ask the owner of land, "How much do you want for this land?" after which you were able to make a comparison between the amount and that at which he was rated by the local rating authority. There was a time when I could go outside Glasgow and ask landowners what was the figure at which they were rated. Sometimes they refused to say, but we had a very accommodating man at the municipal offices who would tell us. We could find land rated at half-a-crown an acre, but when we wanted that land for housing, it reached a sum of £600 and sometimes £1,000 an acre. I do not receive a shock when a landowner tells me—as landowners have told me before now—that he wants £800 an acre for his land. The other day I asked a landowner just outside the Potteries why the land there was worth £800 an acre, and he said, "Well, it gets the air from Buxton Moor." I said, "Can you tell me anything which the landlord has done to make it worth £800 an acre? "I said, "Who sent the air? You?" He then said, "It is on the sunny side of the hill." I said, "Who sent the sun?" I asked him to tell me something that the owner of the land had done which put him in a position to ask from the local authority £800 an acre, and he could not. Nor can any landowner. We are only saying that if the land is worth £800 an acre or £1,000 an acre, or, as in the

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  London area, £3,000,000 an acre, then that is the data upon which we are going to operate, and we are going to abolish the old, vicious data which gave a false value for rating and taxation. We are going to take the market value as the basis.
  The right hon. Gentleman opposite said that the valuation is going to be costly. I know it is. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs and I know a good deal about this. In the past he was in the forefront of the battle; I was somewhere behind! We wanted a valuation. I and my colleagues protested in Glasgow and elsewhere against the procedure of the right hon. Gentleman in going in for his form of valuation at the time. I knew that it would be costly and not easy to work, that partly trained men would have to go into difficult propositions in order to make balances and adjustments, and that it would give much cause for litigation. We knew that. But the right hon. Gentleman was not the sole driver in the cart at that time. He had a little coterie behind him who represented the vested interests, which were holding him back. He had to make concessions, and the valuation was costly and almost futile. Is that agreed? If the right hon. Gentleman who has made so much of the costliness of the valuation to-day will be good enough to get up in his place and reply to this challenge, I shall welcome him. If the valuation is costly, long drawn out and, like a snowball, gathers and gathers as it proceeds in its accumulation of bureaucratic officialdom, if the right hon. Gentleman rejects the proposal, will he accept the landlord's valuation this year?
  I should be willing for my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer to scrap valuation to-morrow on the grounds of expense and long and protracted litigation, if the Opposition would be willing to accept this proposition, namely, that we ask the landowners of England and Scotland to state the value of their land, with this little proviso, that if they make a statement the amount will be taken both in respect of Probate Duty and of sale. Will the right hon. Gentleman accept that? Will anyone accept it? Silence! If valuation is to be carried through and the landowners
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  are not willing to fall in with my suggestion, it is thrown upon the State to carry through the valuation alone.
  Apart altogether from what one may feel on this matter, it would be sublime arrogance on my part to make out that land valuation is an easy job. It is full of complexities. It is full of difficulties. When the commission has been formed, there must of necessity be quite a number of that commission who have never done this kind of valuation before, and in the very nature of the case there are bound to be difficulties and traps and any amount of opportunities for litigation to arise. As I say, there is no alternative before us but to accept governmental valuation. I wish with all my heart—and my right hon. Friend knows it—that we could have expedited valuation and used to some extent that part of the previous valuation which was carried through by the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs from 1910 to 1915. But perhaps the Chancellor of the Exchequer may have some views upon this matter, and it is better that I should keep clear of it until he comes to the more meticulous details of the proposition which he has in mind.
  During the course of the Debate many references have been made to the Budget of 1909–10. I want to deal with them for a moment. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham (Sir A. Chamberlain) got up in his place either the day before the Budget statement was made or just after it was made, and asked how much it had cost to carry through the valuation of 1909–10, and what had been the sum total of the taxes secured. I want to assure the right hon. Gentleman, and the right hon. Member for South Croydon, that there is really nothing in that point at all. I think that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs will admit that the only tax in his Budget which was in any way a land tax was the undeveloped land unit. The other taxes were not in any way a direct levy upon the site value of land at all. There were four taxes brought in—the Increment Duty, the Reversion Duty, the Mineral Rights Duty and the Undeveloped Land Duty. He had to bring in these taxes in order to get a concurrent valuation carried through at the time.

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  I am not concerned with the cost of valuation, provided that it is carried through effectively, because it will be a final and a splendid structure which has caused much attention and labour in the laying of its foundation. This initial valuation will be a new Dooms day Book, and although it may cost much in its initial stages in regard to collection, hon. Members have no right whatever to make comparisons between the income of the tax derived from an impost of land taxation and the initial cost of valuation. The initial cost of valuation will be enormous, but if the subsequent valuations come speedily and are not too far away, one from the other, there is no reason why the subsequent valuations based on the primary or first valuation should not run as easily as clockwork, and cost the State little or nothing at all. Therefore there is really nothing in the argument about the £5,000,000 for the cost of collection, which, I dare say, hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite will trot about the country. There is nothing in it at all. It is only £5,000,000—[Interruption.] Yes, hon. Gentlemen opposite know that the subsequent valuations will cost us little or nothing. But the income from a tax on land values based upon them will far outbalance the cost they will incur. They know that, hence this rooted opposition to the first valuation.
  Before I leave the Budget of 1909–10, I wish to say that the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs was not a free agent, although many a time I used to think that with his power over his party in those days he could very often have checked the intimidating influences behind him. When the courts through their legal decisions made the Budget taxes unworkable, promises were given by the Liberal party in those days that in subsequent Finance Bills these things would be rectified, but they were never carried through. [An HON. MEMBER: "The War intervened!"] The War intervened, and we know what happened. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Croydon said—and this is very important—" You will go to the landowner and you will say to him, 'Despite the fact that you bought the land at its statutory value, despite also the fact that you are going to be taxed under Schedule A, we are going to put
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  another impost upon you.'" I want to remind him of this fact—it must have escaped his memory—that it was agreed that if anything was paid by any landowner in respect of his land under Schedule A, he would be relieved to the extent of an equivalent amount if a land tax was imposed upon him.
  I do not know what the Chancellor of the Exchequer thinks about this, but in the past, when faced with the same problem, we made an agreement that the landowners should not be taxed twice and that under Schedule A they should get remissions of the amount charged upon land taxation. I am sorry that I am taking so long, but I think it will be agreed that I seem to be rather obsessed with the whole question. In fact the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Marjoribanks) paid me a great compliment the other day when he called me a fanatic. It is very interesting to be called a fanatic or a crank, it has advantages. I remember on one occasion Mr. Speaker was going to rule me out of order because he thought I was going to use a certain phrase. But I assured him I did not need to mention it, because the whole House knew what I meant, and therefore he could not rule me out of order.
  The proposals laid before the House differ from the Budget proposals of 1909–10 in this respect, that they are more direct, more simple, and they are the greatest advance that I have ever known in this or any other country in attempting to remove taxation from industry and to begin imposing some taxation on land values. I want to congratulate the Chancellor of the Exchequer on one thing. In the valuation proposals of 1909–10 the valuations were more or less private and secret. You could not find out the valuation unless you were a solicitor or an interested party. The Chancellor of the Exchequer has taken the bold course; a course justified by practice in other countries, and that is that after the valuation has been made it shall be open to the light of inspection, so that one person can compare the value of his site with the value of another. The open inspection of sites valuations brings about speedy valuations.
  In New York they have a unique system. The blocks are marked in charts.

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  You can go into the City Hall and see the blocks of New York marked out on the chart. Every landowner in New York knows that he has a land tax to pay. No notices are issued, but the landowner knows that his block stands charged with a land tax and that he can go to the City Hall and consult the chart. The chart shows the amount of land tax that he has to pay. If he does not pay the land tax within the given time, anyone can go off the street in New York and by payment of the land tax take a lien on the plot, and he has a first charge on the plot until the rate, with interest, has been paid. Publicity of valuation causes expeditious valuation, keeps the valuation up to date, and removes causes of suspicion between one landowner and another. That is a good thing. There is one thing about the speech of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer which I regret. I understand that minerals are to be exempted. I regret that more than I can say, because minerals have an enormous value. I hope that the definition of minerals will be so defined as not to include surface land.
  The CHAIRMAN: The hon. Member cannot raise that matter on the Financial Resolution.
  Mr. MacLAREN: I would have liked all these things to have been included, but if there are to be certain concessions made, I hope that the definition Clause will be so drawn that no escapes will be possible. I thank the House for the patience and toleration that they have shown for one who feels deeply on this matter. I only wish the right hon. Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill) had been in his place, because I would have liked to bring before his notice a little classic, which I am sure he would have liked to hear when I brought it to his memory. The right hon. Gentleman is a master of language, of simile and of dexterous, flashing, brilliant eloquence. He knows much more than I do the value and the weight of words. He knows how so to use his words that they fly directly to the spot that he means them to reach. As a master of language, I will quote his words. This is what he said at Drury Lane Theatre on 20th April, 1907. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh!"] Yes. The Church-illian mind goes like the hands of a clock,
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  ever moving from point to point. I am from this particular 1907 point. This is what he said:
  "We have to face all the resources of a great monopoly so ancient that it has become almost venerable. We have against us all the modern money power. We have to deal with the apathy and levity of all sections of the public. We have against us tie political machinery of class and privilege represented by the Second Chamber in the State. There are only two ways in which people can acquire wealth. There is production and there is plunder."
  I have never used that word—
  "Production is always beneficial. Plunder is always pernicious, and its proceeds are either monopolised by a few or consumed in the mere struggle for possession. We are here to range definitely on the side of production, and to eliminate plunder as an element in our social system. The present land system hampers, hobbles and restricts industry. They, the landlords, were resolved if they could to prevent any class from steadily absorbing under the shelter of the law the wealth in the creation of which they had borne no share, wealth which belonged not to them but to the community, wealth which they could only secure by vexatious obstruction of social and economic progress, far more injurious and wasteful than could be measured by their inordinate gains."
  How the whirligig of time brings changes! Who would have thought that the author of those words was the right hon. Gentleman who tried to save the Conservative party by bringing in that fatuous futility called de-rating?
  Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: This is my hon. Friend's happy day. When these occasions arise, too often there is a feeling of disillusionment, but I am very glad to find that in the case of my hon. Friend the Member for Burslem (Mr. MacLaren) he is very happy. I congratulate him upon seeing the coming accomplishment of a great many years of hard work in converting public opinion to the acceptance of this idea, the taxation of land values. We have heard this afternoon from the right hon. Member for South Croydon (Sir W. Mitchell-Thomson) a notable speech, and it gives me very great pleasure to congratulate him upon it as a Parliamentary performance. I will not say that I did not agree with a single sentence, because there were a few sentences with which I did agree. That makes me an impartial judge of his speech as a performance. It was a case very powerfully

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  presented and marshalled. There is an advantage in that, because it enables those of us who take a different view to hear, powerfully presented, the worst that there is to be said against these taxes.
  The right hon. Gentleman left us in no doubt as to the attitude of the Conservative party in regard to these taxes. The right hon. Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill) has arrived about 10 minutes too late. He might have heard a very brilliant passage of oratory, which I have no doubt he will have many other opportunities of hearing, in support of this particular form of taxation. Until the right hon. Member for South Croydon spoke, I think there was some doubt as to the attitude of the right hon. Gentlemen sitting alongside him and hon. Members behind him. I heard part of the Debate on Monday and I read it all. I was not quite sure at the end of that perusal whether the Conservative party mean to fight these taxes. There were bitter memories of 1909–10 as the result of the conflict at that time. How bitter those memories are one can learn from the way that the references to that conflict are greeted after a period of 20 years have elapsed. I think the right hon. Gentleman certainly means to fight these taxes root and branch. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear!"] The cheer was very much more vigorous in 1909. There was a greater air of conviction about them in those days. One would like to know, because unless the principle is challenged, these two days' Debates are wasted.
  It is no use discussing the details of a Bill which has not appeared. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear!"] Well, they cannot appear until a Financial Resolution of the House of Commons has been passed. There was the same experience in 1909, and the Conservative party on that occasion realised how futile it was to go on discussing the proposition and asking questions upon matters of detail which would be solved the moment the Bill appeared. [HON. MEMBERS: "Solved? "] It was solved in the sense that anyone would know when the Bill was printed what the proposals of the Government were. To ask questions on a Resolution of this kind with regard to what is going to be included in the Bill, is just as much waste of time now as the
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  Conservative party realised it was in 1909. If there is to be a challenge of the principle, then this is practically a Second Reading Debate upon the question whether we ought to tax site values or not.
  I am going to deal with the points presented by the right hon. Gentleman. I will take the objections which he raised. He said: "I object because of the staff you have to create, and the cost to the country." I believe he is a supporter of tariffs. Has he ever put that question to himself with regard to tariffs? Has he ever asked himself about the staff that has to be created for tariff purposes? Let him look at the increase of the Customs House staff which has been the result of the very few tariffs that have been created. With regard to the tariff on motors, silk and a few other things there has been a very considerable increase in the staff. That has been due entirely to a very few tariffs. Has it ever occurred to the right hon. Gentleman what will happen when every commodity, every article which is imported into this country is subject to a duty, with exemptions, drawbacks, grades, shades, scales, all kinds of commodities being in one scale at a certain point, and in another scale at another point? The number who would be employed in regard to tariffs would not be the few thousands about which the right hon. Gentleman complained, amidst the resounding cheers of hon. Members behind him, but would number scores of thousands if a tariff was enforced in this country.
  The right hon. Member naturally objects to it here because he objects to the tax, but that is a very different thing to objecting to a tax because it creates a staff. If it is a duty of which he approves he is quite willing to go much further with regard to the cost of administration. He was a member of the last Administration which brought in a Bill for revaluation. I do not say whether it was a good or bad Bill, I really forget the adjective I used; and for the purpose of this argument it does not matter. If the valuation was a good one the cost was justified, if the valuation was not necessary the cost was not justified. But the cost was enormous, and if the right hon. Gentleman will make inquiries in the counties and the towns and cities he will find that the expenditure was very

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  considerable. It ran into millions, and I should be surprised if before the end it will not cost almost as much as the one he is denouncing. The point is not whether you should create a staff—al though there is of course a limit as to the cost—but whether the tax is a good one or is not. The other consideration is more or less irrelevant.
  There has been a good deal of denunciation of this valuation, and as I was responsible for the legislation which inaugurated it I should like to say a few words upon it. These taxes were abolished in 1920, but it was part of the arrangement made at that time that if the taxes were abolished the valuation was to remain; and I shall have something to say about the way in which that pact was broken. The right hon. Member for West Birmingham (Sir A. Chamberlain) was Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time when the taxes were abolished and in his Budget statement he said:
  "But whilst we propose to terminate the duty, we attach great importance to the existence of a State valuation of all the land and buildings of the United Kingdom based upon an up-to-date system of values, which would be available for the information of the Government and, within proper limits, of other public authorities, and which might be utilised in connection with any taxation proposals of the future or with a reform of rating."
  Then there are some words which are still more significant, and I ask hon. Members who say that that valuation was £5,000,000 thrown away to listen to these words. The right hon. Gentleman was speaking then not merely on his own behalf but on behalf of most right hon. Members sitting on the Front Opposition Bench. I was not in the House at the time; I was away.
  "In our view it is essential that there should be a thoroughly equipped and skilled State Valuation Department whose services would be available for the use of the Government."
  Then Mr. Kennedy Jones, who was Conservative Member for Hornsey, interrupted and said, "Why not sack the lot?" to which the right hon. Gentleman replied:
  "I will tell hon. Members why not—because we should lose a great deal more money than we should save. We are confirmed in the view of the necessity for the continuance of this Department by the
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  great assistance which has been afforded by the Valuation Staff during the War in the requisitioning of land for War purposes, and by the proved worth of their services in connection with the acquisition of land for public purposes, such as housing and land settlement, as to which the Government has taken further large financial responsibilities. Apart from their revenue functions in connection with Death Duties, the Valuation Department will render such assistance to other Government Departments as occasion may require. For this purpose it is essential that the system under which particulars of sales and leases of land are reported to the Inland Revenue should be continued in order that the Department may be in possession of the fullest information."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 19th April, 1920; col. 85, Vol. 128.]
  I am not at all sure that the right hon. Member for South Croydon was not in the Government at that time. I believe he was. At any rate, the Leader of the Opposition was in the Government and, indeed, most right hon. Members on the Front Opposition Bench were in the Government at that time, and on this glowing defence of the valuation set up by the 1910 Bill I am perfectly satisfied to rest its defence. Then comes the question of time. The right hon. Gentleman said that it took four years. I take his figures, because I have no doubt that he has examined the matter. When I interrupted it was not to challenge him, but to know how far it had gone by 1914, and I understand that it was 79 per cent. that had been completed.
  Sir W. MITCHELL-THOMSON: Yes, 79 per cent.
  Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: I am not at all surprised. Why? It is one of those cases which I have always urged the Chancellor of the Exchequer to take as a warning. If anyone will take the trouble to look at the Act of 1910 he will know why it took all that time. I am not referring merely to the difficulties I had to get the Bill through, though with my critics in front of me and critics behind me it was a difficult thing to get a Bill at all, and I was much more concerned with getting a valuation than I was about the actual amount of the duty. The Bill was fought in this House for months. The right hon. Member for West Birmingham and I confronted each other day after day and when I looked across at him at 6 o'clock in the mornings I wondered whether I was looking as pale as he did. We hardly ever separated

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  until one or two o'clock in the morning—and this fight went on from April until December. There has never been a Bill that has taken so long or that has drawn so much on the physical and nerve resources of those engaged in it. I am proud of the fact that while the right hon. Member for West Birmingham and I fought each other night after night neither of us ever lost his temper.
  In order to get the Bill through under those conditions concessions had to be made, sometimes to those behind me, certainly to those in front of me, if we were to make any progress. We were able to expedite proceedings a little by the Kangaroo, which was invented at that time, and anybody looking at that Bill will see such a schedule of exemptions, restrictions, reductions, and limitations—I will not say that it surpasses the wit of man to interpret them because a very able Department was set up—that it was bound to take time. I gave in; I was far too meek. But I have great confidence in the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and it is upon that that I base my confidence that the valuation will not take too long. There is only one way to get a valuation, and that is by having a simple and direct principle of valuation.
  It may interest the right hon. Member for West Birmingham to know that I have not seen the Bill. [An HON. MEMBER: "Why not?"] That is another question; but if the right hon. Gentleman is under the impression that I have some information which he does not possess, which I am in a position to convey to him, I have not. [Interruption.] I assure the Noble Lady the Member for Sutton (Viscountess Astor) on my word of honour that I have not. May I commend to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he has not already determined on the draft of his Bill, the Bill which was introduced by the right hon. and learned Member for Spen Valley (Sir J. Simon) in 1924? It is a Bill for the Rating of Land Values (No. 2) Bill. He will find there a very simple very direct, and a very unequivocal definition of land values which is to be the basis of taxation. I earnestly commend the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Attorney-General, who I have no doubt will be engaged in the
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  drafting of this Measure, to spend a few minutes in studying the draft of the definition of land values suggested by the right hon. and learned Member for Spen Valley as the basis of valuation.
  A good deal has been said about the failure of the 1909–10 Act. Will the House extend to me its indulgence? I have never before, either here or elsewhere, occupied any time by defending it. The reason is very simple. In the course of a prolonged political life you leave a very extended front for defence. You are liable to be attacked here, and attacked there, and if you begin to defend yourself against every attack on what you did in nineteen hundred and this, and eighteen hundred and that—because I go back to the eighteen hundreds—then you will have no time for the real controversies of the hour. Therefore I cannot undertake to defend every sector of so long a front, especially as up to the present—if hon. Gentlemen will not mind my saying so—I have been too much bombarded by what used to be known as "pip squeaks." The bombardment is now by heavy artillery—by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Croydon. Now that I am getting a real heavy bombardment in this Debate I am bound to answer and to counter-attack. May I say another thing? The duties of 1909, I can see from the course of these Debates, have become a definite matter of urgent public importance for the first time since their abolition, and therefore I am bound to defend them.
  It will be asked why were these taxes abolished, and why did they, according to the statements which have been made, not realise the estimate? I take first the Reversion Duty. The Reversion Duty was in a sense a Death Duty on leases and as hon. Members know there was not very much time for reversions to come in. There were no great reversions. Therefore there was nothing of value. It was, admittedly, an occasional duty and it depended upon the lapse of leases of very great value and nothing of that kind came in. When we come to Mineral Rights Duty that was converted into a royalty charge and produced a very substantial sum. But take the other two because they are relevant. Take, if you like, the Increment Duty. It was the only

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  duty which could be said to give any prospect of a very considerable sum in the future. But I never said that it was going to produce anything of substance for some years. The datum line was the date of the valuation. The right hon. Gentleman himself has said that the valuation, for the reasons which have been given, did not come into operation in the country and when the War came these things did not count. There was not much buying and selling then and, as far as the Increment Duty is concerned, it never really had an opportunity of beginning.
  Now I come to the Undeveloped Land Duty. I never had a high estimate there. I never gave a high estimate of the return. It was only a halfpenny tax at the best and I never estimated a big return but during the passage of the Bill through the House of Commons it was cut up by exemptions and reservations and postponements until the amount which I had estimated became at the end a very small amount and I realised that its only value was that it provided a basis for valuation. That was how I regarded it. The right hon. Gentleman said that I had had to grub up my fruit trees. I will tell him why. It was because they were too severely pruned and that is a lesson to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Anybody who knows anything about fruit-growing knows that you can see at once which buds are the fruit buds. Unfortunately the knife cut too many of the fruit buds. I advise the right hon. Gentleman to guard against that possibility, to keep his eye on that, and not to allow those buds to be cut, otherwise he will get no return either.
  I come to another question with regard to the valuation. The valuation, in consequence of all these very complicated exemptions, led to a good deal of litigation, but it is no use talking of these taxes as if they were the only taxes that led to litigation. There has never been a tax yet which has not led to litigation. Consult any Law Officer of the Crown. Consult the hon. and learned Member for Fareham (Sir T. Inskip). He knows it. Most of the duties of Law Officers representing the Crown are concerned with fighting cases for the Revenue and all the taxation laws—I was almost going as far as to say all the
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  national rights—which we have to-day are the result of conflict between the State and the lawyers. I cannot recall a single Budget of any party which has not contained amendments of the law with reference to decisions of the Courts.
  All Revenue Bills are the results of little decisions of the Courts which have made gaps in the dam. The water begins to flow through, and everybody knows that unless you close up the gap it will be widened. Had it not been for the fact that the House of Commons has had constant conflict with the courts of justice, on these things, the Income Tax return to-day would not be one-tenth of what it is because of the ingenuity of lawyers. They can get over this, and get round that, and get through something else—and they do so. It happens year by year that they succeed in doing so and you have the same experience as the experience which I had in regard to the taxes of 1909. But I presented too great a front because of exemptions. Simplicity of the basis of valuation is the best guarantee for the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer against litigation of that kind. There were several cases when the War came which more or less destroyed the tax in the absence of amendments made in the law by this House, and I could not propose amendments of the law in this respect from 1914 up to 1919. We had a far more terrible task to think about then. I see that somebody had time in 1917 to try to get up evidence against the land tax. I was too busy to defend that. There were five years gone, and the Bill only came into operation in, I think, August, 1910, and we could not amend it.
  Then, it is said, "Why did you drop the land tax?" I say, quite frankly, that it was a Coalition Government. I am making no complaint against my old colleagues. I must say that they gave me extraordinarily loyal support in the carrying through of great progressive Measures which they might easily have opposed if the Government held been a purely party Government of their own colour. I say so at once. Let them not think that I am criticising them in the least in regard to that. There were such great progressive Measures as the lowering of the franchise, women's franchise, reforms in India, education and what

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  was, considering that they were a Unionist party, the biggest concession of all, Home Rule for Ireland. May I also remind hon. Members of another Measure which bears upon this very problem? In 1919 they agreed to the Land Acquisition Act. I agree with everything said by the right hon. Gentleman in regard to that Act. I think it has had the effect, in the main, of obtaining land for public purposes at more reasonable cost than was possible before it. This is the point about the Act of 1919. The valuation of land under the Act of 1919 was very largely based upon the public valuation under the 1910 Budget. That was a very big concession.
  Therefore I am not complaining in the least in regard to that. But I was confronted with this position. It was impossible to go on with these taxes without amendment of the law. It was a Coalition and the (majority of those supporting it were at least three to one Conservatives, and I would have had to press them. I could not have insisted upon their amending laws which they had fought very strenuously, in order to make those laws more effective. The leader of the fight against land taxes was the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham and he was Chancellor of the Exchequer. I would have had to ask him to do so. Any Coalition of that kind is bound to be a compromise, but what was the compromise in this case? The compromise has been very fairly stated in the words which I have read from the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham—that the taxes were to go off but the valuation was to remain as a basis for Death Duties, for the purchase of land for public purposes and for future rating. What happened to that compromise?
  The Coalition went out in 1922. In 1923 what happened to that bargain? Right hon. Gentlemen, some of them sitting there—the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham was not one of them and had nothing to do with it—said, "No, we cannot abolish this valuation; it is part of the arrangement that the taxes are to go but the valuation is to remain. We will leave it to an open vote of the House." And all the Conservative Members voted to get rid of the valuation. Of course the Government
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  were not responsible! Had that been done by Labour or Liberal Members I know what would have been said. This is the first time I have had the opportunity of saying that, and I would not have said it except for the challenge which has been made.
  I now come to another point raised by the right hon. Gentleman, and that is as to the merits of a duty upon land values. It has excited a good deal of indignation. Hon. Members have treated it as if it were something which had never been done before in any civilised country. They say that, not merely is it unjust, but that it is impracticable, that it cannot be done. My answer is that it has been done and is being done at this moment. It is being done in some of our Dominions—in some of the greatest cities in the Dominions. It is being done in the United States of America, it is being done in some European countries and it is working well.
  Captain Sir WILLIAM BRASS: In addition to Income Tax.
  6.0 p.m.
  Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: Certainly, in addition to Income Tax. There is Income Tax, I believe, in all these countries. In the United States there was no Income Tax, but since the War there has been an Income Tax. I think the same applies to Denmark and New Zealand and New South Wales. I think my hon. and gallant Friend will find that that is the case. Very well, it is being done, and why should it be such an outrage? There was a Noble Lord who was speaking here the other night and who was very angry. He was in a state of incoherent fury about it. [Interruption.] There were very few present, but I was. Why? He and many others here have come to the conclusion that it is necessary to tax bread. Why should the idea of taxing site values, whether they belong to great landlords or to small landlords, be such an outrage? If the Noble Lord had been here, I should have liked to have put him right. I tried to put him right the other day—
  Mr. WOMERSLEY: A darned bad try!
  Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: If the Noble Lord takes part in these things, he must expect a reply. He referred to some books that I had written in regard to land, and he said that in those books I

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  had said that one of the defects of the present system of land tenure was that the land had been impoverished by the War and the landlords were therefore not in the same position to spend as before the War. I stand by that, but he interrupted me when I spoke about the agricultural landlords. There is a vast difference between the two. While the agricultural landlords undoubtedly have been suffering very severely in consequence of the pressure which has come from war taxation, and are not in a position to do what they are anxious to do, and which a great many of them did do before the War, because they have not the necessary resources, that is not the case with regard to the urban landlords, whose land is going up in value without any expenditure on their part, and going up in value year by year. There is a real distinction. It is not enough to lump the landlords together as if they were all one class, "one and indivisible.' They are two absolutely different propositions.
  I do not quite accept the view of my right hon. Friend that this is a step to nationalisation. All taxation is the nationalisation of somebody's property. You are nationalising 5s. in the £ of every man's income. You are nationalising, in your Schedule A and in Death Duties, anything from five up to 50 per cent. at the present moment. That is nationalising property which before belonged to somebody else. All taxation is nationalisation, and it is only to that extent that this is nationalisation. If you acquire land, as you are doing under the Land Utilisation Bill, that is nationalisation, and it is to be used for the right purpose. But a penny in the £ is rather a slow process of nationalisation, and it does not come into operation for two years, and if it is added to at that rate, how long would the process take? Four hundred and eighty years. Really, for the land taxers to expect anything, they must get back to Methuselah. [Interruption.] As a matter of fact, for some reason or other, that is not the case, and I will tell the hon. Member why. He will find at the present moment rates in certain districts of 30s. in the £, annual. There is an appearance there of wiping out all value, but you are not quite doing it.
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  However, I do not want to enter into that argument at the present moment.
  The case, I think, is an overwhelming one. The Noble Lord rather ignored, in the examples which he had of his own, and which I am not in the least challenging, the enormous values which had been created, as the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer pointed out, by the expansion of towns and cities owing to motor traffic. It is gigantic. I think it is worth while to read to the House one or two illustrations. I wonder how many Members of this House saw the triennial report of the Middlesex County Council the other day. The chairman said that since 1920 they had spent £6,000,000 of public money in making 70 miles of arterial roads. There was a discussion, and somebody got up who had been examining the matter—a councillor—and pointed out that this meant the creation of 740,000 feet of frontage. He pointed out the money which had been made by the sale of that land, a gigantic increase in value which was due to this expenditure of £6,000,000; and he pointed out another thing—which is an answer to the right hon. Gentleman who spoke about the powers with regard to purchase—that to depths from 220 yards to nearly half a mile from these roads the values had gone up, and he estimated the increase in value attributable to this expenditure of £6,000,000 at an increase of £15,000,000.
  Take that case. There is an increase which is not due to any expenditure by the landowners—none—and it is an increase which is going on year by year. Men who are in business, in commerce, in finance, in a profession, have to pay heavy taxation upon that increase, and if they have anything to spare, then there is a very heavy rate of Death Duties; but here is an annual increase which is going on. I can give many cases. There is the Kingston by-pass, there is the Kingsway in Manchester, and there is the Edgware Road, where a tube was constructed. I can give cases where land which was worth £50 or £60, and could hardly be sold then, is now being sold at anything between £600 and £3,000 an acre, without any expenditure on the part of the landowner. Is it unfair that a Chancellor of the Exchequer, hard-pressed, should take these values, while he is putting 5s., running up to 10s., upon professional

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  men, and spending £140,000,000 upon public works which are developing these values, when he is putting heavy charges and Death Duties—is it unfair to resort to these means of taxation of men who, up to the present, have escaped?
  Most of these cases are cases where you escape taxation altogether. Take the agricultural value, which is all that you can charge in those cases. A man may be receiving £l or £2 an acre in respect of land which is growing in value every year by perhaps £100 an acre. Is it unfair that the Chancellor of the Exchequer should put a penny upon that £100? I appeal to the sense of fair play of right hon. and hon. Members. When there is such very heavy taxation in the country, what injustice is there in calling these in aid to relieve general taxation, and to help the country out of its difficulties?
  Earl of DALKEITH: Is it not the case that the owner of land is already paying 4s. 6d. in Income Tax and up to 12s. in the £ including Super-tax?
  Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: I say that everybody in respect of income which he is actually receiving is paying Income Tax and Death Duties, but I think the Noble Lord has mistaken my point. That is true with regard to the rural landowner, but if he takes the urban landowner, he is only paying in respect of an income which he is receiving for agricultural purposes, while at the same time, year by year, the real value of the land is going up by £50 or £100 a year. He is paying nothing in respect of that, and he ought to pay. [An HON. MEMBER: "He is paying Death Duties!"] If the hon. Member will just consider it, it is unfair to the agricultural landowner, who is paying up to the last penny in respect of what he receives. On the Death Duties, I agree, they are both on a level, thanks to the valuation of 1910, but when you come to the actual increase year by year, one is paying up to the last penny that he receives, and the other is not, and I do not think it is fair.
  My last point is this: The real value of this is not so much what the right hon. Gentleman gets out of his penny; it is the thing that he pointed out, that it is to be the basis of local taxation. What is happening at the present time? It is not merely because of the De-rating Act, although the De-rating Act has impoverished
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  the local authorities very considerably. There are some local authorities where a penny rate does not produce more than half what it produced before, and therefore that balance has to be redressed; but it is a little more than that. The local authorities now are too restricted in the basis of their taxation. They have practically only one tax that they can impose, and I do not know of any other country in the world where that is the case. It is not the case in America, or in Germany, or in France, or in our Dominions. They all have some other resources upon which they can depend, but in the case of our local authorities, with the first great national emergency that befalls them, they are completely at the end of their tether, they have completely exhausted their resources. There are a great many things that they would like to do, and that they know would be of enormous advantage to their towns, and cities, and counties, but they have no means. What is the result? They have always to come to the State, and the State is forced gradually to give a larger and larger percentage of grants. Why? Because the local authorities have been bankrupted very largely by this extraordinary restriction in their basis of taxation. This Measure of the right hon. Gentleman will broaden the basis of taxation; it will strengthen the local authorities: it will give them greater opportunities of beneficial action for the State; and, beyond that, it is in itself equitable, it is equitable as between one taxpayer and another, and it is equitable, as far as the whole community is concerned.
  Major HILLS: The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) asked whether the Conservative party would oppose this Measure with the same enthusiasm as they opposed the Measure of 1909. I can assure him that they will. Not only is the attack much stronger, but, unless I am very much mistaken, the defence of the Measure will be much weaker. I plead in aid the right hon. Gentleman's speech itself. Part of it was a defence of his own action in 1920, and the only part in which he dealt with land taxes was devoted entirely to one thing, namely, a tax on the increment value of land, which is not mentioned in this Measure

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  at all. The right hon. Gentleman told us that he had to defend a very extended front. His career proves that, and I do not think that he has shortened that front by his speech to-day. He made a good deal of play with what occurred in 1920, and he excused himself for dropping the tax in 1920. The charge is not that the tax was dropped in 1920; nobody objects to that. The whole charge against this legislation is that it was a dead failure and produced no money.
  Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: Not quite that. I was referring to what was said here, that these taxes were dropped with my consent.
  Major HILLS: I accept that statement. I accept that the dropping of the tax was one of those arrangements that Coalition Governments have to make—the sort of arrangement of which we have had several examples lately. The real gravamen against the system started by the right hon. Gentleman is surely that it took about £3 to collect £l of duty, and for that reason the tax was very properly dropped. The right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Colonel Wedgwood), who spoke on Monday, told the Committee—and I think that the Committee agreed—that a tax on increment value was the very worst tax of all, and he gave his reasons for that. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs seems to me to be guilty of a confusion of thought. People who talk about taxing land values and taxing increment values seem to think that a pile of value is made on which somebody sits, and that the State can get a part of that value. If you could by any means separate from the piece of land that part of the value which was due to the community, it might be a proper subject for a tax, but taxes are not paid by land values; taxes are paid by individuals, and in the present case you are imposing the tax on certain individuals. Those individuals may be quite different people from the class referred to by the horn Gentleman the Member for Burslem (Mr. MacLaren) who bought land and sat upon it, and then extracted a ransom from the community.
  The tax which will be imposed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer will fall, not on the exploiter, or the speculator,
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  or the man who withholds land from the community. It will fall on the man who has bought the land in order to bring it into consumption. He is the person who will be taxed. You can, of course, tax land. You can tax anything. You can get some money from the taxation of land, but when I am told that by taxing land it will be freed for production, or made cheap, or be brought into the market, I join issue. The right hon. Gentleman talked of land going up in value without any action on the part of the landlord, and he drew an emotional picture of what occurs when a man holds up his land and the increment value, which ought to go to the community, is absorbed by one individual; and he says that the State ought to take part of that increased value. That may be all very well, but you cannot distinguish between the part that the State has put into the land and what the private individual may have put into the land; and if you tax improvements made by the landowner, you will do a thing which you cannot possibly justify, and which is the very worst thing to do for the community.
  The right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme is one of the few convinced and unchanging land taxers in this House. I am sorry he is not here, for I want to make some remarks on the speech which he made on Monday. He based his defence of land taxes, not so much on the economic return of the tax but on two effects which the taxation of land would produce. He said that it gave an incentive to a man to sell.
  "The ordinary owner of land, faced year by year with this tax upon the selling value of his land, will have a greater incentive to sell that land than he has at the present time. He will be more anxious to sell."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 4th May. 1931; col. 78, Vol. 252.]
  Let me examine that for a moment. The argument is that this tax will drive land into the market and make it more saleable. I agree that if you tax land, and the tax that you have to pay yearly comes to more than the yearly return on the land, there is an inducement to sell, and to that extent land is forced into the market. But that only operates on the first sale, for the man who buys the land buys it at a price which represents the land with the capitalised value of the tax deducted. If you have land

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  that is worth £1,000, as the right hon. Gentleman supposed, you sell it less tax, namely, for £900, so that the man who buys it gets the tax paid. Therefore, he has no incentive to sell, because he has discounted the whole effect of the tax, and the same causes which make a man hold up land and keep it for a future increase in value, will operate on him. He will have no extra inducement to sell unless you impose an additional tax every year, approaching the method of taxation adopted by the late King John. As long as the tax remains the same, the only incentive to sell operates on the first man. The whole of that incentive is obliterated by the lower price for which the first buyer gets the land; he has paid part of the price to the owner and part to the State, and there will be no incentive for a re-sale.
  The second argument is that this tax will cheapen land. It is a remarkable thing to argue that if you tax an article, you make it cheaper. I am surprised that the party that pins itself to the doctrine that Protection will make every article that is protected more expensive, should except land from that argument and say that taxation will cheapen it. Here, again, the right hon. Gentleman is wrong. He said that he wants land cheaper so that municipalities can pay a reasonable price for it. He said that when this Bill is passed, the building trade will get land at a much more reasonable price. They will pay the same price exactly. If land is worth £1,000, and they get it for £900, they really pay £1,000, because they pay £900 to the owner of the land and an annual charge to the Government, and the capitalised value of that charge is the difference between £900 and £1,000. It does not make the land cheaper at all. In fact, I shall show that it makes land a good deal dearer. As for the Increment Duty, the same right hon. Gentleman went on to say that there was nothing to be said for such a tax.
  The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs is a powerful advocate of land taxes. One of his greatest supporters in the Bill of 1909–10 was the right hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme. Yet they disagree with the root, the base, and the very essential incidence of this tax. They want to put it on to different subjects. The right hon. Member
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  for Carnarvon Boroughs wants to tax the increased value of land, which this Bill does not do, and the other right hon. Gentleman says there is nothing to be said for such a tax. I hope that before we have gone much farther we shall know which is the policy of the Government. They have the support of the Liberal party. On what terms was that support given? Are we to tax the increment value of land, or are we to tax the selling value of land? I think we ought to know, and I would suggest to the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs that perhaps this Bill does not do all that he imagines it does.
  I see that my right hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme is now present. I have been trying to explain that the two main theses on which he based his speech, the forcing of land on to the markets and not increasing the selling value of land, would not stand examination, but I will not weary the Committee by repeating those arguments.
  Colonel WEDGWOOD: I am sorry I was absent, but I was at a Committee.
  Major HILLS: I quite understand. I should never ask the right hon. and gallant Gentleman to come here to listen to me. I think a great many hon. Members opposite are hypnotised by certain special cases. They have looked at the case of some London landowner whose ancestors bought land and have seen that land improving in value, and, as he has retained the whole of the freehold in his possession, he gets richer and richer as the leases fall in. That is really a criticism of our system of land owning. I have always been an opponent of the leasehold system, and if that question arose in this Debate I think I could give a good many reasons against it. It is the most illogical and unfair system that the wit of man has ever adopted, but it has been the system operating in England, and we in this country, with our sense of fair play and justice, and our capacity for practical adjustment, which give us a somewhat fatal facility in working unworkable institutions, have made the leasehold system not quite so unreasonable as it looks. But suppose all that value had been passed on to a lot of smallholders, to a lot of householders who had bought their houses, as would have happened if that land had

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  been in Edinburgh. I do not think there would have been any outcry. It would have meant that certain people had bought wisely. Is a man who buys a house wisely to be penalised? If so I do not see why a man who buys stocks and shares wisely should not be penalised. The picture is exaggerated, all the colours are heightened and a spot light is concentrated upon it.
  Let us take the case of the factory. When hon. Members opposite speak of a factory and say that if you tax the land the tax cannot be passed on and will not become a charge on production, they always seem to picture a landlord in the background who is to be taxed, and think that however much he is taxed he cannot increase the rent of the factory because already he has got the economic rent. I do not think that contention is true even when there is a landlord in the background, but it is entirely untrue when the owners of the business also own the land on which the factory stands. The factory may be in a town and built on land of very high value. We put an extra charge on that land which it did not bear before, but in doing that we do not increase the productivity of that factory by a single sixpence. It will be an extra charge which the owners of the factory will pay as the freeholders. It is of no advantage to them that the land is of high value. Often it is impossible to sell the land and move the factory to a cheaper site. They will have to pay an extra charge which will be a direct charge on production.
  When the hon. Member for Burslem said that he stood on two pillars, Free Trade and free production, I think he forgot for the moment that the Land Tax will tax production, and tax it in the very worst way, for it will not increase production. When the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs twitted my right hon. Friend who opened this Debate with complaining about the number of officials required to value the land while ignoring the number that would be required to impose a tariff, he forgot that the Custom House officers employed in collecting a tariff would be increasing the productivity of this country and increasing employment, whereas the
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  people employed to value the land will in no sense be increasing production.
  The Government announced at the last election that they intended to make farming pay. Take the land which is to be seen near our big towns, the sort of land which is to be seen by those who travel on any of our railways. It is agricultural land, and for a long time, 10, 20, 50 or 60 years must be used only for farming. It cannot be used for anything else. The gradual growth of our large towns will, however, have an effect on the selling value of that land. If you put the tax on the landlord you will increase the cost of the land to the farmer; and how about the many farmers who have bought their land and are their own landlords? They may possess land which has a bigger value than its agricultural value, and that is to be taxed. They cannot pass land tax on to the consumer. [Interruption.] Yes, I agree that that tax cannot be passed on. There I agree with the right hon. and gallant Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme, but surely he realises that the increased value which is ascribed to that land does not add to the productivity of the land. The land is worth—what? Its power to produce food. Its value 50 years hence for building purposes has nothing to do with the present value. As the right hon. Gentleman has said that all reliefs to agriculture are a relief to the landlord, in cases where the farmer is his own landlord a burden on the landlord must be a burden on the farmer. I think he cannot get out of that.
  Colonel WEDGWOOD: I quite agree, but if that land has a higher value than its value for agricultural purposes, it means that somebody else is anxious to use that land for more productive purposes than farming.
  Major HILLS: No, that is where the right hon. and gallant Gentleman is in the world of theory. That land has got no other use except its use for farming for years to come, and he knows it has not, but he argues that it has another value because somebody who looks further ahead, or who is more speculative, thinks that a town will extend that way in years to come, and thus add to its value. It is not the case that you can say, "If that land has a higher value,

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  therefore it will be more productively employed in some other way," because that simply is not the fact. For many years to come that land must be farmed. It is land of that class which constitutes a very large share of the land in this small island. Our town" are spreading, our roads are spreading, but this land will be agricultural land for a long time and yet the effect of this Bill will be to say that that land has an increased value which has nothing to do with its present use.
  This Bill is an attempt to abolish the effects of de-rating. The Chancellor of the Exchequer admitted it. He said it was aimed at minimising the effects of de-rating. I believe I am right in saying that de-rating has been accepted by the vast majority of the electors as a most beneficial thing. It was fought by the party opposite, but some of them now openly state that they were wrong and that de-rating was a good and a profitable act of State. We took a burden off production and we took a burden off agriculture. Now we are to reimpose burdens on production and on agriculture, and to do it at a tremendous cost to the State in machinery and personnel. We are to do this at a time when unemployment calls for the whole attention of this House, and yet what we do will not put a single man back to work, will, in fact, throw men out of work. This Land Tax will be a direct tax on production and it will throw men out of work, it will injure manufacture and will be a deadly blow to the depressed industry of agriculture.
  Sir JAMES SEXTON: It has been my privilege to hear a good few Budgets introduced into this House. They always produce a remarkable variety of views, but never have I heard a greater variation in opinions than in those expressed on this particular item in this Budget. At one time there appeared to be indications of some kind of unanimity over the principle of a tax on land values, but the unanimity has suddenly disappeared. Personally, I am very glad to see the Chancellor reviving the old principle of the taxation of land values, which was first introduced in 1909, and to give it my support. We have heard some remarkable speeches on this subject, and I was gratified while listening to the right hon. Member
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  for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George). He went at very great length into his experience with his Bill of 1909, and I am glad he did so, because after what happened then, when compelled by circumstances to jettison his cargo, he lay under the suspicion of having burnt his boats. Personally, I never subscribed to that idea. My mind turns back over 25 years to that campaign in North Wales. I worshipped at his feet and heard the mountains re-echo to his eloquent denunciations of the privileges of landlordism in a well-known quarrying dispute, which dragged its weary length along for many months.
  The right hon. Gentleman's surroundings were of such a character that he was quite prepared to give all those matters every consideration, and there is no doubt that he was engaged in very serious and complicated position as Prime Minister, and compromise was necessary. The nation itself was in duress in order to keep together the Cabinet of which the light hon. Gentleman was the head. He did yeoman service which redounds to his credit and will go down to posterity. I can quite understand that in those circumstances concessions had to be made. I was convinced that his transgression was but temporary. I have been associated with the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs for over 30 years, and I was convinced that when he discovered the fickleness of the political jades he was then coquetting with, he would eventually come back to his old love. I could not, however, help sighing for even the temporary loss of a touch of the vanished hand and the sound of the voice that for the time being was stilled. The Chancellor of the Exchequer in his Budget speech incidentally referred to Genesis, and the most extraordinary reference to this was the speech of the hon. and learned Member for Altrincham (Mr. Atkinson), who, despite his legal acumen, delivered a speech conspicuous only for its confusion of thought on the subject of land values, and its glaring inconsistency. The hon. and learned Member, who is a very clever lawyer, used these words:
  "That may do for the street corner and for people who do not understand what they are listening to."
  He was evidently at sea on the subject. But technically he was right. For if the

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  people at street corners did understand there would be very little necessity for this Resolution, and very few, if any, landowners and very little unearned increment. The hon. and learned Member went on to put a question to the Attorney-General, and he asked: "Of what value was the land when it was given by the Creator to the people? I have great admiration for the Attorney-General, but I would hesitate to impose a burden like that upon his intelligence. The hon. and learned Gentleman further said: "Of what value was the land when it was given by the Creator to the people, if it ever was given? I suppose it was inaccessible, uncleared ground and worth very little." I was always under the impression that the great Conservative party accepted the Bible as the source of England's moral greatness. There might be one or two exceptions, but it gave me rather a shock to hear one of the most brilliant and learned members of that historic party questioning the authenticity of Genesis.
  Perhaps the House will bear with me while I give another quotation from the first chapter of Genesis:
  "And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself upon the earth: and it was so.
  And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after its kind and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind and (God saw that it was good."
  Here is a further quotation from the first chapter of Genesis:
  "And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.
  And God blessed them saying, Be fruitful, and multiply and fill the waters in the seas and let fowls multiply in the earth.
  And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after his kind; and it was so."
  With particular emphasis in the creeping things.
  "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth."
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  But, alas! it is not so to-day. For what about the gift of God to His people? Is there not something radically wrong there? Take Britain as an example. It is estimated that there are 77,000,000 acres of land in Great Britain and 44,000,000 people. According to Genesis the land belongs collectively to the people, and to-day we find that it is monopolised by a comparatively few individuals who lay down the conditions under which the bulk of the population, God's creatures to whom the land was originally given, shall make use of the land. One hon. and learned Gentleman said that this was a tax upon industry. May I give one or two examples? A passing reference was made to Liverpool in the opening statement made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and I want to deal particularly with Liverpool and the statement that this tax is a charge upon industry. The rateable value of Liverpool is £7,000,000, and the assessed value is something like £6,000,000, all of which is contributed by the ratepayers of Liverpool, consisting of workmen, shipowners, shopkeepers, employers and the ordinary man in the street. Those are the people who contribute these £6,000,000, and yet there is never a council meeting at which some statement does not come before the council in regard to the purchase of land, and I know of land in Liverpool which 100 years ago was estimated to be worth £60 an acre, or 20 years' purchase, sold to-day for something like £1,000,000 an acre.
  7.0 p.m.
  A sum amounting to nearly £7,000,000 has been spent on street improvements and not long ago we paid £350 a square yard for city improvements in connection with the new tunnel. I am not blaming the landowner individually, because it is not his fault, and he has simply inherited the evil. I happen to be a landowner myself in a small way. I own very nearly two acres of land, and that land may possibly become valuable. If anybody comes along and wants to buy it he will have to pay the price, and no mistake about that. I am living in Rome and I am going to do as Rome does, and for every pound in value that my land goes up, if the Government will leave me 19s. 11d. I shall be perfectly satisfied, and I will pay it when the time comes. At the approach to the place

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  where I live outside Liverpool there is a tramway. The Liverpool Corporation wanted to extend the tramway and we had to purchase a slice of agricultural land from the landowner. I do not suppose the area will amount to more than 2½ acres. That agricultural land is generally rented at about £2 a year, and at 20 years' purchase it would be worth £50 or £60. The Liverpool Corporation paid £700 for it, in order to meet the necessities of the tramway, and the landlord laid down the conditions that common workmen's dwellings must not come "between the wind and the nobility of the villas," which sprang up on both sides and enhanced the value of his agricultural land over ten-fold. That is the position to-day. The erection of these villas has increased the value of the land from an ordinary agricultural value to £2,000 or £3,000 an acre and all that has escaped taxation. The people of Liverpool, who made all this land valuable, are finding £6,000,000 a year for local taxation.
  We extended the dock system many years ago. I remember the time when at the North End of Liverpool we had a seashore that was valueless to the landlord. I am not blaming him; he is a friend of mine. I am simply describing a system which is strangling industry in this country. Let me work out my point. When it became necessary to extend the docks of Liverpool to the North End, the Dock Board wanted the seashore. Before they could use the seashore, it was said, they had to pay £80,000 before they put a spade in it. The Dock Board, being by Act of Parliament limited to 21/2 per cent. payment on their bonds, in order to meet that payment had to charge heavy dock and harbour dues to the shipowners. The shipowners, being taxed locally and Imperially and having to pay heavy dock charges and dues, went to the point of least resistance, the sailor, the dock labourer and the man who built the docks. The docks are useless without ships, the ships cannot sail without men, and they cannot be discharged without dock labourers. What is the result? The dock labourer and the sailor are ground between the upper and nether millstones of heavy dock charges and low wages and they have crowded, too, to the North End where the dock area has extended.
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  Then comes the question of housing accommodation. The sandhills in the neighbourhood were valueless, but beneath the sandhills is clay which is required to make bricks. The demand for the clay beneath those sandhills to make bricks for houses caused the value of those sandhills to rise immediately, from nothing to thousands of pounds an acre, and on that value the clay was taken from the ground to make bricks, and on every thousand bricks made by the brick-maker he paid the landlord 2s. 6d. a thousand. The clay was taken out and the landowner sent word round to all the manufacturers to dump their refuse into the big hole that remained and charged them 3d. a load for every load they dumped. When they had filled it up, he leased it to a jerry-builder at £2,000 or £3,000 an acre to put jerry-built houses upon it. There again the dock labourer and sailor were ground between the upper and nether millstones of low wages and high rates and rents.
  I will give one more example. My recollection goes back to the time when Kirkdale Gaol was built in the late Fifties, out of the clay taken from a hole alongside the gaol. I remember the time when public executions used to be held there, and I used—as the local saying is—to "sag" school and go and see them erecting the scaffold on Friday afternoon. The time came when the gaol was not used and was pulled down, but the hole from which they took the clay to build that gaol was again filled up and sold or leased for £2,000 or £3,000 an acre valuation to the jerry-builder. When the gaol was pulled down, the bricks were used over again and part of them went to build a church, where the lay preacher, a jerry-builder, preached the way to Heaven to the children who lived in his jerry-built houses. The same bell that used to call men out to execution summoned people to this church, and they used to sing the Doxology, "Praise God from whom all blessings flow."
  I could go on giving examples. The rateable value there is £480,000 and the assessment is £420,000. All that is paid by the people. They made the enormous value of the land. I am simply stating a hard historic fact. The community are finding £420,000 a year, just as Liverpool is finding £6,000,000. The employer and the workman, the housekeeper and the

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  shopkeeper, have between them created all that enormous value for ground rents, which a few years ago were sold for £2,500,000. Let me take the Committee across the road. Not long ago a Noble Lord sold eight and a half acres in Mill-bank, the value of which was created on gaols and slums, for £2,500,000. I agree that that escapes, or I should certainly call the attention of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to that point. An hon. Friend below the Gangway raised the very pertinent point that the purchase money should not be allowed to escape. I hope it will not be forgotten.
  Lieut.-Colonel FREMANTLE: Does the hon. Member know that the Noble Lord in question gave £300,000 to the Westminster City Council for housing in respect of that particular negotiation and is badly out of pocket through it?
  Sir J. SEXTON: That may be so, and it will be credited to his account for righteousness, but it does not interfere with my argument at all. The fact remains that 8½ acres, the value of which was created out of slums and gaols, was sold for £2,500,000. He could very well have afforded to give it. I do not want to pursue the question very much longer, but here is the example of a small place. The price paid for the whole of the land I have mentioned earlier did not exceed £1,200 100 years ago. The ground rents were recently sold for 2½ millions. Today its value is enormous and the people are finding £420,000, which is being spent in further improving the price in land. Every main road, every tramway, every pleasure ground, every open space, aye, every gaol and asylum, every workhouse built on the land, increases the value of the land. My regret is that the tax is so small. But it is a beginning. If we had a tax of 1s. in the £ on land values, the burden on industry would be lifted off Liverpool to the extent of 30 per cent. of the local rates, which are bearing on industry, which are now the cause of strikes and disputes, and which compel the local tradesmen to go for the point of least resistance all the time, the workman.
  One more illustration and I have done. In the North End of Liverpool I have mentioned activities of the jerry-builder, who is no philanthropist but insists on
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  getting a dividend for his outlay. There the jerry-builders succeeded in getting themselves on the Health Committee. They passed their own plans to build their own streets with the open cesspool and no water closets—human excrement thrown on the bare ground with the effluvia arising from it creating an epidemic of scarlet fever and diphtheria. The jerry-builders called a town's meeting at nine o'clock in the morning, when all the town was at work, and passed a resolution authorising a loan of £17,000 for the erection of an infectious diseases hospital to accommodate the victims of the conditions under which they built those houses. Every Member of the House is familiar with the fine lines:
  "Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
  Who never to himself hath said.
  This is my own, my native land!"
  How lovely and how pathetic, but how disconnected when you get down to bedrock! Talk about our native land—we cannot lay claim to a dog daisy that sprouts from its surface! The only claim we have to it is when we die and then, literally and figuratively, we do not get the land but the land gets us, and we get two or three fellows on top of our chest to see that we do not rise again until the Resurrection. We sent many men to fight for our native land. They expected to come back to a land fit for heroes to live in, but found it was only heroes who could live in it under existing conditions. The position simply is that no man has any right to exploit the joint industry of the people without giving something in return for it. The hon. and learned Gentleman said that this was a burden on industry and went on to say:
  "Members talk about what the community put into the land, about the money spent by local authorities, but who finds it? The landowner finds it."
  He is quite right there. He does find it, but he does nothing to create it. Yet these gentlemen never lose an opportunity of reviling the men who are in receipt of the dole as men who are subsidised for their unemployment.
  I do not want to detain the House any longer. I have given what I consider is an analysis of the evil, and there are other quotations from the Bible that fit the case. Here is one from the Book of Samuel, chapters 10 to 15, where the

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  people were clamouring for a king to reign over them, when be said unto them:
  "This shall be the manner of the King which shall reign over you. He will take your sons for his charioteers and to run before his Chariot and set them to till his ground and reap his harvest and make his instruments of War; and your daughters as his cooks and confectioners and bakers, and your fields and vineyards even the best of them, and the tenth of your sheep and your seed and your goodly young men and your asses and put them to work.'
  But the people insisted upon Saul, who was seeking his father's asses, becoming their king, and Samuel said unto Saul, As for thine asses which were lost, set not thy mind upon them, for Lo they are found—just as they were at the Ashton-under-Lyne election.
  I could give other quotations from the Bible. One in particular from the Book of Nahum:
  "Was to the bloody city, it is full of lies and Robbery and the prey departeth not. There is the noise of the prancing horses and the flashing sword and spear, and there is a multitude of slain. We stumble over their corpses."
  Sir W. BRASS: I do not propose to follow the hon. Gentleman into the realm of quotations from the Bible, but I would like to address myself to the question which is before the Committee. The hon. Gentleman seems to be affected by some confusion of thought, and I do not think that that confusion of thought is confined to him, for most of the speakers from the opposite side of the Committee have assumed that the tax which we are discussing is an increment value duty. They have used various illustrations of large increments of value due to what they call the community, but, if they will look for a moment at the Order Paper, they will see that what we are discussing is not the question of an increment duty like the increment duty which was set up by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George), but quite a different thing. This is the Motion which we are supposed to be discussing:
  "That there shall be charged for the financial year ending the thirty-first day of March, nineteen hundred and thirty four, and for every subsequent financial year, a tax at the rate of 1d. for each pound of the land value of every unit of land in Great Britain."
  We have heard from the Chancellor of the Exchequer that he is proposing certain
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  exceptions from the taxation of every unit of land as mentioned in this Motion. The right hon. Gentleman during his speech made this remark:
  "By this Measure we assert the right of a community to the ownership of land."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 4th May, 1931; col. 48, Vol. 252.]
  That I imagined to mean that he was moving towards land nationalisation. I can imagine the right hon. Gentleman thinking out his speech, and wondering how far he could go—wondering whether he should make a really Socialistic outburst and advocate the nationalisation of the land, or whether he should try to whittle it down a little so as to soften it for his friends below the Gangway. I think he must have come to the conclusion that his friends below the Gangway were not worth considering, and on that point I agree with him. We have heard hon. and right hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway make many speeches against various suggestions of the Government, and we have seen them going into the Lobby to vote for the very things which they have been abusing. The other day the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Darwen (Sir H. Samuel) made a speech on the Budget, in the course of which he referred to a Division which took place in the House last year; and he explained to the House—and this, I think, is the reason why the Chancellor was ready not to consider hon. Gentlemen below the Gangway—that when a Liberal Amendment was moved it was not really necessary to divide upon it, even if the Liberal Whips were on, because all these things were merely brought forward as a basis of discussion. I think that, if the Chancellor had any fears about hon. Members below the Gangway, that speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Darwen must have dispersed them. Another thing that the Chancellor "aid was this:
  "The land was given by the Creator, not for the use of dukes, but for the equal use of all His people."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 4th May, 1931; col. 48, Vol. 252.]
  After having said that, and after having moved a Motion to put a tax of one penny in the pound on every unit of land in the country, he then proceeds to tell us that he is not going to tax agricultural land. Agricultural land, I imagine, is possibly three-fourths or seven-eighths of the whole of the land

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  of the country, and I imagine also that some of that agricultural land belongs to those hated dukes to whom the right hon. Gentleman was referring; so that the deer forests, the grouse moors and so on are to be exempted, and are not to come under this tax.
  Then the right hon. Gentleman considered something else. He wondered, I suppose, how many votes he was going to lose if he taxed every single unit of land, and so he decided that, as far as the Creator was concerned, and the giving of land, the small bits were not going to count, and that the small householder, the man who only owns a little piece of land worth not more than £120, is to be able to have that free without all this valuation. I want hon. Members to realise, therefore, that the real principle underlying this proposal has been destroyed by the exemptions which have already been decided upon. We are told that there are going to be at least 12,000,000 valuations. There are not 12,000,000 dukes, but there are possibly 12,000,000 people who own land, and every person who owns any land is to have that land valued, except, possibly, those who own purely agricultural land. How are we to know what purely agricultural land is? That is going to be a very difficult thing; I will deal with it in a minute.
  We were told by my right hon. Friend this afternoon that, for the purposes of the valuation made under the Act of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs, there were 5,204 valuers of various kinds. We were told by the Chancellor that it would take some time to carry out this suggestion of the Government, because they would have to train valuers; they were going to have, so to speak, apprentice valuers, who were going to be trained within a period of, possibly, six months. I wonder how many trade unions in the country would accept six months' training as a qualification for admission. I do not think they would accept so short a time as that. These apprentice valuers will have quite a lot of work to do. One of the things that they will have to decide will be what particular pieces of land are to be valued and what particular pieces of land are not to be valued. We are told that, in addition to churches
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  and so on, agricultural land is to be exempted, but that, if the land has any value above its purely agricultural value, then it is to be valued. I would ask the Solicitor-General to tell us, when he comes to reply, who is going to decide whether a particular piece of land is to be valued because it is supposed to possess a value above its agricultural value.
  I would suggest that possibly some provision might be put in the Bill, when we see it, that all land abutting on to the main road within five miles of a big city shall be valued, because it has a certain potential building value, and that all land within one mile on big main roads of a town should be valued, because it might have a potential building value; and possibly also land within a quarter of a mile of a village might be included. Then, when the time arrived for deciding whether a particular individual holder of land should receive a notice of valuation, the valuer would know to whom to send the notice. It seems to me that, if agricultural land is to be exempted, it will be very difficult to know, when there is at the side of a road land which is partially agricultural and partially building land, which portions are to be valued and which are to be left out.
  There are one or two questions—I do not know whether they can be called catch questions—to which I should like to have answers if I can. We have heard a great deal about catch questions, and, as we have had no answer, I suppose they still are catch questions. I happen to live in a place in London where there are freeholds on the ground floor, freeholds on the first floor, and freeholds on the second floor, and I should like to know, if the learned Solicitor-General can tell me, who is going to pay the land duty of one penny in the pound on those different flats. That is not a catch question, but a very real question, because I understand that in the case of other flats in different parts of London there are freeholds on the different floors. Possibly the tax may be divided up between all the flats, or possibly the ground floor flat, being on the ground, may have to bear the whole of the tax.
  There is another point that I would put to the hon. and learned Gentleman, and that is with regard to the question of mortgages. If the proposal which is

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  now before the House is put into operation, it will be a very serious matter as far as mortgages are concerned. A great deal of property in the City of London and elsewhere is mortgaged. It is mortgaged up to a certain proportion of its assumed value. Directly you put an extra tax on that land, you immediately reduce the value of the security, and, when the security is not a very big one, it is quite possible—in fact, I think it is probable—that a large number of these mortgages might be called in. I would ask the hon. and learned Gentleman to consider why the owner of land who has borrowed money should be made to pay, while the man who has invested his money—the mortgagee who has lent his money on the land, and who is really benefiting by his investment in land—should not be taxed in the same way as the actual owner of the land himself.
  It being Half-past Seven of the Clock, and there being Private Business set down by direction of the Chairman of Ways and Means under Standing Order No. 8, further Proceeding was postponed without Question put.

  PRIVATE BUSINESS.

    YORKSHIRE (WOOLLEN DISTRICT) TRANSPORT BILL [Lords] (By Order).
    Order for Second Reading read.
    The CHAIRMAN of WAYS and MEANS (Sir Robert Young): It has been represented to me that it would be inconvenient to interrupt the Debate in Committee of Ways and Means. Accordingly, I saw the promoters and those interested in the Bill, and intimated that I would postpone it until Monday at half-past Seven o'Clock.
    Mr. TURNER: Will that be a firm date?
    Sir R. YOUNG: It will be down for half-past Seven o'Clock on Monday. I hope all opposition will be withdrawn by that time.
    Second Reading deferred until Monday next at half-past Seven o'Clock.

  WAYS AND MEANS.
  Again considered in Committee.
  [Mr. DUNNICO in the Chair.]

  LAND VALUES TAX.
  Postponed Proceeding resumed on Question,
  "That there shall be charged for the financial year ending the thirty-first day of March, nineteen hundred and thirty-four, and for every subsequent financial year, a tax at the rate of one penny for each pound of the land value of every unit of land in Great Britain."—[Mr. P. Snowden.]
  Question again proposed.
  Sir W. BRASS: I will not go on any further about mortgages. I think I have explained the position quite clearly. I want to remind the Committee that this is not the first Land Tax Bill that has been brought forward. We have had a Land Tax before, in 1798. I have looked it up and I find that there are certain exemptions in it. I think it was put at 4s. in the £. It was an annual tax and it was put on to various counties. Lancashire, for instance, had to pay £20,989 14s. 6½d. during the year. The City of London had to pay £123,399 5s. 5d. The collectors were paid 3d. in the £ for all the money they collected, and the tax was redeemable. One of its provisions was:
  "Provided that nothing in this Act contained shall extend to charge any college or hall in either of the two Universities, Oxford or Cambridge, or the Colleges of Windsor, Eton, Winton, Westminster or the Corporation of the Governors of the Charity for the Relief of the Poor Widows and the Children of the Clergy."
  I mention that because in the present proposal these college" are not exempted at all, and a very heavy burden indeed will come on to them and on to the Universities. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman would consider the relief of the children of the clergy, that is, whether he would consider the relief from taxation of the various vicarages and rectories, because the example might well be taken from this old tax.
  Hon. Members opposite seem to think this is a popular proposal. I can assure them that it is not nearly as popular, when it is explained, as they imagine. I can tell my constituents that we have been discussing the question whether in three or four years' time we shall or shall not pay a penny tax on land values all

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  over the country, and they will say, "Why do you not talk about unemployment or about the boycott in India? Why do you talk about things like the taxation of land values? How is it going to affect us?" My answer to them is that they will get a lot of forms and that there will be a very large number of civil servants and apprenticed valuers all over the country. They will have to send in returns of all the mills in Lancashire and will have an extra burden put on so as to take away the advantage that the Derating Act gives them. I do not think this is going to be the election cry that the Chancellor of the Exchequer thinks it will be. I feel quite sure that, if the Government go to the country on this Bill, they will not get another mandate. They will be asked why they talk about things like that when the real thing they ought to be talking about is unemployment.
  Mr. HARDIE: I think the hon. Gentleman was in the House when we discussed the De-rating Act, and I am surprised that he should make the statement he has just made. He spoke of the advantages that have come from it. The late Lord Advocate had to admit that the only advantage of de-rating would go to the landlords. [Interruption.] I challenge hon. Members to deny that that was the statement made by the late Lord Advocate, speaking on behalf of the Government.
  Earl of DALKEITH: It is quite easy to challenge that statement.
  Mr. HARDIE: I will read the statement.
  Sir W. BRASS: We are talking about the taxation of land values.
  Mr. HARDIE: The hon. and gallant Member was talking about the advantages of de-rating. This is what the late Lord Advocate said:
  "I do not want to argue at length the question of whether a benefit like this ultimately goes to the landlord or not. My humble view is that it certainly does."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 11th March, 1929; col. 909, Vol. 226.]
  Captain CAZALET: Was the Lord Advocate referring to the de-rating of agricultural land or to the de-rating of factories?
  Mr. HARDIE: He was just dealing with de-rating. We have been hearing a lot about the wonderful things that people with land have done to bring benefit to the community. A few minutes ago we heard about flats in London. I admit that there are a lot of flats in London. When I wanted to get a place to live in here, I started to look for a flat, and I discovered some of the great advantages of having a landlord. In the end I was compelled to take three small box rooms at the top of three storeys. When a omnibus passed, the whole place shook. I had to pay £125 rent. The stairs were 3 feet 9 inches wide. These are some of the beautiful advantages that accrue from this far-sighted landowner in the past. Of course, he would not take the risk of putting his money into business. He put it into something that was sure and secure. Let us see what the landlord system has done in recent times for the business community of London. We read in the Press of a building lease for 99 years on a site in Oxford Street at a rental of £20,000 per annum for two years and £30,000 per annum thereafter. That is only for 99 years. When that date arrives, the Duke will come along and make some fresh arrangement, put Gamages out of business and take away the results of their business organisation. The Duke of Westminster, by abstaining from putting his money into business, has succeeded in shoving someone else out of it.
  The whole of this proposal is another instance of the ever-growing demand for land. Private ownership is not known to the law. As a technical point of law, land is not subject to absolute ownership but to tenure held directly or indirectly from the Crown. That applies to tenure in the name of the King in Scotland and does not apply to English conditions. The chief holds his stewardship under the King, but the King system in Scotland has been altered by subinfeudation. The means used in these demands brought the need for drastic methods. When they tried drastic methods, they were always beaten by the other fellow with more money who could get a man with a more acute legal mind to deal with what had previously been drafted by a lawyer. The system that developed, in the attempts to get away from the landlord by subinfeudation, resulted

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  in the landlords beginning to realise that the other people were getting away, and they had to pass another law to get the people back into the fold.
  What we are discussing to-day relates to present conditions in regard to unemployment. The basis of unemployment is the power to divorce people from land. Whenever you do that, you get unemployment. When you close the land you open the Employment Exchanges. You cannot get away from that fact. We have been paying £1,000,000 a week insurance while trying to get men on to the land. Then you find that the gentlemen in the other place have been destroying the Agricultural Land (Utilisation) Bill. I have noticed that everything remains pretty smooth in our Debates until you touch land. You have only to stand at the Bar in the other place to see the change in character and in mood whenever the question of land is reached. Yet here we are, facing this £1,000,000 per week and trying by Bills to get something done in relation to land, and being met always by this constant barrier of landlords saying that they are owners, while in law they are not. All this has taken place in regard to land in its connection with unemployment. I look upon unemployment payments as a pay-off against revolution, because, if you are not going to have reforms, you are going to have revolution. There are no two ways about it, especially in the state in which this country is at the present time.
  The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN (Mr. Dunnico): I have tried to give the utmost liberty in this Debate, similar to what is given in a Second Beading Debate, but there are obvious limitations to what can be discussed on a Second Reading of a Bill. I must ask the hon. Member to confine his remarks more to the subject of the Motion before the Committee.
  Mr. HARDIE: I was only relating unemployment to what is being done in regard to the land. If we had not paid the money there would have been revolution. If you take the history of land taxation in this country, you find that it was the land basis in the past that always led to riots. The Parliament Act was the result of all of it. That Act was passed to save the Commons against
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  the landlords. Taxation I believe to be the key to freeing the land at present, in order that we may have a greater access to land, and therefore greater flexibility in moving our industries from time to time.
  Scotland has some of the blackest pages in the history of the world, in regard to the treatment of the people on the land. Scotland has twice passed a Valuation Bill, which has each time been killed in the other House. The agitation as to the taxation of land values really began in a serious form in Glasgow. The Glasgow Corporation started the agitation, so far as local authorities are concerned. The 1910 agitation grew out of the Scottish agitation; I do not think there is any doubt about that. It was Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman, a Scotsman, who took up the case of agitation in Glasgow and who used it. Might I just quote an example to show what makes Glasgow so bitter, in regard to its attitude on this question of the taxation of land values? The Glasgow people desired to get good drinking water on one occasion, and the Glasgow citizens had to pay the landlords a sum of £106,820 for the right to use the water for domestic purposes. That was for just the water, not the land.
  Last week, when I was at the Bar of the other place—[Interruption]—hon. Members opposite all seem familiar with the other "bar" of the House—I there saw the son of the owner of the land-of whom I am speaking, protesting against those parts of the Agricultural Land (Utilisation) Bill which Would have given people access to the land. The people have always to pay for every little improvement they make in Glasgow. When they make an improvement they are always improving the power of the landlord to increase his drawings. For instance, take the case of the Scottish wholesale co-operative movement, a working-class movement. In 1925, the Scottish Co-operative Wholesale Society issued a report in respect of certain expenditure upon land. It pointed out that when the Scottish Co-operative Wholesale Society bought land in Glasgow, to put up works, in 1887, it paid £500 per acre. In 1914, desiring to extend their premises by one-and-a-half acres, they had to pay, not £500 an acre,

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  but £2,000 per acre. In 1815 another extension became necessary over about three acres, and the Scottish Co-operative Wholesale Society had to pay, not £2,000 per acre, but £5,600 per acre. The landlords were scooping up a bit of the dividend that other people should have had. That is exactly what the principle we are discussing to-day is intended to deal with. The reform must come. The feu duties must not escape the tax.
  The "Lloyd George Budget" that has been described to-day was a failure. Only one of its taxes was a land valuation tax, and the whole of his scheme was ruined by concessions made to the Tories. That is the thing that has to be watched from our Front Bench. We have to see that there is no giving away what we are fighting for. When I get up to fight for something, I am going to fight for it to a finish, and take the result. That is a warning to everyone who is in charge of affairs in connection with this Finance Bill. How does this matter affect Scotland? We desire to speed up the valuation. We cannot understand that it has to take all this time to value the land, and we are very apprehensive of the present proposals. In Scotland we have a system of registering all changing of land for a long time back, and we could begin right away by taking that registration as part of the machine that is going to do the work. I do not see why those who are looking at this think as if it were going to be a tremendous lot of trouble, should look to Scotland as giving any trouble at all. Four months should be quite ample to go through all those proofs, and you could start off the moment that that was finished. You would have completed your valuation.
  I quite agree with the hon. Member for Burslem (Mr. MacLaren) that we should not have to pay for valuation at all. We ought to do just as we do with regard to Income Tax. We send out a form and ask a man to declare his income, and we should ask him to declare what land he owns. In that way, you can get the thing done in six months. We shall be told that some people would return their land at a penny. That could be prevented by a Clause in the Bill. I object, as a Scotsman, that an arrangement which has already been
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  working for so long should not be used, and I object to Scotland being dragged after England in this matter. There is no need for Scotland to have to wait all this time for its valuation. I am sorry the Lord Advocate is not here, but I hope he is going to see to it that, in so far as this machinery exists, it should be brought in right away in order to speed up things.
  We have to get something in the form of a separate instrument to deal with Scotland. If we do not, and if we have to wait until England is through, we may have to take up the English system, which will not work. The land laws of England would not work in Scotland at all. There is so much of the Roman law in Scottish law. Also, it is going to take a different type of surveyor and valuer to deal with the question of valuation in Scotland. I am hoping that the Scottish Office is going to see that we are not left, so far as that is concerned. I am quite sure that the question of the ground-annual will be brought up, and will be mixed with the new duties. I want to make a quotation in regard to the exemption of feu or ground-annual. The ground-annual, or feu, is paid by a vassal by way of a sum of money, as trustee for the King. In regard to the case of Scott v. Edmond, 1850, 12D. 107V, Lord Blackburn said:
  "I think it is established by a long series of authorities, ending with Scott v. Edmond, that the obligation created by a Clause in relief in a feu-charter worded in terms such as these does not apply to burdens or taxes imposed by future or supervening laws."
  That, I think, makes the position quite clear, so far as the legal point is concerned. I do not think there is anyone in this House who doubts the character and ability of Lord Blackburn, or would care to challenge what he said.
  8.0 p.m.
  So far as the feu is different from the ground-annual, the practice of feu was described by Professor Bell in his lecture on conveyancing. In that lecture, it is stated that the valuation duties in the Finance Act of 1909–10 laid it down that both duty and ground-annual are included in the expression "feu." So there can be argument in relation to the feu duty, or in relation to the ground-annual. All these things have a real basis in Scottish law. I hope that the Scottish Office will see that the question of registration of feus will be one

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  that will give immediate satisfaction. The position as far as England is concerned, is much more involved. In view of the information which we have in Scotland we should be able inside six months to say that the valuation was finished. In regard to Edinburgh, where those values have been said to operate, I can give the following example:
  "The town council of Edinburgh required land for the erection of gasworks in the neighbourhood of Granton. The land belonged to the Duke of Buccleuch, and comprised 105 acres, partly built on, and rated on an average at £5 10s. per acre. At 30 years' purchase of the assessed value the price would have been £165 per acre, and the total price for the land £17,325. The town council paid the Duke of Buccleuch £124,000 or 214 years' purchase."
  I can give hundreds of those cases.
  Earl of DALKEITH: Can the hon. Member justify the example?
  Mr. HARDIE: It was the town council of Edinburgh who purchased the land in order that they could build a gasworks.
  Earl of DALKEITH: This property was developed at great expense by my great grandfather, as a result of which it appreciated in value, and the town council of Edinburgh have since agreed that they made a very good bargain in their favour by purchasing. If the hon. Member wishes any further statement, I have the whole thing here and he can see it afterwards.
  HON. MEMBERS: Withdraw!
  Mr. HARDIE: The hon. Member has told us that his great grandfather created the ground value. He has not listened to what I read. What I read was, the difference between what you pay and what you get. The land belonged, as I said, to the Duke of Buccleuch and consisted of 105 acres partly built upon and rated at an average of £5 10s an acre. It is generally held that land is acquired on 20 years' purchase. At 30 years' purchase on the assessed value the price would be £165 an acre, and the total price for the land would be £17,000, but the town council had to pay £124,000.
  Earl of DALKEITH Earl of DALKEITH rose—
  The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN: I think that as the Noble Lord assumes that he
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  has been attacked, it might be better if I called upon him as the next speaker to follow the hon. Member.
  Mr. KIRKWOOD: He knows that:
  "If every man had his ain coo', There wadna be the Duke o' Buccleuch."
  Mr. HARDIE: I deny that I am attacking any Member of this Committee. I am attacking the system, and I am showing, from the records of the Edinburgh Corporation, what took place. If the hon. Member has any quarrel with the statement he must see the corporation of Edinburgh. I am not taking the responsibility for it.
  The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN: I want to make it quite clear that certain references have been made to the Noble Lord, and he claims the right to reply. I think that it is the custom in this House that when a reference is made to an hon. Member the hon. Member concerned is entitled to reply to it.
  Mr. HARDIE: I am not quarrelling with the Noble Lord but with the system, and I am showing the need for this taxation, and that this particular land would not have reached such a value were it not for the fact that the population of Edinburgh was increasing and the land was desired in connection with the erection of a gasworks to meet the requirements of the population. That is my point. If a piece of land out on the Sahara were owned by any Noble Lord it would remain of the same value until someone began to get round it or to use it. I am not attacking anyone, only the system. It is fortunate that the Edinburgh Corporation have this example on record. I did not realise that the Noble Lord was the person alluded to. There are a great many more instances which I could give. I hope that those in charge of this matter on the Front Bench will see to it, since there is this difference existing in Scotland and since we can facilitate matters as far as actual valuation is concerned, that the feu duties do not escape. We must get right into that question, and perhaps on the later stages of this proposal we may be able to obtain some further details from the Scottish Office.
  Earl of DALKEITH: I regret that I have been called upon to reply to the charge which has been made with regard

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  to a development in Edinburgh. This attack has been made so frequently in the past few years by Socialist speakers in my own constituency and at General Elections, that I brought the papers in connection with the matter with me today. In order to improve trade and employment, a very long time ago, a capital sum amounting to £520,000 was spent upon the development of this district by an individual. It is true that a portion of that land was sold, as has been indicated, to the Edinburgh Town Council. If the hon. Member for Springburn (Mr. Hardie) has any fault to find, I have the complete information here, or he can obtain it from the Edinburgh Town Council. I feel quite sure, on the evidence which I possess, that he is unjustified in making any charge against the family, or in using that illustration in favour of this particular Bill.
  Mr. STEPHEN: Do I understand the Noble Lord to say that £520,000 was spent on this property which was afterwards sold for £124,000?
  Earl of DALKEITH: That is not exactly what I said.
  Mr. STEPHEN: Then what is the point?
  Earl of DALKEITH: The hon. Member for Springburn tried to assure us that the valuation required for the proposal was very simple in Scotland, and, in fact, was almost ready now. Although there is a valuation and although there may be records of certain sales which have taken place, it cannot be assumed that the valuation would be carried out as easily as he suggested. The difficulties and complications are just as great there as in England, and the cost would also be very great. I suggest that the Government would deserve far greater support for their proposal if it was really designed to deal with, and would succeed in dealing with, certain cases of exploitation in the sale of land, especially the sale of land for the use of the community. It has already been shown that the result will be quite different and that the method will be entirely wrong. Very exaggerated statements have been made from the benches opposite about the difficulty of acquiring land for building, and the high cost of housing schemes
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  being due to the price of land. The Unionist party have taken, or supported, action since the War to make it easier for local authorities to acquire land at a reasonable cost, and it is fair to say that at the present time no difficulty exists where it can be shown that it is for the welfare of the people. Examples have been quoted of very large sums being given for small plots of ground. If further legislation were needed, I am sure that the Chancellor of the Exchequer would receive our assistance if he produced a method of dealing with the matter without causing an injurious and unjust effect in other directions.
  I have looked up the figures for the recent housing schemes in the largest town in my constituency. I find that the proportion of weekly rent which is due to the price paid for the land works out in one scheme at a 1½d. out of 7s. 9d., equal to one fifty-eighth part of the weekly rent, and in another scheme it is a fraction over a penny out of 7s. 3½d., which is equal to one-eightieth part of the cost of the weekly rent. In other words less than one-fiftieth and one-eightieth respectively were due to the cost of land. I mention this fact because I think it will dispose of the very general charge made in regard to housing schemes, that out of the total cost, the cost of land is prohibitive, or at any rate comprises a very large proportion of the cost of the houses. This is evidence which shows that there is not the difficulty in acquiring land that has been suggested by hon. Members opposite, and I feel that if they will investigate the different items which go to the total cost they will find, in far more cases than they believe, that the cost of land is much smaller than is understood to be the case.
  So many questions have been put to which answers have been withheld, that it is difficult to judge the merits of the proposal. I hope that the Government will not prejudge the wisdom of the course we are pursuing, and that they are not committed too deeply, because I feel that if they will consider the arguments on their merits, rather than the loose statements that are being made in support of their case, they will come to the conclusion that this proposal should be withdrawn. I have only one reason for welcoming the proposal, and

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  that is that we shall have open discussion in the House. I feel confident that the House will feel convinced that the proposal is thoroughly unsound, and that it will be withdrawn for good.
  As a member of a family still owning a considerable estate, chiefly agricultural, in Scotland, I feel entitled to challenge and deny the assumption so freely made about landowners, especially dukes, and the use of the land for which they are responsible. I feel justified in taking exception to the attacks upon landowners and the insinuations that their land is habitually used to the disadvantage of the community. When attacks are made upon the larger estates, I may in fairness point out that in the case of typical agricultural estates such as ours, it is largely because of their size that they can be efficiently equipped, maintained and worked for the use of those farming the land, and for other useful purposes. Although the Prime Minister spoke of ignorant landlordism in his May day speech, it can hardly be disputed that landowners in the past have developed their land with advantage to the community. They have done so and provided capital, in addition to paying large taxation to the Exchequer, far more economically than in those cases, so often quoted, where experiments on the land by the State have only resulted in large cost to the community. The charge of ignorance is, therefore, hardly to be laid upon the landowners in preference to Government officials. Recently, higher taxation has brought about a change, and many landowners discouraged by threats of vindictive action by the Socialist party may perhaps have some sense in anticipating the further burden proposed this week.
  A number of hon. Members have talked as if this tax of one penny in the £ will be only a tax on land, ignoring the fact that Income Tax and Super-tax may be paid up to an amount of 12s. in the £, with Death Duties in addition. Where the new tax is levied on agricultural land it will amount in Income Tax to 1s. 8d. in the £. That is the policy adopted by the Socialist Government to prevent the maintenance and equipment necessary for this land. The landowner is paying his share and rightly objects to being singled out for unequal and penal taxation. There can be no doubt that some agricultural
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  land will be exempt and some will not. In any case, in Scotland, if a fair deduction was made for owners' improvements, there would be no value left for taxation, but sometimes there would be a minus. Where agricultural land is exempt the difficulties and anomalies of discrimination by the valuer will be enormous, and by its very exemption the principles on which the tax is based are broken. Where it is not exempt, it will rest entirely upon the opinion of the tax gatherer and valuer as to whether the land should or might be built upon, and it will be taxed upon the value that he puts upon it, and will be a further tax upon the production of food.
  Apparently, even where agricultural land is exempt, it is not from any wish to help agriculture, but only because it would cost the country even more than we believe the rest of the scheme will do. It is not from any love for the landlords. We are accustomed to much propaganda about land monoply, which is no longer justified, and we are accustomed to much abuse of landlords, despite the evidence that they do take great interest in the proper use of their land. We get no credit for development which is entirely due to individual enterprise. Respect is due to those who invest their capital in the land of this country, which helps employment, where it is heavily taxed, rather than in foreign investments where it only helps foreign employment.
  We understand that where a private owner has provided allotments, or cricket grounds, or football grounds, or playing fields at a nominal rent in. the vicinity of towns, this land will in future be liable to heavy taxation, whereas if it belongs to a local authority it will escape. That will surely be a very heavy blow to the allotment holders and those cricket and football clubs and others who just manage to pay their way annually. The tax will have to be passed on to them, or will the Chancellor of the Exchequer show a way in which it can be avoided? I hope the Committee will resist this iniquitous proposal. Will the Government tell us whether their real object is revenue or revenge, and whether the effect is likely to be no improvement whatsoever or confiscation? It is certainly no business proposition.
  The Chancellor of the Exchequer has a considerable reputation for business

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  capacity and he must be aware that this is not a business transaction. The hon. Member for Kincardine (Mr. Scott) and other Scottish speakers suggest that the immense revenue from the tax will provide relief in taxation. That is impossible. The Chancellor of the Exchequer himself is doubtful. He does not mind if it fails to produce revenue. There seems no doubt that the whole object of this proceeding is confiscation of the land, or even Socialist control. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, speaking at Paisley in 1925, made his views quite clear and showed that he would destroy private landlordism root and branch. Evidently this is the scheme of taxation by which he hopes to bring that about. If he does intend confiscation, can he not say so direct and can we not have done with this bargaining, and let the Liberal party choose whether they wish to submit to State control? Whenever they are challenged they deny that they support nationalisation of the land, but by their actions they try to make any other system of land tenure impossible.
  The object of the tax is political. It is a political bribe to Liberals, to faddists and fanatics. The Chancellor of the Exchequer thinks that the Liberal party will swallow this bait at one gulp and as soon as he has finished with any necessity for their support he will complete nationalisation as soon as he can. Surely at this stage, during these years of difficulty following the War, the Government, if they have any intention of solving the internal troubles of the country and avoiding keeping up internecine strife, will withdraw this proposal, which cannot possibly have any effect in helping the country. I suggest, after all the arguments that have been brought forward by hon. Members on this side, that the time has come when they should withdraw the proposal.
  Mr. STAMFORD: The Noble Lord who has just resumed his seat has suggested that the proposals of the Chancellor of the Exchequer are designed for confiscation purposes. I can assure him that they are designed for no purpose of the kind. They are designed to prevent the confiscation of socially produced values by the landowning section of the community. This Debate has been interesting for a number of reasons. It has
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  been interesting to see the way in which the proposals of the Chancellor have been accepted by the Committee. It would have been impossible a few years ago for proposals for the taxation of land values to have been received by a Committee of the House of Commons with the lack of excitement, almost the lack of interest, which has characterised the Debate during the two days which have been devoted to this topic. When we look at the present atmosphere of the Committee, the hectic days of 1910 are indeed a very long way behind.
  I am rather at a loss to understand the attitude of the Conservative party towards these proposals. The right hon. Member for South Croydon (Sir W. Mitchell-Thomson) said that things have changed since 1910. They have indeed changed, and in no respect have they changed more than in the profound change that has come over public opinion on the matter of the taxation of land values. It is possible that that fact has something to do with the attitude of the Opposition, so far as it has been revealed in the Debate of the last two days. Up to the present we have seen very little conviction and no enthusiasm at all on the other side of the Committee, and it may be that hon. Members opposite are reserving their resistance to the proposals to a later stage. If I were to hazard a guess at the tactics of the Opposition, it is that later on their policy will be to do all they can to restrict the scope of this new taxation and enlarge the range of the exemptions and exceptions. If that be the case, as I imagine it will be, I can only express the hope that the Chancellor of the Exchequer will resist to the fullest extent that kind of tactics, as I have no doubt he will.
  Another rather interesting feature of the Debate has been the comparative absence of references to speeches made some years ago by the right hon. Member for Epping (Mr. Churchill) the ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer. It has been very noticeable that although the right hon. Gentleman displayed a very considerable interest in the proposals for rating and the taxation of land values a few years ago, he has not graced these Debates by his presence this week. It is true that this afternoon, while the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) was speaking,

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  his form flitted across the scene for a few brief moments and then disappeared. When I turn to the speeches of the right hon. Gentleman the ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer I find there a good deal not only to interest, but also to instruct and inspire me on this question.
  The hon. Member for Burslem (Mr. MacLaren) ventured to give one or two quotations from speeches made by the ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer. I have one here. It is an extract from a speech delivered at Edinburgh in 1910, in which the right hon. Gentleman referred to the enrichment which comes to the landlord as the result of social effort. He spoke about the improvements of various kinds made at the public expense, many of them made at the expense of local authorities, and the right hon. Gentleman said:
  "Everyone of these improvements is effected by the labour and at the cost of other people, many of the most important are effected at the cost of the municipality and the ratepayer. To not one of these improvements does the land monopolist, as a land monopolist, contribute, and yet by everyone of them the value of his land is sensibly enhanced. He renders no service to the community, he contributes nothing even to the process from which his own enrichment is derived."
  Sir BASIL PETO: What is the date of that?
  Mr. STAMFORD: It is the year 1910.
  Sir B. PETO: It related to Increment Duty, which is entirely different from the present proposal.
  Mr. STAMFORD: At the time this speech was made, the ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer was a whole-hearted supporter of the full policy of the taxation of land values for local municipal purposes, and while the ex-Chancellor has frequently changed his political views and his political attachments since that time, this statement is just as true to-day as it was in the year 1910 when the speech was made.
  Sir B. PETO: It has no relevance to the proposals of the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
  Mr. STAMFORD: There is a quite unanswerable case to be made out for these proposals, and the case is un-answerable, because it is the universal need of man for land which is the sole
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  source of land value. I know of no other factor which contributes to the rising value of land but the universal need of mankind for the use of land, and, after all, private ownership of land itself can confer no sort or kind of advantage on the landlord. Suppose the whole area of these islands were in the possession of one landowner, and that this one landowner was the only inhabitant of these islands. That one landowner might possibly maintain for himself a standard of living very much like that which was maintained on his desert island by Robinson Crusoe—although I am not quite so sure about that, because Robinson Crusoe possessed qualities of initiative and enterprise, foresight and forethought, which are not always present in the modern landowner—but even in such a situation as that the fact that one man possessed the whole area of these islands would mean very little to him.
  The fact of the matter is that it is not the ownership of land in itself which confers an advantage. Ownership merely represents a power which the private owners of land possess to levy a continual tribute on social production. The right hon. Member for Tamworth (Sir A. Steel-Maitland) has told the Committee that as far as the Conservative party are concerned they are willing that betterment should be taken, but if we take the betterment which accrues on certain land, it does not really affect the problem with which the Chancellor of the Exchequer is now endeavouring to deal. It is not merely a question of betterment. We are agreed that, where betterment exists, it should be taken for the community and used for the purposes of the community. But what we are most concerned about is to prevent this tribute being exacted from the community by the owners of the soil. I believe that one of the greatest, perhaps the greatest of all social scandals of to-day, is the steady appropriation by landowners of the accumulated resources of human energy and enterprise as expressed in steadily rising land values.
  That is the general case in support of these proposals. There is one matter however which ought to be cleared up before these Debates conclude. From a statement made by the Financial Secretary on Monday it would appear that certain classes of agricultural land are

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  to be exempted from the valuation proposals. I did not gather, however, from the statement of the Chancellor of the Exchequer that such was to be the case. I hope that the position which I understood the Chancellor of the Exchequer to take up on Monday, is to be regarded as the correct position as far as the general valuation is concerned. I see no reason for excluding any type of land from the valuation proposals. The nation has a right to know the total value of the national estate. I hope that the valuation will be complete, that it will make public for the first time the value of the national estate, and that it will admit of no exceptions or exemptions whatever. I was also glad to hear the Chancellor of the Exchequer express the hope that when the valuation was complete, it would be made the basis for the purchase of land by local authorities and—what I regard as even more important—for the transference of local rates from houses and improvements.
  I share the right hon. Gentleman's hope. It is a good many years since I was instrumental in getting passed through the Bradford city council, a resolution asking Parliament to give power to local authorities to levy rates on the basis of land values. The matter was urgent at that time. It is even more urgent to-day, because of the recent considerable increase in local rates. I have never taken up the attitude which some people—I think, mistakenly—take, that it does not matter how high local rates are as long as the citizens are getting value for the money which is expended in that way. I think that is a fundamentally unsound position. I know, from experience, that high rates in a city like Bradford or Leeds constitute at the present time a heavy, and in some cases, an almost intolerable burden on large classes of the poorer ratepayers. While that is the case with regard to the poorer section of the community, there is another section which escapes its fair share of contribution to the local expenditure, and that is the landlord class. The landlord benefits most from municipal government, and contributes least towards its cost. In addition, as a result of the operation of the existing system of rating, municipalities are penalised in respect of their purchases of land, and also in respect of the
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  loss in rates which they regularly sustain owing to the operation of the present system.
  Sir B. PETO: On a point of Order. Are we entitled on this Resolution to discuss the whole question of raising rates upon land values? In connection with that point, may I call your attention, Mr. Dunnico, to the fact that your predecessor in the Chair ruled that this question was outside the scope of the present Debate.
  Colonel WEDGWOOD: On that point of Order. May I point out that the Chancellor of the Exchequer in his original speech on Monday, referred to the value which this valuation would have in relation to rating?
  Sir B. PETO: May I also call attention to the fact that the Chancellor of the Exchequer only made a passing reference, almost in parenthesis, to the fact that some day he hoped to utilise this valuation for the purpose of raising rates on land values?
  The DEPUTY-CHAIRMAN: I said some time ago that I looked upon this Debate as being in the nature of a Second Reading Debate, and on the Second Reading of a Bill a rather wider latitude is given, as to the discussion of general principles. I am afraid it is now rather too late in the Debate to try to restrict it. The Chancellor of the Exchequer in his opening statement did suggest that one of the underlying reasons for this Resolution was to permit such a thing as has been mentioned to take place, and I cannot prevent any hon. Member from arguing that it is advisable or inadvisable for it to take place. Therefore, I think that the hon. Member for West Leeds (Mr. Stamford) is in order.
  Mr. STAMFORD: I am obliged, Mr. Dunnico, for your ruling. After all, there is no good in having a valuation of land unless it is intended to put it to some use, and I was merely discussing one of the possible uses to which it might be put. I was referring to the difficulties experienced by local authorities in relation to land purchase, and I was about to give an example from my own experience. When I was a member of the Bradford City Council, that body contemplated the purchase of a rather large piece of land. We approached the

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  owner who informed us that the selling price was £18,500. We then went to the local valuation office and inquired as to the value of the land, according to the conclusions of the official valuer. We found that the value placed upon the land by the official valuer was £5,000. We then made inquiries at the office of the city treasurer to ascertain how this piece of land stood in the Tate books of the corporation. The information that I got was the rather startling information that the piece of land for which the owner demanded from the corporation £18,500 stood in the ratebooks of the corporation as if its value were £110 10s. There is only one comment to be made on a case like that. If the land were worth what the owner said it was worth, it should have been paying local rates on the basis of that valuation; if, alternatively, it was worth what it was represented to be worth in the rate books of Bradford Corporation, the local authority ought to have had the power to compel the owner to sell his land to the corporation at that price.
  Some little time ago the City Corporation of Sheffield published some figures relating to its recent land transactions, from which it appeared that during the last 24 years Sheffield had acquired 1,010 acres of land for public purposes. The price-which it had to pay was £245,540, and the rates levied upon that land totalled £1,329. With instances like that, which could be multiplied over and over again and which are within the knowledge of every Member of this House who has ever sat on a local authority, the case for some change in the basis of local rating is absolutely complete and overwhelming; and I again express the hope that later on, when the valuation is complete, the local authorities will be empowered to take that valuation as the basis for local rating purposes. I am certain that it would represent the biggest revolution that has ever been made in the history of local government in this country.
  Let me turn to what is, I think, the main objection urged from the other side to the proposals of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. An hon. Member on Monday evening put his objection in these words:
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  "My great objection to this tax is that it will inevitably be a tax on industry, and a very great tax at that."—[OFFICIAL, REPORT, 4th May, 1931; col. 150, Vol. 252.]
  The right hon. Gentleman who opened the Debate to-day repeated that objection in rather different words. I am rather at a loss to understand exactly what ground the Conservative party is choosing for its fight on these valuation and taxation proposals. We are told, on the one hand, that their effect will be to increase the cost of production and the cost of commodities; on the other hand, there have been arguments advanced from the other side to the effect that this new tax will be a grievous burden on the landowners of Great Britain. I imagine that it is impossible for the Conservative party to have it both ways. Either this tax rests where it is put, or it does not. If it rests where it is put, on the landowner, it does not increase the cost of production and it does not tend to increase the cost of commodities; if it does pass from the landowner into industry, I cannot understand a part of the argument from the other side or the bitter opposition to these proposals displayed by the Land Union of Great Britain. They, at any rate, are under no illusion with regard to it; they know quite well, as we have been told by economists for very many years past, that one of the virtues of a tax on land values is that it stays where it is put, that it stays on the landowner, and it is impossible that it should be otherwise.
  It is very difficult to present the case in a brief and at the same time simple way, but I will try to do so. The price of a commodity is fixed by the relation of supply and demand. If the supply of a commodity is ample and the demand is small, the price will be low; if, on the other hand, the supply of a commodity is limited, either by monopoly or in any other way, and the demand for the commodity is very considerable, then the price will be high. That is why protective tariffs tend to increase the cost of production and the price of the article to the consumer, but that does not apply to a tax on land values. It cannot. A tax on land values cannot be passed on, for the very simple reason that it does nothing to diminish the supply or to increase the demand. The demand for

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  land is fixed. It cannot be altered. It remains precisely what it was before the tax was imposed.
  The demand for land is fixed by the size and demand of the population for land, and there is nothing in the imposition of a tax on land values that in any way alters the extent of that demand. On the other hand, what we claim for a tax on land values is that it does tend to increase the available supply of land. If I happened to be a landowner, which, fortunately or otherwise, I am not, I am certain that I should find it much easier to hold land out of its full use in the absence of a tax than if a tax is actually in operation. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear!"] If it is agreed on the other side, as apparently it is in some quarters, that the effect of a tax on land values is to increase the available supply, and if the tax does nothing to increase the demand, then the effect of the taxation of land values must be lower rents and cheaper land. If there is any flaw in that argument, if it is an unsound argument, I should like one of the hon. Members opposite to tell us plainly and simply where the flaw lies and where the unsoundness of that argument is.
  May I now turn to one rather wider consideration? This proposed tax on land values is not, as many Members on the other side appear to imagine, an additional tax. It is an alternative tax. It is a form of taxation which will provide revenue without hampering and hurting industry. [Interruption.] That, at any rate, is the claim that we make for it. The biggest problem, the gravest problem, the most tragic problem with which society is faced at the present moment, without any question at all, is the problem of the unemployment of upwards of 2,000,000 decent working people in this country. It is a problem that up to now has baffled the attempts of every political party to deal with it, and I believe that it will continue to baffle the attempts of all who would wish to settle it until the roots of that problem are found and cut away. At the root of the problem of unemployment, I believe, is to be found the problem of land monopoly. It is the worst of all monopolies, because it is the monopoly of the source of all wealth, of all production and of all life.
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  Unemployment, the poverty of the people, is part of the price that society has to pay for the denial of common rights to land. I believe those rights can be enforced by the instrument of taxation, and I see in the proposals of the Chancellor of the Exchequer a beginning towards that end. I see in them the beginning of the opening of an attack on the age-long established private land monopoly. I see in them the beginning of the socialisation of economic rent, a necessary first step if the community is to retain the advantage of other forms of socialisation, and I congratulate the Chancellor of the Exchequer on his good fortune in having his name associated with what, I believe, will in future be recognised to be one of the biggest, most important and far-reaching reforms ever submitted to the House of Commons.
  Mr. CADOGAN: The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George), if I understood his speech aright, teemed to deprecate anyone, save those on our Front Bench, who were his colleagues during the Coalition, attacking that wide and vulnerable front which represents his long Parliamentary career. I do not know whether I come within the category of what he terms "pip-squeaks." Everyone must acknowledge that is a highly reprehensible and discourteous way of referring to any of his colleagues in this House, but I represent a constituency just as much as the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs, and although his constituency may be a better judge of men, it is obvious that my constituency is a better judge of measures. I claim the same right to criticise him as any occupant of our Front Bench. He pointed out that we cannot expect the Government at this stage to supply us with any details of this tax. We fully appreciate that, but what we want is more elucidation of the principle that is enforced by this Measure. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs, in recommending it-to the Committee, reminded me of that historic company promoter who, just before the bursting of the South Sea Bubble, when speculative fever was at its height in the City, invited the public to subscribe to an enterprise, the nature of which he

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  subsequently revealed. It is preposterous that any Member in any part of the House should be asked to go into any particular Lobby to vote on this tax until we know a little more about it.
  9.0. p.m.
  I want to ask the Solicitor-General how far the principle of this tax fits in or conflicts with principles which are contained in Measures which are on the Statute Book, and in one in particular which is going through the House at the present time. Before I do so, I should like him to give the Committee a definition. We have heard a certain phrase used perpetually from the very start of this campaign for the taxation of site values. It is a phrase which the Chancellor of the Exchequer employed in his opening speech a few days ago, and it is a phrase which even the Solicitor-General, with all his legal acumen, will have considerable difficulty in defining. It is the phrase "The people." We have heard the Chancellor of the Exchequer say that the Creator made the land for the people. According to this Measure, if I have real estate of the value of £119 I am a person, I am one of the people; but if that real estate is worth £121, then I am no longer a person; I have no longer my civic rights. One of the difficulties of this form of legislation is that it penalises—3 use the word "penalises," for it is a crime to own land—one section of the community in order to benefit another section. It is very interesting to read an extract from a speech made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer a long time ago, which was published in a leading article in "The Times" this morning. He was holding up to ridicule the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs, because he was making the distinction between two sections of the community as to who were the people and who were not. He said that the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs says:
  "it is wrong for the rich man to take something which is the creation of the community, but it is not wrong for the poor man to do so. What we are going to say now is that it is not wrong for a man to steal from the community, provided his income is not more than £3 a week, but the moment he gets beyond that point he is a thief. What is the moral of all this? That the Chancellor of the Exchequer has found his land taxation to be an utter failure and the machinery set up impracticable."
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  We are in the same difficulty. The hon. Member who spoke last wanted to know exactly the line we were going to take in attacking this Measure, but I should like to have fuller and better particulars. Nothing has emerged from the other side beyond the fact which we knew before, that they have an obsession against landlords. This obsession is disguised under the cloak of what appears to be a laudable ambition to benefit the community. I should be much more convinced if these strong champions of the taxation of site values were going to make sacrifices themselves. I should form a much higher opinion of their public spirit. Their anxiety to tax the landlords is derived more from a morbid obsession than from any charitable impulse.
  The hon. and gallant Member for Wells (Major Muirhead) said that the Socialist party were most hopelessly out-of-date and old-fashioned, and I endorse that statement. In this campaign they seem to be completely ignorant of the great changes that have taken place since the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs first initiated his campaign in favour of the taxation of site values. Hon. Members opposite seem to be under the impression that the same great estates which existed in the original Domesday Book are in the same hands now, that great estates have not been split up, and that they do not change hands frequently at the present time. One hon. Member referred to the fact that he had found a tombstone in his cathedral of a Crusader whose name was exactly the same as that of the family which owned the land of this departed warrior at the present time. Let me assure hon. Members that, if great estates exist, they are now possessed not so much by the descendants of the Crusaders as by the descendants of those whose land aforetime the Crusaders invaded. Hon. Members opposite still think that great landlords are in the same situation as they were in when Dr. Johnson auctioned Barclay and Perkins' brewery. He went about at the auction saying, "I am not auctioning a couple of vats and a chimney stack, I am auctioning potentialities of wealth beyond the dreams of avarice." No landlord is in that position to-day. In the last 20 years Income Tax, Surtax and Estate

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  Duties have appropriated a very large proportion of what hon. Members opposite call "unearned increment."
  The hon. Member for Burslem (Mr. MacLaren) evidently ignores the fact that education has advanced, because he thinks the cry, "They are taxing food as opposed to taxing site values,' will go down with the people of the country at the next election. I can assure him that the people of this country are much too well educated to be gulled by such statements as that. Hon. Members opposite also ignore all recent legislation. Apart from such Acts as the Rent Restrictions Act, the Housing Act, 1930, the Land Drainage Act and the Agricultural Holdings Act, there is a town planning Measure which is receiving attention in Committee upstairs. I think at is very important that we should know how far the principle of the taxation of site values which is now before us conflicts with the principle contained in the Bill upstairs, because I believe that the provisions in the latter Bill for preventing the community being exploited by landlords is a much better method of achieving their end than that which is contained in the Measure now before us.
  As several hon. Members on the other side of the Committee have instanced their own cases, perhaps I may quote mine. We all know more about our own individual cases, and probably we can make our points clearer in that way. I am the fortunate, or unfortunate, possessor of a small agricultural estate. Though it is small, it has a considerable length of boundary adjoining one of these arterial monstrosities which are defiling the amenities of the countryside. I have no doubt that when the emissaries of the Chancellor of the Exchequer start assessing my property under this scheme, if it is ever placed on the Statute Book, they will say that although it is agricultural land yet, with its frontage to the Oxford high road, it has potentialities of development which are other than agricultural. I would like hon. Members opposite, who have as good an eye for the main chance as I have, to put themselves in my situation. What would be my best course? Obviously it would be to develop that strip of country. But then what would happen under this other Measure which is upstairs? The
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  Solicitor-General knows a great deal about the matter, and if he can convince me that I am wrong, I shall be only too delighted. The local authority, having made a scheme under Clause 5 of that Bill—if it becomes law—will claim that my development scheme does not conform to the provisions of theirs, and then, under Clause 12, they can insist that I shall remove or pull down my buildings, though how one can remove buildings without pulling them down is one of the mysteries known only to the promoters of that Bill. It is quite true that under Clause 17 owners who are in that horrible predicament—
  The CHAIRMAN: The hon. Member is discussing the Bill upstairs. He is not at liberty to do that.
  Mr. CADOGAN: May I put this point? Is it not within my rights to ask how far the principle of another Measure which is being promoted by the Government conflicts with the principle of this Bill?
  The CHAIRMAN: I heard the hon. Member put that point, but since then he has been referring to the various Clauses of the Bill.
  Mr. CADOGAN: I wanted to elaborate my point. In any case I bow to your Ruling, but I do hope that the Solicitor-General will find himself sufficiently within your Ruling to be able to make the position clear on that point. We claim that the Measure upstairs embodies a principle which may solve the difficulties of hon. Members opposite. As I am not allowed to proceed on that line, I will put one or two other points. In the first place, I cannot conceive how anybody can produce a formula which, under modern circumstances, will define what is agricultural land pure and simple and what is agricultural land which has any potentialities other than agricultural. The factor of rapid transit renders it improbable that there is a square inch of land anywhere in Great Britain which has not potentialities outside agriculture. It is amazing to see how, in a few weeks, arterial roads and consequent developments can spring up in districts which were formerly absolutely rural. Then the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs twitted the right hon. Member for Croydon (Sir W. Mitchell-Thomson) on the fact that he had forgotten

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  that if we imposed a tariff there must be an enormous increase of staff for the collection of the revenue. Surely the answer to that is that a general tariff, whatever one may think of it, would unquestionably produce an immense revenue, far greater than any which will be raised by this land tax, and in those circumstances we could better afford a larger staff. I will conclude by saying that we on this side of the House regard this as a Measure which is replete with injustices and inequity, and, that being the case, we resent the use of such a phrase as "The Creator gave the land to the people" and object to right hon. Gentlemen opposite sheltering themselves behind it. They only add one more to the long list of offences against the Decalogue by a flagrant breach of the Third Commandment.
  Mr. DUNCAN MILLAR: I agree with the hon. Member who has just spoken that the Committee are undoubtedly labouring under a substantial disadvantage in not having the full details of the Government's scheme, which will in due time be presented in the Finance Bill. At the same time, I think the issue before the Committee is a very simple one. We are dealing here with a question of principle on which we shall have to record our votes to-night. The principle is whether it is proper to levy a duty which is based upon the value of sites, limited, as I understand, to urban areas. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] Substantially so. I understand that agricultural land is to be excluded. I should have thought there would have been a much larger measure of agreement in the House, certainly with regard to the principle of valuation, which has been dealt with adequately this afternoon by the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George), and I should be surprised to hear that there is any hon. Member who is not prepared to accept the proposition that it is in the interests of the country to have a basis of valuation on which the revenue officers can estimate taxation for Estate Duty and other purposes.
  With regard to the general issues which are raised, I should have thought that hon. Members who sit in the opposition benches would have been prepared to go a very long way on this subject. I have
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  long been associated with the movement for the taxation of land values, and I have discussed this subject with men who hold different political opinions. There are three propositions upon which, I think, there is general agreement. The first is that we should secure for the community the increment values created by the population. That is a proposition which will receive substantial support in all quarters of the House. My second proposition is that land required for public purposes should be acquired at a fair price. I do not think any hon. Member will dispute that proposition, in view of the scandalous cases which can be cited as to what has taken place in the past with regard to the high sums exacted when land has been required for public purposes.
  Sir DENNIS HERBERT: Within the last 10 years?
  Mr. MILLAR: Yes. There have been many cases where very substantial prices have been paid beyond the actual value of the land taken. In the third place, I think it will be agreed by all sections in this Committee that it is very desirable that something should be done with regard to relieving improvements in the form of buildings, including factory buildings, from rates and taxes through the readjustment of taxation which will bring in a source of revenue which at present escapes altogether. [Interruption.] Apparently the hon. Member who interrupts me has not studied this question or he would know that there are in this country a large number of (municipalities who are not concerned with any political party, who, in the interests of the community they serve, have brought in time and again proposals of this character. I would like to mention the proposals brought in by the great municipality of Glasgow to secure the rating of site values. I agree with the Chancellor of the Exchequer that there are hundreds of municipalities who would be prepared to do the same.
  I do not think that this point has been stressed sufficiently, that the principal object of a tax on site values is to secure an equitable readjustment of taxation. I am not prepared to accept the statement that the proposals of the Government involve simply an additional form of taxation. If I thought the intention was to

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  impose a fresh duty or a fresh tax which is going to impose an all-round additional burden, I should oppose it.
  Sir B. PETO: The Resolution we are discussing is a proposal to add an additional tax, and there is no proposal as to how the money is to he spent. In those circumstances surely we are considering an additional tax and nothing else.
  Mr. MILLAR: The proposal of the Government is one which will have to be debated in detail on the Finance Bill, and I am discussing the principle which the Resolution raises. Are you going to impose a tax on site values? I think that depends largely upon the intention of the Government to readjust taxation. I was dealing with the question of the rates, and I am glad that the Ruling of the Chair permits me to deal with that question. It appears to me that the necessity for allowing local authorities to deal with the question of local rating is urgent to-day, and I should prefer to have seen steps taken in that direction in the first instance. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, in referring to the taxation which he proposes by this Resolution, said the intention was to raise revenue for the purpose of meeting the expense of the de-rating proposals, amounting to a sum of £35,000,000. My submission to the Committee is that instead of meeting the expense of de-rating the duty of the Chancellor of the Exchequer is to abolish the de-rating proposals and to readjust taxation in order that every section of the community will benefit. Under the de-rating scheme many wealthy industries are getting advantages for which they never asked, and which they did not deserve, and the ratepayers are called upon to pay an additional charge to those engaged in these trades.
  Why should the Chancellor of the Exchequer raise this revenue for the particular purpose of meeting the expense of the de-rating scheme, which is only to benefit certain favoured productive industries? I think the Government are bound to reconsider the whole question of de-rating in relation to the proposals which they are putting forward, and they ought to remove this very unjust burden
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  which has been imposed upon many small ratepayers, including householders and those engaged in distribution trades. Many Bills have been introduced dealing with this question, and I remember the time when we had introduced land valuation Bills which obtained a Second Reading, and some of them passed this House, but were rejected in another place. I think opinion in the country is ripe for a distinct advance being made at the present moment on this question. The experience of other countries which have adopted these proposals is that they have been successful, and if they are passed we shall share the benefits and advantages which have accrued in other countries. I do not share the views of hon. Members who do not believe that these proposals are calculated to meet the needs of great municipalities.
  I cannot associate myself with the form in which these proposals have been submitted and introduced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I think questions of this character ought to be raised altogether above party considerations, and that no challenge should be made from one side of the House or the other. We are dealing with a problem which vitally affects the whole of the country. Certain statements have been made in support of these proposals to which I cannot agree. I cannot accept the view that this Measure asserts the right of the community to the ownership of land, and that private individuals only possess a nominal claim. I do not agree that that is a fair or a just statement of the case. I would like to see these questions argued without bias on either side, and I would like to see points of difference thoroughly thrashed out. I desire to reserve my right fully to criticise these proposals when they are brought up in detail, and I dissociate myself from some of the statements made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, which do not seem to me to agree at all with the Liberal standpoint.
  Sir D. HERBERT: The right Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) and certain others have seemed to he in some doubt as to the extent to which these proposals are really going to be opposed by hon. Members on these benches. The right hon. Gentleman, at any rate, ought to be

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  a sufficiently experienced Parliamentary hand to know that the most serious opposition is not that which makes the greatest noise at the start. It may be just possible that with his great Parliamentary experience he may be endeavouring to interfere to some extent with the way in which we propose to conduct our opposition. The Government may be assured that if they intend their proposals to be on the lines of the principles expressed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in introducing this Resolution, they will meet with an opposition which, if not noisy, will at least have solid argument behind it, and is likely to have a considerable amount of success.
  Let me for a moment try to show what arguments have been advanced in support of what has been described as the second Reading principle which we are now discussing. The hon. Gentleman who has just sat down has called attention to what is apparently the argument of the Chancellor himself, which is that he desires the ultimate nationalisation of all land in the country. We on these benches are not very much afraid of that proposal, for we realise, at any rate, that there is not a majority in this House in favour of it. The only other argument which seems to have been advanced to any great extent in introducing these proposals is the alleged wickedness and unfairness of the man who holds a piece of land which increases enormously in value without his doing anything to increase it. It has been pointed out over and over again that we are not discussing now the question of the taxation of unearned increment values. The right hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Colonel Wedgwood), the keenest supporter of the taxation of land values in the House, has taken the view, in support of which there has been considerable evidence from past experience, that that is not practicable, and that you cannot do it. Those who are supporting the Resolution on those grounds quoted instances of the extraordinary increase in value of land in certain places, but they did not refer to the other land which is going to be taxed under this principle.
  Let me refer just briefly to one unit of land. It is true that we may have more information about this when we come to the details, but, at any rate, here is an example of broad principles
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  which is worth considering when we have this Resolution before us. Generally speaking, I understand this tax on land values, if not to be levied directly upon is at any rate ultimately to be thrown back upon the actual freeholders of the property. It may be levied on the leaseholders if the original lease is for more than 50 years, but he is to have the right of recourse against his lessor. I know perfectly well that it is no use worrying the Chancellor at the present time for exact details as to what those circumstances will be, but let me refer to the particular case I have in mind. Reference has been made to land in the City of Manchester. I will take my example from that city. There is land up there in connection with which there is a form of property commonly known as ground rents. Thrifty persons with savings who want a safe investment have invested in the purchase of these ground rents.
  Not many years ago, a good gilt-edged ground rent bought at 25 years' purchase brought in 4 per cent. or a little less, after all expenses were paid. No one will dispute the fact that many of the sites on which these ground rents are secured are worth 7½ times the price which would produce 4 per cent. Under those circumstances, the owner of that £4 a year ground rent, after paying his 4s. 6d. in the £ for Income Tax, is left with £3 2s. a year, the exact amount of the land tax on that unit of land. There may be circumstances which are going to alter that, but if not, it is going to amount to confiscation of a form of property which is not properly described as an interest in land in the sense that the owner can do nothing whatever at present with regard to dealing with the land. He has parted with the control of the land for a very long term of years. I admit at once that that case may be dealt with to some extent by the special circumstances which are to qualify throwing this tax back on the ultimate owner, but, at any rate, unless we can be told that the owners of these freehold ground rents are to be entirely exempt from this taxation, it is enough to show that you are levying a severe tax on a form of property the owner of which has no practical power whatever to interfere with the user of the land for a great number of years.

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  A very large amount of that sort of interest in land and ownership of site values is subject to mortgages. Again, there is the investment of money by people, very often of no great means, who want a safe investment. If the ground rent is practically confiscated or reduced by 50 per cent. or even 25 per cent., what is to be the fate of that particular mortgagee? Let me take another matter in connection with this, namely, the question of valuation. The hon. Member who has just sat down referred to the need of a basis for valuation of land throughout the country. I do not know what be means by basis of valuation. Everyone who knows anything about land knows perfectly well that it is no use undertaking a complete valuation, even if it were possible, of all land in the country as the value stands to-day, because within one month the value would be different. To say we have no system of valuation is absurd and ridiculous.
  The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs could not find any better reason for supporting the principle of this tax than telling long stories about the wickedness of the man who gets the unearned increment. When he comes to this question of valuation he moans over what he calls the destruction of the Valuation Department system which he set up. What is the actual truth of the case? The Valuation Department has never been abolished. The Inland Revenue Valuation Department remains and is as active and successful as ever it was. What the right hon. Gentleman makes such a song about is the abolition of the necessity of filling up a certain form. I have the reference to the Debate here. It was the case in which the Government at the time took off the Whips and allowed a free vote. It was on the question of the abolition of the Clause in a previous Finance Act requiring that on every transfer of land there should be filled up a certain form, known as the "Particulars delivered" form.
  Mr. KNIGHT: Form IV.
  Sir D. HERBERT: No, it was not Form IV. The hon. and learned Gentleman should have spent a little more time in an office of the lower branch of the
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  profession, if he wants to understand some of the practical considerations which affect this matter.
  Mr. KNIGHT: It was not a serious interjection.
  Sir D. HERBERT: I can quite understand that, but I am dealing at the moment with a rather serious matter, which formed one of the main arguments and one of the main topics of the speech of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs. What he complained of was apparently that my right hon. Friend the Member for West Birmingham (Sir A. Chamberlain) had almost been guilty of a breach of faith by getting rid of the necessity for filling up that particular form. One effect of getting rid of it was to save the country £500,000 a year from that time onwards—
  Colonel WEDGWOOD: Has the hon. Gentleman any idea of the amount that is being lost in Death Duties through the Valuation Department not being kept up to date?
  Sir D. HERBERT: Not one penny, and I will tell the right hon. and gallant Gentleman why. I have some experience of the work of the Valuation Department with regard to Death Duties. It does its work very well indeed at any rate from the point of view of the National Exchequer.
  Colonel WEDGWOOD: It is handicapped by not being able to get particulars as to the selling price.
  Sir D. HERBERT: The right hon. and gallant Gentleman is wrong again. It is able to get those particulars, and I challenge him to give me proof to the contrary. It is always furnished with the fullest possible information.
  Colonel WEDGWOOD: The Department was furnished with the fullest possible information for the purposes of the duty which was destroyed when that Clause in that Government Bill was withdrawn by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham.
  Sir D. HERBERT: The right hon. and gallant. Gentleman seems to think that, if he dies to-morrow, and the Inland Revenue Department comes down to value his real estate for the purpose of

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  Death Duties, what it will want to know will not be what has been done With the property within the last 12 months, but what has happened with regard to certain building restrictions, certain building lines, certain leases, timber and fixtures, at the time when the right hon. and gallant Gentleman or his predecessor bought it years ago. What is the use of that? If you ask any business man in the country who knows anything whatever about the valuation of real estate for purposes of Death Duties, he will tell you that the Department is as efficient as ever it was. That is, as I have put it, from the point of view of the National Exchequer. It is far more efficient than it was at the time when that "Particulars delivered form" was abolished.
  The fact of the matter is that on this occasion a proposal is brought forward which is supported by the Chancellor of the Exchequer on grounds which he knows perfectly well would never get it through this House, is supported on totally different grounds by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs, and is supported by certain of the Chancellor's own back-bench Members because they think it will assist those of them who are definitely in favour of class war. They think that it is a form of class war. We all know, however, and it is more or less openly stated, that the real thing here is an arrangement whereby the Government hope to secure themselves in office for a certain time longer by acquiring the support, I Will not say of the Liberal party, because that would not be correct, but of what we may call the "L.G. Liberals." That expression, of course, has no reference to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs; the expression "L.G. Liberals" merely means "Labour Government Liberals," who are determined to keep in office a Labour Government as long as they can in order to hold their own seats.
  Dr. HUNTER: No; that is not true.
  Sir D. HERBERT: It may not be true with regard to the hon. Gentleman, but it is at least true, or I am entitled to suppose that it is true, in regard to the Liberal Members who have been so largely proclaiming their intention, for whatever reason—for the good of the
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  country as they believe—to keep this Parliament in existence and this Government in office as long as they can, and to prevent the country from having the opportunity of putting the party on these benches into office.
  Dr. HUNTER: To fulfil its mandate.
  Sir D. HERBERT: When the hon. Member speaks of carrying out its mandate, he will know that mandates are sometimes differently interpreted by different people, and I am quite satisfied that certain of those whom I have called "L.G. Liberals" regard their mandate as being what I have described, namely, to keep the present Government in office as long as they can, and, incidentally, to hold their own seats as well. [Interruption.] Hon. Gentlemen need not be so touchy. I do not want for one moment to do otherwise than let them take credit for all the virtues that they claim. Largely their claim is that they are absolutely independent, and it was for that reason, among others, that I refrained from interpreting the expression "L.G. Liberals" as having anything to do with the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs. They refuse to admit for one moment that they are bound by him in any way; they are absolutely independent. That may be to some extent a matter of opinion, but, on the particular question with which we are dealing here, I think we are justified in calling attention to the very different grounds on which this proposal is supported by the Chancellor of the Exchequer himself and by his allies, whoever they may be or whatever their reasons may be, who sit upon the benches below the Gangway. They claim certain virtues, and I do not wish to dispute their possession of them, but with regard to independence some of us could say that that was about the last virtue that they possessed. We know that the claiming of a virtue which is conspicuously absent is one of the principal signs of senile decay.
  Sir THOMAS INSKIP: My hon. Friend has certainly succeeded in arousing the Members of the party below the Gangway. Considering how loyally they co-operate with the Government in this matter and other matters, it is a little remarkable how tender they are when attention is called to the unholy alliance.

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  A matter of more importance even than the co-operation of the Liberal party with the Government is the interesting and difficult question which we have been discussing for two days. The Solicitor-General has been vouched by the Chancellor of the Exchequer as willing and competent to answer all or every question that may be asked of him in connection with, this scheme and, if I thought at this very late stage in the Debate it would serve any very useful purpose to put some questions to him upon matters which are exceedingly obscure, I should do so, and I am sure the hon. and learned Gentleman would do his best to give me the information, provided he has it. I should like, for instance, to have asked him what the Chancellor of the Exchequer meant by his exceedingly obscure observations upon the question as to the incidence of the tax. What are the circumstances, for instance, to use the Chancellor's expression, which will allow the lessee to pass on the tax to his landlord? I should like to have asked the Solicitor-General what effect the operation of the Rent Restrictions Act has upon the value of land, or to ask the Solicitor-General to tell us how these proposals are likely to affect the Housing and Town Planning Bill.
  To tell the truth, I think it is too late in this Debate to raise those questions. If we had had a proper exposition of the matter from the Chancellor, they could have been discussed at an earlier stage and the Solicitor-General could have cleared up any lingering doubts that remained after the Chancellor had done his best to elucidate his scheme. But, instead of an exposure of the proposal, we have had a discursive address by him upon a variety of subjects, beginning with the rapacity of landlords and the designs of the Creator, about which he seemed to be very well-informed. We have had a curious symposium of Lord Rothermere and other textbook writers as to the equity of land taxes. We had hints, which were not developed, as to some ulterior purpose in the Land Taxes that are now proposed. Taken in conjunction with the autobiographical details to which the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) treated us, we seem to have had everything from the two great
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  authorities on the question except accurate and detailed information about the scheme itself.
  The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs occupied the greater part of his speech in treating us to his observations about his own taxes. The Chancellor warned us all that if we enlarged upon that topic we should not only be indulging in irrelevant, but in foolish observations. That did not prevent the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs telling us what were the reasons which led him to design the taxes in the way he did, and the reasons that led him to assent to their abolition. I should like to make one observation about one defence that the right hon. Gentleman made of the failure of his proposals. He told us their defeat was the result of a long drawn out conflict, which was of old standing, between the politicians and the judges. He told us that, if the judges had had their way with the Income Tax Acts, the revenue would have been scarcely more than a tenth of that which is received to-day. The right hon. Gentleman looks at this matter of taxation from the point of view of the taxer. I think the general public will rejoice that the judges do stand between the taxing politicians and themselves, and perhaps when the right hon. Gentleman expressed great regret, which he obviously felt, at the fact that the Law Courts had stood between him and the operation of his complex and, as I think, nefarious taxes, most Members in the House, and I am sure the public outside, rejoice to think that there is still one bulwark between them and the ingenuity of those people who design fresh taxation for the public.
  The Chancellor of the Exchequer thought those old taxes failed owing to their complexity. I gather that the right hon. Gentleman did not agree with him in that respect, but I think the same fate that awaited those taxes will inevitably await the Chancellor of the Exchquer when his scheme comes to be elaborated. The acidity with which he introduced his proposals seemed to me to promise ill for their success. Here he was approaching the Committee in the guise of a philanthropist propounding a scheme which he described as beneficial. If everything was so admirable

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  in his proposals, why was he so reluctant to expose the engaging features of his scheme to the House? Why was he so impatient with the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Birmingham (Sir A. Chamberlain) who asked a few innocent questions? I can understand his reticence and his impatience if doubts assailed him as to whether his scheme was really all that he claimed it was. Our inquiries were not welcome. I agree with the Leader of the Opposition that perhaps it is just as well that we should wait for the Bill as we were refused any information at the earliest possible moment in this Debate.
  After all, I think this discussion has lost a great part of its value, because we have not had the proper details to enable us to give what the right hon. Gentleman below the Gangway called a Second Reading to the principle. It is all very well to speak of a principle. What is the principle? I suppose the principle is intended to be the question of the taxation of land values. Before you can judge of the principle and apply your mind to it, you must know something about the particular form of the tax. If it is to be a repetition of the right hon. Gentleman's faxes, we should all, I suppose, resist it—even the Chancellor of the Exchequer. If it is some new tax, we want to know what sort of tax. What operation will it have? What effect will it produce? What will be its fruits? We have had none of that information, and, for that reason, the Debate seems to me to be likely to be less useful than it otherwise might have been. We are told one thing, however. We are told it is going to be a simple scheme. The Chancellor says he has devised it with the determination to apply strict logic and abstract theory to its form and its operation. So says the Resolution. It seems to be a simple one. It provides for a tax at the rate of one penny for each £ of the land value of every unit of land in Great Britain. But we had not proceeded very far in the Debate before the right hon. Gentleman explained that "every unit "does not mean what it says. It means some units. And what units? Why has the right hon. Gentleman departed from the strict logic and abstract theory of this universal tax upon every unit of land? What "overwhelming reasons," to use
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  his own expression, has driven him to this course?
  I think we appreciated the overwhelming reasons when he, with obvious relish, told us that the working classes would be exempted from this taxation. Then we understood that it was not logic, but expediency, which governed him. Indeed he seems to have adopted deliberately the methods of the unjust steward. The right hon. Gentleman told his friends to "take their bill, and sit down quickly and write 50," and he hopes to make friends for himself in the day of Providence. I am not sure that it will work. I am not sure that his design can be carried out to exempt the working classes. Let us take two different cases of members of the working classes, as I understand the expression, who are owners of a small house. "A" lives outside the town, or on the outskirts of the town, and the site of his house is worth £100. He escapes. "B" lives in the city. He does not enjoy the amenities of his friend. The site of his house, as is the case in many towns and cities, is worth at least £200, if you are to consider its site value for other purposes than that of a working class house. "B" is taxed. "A" escapes. I venture to think that in every city in this country there will be hundreds of thousands of members of the working class who will be caught by the right hon. Gentleman's proposal.
  But what of the scheme, when it matures, as the right hon. Gentleman for Carnarvon Boroughs expects? He tells us that the foundation of these proposals is to make up the deficiencies which local authorities are experiencing in the yield from the rates. When the taxation becomes 2d. instead of a 1d., even the man who at present occupies a house upon a site worth only £60 in capital value, will have to pay the tax. The Chancellor of the Exchequer deliberately intends to relieve from the consequences of this tax, large portions of the electorate to whom he looks for support. Disaster will overtake him, and he will find that a great many members of the working classes are more aware of the operation of this tax than he is at the present moment. What is the meaning exactly of the phrase "working classes," when the right hon. Gentleman uses it with that obvious reference to one particular portion of the community? Are those who work at agriculture

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  not members of the working classes? How is the Chancellor of the Exchequer going to treat the question of agriculture? I hope the Committee noticed the Chancellor of the Exchequer's careful qualification of this reference to agriculture. He said:
  "I do not propose that the tax should apply to agricultural land as long as it has no higher value than its value for agricultural purposes."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 4th May. 1931; col. 52, Vol. 252.]
  Did the Chancellor of the Exchequer mean that agricultural land will be taxed as to 100 per cent. of its capital value, provided that it has a value in excess of that agricultural purpose; or does he mean only that it will be taxed on the excess? Perhaps the learned Solicitor-General will tell us. Then I should like to ask this question: Suppose that the agricultural value of the land goes down, and the land has some value for building purposes. Will the tax then be paid upon the increased amount of the total value of the land? There is not a piece of land in this country whose value for agricultural purposes is not going down. Does that mean that the owner of a smallholding, or of a farm, who is ill capable of supporting even the present burdens that rest upon him, because the industry is languishing and because it is difficult to make money out of it, will not only see the value of his agricultural holding diminished, but will have to face increased taxation, because the building value will be greater?
  10.0 p.m.
  Agriculture illustrates, perhaps better than anything else, the fantastics and arbitrary character of the Chancellor of the Exchequer's proposal. Let us take two typical pieces of agricultural land in this country, the rich lands of Lincolnshire, and the cold lakelands of Essex. The owner of the land in Lincolnshire presumably is the owner of land that is only agricultural land. He will escape. The rich, prosperous and fortunate owner of that land will escape the tax. What about the owner of the poor low-rented land in Essex, that is adjoining this great Metropolis and has a building value far in excess of its agricultural value? That farmer is to have placed upon him a crushing burden. [Interruption.] Hon. Gentlemen opposite with their limited
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  experience—[Interruption]—with their limited experience of urban life, think that everybody who farms land in this country pays rent to a wicked and extravagant landlord.
  Mr. THORNE: Hear, hear!
  Sir T. INSKIP: Hon. Members opposite, if they will make a few inquiries, will find that in the course of the last 20 years there have arisen a large number of farmer occupiers, who now own their land. Some of them labour under burdens in the shape of mortgages, the security for which will be greatly affected by the right hon. Gentleman's proposals. If I may take the two cases I have mentioned: What is the justice of letting the man who can best afford to bear the tax escape, and why should the man who is so unfortunate as to own a piece of agricultural land near London have to bear the tax that the Chancellor of the Exchequer proposes?
  Let me take the case of market gardeners. Everybody who has travelled on the London and North Eastern Railway out of London, is aware of the great tract of country which is covered by market gardens, many of them bearing glasshouses. Are those glasshouses to be regarded as structures which are to be stripped from the land, before the land is valued, or are they to be included in the agricultural value of the land which will escape taxation? But contrast the case of the market garden with the pastures or the orchards in the Home counties. Presumably, the market gardener in that part of Essex to which I have referred will escape, because his land, that low-lying, unhealthy land, has practically no other value than that for agricultural purposes. It is not likely that people will build there to a great extent for any considerable class of the community. But what about those pastures in the Home counties, those delightful spots where anybody might covet a residence at a high price for the land on which to erect it? The owners of these pieces of land will be forced to pay tax on them, although they use the land and retain it solely for agricultural purposes. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer has thought out those problems, and has considered the extent to which different pieces of agricultural

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  land will have to bear this tax, but we have not been vouchsafed the information this afternoon in the course of this Debate, and we must do the best we can with such material as we have.
  Let me make this further observation. If there is one thing the farmers and the farming community abhor, it is the growing burden of forms, schedules and returns which they have to fill up for every Government Department. I do not know how they will relish the new burden which will rest upon them when they have to engage in fanciful estimates and elaborate calculations which will be necessary to define agricultural value as distinct from building value. There are innumerable cases in which, in spite of the intentions of the Chancellor of the Exchequer as I understand them, the owners and occupiers of agricultural land will be involved in taxation which will be the last straw that will crush the life out of them in an industry, which, we all agree, is suffering from the burdens which at present rest upon it. So much was this felt by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent (Mr. MacLaren) that he actually proposed that this new tax should be merged into Schedule A, if I understood him aright. The right hon. Gentleman the Chancellor of the Exchequer expressed no such intention. His intention is not to merge this new tax into Schedule A, but to impose it upon Schedule A as an additional burden.
  Let us take a very ordinary and simple case of a man who owns 100 acres of which the value for agricultural purposes is, say, £20 and the value for other purposes £30. The owner of that land will pay, as I understand it, an additional 2s. 6d. in the pound over and above the 4s. 6d. which he pays upon Schedule A. What is the justice of a proposal of that sort? What is the sense of it when we are all anxious to make it possible for agriculture in its present distress to become a success?
  The question of allotments has been mentioned. I venture to think that when any hon. Members opposite go down to their constituencies if they happen to be in a town or near a town and tell their constituents that the allotments which a private landlord has allowed them to occupy at a rent far below their real value will have to pay this taxation,
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  they will find that the allotment holders, who represent some of the best members of the community in our towns, will resent the additional taxation. What is the value and the advantage to the community of compelling the owner of allotments to sell his property, to turn out the allotment holders and to erect buildings upon these oases, as they are in many of our cities?
  Take another consideration. Why does the right hon. Gentleman prefer cemeteries to playing fields unless he has some kinship with those who occupy the first and very little kinship with those who use the second. I cannot understand why it should be more admirable to exempt cemeteries from this tax than to help playing fields. Which is more important, if you put sentiment aside, the respect that we desire to give to the places where the dead lie, or the ground where the health and happiness of the youth of our nation is involved? Great efforts have been made during the last few years to increase the number of playing fields in our towns and in the country. This proposal, if it ever matures, is the death-knell of any attempt to extend playing fields on a large scale for our great cities.
  My right hon. Friend the Member for West Birmingham (Sir A. Chamberlain) asked another question which has scarcely been answered. He asked whether schools and colleges were to be exempted. We have had no answer to that question. The right hon. Gentleman below the Gangway, I understand, asked why should schools and colleges be exempted? Why should schools and colleges be taxed if the principle upon which we are taxing land is that God gave the land for the purposes of the community? I understand that hon. Members opposite regard education as one of the greatest advantages which can possibly be conferred upon the community. If that is so, every school or college that is properly conducted is an advantage to the community, but, apparently, the fact that God gave the land to the community for the community's enjoyment makes it necessary to tax the land when it is applied to a purpose so beneficial as that.
  Let me take a case which, I am sure, will appeal to every hon. Member in the Committee—the great school of St. Paul's which was moved some years ago

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  to Hammersmith. That school depends for its endowment upon a property in the East End, and the revenues from that property are devoted to maintaining, not merely the school generally, but to maintaining and educating absolutely free of cost 153 scholars out of 650. There is only one alternative when the right hon. Gentleman's tax has come into operation. You will either affect the upkeep of property in the East End of London or you will affect the upkeep of this great valuable institution for the education of our youth. Is it really seriously intended by hon. Gentlemen opposite to tax the schools and colleges and the sites and the playing fields connected with them? Hon. Gentlemen opposite have done a great deal of lip-service to the cause of education, but they will forgive me for saying that I shall decline to believe that they have any interest except partisan interests.
  Let us consider these proposals as affecting industry. We were told by some hon. Members opposite that the only alternative to imposing this tax upon land at the present time is to increase the indirect taxes, that at the present time the yield of direct taxation has reached its maximum and the Chancellor of the Exchequer cannot impose any new tax with any hope of obtaining an increased yield, and that this is the only field open to him. There is but one inevitable consequence of placing a tax upon the sites occupied by the factories which are essential to every industry in the country, and that is to increase the overhead expenses. You cannot get away from that fact. The next fact which follows, as surely as night follows day, is that if you are going to increase the overhead expenses, you either increase the cost of production or you must reduce the wages of the workers. Which will hon. Members opposite prefer? If they tell us, as I suppose they will, that they will never consent to a reduction of wages, they must consent to an increase of the cost of the articles produced. [An HON. MEMBER: "Why? "] Hon. Members opposite will appreciate that an increase of overhead expenses means an increase in the cost of the article, and from that consequence there flows this result, they are by this means merely imposing an additional piece of indirect taxation upon the very community they claim to represent.
  The right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs expressed a little doubt regarding the Conservative attitude on this question. I can make plain to him what is the attitude of my friends and myself towards this taxation. If there is one class in the community, whatever jibes may emanate from hon. Members opposite, that has borne heavy taxation where a proper case was made for it, it is the class which hon. Members particularly love to assail. Say what you like, broadly speaking, the richer class in this country, whether it was in the War or whether it has been since the War, have borne with uncomplaining cheerfulness heavy taxation because they were satisfied with the purpose to which the yield of the taxation would be put. The same class, and I know that hon. Members opposite, in their folly, refuse to look at facts like these fairly and squarely in the face, are always prepared, whatever grumbles they may express, to bear taxation that will result to the advantage of the classes that are sometimes described as the working classes and sometimes described as the poorer classes.
  But we cannot trust this Government to use any new taxation for the benefit of the persons in whom they profess to be chiefly interested. They misuse the taxation which is already committed to their care. They refuse to look at the consequences of placing burdens upon one class of the community which will most surely and inevitably be passed on to another section of the community. It is certain that a tax of this sort, if it were imposed as the Chancellor of the Exchequer intends, would in due course fall upon the shoulders least able to bear it and would greatly increase the handicap under which many portions of the community are already suffering in the race of life. When the right hon. Member asks us what is our attitude towards this taxation, he may believe me or not, hon. Members opposite may believe me or not, we oppose this taxation not because we resent increased taxation if it is properly used and applied, but we resent it because it is the gambler's throw of the Government.
  The Financial Secretary to the Treasury said that he was confident the proposals would secure the assent of a majority of the Committee. He will get his majority right enough. He knows

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  that the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs and his followers can be depended upon to support this proposal and any other proposal that emanates from the Government. Fortunately, the alliance that exists between the two parties is not the last court of appeal in this matter or in any other matter. These proposals will serve their purpose in filling up the time which the Government are afraid to devote to questions upon which they have not the courage to frame a policy. Sooner or later both the Government and the nation will have to face facts more menacing than any that this generation has previously experienced, and when the nation is driven, as it will be driven, to face facts which can no longer be avoided, we believe that the nation will show its unmistakable opinion about this crazy tax of the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
  The SOLICITOR-GENERAL (Sir Stafford Cripps): Those who sit behind me will not hesitate to meet in that court of appeal the right hon. Gentleman and his friends, and when the time comes for judgment to be given by that court of appeal we shall have little doubt as to the verdict. The arguments put forward by the hon. and learned Member are somewhat familiar to those who have practised in the courts. They largely consist of a failure to meet the points which have been put forward and in irrelevant and somewhat discursive journeys into the realms of speculation. The curiosity of hon. Members opposite will be largely satisfied when they have the Finance Bill in their hands. The hon. and learned Member for Fareham (Sir T. Inskip) said that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has not given any details of this tax, indeed, that he has not stated what sort of a tax it is or what the incidence of the tax will be. I can only recommend the hon. and learned Member to read again the speech of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He will there find, as in the Resolution, a clear statement of the sort of tax that is proposed. [Interruption.] I am sorry that hon. Members opposite are unable to appreciate the words of the Resolution so far as they define the sort of tax it is proposed to impose. It is perfectly clear that the tax to be imposed is 1d. in the £ on the site value annually, subject to the exemptions
  514
  which have been stated by the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
  Sir D. HERBERT: And no others?
  The SOLICITOR-GENERAL: I have no doubt that hon. Members will desire to put forward suggestions as to other exemption" when the Committee stage of the Finance Bill is reached, but those which the Chancellor of the Exchequer mentioned will appear in the Bill. The hon. and learned Member has said that the strict logic of this tax has been departed from by the exemptions; but this was stated by the Chancellor of the Exchequer himself in introducing this Resolution and, moreover, the reason was given. There are cases of very small values, where it would be a waste of time and money to enter into a valuation and taxation of the subject. [Interruption.] Hon. Members opposite laugh. I wonder what they would have said had there been a proposal to value and collect a tax of 2d. or 4d. per year throughout the country. They would have been the first to say, what a monstrous waste of money to set up this machinery to collect these few pennies, and they should be the first to appreciate the measure of economy in not entering into wasteful valuations which will not yield any result.
  Let me turn to the forcible arguments put forward by the right hon. Member for South Croydon (Sir W. Mitchell-Thomson) which, as the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) has said, contain all that there is to be said against this system of taxation. There were one or two points in his observations which I would like to answer. The somewhat elaborate structure of his argument could fitly be compared, perhaps, with the buildings of some of those speculative builders for whom he showed such a fondness—pleasant and attractive at first sight, but, on closer examination, full of holes and leaks and not very habitable, and, moreover, liable to collapse when met with the earthquake of the argument of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Carnarvon Boroughs. The first complaint which he made was that there would be no immediate yield of taxation. That is a matter upon which, I imagine, some hon. Gentlemen behind him are congratulating themselves, but he surely must realise that it is essential

  515
  to carry through the valuation as a first step, before starting to try to collect the tax. I think it is generally acknowledged that one of the reasons why the 1909 attempt was a failure, was because it was then attempted to carry through both processes at once. I think that the right hon. Gentleman admitted that there was wide and general support in the country for some form of the taxation of land values, but apparently he thinks that that support would only be forthcoming for some system which taxes the increment value of land and not land values as a whole.
  There were two matters which, he said, he agreed needed some treatment. First, there was the unearned benefit accruing to landowners from the expenditure of public money, and secondly, there was the holding up of suburban land. Both these matters he suggested had been cured, to some extent, by legislation, and I wish to deal with that legislation which the right hon. Gentleman suggested had been to some degree a cure. As regards the first matter he pointed to the right of the Road Board to acquire land on either side of a road, and also to the provision for the payment of some portion of the betterment by the landowner, or its deduction from compensation. I think it is generally known that that provision as to the Road Board has never been used for this reason—that the Road Board in view of the state of its funds cannot lock up money in a quarter mile width of land throughout the country, when it needs the money urgently for other matters. That has consequently made that provision a dead letter. Then as regards betterment, if the right hon. Gentleman has ever been before an arbitrator, as I have been on many occasions, trying to get something for betterment, he will know that that provision also is substantially, a dead letter.
  Before coming to the second point may I deal with a little illustration which the right hon. Gentleman gave of some land acquired by the Grocers' Company, as he made, I am sure unwittingly, a somewhat false point in that connection. He said that in 1599 they had invested £150, but he forgot all the rents accruing to them ever since 1599, and, moreover, he forgot that in 1868 they had realised £24,000 and that ever since then,
  516
  by virtue of an investment of £150, they had been drawing interest on £24,000. It is not, therefore, justifiable to say that you can take the £150 and add to it interest as if it had never been actually drawn, and find that at the present time it would have accumulated at compound interest a sum infinitely greater than the £24,000, as the right hon. Gentleman has omitted to remember that the interest has been pocketed by the Grocers' Company since 1599.
  Now let me turn to the second point, the holding up of suburban land. The right hon. Gentleman seemed to think that the Acquisition of Land Act of 1919 gave some powers to local authorities to acquire land. I assure him that it did nothing of the sort. The only thing that it did was to attempt to cut down the admittedly exorbitant prices that were paid under the Lands Clauses Act and to substitute, as a measure of compensation for the value to the owner, the market price. That has had no effect as regards the reduction of market prices, nor has it had any effect in the reduction of the amount that the local authorities have to pay, except the 10 per cent. which was allowed under the Lands Clauses Act; and I can assure the right hon. Gentleman, from my own experience in arbitrations all around London, that consistently the prices paid by the London County Council, for instance, for land for their housing sites have been exorbitant. [Interruption.]
  The right hon. Gentleman does not appreciate my point, I am sorry to say. Market value is created by the amount of land in the market. If speculators and others hold it up and do not allow it to go on the market, the price rises rapidly, and a very small sale at a very high price is the only test of market value. May I point out to the right hon. Gentleman another matter in that respect, which is of supreme importance, and that is that if there is a published valuation when these arbitrations take place, the position of the owner will be a very different one. He will no longer be able merely to take as the test of the market value one or two isolated sales at high prices, but he will also have to face cross-examination on the published valuation of his own land.
  Now may I deal with another point which was raised by the right hon.

  517
  Gentleman? He said that, in his opinion, this tax would restrain development, as people would retain the land as agricultural land in order to avoid the tax.
  Sir W. MITCHELL-THOMSON indicated dissent.
  The SOLICITOR-GENERAL: Those were the words which I took down, perhaps inaccurately. If the right hon. Gentleman denies the words, of course I accept his denial and will not deal with the argument, because obviously he has seen how perfectly futile it is.
  Sir W. MITCHELL-THOMSON: I am sorry to interrupt, but I have refrained under great provocation. So far as I remember what I said, it was to point out that, so long as the land was largely agricultural and largely had an agricultural value, it would either escape or largely escape taxation and valuation, but that so soon as the owner started to develop it for building purposes, so soon as he made the first road to develop it for building, it then acquired a value, and he was then taxed on his own improvements.
  The SOLICITOR-GENERAL: The right hon. Gentleman must have said that in another passage. Perhaps I had better deal with the large number of questions which hon. and right hon. Members opposite have asked as regards the agricultural valuation. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer stated that there would be no valuation of agricultural land where it had no higher value than its agricultural value.
  Colonel WEDGWOOD: No valuation or no taxation?
  The SOLICITOR-GENERAL: No taxation. The provision will be that there will be no taxation, and that where there are exemptions from taxation, it will not be necessary to value it, exactly as at present, where Income Tax is not chargeable, no assessment is made. That is a matter which, of course, is to be left to someone to determine. The Act lays down who shall be taxed and who shall not be taxed, and some authority has to determine who comes as an individual within those provisions and who comes without those provisions.
  Sir T. INSKIP: If that analogy is to be pressed, is it not a fact that under the Income Tax Acts everybody has to
  518
  make a return, whether he is assessed or not?
  The SOLICITOR-GENERAL: My hon. and learned Friend is right under the Act, but not under the practice which has existed since 1842. Since then, I understand, the practice has been not to assess people where obviously they have an income far below the limit. The same principle will be applied here. People will not have their land valued where obviously they do not come within the category to be taxed. That, in my submission, is a perfectly sound and proper way of approaching the matter. Everybody knows that up and down the country there are large tracts of land which obviously have no value other than agricultural. On the other hand, there are large tracts of land which may or may not have some value apart from agricultural land. This, of course, will all have to be valued, and if it is found by the valuer that they have a land value above their agricultural value, the difference between the two values will be liable to taxation. That, of course, will be for the first valuation and for the first quinquennium, and when the next valuation comes at the end of five years, it will be perfectly competent to bring in or to leave out any of that land if the character has altered, or if it has become improved or developed, or the other way round.
  Colonel WEDGWOOD: We understood the Chancellor to say that we were to get the complete valuation, of the land, and that that valuation was to be sap plied to the local authorities Do I understand the hon. and learned Gentleman correctly now in saying that the valuation will not be complete, and that the local authorities will not have that valuation.
  The SOLICITOR-GENERAL: At the first valuation there will only be valuation of those units which are to be taxed. If they are exempt from taxation, they will not be valued. The reason for that is of course obvious to the Committee. It is that it is desired to carry through the valuation as rapidly and as efficiently as possible, and it is desired to get the tax as soon as possible. Anything that will aid cheapness in the valuation or the collection of the tax will naturally be used.

  519
  I turn to deal with another point which has been stressed by a number of hon. and right hon. Members, and that is the cost of the valuation, because it is right that an accurate figure should be given rather than the grossly inaccurate figure of £5,000,000 which has so far been discussed as though it had been established. The actual facts of the case, as I appreciate them, are these: In the year 1919 Sir Edgar Harper, as mentioned by the right hon. Gentleman, gave evidence before a Select Committee and then stated that the expenditure up to September, 1915, was £3,000,000, of which £2,000,000 alone was for the first valuation. Subsequently to September, 1915, as the right hon. Gentleman said to-day, no further money was expended on that valuation, which was entirely shut down—[Interruption]. Subsequently to September, 1915, the valuation under the 1909–10 Act was completely shut down, there was no further expenditure on the valuation, and up to that date it had been £2,000,000. Therefore, the total expenditure on the 1909–10 valuation was £2,000,000 and not £5,000,000. [Interruption.] The right hon. Member for West Birmingham (Sir A. Chamberlain) will appreciate that he is falling into an error, because a great deal of the cost of the Department, in fact, practically the total cost of the Department from 1915 to 1919 was, as he stated himself, in the passage read by the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs, due to war work—the acquisition of land and valuation for war purposes, and the other £1,000,000 which was spent was spent not on the valuation but on the assessment of Estate Duty and service for other Government Departments by the Valuation Department. So the sole sum which was expended on the valuation was £2,000,000.
  I ask the Committee to remember one more factor as regards the differentiation between the present proposals and the scheme of 1909–10, and that is that under that scheme there were four different values to be ascertained in order to get the site value. There was the gross value, the total value, the assessable site value and the gross site value. In order to ascertain them 20 figures on each valuation form had to be calculated and filled in; and, as the right hon. Member for Croydon (Sir W. Mitchell-Thomson) will no doubt recollect from the forms which
  520
  he must often have seen, a mass of particulars had also to be supplied. If that cost only £2,000,000, it would seem that the Chancellor of the Exchequer's estimate for a single valuation of a single figure is a very liberal one indeed. [Interruption.] A single figure except in the case of agricultural land; but, as the right hon. Gentleman will realise, the units of urban and town land will be many more in number than the agricultural units.
  Another question I was asked was, what the effect of this tax would be upon the development of land outside towns. It was suggested in a figure given, I think, by the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Altrincham (Mr. Atkinson), that the tax would be far greater upon built-up sites in cities than upon the undeveloped land, and that this would lead to a tendency not to develop. The Committee will realise, of course, that that is the complete reverse of the fact, for the reason that when one is dealing with developed land one has a house which costs money, or a building which costs money as well as the land, and one gets a rent for the two together, and the proportion of the tax on that rent is obviously less than the proportion on the rent where there is no building on the land. Therefore the proportion of the tax to the rent will be reduced by development, and that will tend to encourage and not to discourage the development of land.
  Several points have been raised by right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite as to the Town Planning Act and the Town and Country Planning Bill which is at present before a Standing Committee, and it was suggested by several hon. Members that the result of this tax would be to lead to ribbon development, which was undesirable in view of the town planning ideal which everybody upholds. That again is a misunderstanding which will, no doubt, be cleared up when the Bill is before the Committee. If land is restricted by such a thing as the town planning provisions, that is one of the matters that a valuer must take into account. Let me here mention that the same thing will apply to many colleges and schools. Those colleges and schools which have been well advised have entered into arrangements by which their lands are included in plans. I know that

  521
  to be so in regard, I think, to almost all the Oxford colleges, and certainly with regard to one public school, Winchester, and if they have accepted, as I know has been accepted in that case, a complete sterilisation of their land for any other purpose except for the purpose of playing fields for the school, and they are not able to build on it except for a school extension, the amount of value in that would be extraordinarily small, because there is no conceivable purchaser unless he buys the whole school.
  Certainly in instances of that sort the Committee will see that it is quite easy, if anyone is prepared perpetually to dedicate land to the particular purpose to which they desire to dedicate it, and arrange to have it included in the town plan restricted for ever to that use, they can preserve their playing fields substantially without taxation. That does not, of course, include the playing fields belonging to local authorities, which will be exempted, as my right hon. Friend has already said, under the provision applying to all the land of local authorities.
  There are many other points which I have been asked to answer, and there is only a very short time in which to deal with any of them. Perhaps I may deal with one or two of the other exemptions as to which questions have been asked, and also with regard to the question whether we were not taxing the wrong man. I think it was stated by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Tam-worth (Sir A. Steel-Maitland) that there was no justification for taxing the man who paid the figure—the high figure—and not the man who received the high figure. That argument might be applicable if we were dealing with an increment duty, which we are not. [Interruption.] I am so glad that right hon. Gentlemen and hon. Gentlemen opposite have appreciated that point.
  The reason for the putting of the tax on the land value at the moment, in whosever hands it may be, is that it is held that the community have an interest in all the land. That is an interest they have because it is by reason of the existence of the community, the expenditure and organisation of the community, that the land has grown to that value. It is by reason of the continued expenditure of the community that that value
  522
  is preserved to the owner from day to day, and it is by reason of the future expenditure that that land is expected to increase in value. It is for these reasons that the tax is a fair tax; it is a mere acknowledgment by the owner of the land, a gift by him, in exchange for a very great benefit which he is hourly receiving from the community.
  One other point I may deal with. That is the question of passing back the tax, about which several hon. Members have asked questions. The method to be adopted is a method somewhat analogous to the Schedule A method. I think I can best illustrate it by giving a precise example. Let me assume that a person holds under a long lease, subject to a ground rent, a plot of land of which the annual value of the ground rent is £100, and the capital value of the plot is £5,000, equivalent to an annual value of £250 at 5 per cent., on 20 years' purcase. There the tax on the £5,000 at one penny in the £ would be £20 16s. 8d. Of that two-fifths could be passed on, because the proportion between the annual value of £250 and the ground rent of £100 is two-fifths. Therefore, the lessee could pass back £8 6s. 8d., which would fall as a tax on the £100 ground rent. The remainder, £12 10s., would be paid by the lessee himself. I think that will show hon. Members opposite the sort of method which is to be adopted in passing back the tax.
  I have attempted in the time at my disposal to deal with the rather large number of questions which have been addressed to me, and I hope that the answers I have given will enable hon. Gentlemen opposite to appreciate both the soundness and wisdom of the tax. The general concensus of opinion among hon. Members opposite as to the necessity for curbing speculation in land and for securing to the community its due share of the profits accruing from land and its due opportunity of obtaining land upon fair and reasonable terms will, I am sure, be welcomed by everybody, and possibly by some with a little surprise. Having taken this great step forward since 1909–1910, when the Act of that year was passed, I am sure, when they have had an opportunity of studying the full details of these proposals in the Finance Bill, they will be prepared to welcome them with open arms. The imposition of this

  523
  tax, coupled with the valuation which must necessarily precede it, is one of the measures Which have been long and consistently advocated by those on this side of the House—not as a measure of reprisal or attack upon any class of the community, but as a just means of securing to the community as a whole some part of the wealth which that community has created, and at the same time rendering more free and equitable the sales of land, especially in those cases where the land is required for the use of the community. Vast sums have been spent by the community in the past in improving the facilities and services connected with the land in this country, and great works are now being carried through at enormous expense, and will in the future be carried through probably upon an ever-increasing scale. It is the expenditure of these moneys in the past by the community which has developed the land throughout the country, and has given it the value which it now has in the hands of the owners. It is the continual expenditure of this money from day to day that upholds and maintains those values for the owners, and it is only common justice that those who own the land which is so benefited, and will be further "benefited in the future by the expenditure of the resources of the community, should pay some acknowledgment to the community for those benefits. It is for that reason that I support this Resolution.
  Lieut.-Colonel FREMANTLE Lieut.-Colonel FREMANTLE rose—
  HON. MEMBERS: Divide!
  The CHAIRMAN: There is still time before Eleven o'Clock.
  Lieut.-Colonel FREMANTLE: I want, in the two minutes that remain, to ask
  the attention of the Committee to a statement made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer with regard to Becontree. As I was Chairman of the London County Council Housing Committee— [Interruption].
  The CHAIRMAN: I would appeal to hon. Members to allow the hon. and gallant Gentleman to proceed.
  Mr. MARLEY: On a point of Order. Is it not a proper Parliamentary interjection to Bay "Divide"?
  The CHAIRMAN: It is Parliamentary to call for a Division provided that the calling is not prolonged.
  Lieut.-Colonel FREMANTLE: The Chancellor of the Exchequer stated, with regard to the purchase of the Becontree Estate, that, according to the assessment for local rating, it was valued at £7,000, but that it was bought for £295,000. That is a misstatement, because the £7,000 represents the annual value. The purchase price was £295,000, and the rateable value went up to a very much larger sum, namely, £9,000, owing to the action of the committee. The two things are not comparable.
  The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the TREASURY (Mr. T. Kennedy)The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the TREASURY (Mr. T. Kennedy) rose in his place, and claimed to move, " That the Question be now put."
  Question put accordingly,
  "That there shall he charged for the financial year ending the thirty-first day of March, nineteen hundred and thirty-four, and for every subsequent financial year, a tax at the rate of one penny for each pound of the land value of every unit of land in Great Britain."
  The Committee divided: Ayes, 289; Noes, 230.

  Division No. 233.]

  AYES.

  [10.59 p.m.

  Adamson, Rt. Hon. W. (File, West)

  Bennett, Sir E. N. (Cardiff, Central)

  Burgess, F. G.

  Adamson, W. M. (Staff., Cannock)

  Bennett, William (Battersea, South)

  Burgin, Dr. E. L.

  Addison, Rt. Hon. Dr. Christopher

  Benson, G.

  Buxton, C. R. (Yorks. W. R Elland)

  Aitchison, Rt. Hon. Craigle M.

  Bevan, Aneurin (Ebbw Vale)

  Caine, Hall-, Derwent

  Alexander, Rt. Hon. A. V. (Hillsbro')

  Birkett, W. Norman

  Cameron, A. G.

  Allen, W. E. D. (Belfast, W.)

  Blindell, James

  Cape, Thomas

  Alpass, J. H.

  Bondfield, Rt. Hon. Margaret

  Carter, W. (St. Pancras, S. W.)

  Angell, Sir Norman

  Bowerman, Rt. Hon. Charles W.

  Chater, Daniel

  Arnott, John

  Broad, Francis Alfred

  Church, Major A. G.

  Aske, Sir Robert

  Brockway, A. Fenner

  Clarke, J. S.

  Attlee, Clement Richard

  Bromfield, William

  Cluse, W. S.

  Ayles, Walter

  Bromley, J.

  Clynes, Rt. Hon. John R.

  Baker, John (Wolverhampton, Bilston)

  Brooke, W.

  Cocks, Frederick Seymour.

  Baldwin, Oliver (Dudley)

  Brothers, M.

  Collins, Sir Godfrey (Greenock)

  Barnes, Alfred John

  Brown, C. W. E. (Notts. Mansfield)

  Compton, Joseph

  Barr, James

  Brown, Ernest (Leith)

  Cove, William G.

  Batey, Joseph

  Brown, Rt. Hon. J. (South Ayrshire)

  Cripps, Sir Stafford

  Benn, Rt. Hon. Wedgwood

  Buchanan, G.

  Daggar, George

  Dallas, George

  Law, A. (Rossendale)

  Richardson, R. (Houghton-le-Spring)

  Dalton, Hugh

  Lawrence, Susan

  Riley, Ben (Dewsbury)

  Davies, D. L. (Pontypridd)

  Lawrie, Hugh Hartley (Stalybridge)

  Riley, F. F. (Stockton-on-Tees)

  Davies, E. C. (Montgomery)

  Lawson, John James

  Ritson, J.

  Davies, Rhys John (Westhoughton)

  Lawther, W. (Barnard Cattle)

  Romeril, H. G.

  Day, Harry

  Leach, W.

  Rosbotham, D. S. T.

  Denman, Hon. R. D.

  Lee, Frank (Derby, N. E.)

  Rowson, Guy

  Dudgeon, Major C. R.

  Lee, Jennie (Lanark, Northern)

  Salter, Dr. Alfred

  Dukes, C.

  Lees, J.

  Samuel Rt. Hon. Sir H. (Darwen)

  Duncan, Charles

  Lewis, T. (Southampton)

  Sanders, W. S.

  Ede, James Chuter

  Lindley, Fred W.

  Sandham, E.

  Edge, Sir William

  Lloyd. C. Elite

  Sawyer, G. F.

  Edmunds, J. E.

  Logan, David Gilbert

  Scott, James

  Edwards, E. (Morpeth)

  Longbottom, A. W.

  Scurr, John

  Freeman, Peter

  Longden, F.

  Sexton, Sir James

  Gardner, B. W. (West Ham, Upton)

  Lovat-Fraser, J. A.

  Shaw, Rt. Hon. Thomas (Preston)

  Gardner, J. P. (Hammersmith, N.)

  Lunn, William

  Shepherd, Arthur Lewis

  George, Rt. Hon. D. Lloyd (Car'vn)

  Macdonald, Gordon (Ince)

  Sherwood, G. H.

  George, Major G. Lloyd (Pembroke)

  MacDonald, Rt. Hon. J. R. (Seaham)

  Shield, George William

  George, Megan Lloyd (Anglesea)

  MacDonald, Malcolm (Bassetlaw)

  Shiels. Dr. Drummond

  Gibbins, Joseph

  McElwee, A.

  Shillaker, J. F.

  Gibson, H. M. (Lancs, Mossley)

  McEntee, V. L.

  Shinwell, E.

  Gill, T. H.

  McKinlay, A.

  Short, Alfred (Wednesbury)

  Gillett, George M.

  MacLaren, Andrew

  Simmons, C. J.

  Glassey, A. E.

  Maclean, Sir Donald (Cornwall, N.)

  Simon, E. D. (Manch'ter, Withington)

  Gossling, A. G.

  Maclean, Nell (Glasgow, Govan)

  Sinclair, Sir A. (Caithness)

  Gould, F.

  MacNeill-Welr, L.

  Sinkinson, George

  Graham, D. M. (Lanark. Hamilton)

  Macpherson, Rt. Hon. James I.

  Sitch, Charles H.

  Graham, Rt. Hon. Wm. (Edin., Cent.)

  McShane, John James

  Smith, Ben (Bermondsey, Rotherhithe)

  Gray, Milner

  M alone, C. L' Estrange (N'thampton)

  Smith, Frank (Nuneaton)

  Greenwood, Rt. Hon. A. (Colne).

  Mander, Geoffrey le M.

  Smith, Lees-, H. B.

  Griffith, F. Kingsley (Middlesbro' W.)

  Mansfield, W.

  Smith, Rennie (Penistone)

  Griffiths, T. (Monmouth, Pontypool)

  March, s.

  Smith, Tom (Pontefract)

  Groves, Thomas E.

  Marcus, M.

  Smith, W. R. (Norwich)

  Grundy, Thomas W.

  Markham, S. F.

  Sorensen, R.

  Hall, G. H. (Merthyr Tydvil)

  Marley, J.

  Stamford, Thomas W.

  Hall, J. H. (Whitechapel)

  Marshall, Fred

  Stephen, Campbell

  Hall, Capt. W. G. (Portsmouth, C.)

  Mathers, George

  Strauss, G. R.

  Hamilton, Mary Agnes (Blackburn)

  Matters, L. W.

  Sullivan, J.

  Hamilton, Sir R. (Orkney & Zetland)

  Maxton, James

  Sutton, J. E.

  Hardie, George D.

  Messer, Fred

  Taylor, R. A. (Lincoln)

  Harris, Percy A.

  Middleton, G.

  Taylor, W. B. (Norfolk, S. W.)

  Hastings, Dr. Somerville

  Millar, J. D.

  Thomas, Rt. Hon. J. H. (Derby)

  Haycock, A. W.

  Milner, Major J.

  Thorne, W. (West Ham, Plaistow)

  Hayday, Arthur

  Montague, Prederick

  Thurtle, Ernest

  Hayes, John Henry

  Morley, Ralph

  Tillett, Ben

  Henderson, Right Hon. A. (Burnley)

  Morris, Rhys Hopkins

  Tinker, John Joseph

  Henderson, Arthur, Junr. (Cardiff, S.)

  Morris-Jones, Dr. J. H. (Denbigh)

  Toole, Joseph

  Henderson. Thomas (Glasgow)

  Morrison, Rt. Hon. H. (Hackney, S.)

  Tout, W. J.

  Henderson, W. W. (Middx., Enfield)

  Morrison, Robert C. (Tottenham. N.)

  Townend, A. E.

  Herriotts, J.

  Mort, D. L.

  Trevelyan, Rt. Hon. Sir Charles.

  Hicks, Ernest George

  Muff, G.

  Vaughan, David

  Hirst, G. H. (York W. R. Wentworth)

  Muggeridge, H. T.

  Viant, S. P.

  Hoffman, P. C.

  Murnin, Hugh

  Walkden, A. G.

  Hopkin, Daniel

  Nathan, Major H. L.

  Walker, J.

  Horrabin, J. F.

  Naylor, T. E.

  Watkins. F. C.

  Hudson, James H. (Huddersfield)

  Newman, Sir R. H. S. D. L. (Exeter)

  Watson, W. M. (Dunfermline)

  Hunter, Dr. Joseph

  Noel Baker, P. J.

  Watts-Morgan, Lt.-Col. D. (Rhondda)

  Isaacs, George

  Noel-Buxton, Baroness (Norfolk, N.)

  Wedgwood, Rt. Hon. Josiah

  Jenkins, Sir William

  Oldfield. J. R.

  Wellock, Wilfred

  John, William (Rhondda, West)

  Oliver, George Harold (Ilkeston)

  West, F. R.

  Johnston, Rt. Hon. Thomas

  Oliver, P. M. (Man., Blackley)

  Westwood, Joseph

  Jones, Llewellyn-, F.

  Owen, Major G. (Carnarvon)

  White, H. G.

  Jones, Henry Haydn (Merioneth)

  Owen. H. F. (Hereford)

  Whiteley, Wilfrid (Birm., Ladywood)

  Jones, J. J. (West Ham, Silvertown)

  Palin, John Henry.

  Whiteley, William (Blaydon)

  Jones, Rt. Hon. Lell (Camborne)

  Paling, Wilfrid

  Wilkinson, Ellen C.

  Jones, Morgan (Caerphilly)

  Palmer, E. T.

  Williams, Dr. J. H. (Llanelly)

  Jowett, Rt. Hon. F. W.

  Parkinson, John Allen (Wigan)

  Williams, T. (York, Don Valley)

  Jowitt, Sir W. A. (Preston)

  Pethick-Lawrence, F. W.

  Wilson C. H. (Sheffield, Attercliffe)

  Kedward, R. M. (Kent, Ashford)

  Phillips, Dr. Marion

  Wilson, J. (Oldham)

  Kelly, W. T.

  Picton-Turbervill, Edith

  Wilson, R. J. (Jarrow)

  Kennedy. Rt. Hon. Thomas

  Pole. Major D. G.

  Winterton. G. E. (Leicester, Loughb'gh)

  Kenworthy, Lt.-Com. Hon. Joseph M.

  Potts, John S.

  Wise, E. F.

  Kinley, J.

  Price, M. P.

  Wood, Major McKenzie (Banff)

  Kirkwood, D.

  Pybus, Percy John

  Young, R. S. (Islington, North)

  Knight, Holford

  Quibell. D. J. K.

  Lang, Gordon

  Ramsay, T. B. Wilson

  TELLERS FOR THE AYES.—

  Lansbury, Rt. Hon. George

  Rathbone, Eleanor

  Mr. Charles Edwards and Mr. Charleton.

  Lathan, G.

  Raynes, W. R.

  Law, Albert (Bolton)

  Richards, R.

  NOES.

  Acland-Troyte. Lieut.-Colonel

  Alexander, Sir Wm. (Glasgow, Cent'l)

  Astor, Maj. Hon. John J.(Kent, Dover)

  Ainsworth, Lieut.-Col. Charles

  Allen, Sir J. Sandeman (Liverp'l., W.)

  Astor, Viscountess

  Albery, Irving James

  Amery, Rt. Hon. Leopold C. M. S.

  Atholl, Duchess of

  526

  527

  Atkinson, C.

  Everard, W. Lindsay

  Oman, Sir Charles William C.

  Baillie-Hamilton, Hon. Charles W.

  Falle, Sir Bertram G.

  O'Neill, Sir H.

  Baldwin, Rt. Hon. Stanley (Bewdley)

  Ferguson, Sir John

  Ormsby-Gore, Rt. Hon. William

  Balfour, George (Hampstead)

  Fermoy, Lord

  Peake, Captain Osbert

  Balfour, Captain H. H. (I. of Thanet)

  Fielden E. B.

  Penny, Sir George

  Balniel, Lord

  Fison, F. G. Clavering

  Percy, Lord Eustace (Hastings)

  Beamish, Rear-Admiral T. P. H.

  Forestier-Walker. Sir L.

  Peto, Sir Basil E. (Devon, Barnstaple)

  Beaumont, M. W.

  Fremantle, Lieut.-Colonel Francis E.

  Pilditch, Sir Philip

  Bellairs, Commander Carlyon

  Galbraith. J. F. W.

  Power, Sir John Cecil

  Berry, Sir George

  Ganzoni, Sir John

  Pownall, Sir Assheton

  Betterton, Sir Henry B.

  Gault, Lieut.-Col. A. Hamilton

  Purbrick, R.

  Bevan, S. J. (Holborn)

  Gibson, C. G. (Pudsey & Otley)

  Ramsbotham, H.

  Birchall, Major Sir John Dearman

  Gilmour, Lt.-Col. Rt. Hon. Sir John

  Rawson, Sir Cooper

  Bird, Ernest Roy

  Glyn, Major R. G. C.

  Reid, David D. (County Down)

  Boothby, R. J. G.

  Grace, John

  Remer, John R.

  Bourne, Captain Robert Croft

  Graham, Fergus (Cumberland, N.)

  Rentoul, Sir Gervals S.

  Bowater, Col. Sir T. Vansittart

  Greene, W. P. Crawford

  Reynolds, Col. Sir James

  Bowyer, Captain Sir George E. W.

  Grenfell, Edward C. (City of London)

  Richardson, Sir P. W. (Sur'y, Ch'ts'y)

  Boyce, Leslie

  Gretton, Colonel Rt. Hon. John

  Roberts, Sir Samuel (Ecclesall)

  Bracken, B.

  Guinness, Rt. Hon. Walter E.

  Rodd, Rt. Hon. Sir James Rennell

  Brass, Captain Sir William

  Gunston, Captain D. W.

  Ross, Ronald D.

  Briscoe, Richard George

  Hacking, Rt. Hon. Douglas H.

  Ruggles-Brise, Colonel E.

  Broadbent, Colonel J.

  Hall, Lieut.-Col. Sir F. (Dulwich)

  Russell, Alexander West (Tynemouth)

  Brown, Col. D. C. (N'th'l'd., Hexham)

  Hamilton, Sir George (Ilford)

  Salmon, Major I.

  Brown, Brig.-Gen. H. C. (Berks, Newb'y)

  Hammersley, S. S.

  Samuel, A. M. (Surrey, Farnham)

  Buchan-Hepburn, P. G. T.

  Hanbury, C.

  Sandeman, Sir N. Stewart

  Buchan, John

  Hannon, Patrick Joseph Henry

  Sassoon, Rt. Hon. Sir Philip A. G. D.

  Bullock, Captain Malcolm

  Hartington, Marquess of

  Shepperson, Sir Ernest Whittome

  Burton, Colonel H. W.

  Harvey, Major S. E. (Devon. Totnes)

  Skelton, A. N.

  Butler. R. A.

  Henderson, Capt. R. R. (Oxf'd, Henley)

  Smith, Louis W. (Sheffield, Hallam)

  Butt, Sir Alfred

  Heneage, Lieut.-Colonel Arthur P.

  Smith, R. W. (Aberd'n & Kinc'dine, C.)

  Cadogan, Major Hon. Edward

  Herbert, Sir Dennis (Hertford)

  Smith-Carington, Neville W.

  Campbell, E. T.

  Hills, Major Rt. Hon. John Waller

  Smithers, Waldron

  Carver, Major W. H.

  Hoare, Lt.-Col. Rt. Hon. Sir S. J. G.

  Somerset, Thomas

  Castle Stewart, Earl of

  Hope, Sir Harry (Forfar)

  Somerville, A. A. (Windsor)

  Cautley, Sir Henry S.

  Horne, Rt. Hon. Sir Robert S.

  Somerville, D. G. (Willesden, East)

  Cayzer, Sir C. (Chester, City)

  Howard-Bury, Colonel C. K.

  Southby, Commander A. R. J.

  Cayzer, Maj. Sir Herbt. R. (Prtsmth, S.)

  Hudson, Capt. A. U. M. (Hackney, N.)

  Spender-Clay, Colonel H.

  Cazalet, Captain Victor A.

  Hunter-Weston, Lt.-Gen. Sir Aylmer

  Stanley, Lord (Fylde)

  Cecil, Rt. Hon. Lord H. (Ox. Univ.)

  Hurd, Percy A.

  Stanley, Hon. O. (Westmorland)

  Chamberlain, Rt. Hn. Sir J. A. (Birm., W.)

  Hurst, Sir Gerald B.

  Steel-Maitland, Rt. Hon. Sir Arthur

  Chamberlain, Rt. Hon. N. (Edgbaston)

  Inskip, Sir Thomas

  Stewart, W. J. (Belfast, South)

  Chapman, Sir S.

  Iveagh, Countess of

  Stuart, Hon. J. (Moray and Nairn)

  Christie, J. A.

  Jones, Sir G. W. H. (Stoke New'gton)

  Sueter, Rear-Admiral M. F.

  Churchill, Rt. Hon. Winston Spencer

  Kindersley, Major G. M.

  Taylor, Vice-Admiral E. A.

  Clydesdale, Marquess of

  Knox, Sir Alfred

  Thomas, Major L. B. (King's Norton)

  Cobb, Sir Cyril

  Lamb, Sir J. Q.

  Thompson, Luke

  Cockerill, Brig.-General Sir George

  Lane Fox, Col. Rt. Hon. George R.

  Thomson, Sir F.

  Cohen, Major J. Brunel

  Law, Sir Alfred (Derby, High Peak)

  Thomson, Mitchell-, Rt. Hon. Sir W.

  Colfox, Major William Philip

  Leigh, Sir John (Clapham)

  Tinne, J. A.

  Colman, N. C. O.

  Leighton, Major B. E. P.

  Titchfield. Major the Marquess of

  Colville, Major D. J.

  Lewis, Oswald (Colchester)

  Todd, Capt. A. J.

  Conway, Sir W. Martin

  Little, Graham-, Sir Ernest

  Train, J.

  Courtauld, Major J. S.

  Llewellin. Major J. J.

  Tryon, Rt. Hon. George Clement

  Courthope, Colonel Sir G. L.

  Locker-Lampson, Rt. Hon. Godfrey

  Turton, Robert Hugh

  Cranborne, Viscount

  Locker-Lampson, Com. O.(Handsw'th)

  Vaughan-Morgan, Sir Kenyon

  Crichton-Stuart, Lord C.

  Long, Major Hon. Eric

  Wallace, Capt. D. E. (Hornsey)

  Croft, Brigadier-General Sir H.

  Lymington, Viscount

  Ward, Lieut.-Col. Sir A. Lambert

  Crookshank, Capt. H. C.

  McConnell. Sir Joseph

  Warrender, Sir Victor

  Croom-Johnson, R. P.

  Macdonald, Capt. P. D. (I. of W.)

  Waterhouse, Captain Charles

  Culverwell. C. T. (Bristol, West)

  Macquisten, F. A.

  Wells. Sydney R.

  Cunliffe-Lister, Rt. Hon. Sir Philip

  Maitland. A. (Kent, Faversham)

  Williams, Charles (Devon, Torquay)

  Dalkeith, Earl of

  Makins, Brigadier-General E.

  Wilson, G. H. A. (Cambridge U.)

  Dairymple-White, Lt.-Col. Sir Godfrey

  Margesson, Captain H D.

  Windsor-Clive, Lieut.-Colonel George

  Davidson, Rt. Hon. J. (Hertford)

  Marjoribanks, Edward

  Winterton, Rt. Hon. Earl

  Davies, Dr. Vernon

  Mason, Colonel Glyn K.

  Withers, Sir John James

  Davies, Maj. Geo. F.(Somerset, Yeovil)

  Meller, R. J.

  Wolmer, Rt. Hon. Viscount

  Davison. Sir W. H. (Kensington. S.)

  Womersley, W. J.

  Despencer-Robertson, Major J. A. F.

  Merriman, Sir F. Boyd

  Wood, Rt. Hon. Sir Kingsley

  Dixey, A. C.

  Milne, Wardlaw-, J. S.

  Wright, Brig.-Gen. W. D. (Tavist'k)

  Duckworth, G. A. V.

  Moore, Lieut.-Colonel T. C. R. (Ayr)

  Dugdale, Capt. T. L.

  Muirhead, A. J.

  TELLERS FOR THE NOES.—

  Eden, Captain Anthony

  Newton, Sir D. G. C. (Cambridge)

  Commander Sir Bolton Eyres

  Edmondson, Major A. J.

  Nicholson, O. (Westminster)

  Monsell and Major Sir George

  Elliot. Major Walter E.

  Nicholson, Col. Rt. Hn. W. G.(Ptrsf'ld)

  Hennessy.

  Erskine, Lord (Somerset. Weston-s-M.)

  O'Connor, T. J.

  Question, "That the Question be now put," put, and agreed to.

  Resolution to be reported To-morrow;
  Committee to sit again To-morrow.
  The remaining Orders were read, and postponed.

  ADJOURNMENT.
  Resolved, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Mr. T. Kennedy.]
  Adjourned accordingly at Eighteen Minutes after Eleven o'Clock.

TRADE AND COMMERCE.
  POTTERY, LACE AND GLOVES.
  POTTERY, LACE AND GLOVES.
  NORTHERN IRELAND (BUTTER EXPORTS).
  NORTHERN IRELAND (BUTTER EXPORTS).
  Manufactured Exports (Statistics).
  Manufactured Exports (Statistics).
  TRADE MISSION TO SOUTH AFRICA.
  TRADE MISSION TO SOUTH AFRICA.
  ROYAL AIR FORCE (DIETARY).
  ROYAL AIR FORCE (DIETARY).
  PALESTINE (DEVELOPMENT SCHEME).
  PALESTINE (DEVELOPMENT SCHEME).
ROYAL NAVY.
  Mates (Promotions).
  Mates (Promotions).
  CRIMINAL PROCEEDINGS (PRESS REPORTS).
  CRIMINAL PROCEEDINGS (PRESS REPORTS).
  POST OFFICE (REPLY ENVELOPES).
  POST OFFICE (REPLY ENVELOPES).
Preamble
The House met at a quarter before four of the clock, The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
EPSOM URBAN DISTRICT COUNCIL BILL. [H.L.]
Read 3a, and passed, and sent to the Commons.
HACKNEY BOROUGH COUNCIL BILL. [H.L.]
Read 3a, and passed, and sent to the Commons.
GAS LIGHT AND COKE COMPANY BILL. [H.L.]
Read 3a, and passed, and sent to the Commons.
CORBY (NORTHANTS) AND DIS TRICT WATER BILL. [H.L.]
Read 3a, and passed, and sent to the Commons.
LOCAL AUTHORITIES (PUBLICITY) BILL.
Brought from the Commons; read 1a; and to be printed.
MARRIAGE (PROHIBITED DE GREES OF RELATIONSHIP) BILL.
Brought from the Commons; read 1a; and to be printed.
WIDOWS', ORPHANS' AND OLD AGE CONTRIBUTORY PENSIONS BILL.
Brought from the Commons; read 1a; and to be printed.
ANCIENT MONUMENTS BILL. [H.L.]
Returned from the Commons, agreed to, with Amendments.
MINISTRY OF HEALTH PROVISIONAL ORDER (EAST ELLOE JOINT WATER SUPPLY DISTRICT) BILL.
Read 3a, (according to order), with the Amendments, and passes, and returned to the Commons.
ALEXANDER SCOTT'S HOSPITAL ORDER CONFIRMATION BILL. [H.L.]
Read 3a (according to Order), and passed, and sent to the Commons.

THE TWENTY-FOUR-HOUR SYSTEM.
LORD NEWTON LORD NEWTON moved, That in accordance with the recommendations of the Home Office Committee appointed in 1919 to report upon the advisability of adopting, for official and other purposes, the twenty-four-hour method of expressing time, the Ministry of Transport should invite the railway companies to adopt this system from a certain date, and that it should be simultaneously introduced into the Post Office. The noble Lord said: My Lords, in bringing forward this Motion, I presume that I can assume that everybody here is well acquainted with the fact that when we entered upon hostilities in the Great War, our present system of computing time was shown to be thoroughly impracticable, and we were obliged to resort to the system that is advocated in my Motion—namely, what is called the twenty-four-hour system. That system proved to be so satisfactory that it has since been permanently adopted by the Navy, partially adopted, if I am not mistaken, by the Army, and almost completely adopted by the Air Force. The results were so satisfactory that, apparently at the instigation of the Navy, the Government in 1919 appointed a Joint Committee for the purpose of considering whether this new system should be adopted for what were termed "official and public purposes generally."
The Committee, which was presided over by my noble friend Lord Stonehaven, examined a large number of witnesses of all kinds, scientific, commercial, persons interested in the shipping trade, military and naval authorities, and railway authorities. They reported—I will not

1021
read their recommendations in full—that this system had been found completely satisfactory wherever it had been tried, and that it caused no inconvenience because the old and the new systems were quite easily worked together. They recommended that the railways should be invited to put the new system into effect, and that at the same time the Post Office should give the railways the necessary lead by introducing it into their services. They further pointed out—and this is of importance to note—that no legislation was required for the purpose and that, in effect, no public expenditure was required because the railways were prepared to make such expenditure as was necessary in view of the greater convenience that would result. The sole expenditure of public money related to the Post Office, and this would only involve the alteration of date stamps and of the hours on pillar boxes. I might add that as the pillar boxes have to be repainted at regular intervals, no additional expenditure would be involved and it might even turn out in the long run to be an economy, because they would be able to do away with the word "midnight" after twelve o'clock, which is at present added.
In view of those recommendations, and of the facts that no legislation is required, that there would practically be no public expenditure, and that it did not violate any principles of Magna Carta, which is the usual objection brought forward when any sensible proposal is made, it seems surprising that they did not take the opportunity of introducing this measure. But so far from anything being done, the recommendations of the Committee were completely ignored. To use a phrase which is common with regard to this Assembly, "the subject dropped," and it dropped to such an extent that it was not revived for eight years. At the end of the year 1928 the Astronomer Royal, assisted by other scientific authorities, wrote a letter to The Times in which he strongly advocated this proposal. That letter produced much correspondence in the columns of The Times, which lasted for a long time. I will not enter into the details of that correspondence, but the significant fact about it was that, whereas opinion largely preponderated in favour of the change, those who were in favour were those who had had experience of
1022
the system, either during the War or in India or elsewhere. Opposition to the change proceeded solely from persons of what I might venture to call a more insular character—such persons, for instance, if I may say so without offence, as my noble friend Lord Banbury, who, I believe, has never ventured further from this country than Boulogne, and who quite conceivably, I should think, has never undertaken a night journey in the course of his life.
The result of this correspondence was that the question was raised in this House by my noble friend Lord Lamington in March, 1929. At that period a Conservative Government was in office and he was answered by my noble friend Lord Londonderry, who was then Postmaster-General. Lord Londonderry, while expressing himself as personally in favour of the proposal, thought that action ought in the first place to be taken by the railway companies. The railway companies naturally thought that the example ought to be set them by the Post Office, and there the matter rested. In the following year my noble friend Lord Lamington raised the question again. On that occasion the Party opposite was in power and he was replied to by the late Earl Russell, who opposed the proposal on two grounds. The first ground was the somewhat remarkable one that he was a strong Conservative and deprecated any change of this nature—a curious argument to come from a Labour Minister. His second objection lay in the fact that there had been no public demand for any change of this character.
I should like to ask when the public ever does demand anything of the kind. When does the public signify its desire for any legislation? I can hardly remember any instance in which the public has expressed a burning desire for legislation of any kind. On the other hand, I can recall many instances in which legislation has been introduced in which the public has showed no interest whatever. I might instance the vote for "flappers." Nobody pretends that there was any demand for that. On the other hand, I can say with great confidence that there is no large body of public opinion in the country passionately distressed at the fact that the late Education Bill has been lost. I am inclined to think myself that the public is only

1023
deeply agitated when its own pleasures are threatened, and if noble Lords opposite were rash enough, for instance, to shut up cinemas on Sundays or to suppress the betting intelligence in the daily newspapers, I think they would very soon find out that the public would become violently excited.
In order to convince the House, if it be necessary, that I am not a kind of solitary crank urging your Lordships to accept an impracticable proposal, I should like to quote certain witnesses in my favour. Perhaps noble Lords will have noticed that recently there have appeared letters in The Times from various eminent people strongly urging the adoption of this proposal. The first correspondent whom I desire to quote is again the Astronomer Royal. The Astronomer Royal, in a letter addressed to The Times only last Saturday, I believe, pointed out that the 24-hour notation is universally vised by scientific bodies, the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, for meteorological warnings, by the B.B.C. and all the Continental railway and Continental Post Offices as well as by the most valuable book of reference in this country, Whitaker's Almanack. He goes on to point out that:—
"Most people have to think twice before they are quite sure what 12.30 p.m. means. I imagine that many letters have been wrongly posted and many trains lost by a mistake of 12 hours arising from the a.m. and p.m. nomenclature."
I had an experience of this myself only a few days ago. I was directed to take a train at 9.30 in the morning. As my letter came from a lady and I have not complete confidence in the accuracy of the sex, I made inquiries and found there was no such train, but that there was a train which left at 9.30 in the evening. That is an experience which might happen to anybody, but which could not happen if you had the sensible 24-hour system.
Among the other witnesses I adduce are Mr. Harold Cox, well known as an economist in this country, and Mr. Pick, Manager of the Underground Railway. I think it will be generally admitted that no more efficient organisation exists in this country than the Underground, and that is possibly the reason why the Government are anxious to obtain control over it sooner or later. Mr. Pick may be taken as representing the railway view and, although the Underground is
1024
naturally less concerned in this particular question than any of the main lines, nevertheless it is quite ready to spend the small sum of money involved in view of the resulting convenience. We know perfectly well, not only from evidence before the Committee but from what has been said in this House, that the railway companies are only waiting for a lead, and are perfectly prepared to act and to incur the necessary expense provided the Post Office will give them a lead.
To turn for a moment from the railways, it seems to me a singularly ludicrous circumstance that at the present moment when we are hysterically imploring foreign tourists to come to Britain, when they come they should find a perfectly unintelligible labyrinth, representing the British railway time-tables, which even natives find it difficult to explain, in place of their own sensible and easily understandable time-tables. In view of what I have stated, and in view of the fact that no expense or legislation is necessary, it really does not seem as if much reason existed for opposition; but nevertheless there is opposition. When you reflect upon the millions and millions which we spend upon education it is extraordinary to find that this proposal is opposed on the ground that the task of transposing a.m. and p.m. into the figures proposed in this scheme is too baffling for the ordinary citizen.
That seems to me a remarkable assertion to make. I had an instance of it this afternoon, because my noble friend Lord Banbury asked me, when we were about to begin the proceedings, whether it was then 14 o'clock. There is some sort of warrant for this scepticism as to the ability of the ordinary individual to count, because one of the most eminent British writers that ever lived, in the Bab Ballads, with which some noble Lords must be acquainted, presents a picture of a practical-joking London police constable, who, when asked the time of day by Kindly Bumpkin Green, would not infrequently reply, a quarter past thirteen. This presumably too baffling reply to the ordinary rustic is simple to answer. I can give the clue to it myself. If Lord Banbury finds it difficult to answer the conundrum let him substitute in his imagination a shilling—
LORD BANBURY OF SOUTHAM: I have not any imagination.
LORD NEWTON: Nor have I very much, but let him substitute a shilling for the figure 12, and add a penny for every hour after twelve. He will then have no difficulty in arriving at a complete solution. If the figure is 1s. 3d. he will know that it is 3 p.m., and if it is 1s. 6d., then the time will be 6 o'clock in the afternoon, and so forth. There really is no trouble about it at all. But I do not want to set anyone these intellectual problems. There is no occasion to be worried over the answer to questions of this kind, because they never would arise. I am not dealing with the spoken word, but really with the written or rather printed word, and as far as I know it is not the practice of the nations which have adopted this system to make any use of the 24-hour system in ordinary conversation. Therefore, in the family circle or elsewhere people will still be at liberty to talk about a.m. and p.m. In fact, if I am not mistaken, the French—possibly in order to pay us a compliment—have actually invented the word fivoclocquer, which is intended to comprehend all the different forms of social amusement which take place at five o'clock in the afternoon.
This request which I am putting forward is one of a very modest—one might almost say of a very insignificant—character. At all events, it is of an insignificant character when you compare it with the much greater reform of summer time—the greatest boon, perhaps, which this generation has ever experienced, and which caused a greater revolution in our habits than anything in this Motion is likely to do. But, at the same time, if the change is adopted, it will remove certain minor inconveniences. We shall, at all events, know when we ought to start, and when we shall arrive, which it is difficult to ascertain at the present moment; and we shall also know, when letters arrive at their destination, when they were sent off. Also, there will be much less doubt than there is now about the date upon which telegrams are sent off and received. As I have shown that no trouble is incurred, and that a certain amount of general convenience will ensue,
1026
I cannot help hoping that I shall receive on the whole a favourable response from the Government. I beg to move.
Moved, That in accordance with the recommendations of the Home Office Committee appointed in 1919 to report upon the advisability of adopting, for official and other purposes, the 24-hour method of expressing time, the Ministry of Transport should invite the railway companies to adopt this system from a certain date, and that it should be simultaneously introduced into the Post Office.—(Lord Newton.)
LORD STONEHAVEN: My Lords, my noble friend has stated the case in favour of this change so clearly that very little remains to be said. I am hopeful that we may be more fortunate in getting this reform adopted than we have been before, because, though it is not one of those things for which there is a strong demand, I have never noticed that noble Lords opposite and their friends wait for a strong demand in order to carry out what they, in their greater wisdom, know would be good for the country. My friends, like myself, are rather apt to say "Let well alone," but noble Lords opposite will forgive me if I say the impression one gets is that they do not want to let anything alone; they are prepared to improve almost anything, and I have some hope, therefore, that this change, which did not commend itself to my noble friends in the past, may be looked upon more favourably by noble Lords opposite to-day. The real substance of the change is to eliminate the letters a.m. and p.m. and to come into line in that respect with the other countries of the world that have adopted this change—France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy and India; while among ourselves, as my noble friend has stated, the change has been adopted by the Navy, the Army, and the Air Force.
It was interesting when the Committee sat and examined this question—and my only excuse for troubling your Lordships at all is that I happened to be Chairman of that Committee—that there were no wild enthusiasts for this change, but those who had experience of it were all in favour of it. In addition to the railway companies which had direct connection with the Continent, we received

1027
from people who had lived in India or on the Continent encouraging letters expressing the hope that we should succeed in getting this change adopted here. It does not appear that it is going to involve any expenditure. Certainly it does not involve any legislation; and indeed the recommendation that we made with a view to getting this change adopted was that the Ministry of Transport should be asked to call on the railway companies to adopt the 24-hour system from a certain date. That was all that was necessary. The Post Office would automatically come into line. The change is not a very big one, but it would prevent my noble friend from suffering the inconvenience, which he described to your Lordships, of trying to catch a train at 9.30 a.m. which did not start till 9.30 p.m. That could not occur if this change were made. We should also come into line with our friends on the Continent.
I was in favour of the change in the year 1919, when we sat and examined this question, and nothing that has occurred since has led me to think we were wrong in submitting, as we did, that it was an advantage and an improvement. It did not find favour on that occasion. and I believe it has not found favour on subsequent occasions, but, as we now have in office a Government which is not opposed to changing anything—indeed rather likes change—I hope we shall have a favourable response this afternoon.
LORD BANBURY OF SOUTHAM: My Lords, I hope the Government will adhere to their former decision. I can see no object in changing what we have been accustomed to all our lives, nor in asking the railway companies to spend money in altering their time-tables, clocks, and various other things. I see a noble Viscount who is connected with the railways (Lord Churchill) coming into the House, and I think he would tell your Lordships that it would be far better for the railway companies to employ their money in paying a small dividend to their shareholders than to mess about altering the hours of the clock.
LORD LAMINGTON: My noble friend who introduced the Motion said that I have on two occasions addressed your Lordships on this matter; therefore I
1028
have little to say to-day. Our present system is distinctly an artificial system. Primitive man no doubt took his day from the midday sun to the following midday sun—twenty-four hours. The system that we follow now is purely artificial, and the reasons given for the change to a much simpler system are, I think, overwhelming. It is bound to come. In these days, when inter-communication from one part of the world to another is so rapidly developing, it is impossible to conceive that the various air services could work on any other system than the 24-hour table.
The future will show the necessity of this change and as the noble Lord, Lord Newton, has mentioned, it involves no expense to the Government except in altering the stamps for letters and telegrams. Already the 24-hour system is in use for cablegrams. Why should it not be generally extended to all the services? Noble Lords might oppose it on the ground of economy because the pillar boxes would have to have alterations made, but, of course, it would only be necessary to put up slips of paper showing when the next collection would take place. Far from there being any public expense, I believe it would be a great economy. I am sure that few people go long journeys, to Scotland for example, without being often troubled in trying to find out whether the train arrives or starts a.m. or p.m. It is very easy to make a mistake. You work out an itinerary, you think your train starts at a certain hour a.m. and you find you are at p.m. As to those who offer objection to the change, I think they are chiefly ladies who pretend that they are lacking in mathematical knowledge.
LORD MONKSWELL: My Lords, as civilisation, of which we are all so proud, proceeds, it occasionally throws off some quite good ideas. One of those good ideas seems to be the time notation which my noble friend is advocating to-day. For a long time something simple and convenient of that kind has been a crying necessity both with regard to timetables and any other matter upon which doubt may arise as to which side of midday is intended. Nothing is more likely to lead to difficulty than conventional signs. All kinds of dodges have been tried and have only served to make confusion worse confounded. It is possible,

1029
for instance, to underline the minutes between 6 p.m. and 5.59 a.m. or between 12.1 p.m. and midnight, or to use dark type for the midnight hours, or italics, subject to rules that have to be carefully consulted in an appendix. The whole thing is complicated and unsatisfactory. The 24-hour day does away with all difficulties which apply, and there is clearly no reasonable cause why it should not be adopted both by the railways and the Post Office.
But there is officialdom. Such of your Lordships as have been present on the occasions, I am afraid rather numerous, on which I have ventured to criticise our railway companies, will be aware that I have had special opportunities for observing the habits and manners of railway officials at close quarters. I have also been a civil servant and, though the Department in which I served does not happen to have been the Post Office, I imagine the mentality of the chiefs of the Post Office does not differ in any material degree from the mentality of the chiefs of the Foreign Office. This is the conclusion to which I have been led after a close study of officialdom both on the railways and in the Civil Service: If there is one thing above all others that no true blue official will tolerate for an instant, it is any suggestion coming from an outside source, and it is impossible to find words too strong to describe his indifference to anything intended to benefit the public.
Confronted by criticism, he has a regular modus operandi, consisting of a number of well thought out steps intended to defeat all criticism. The first step is to ignore criticism altogether, and just to sit still and say nothing. If for any reason he is unable to persist in this attitude, the next step is to assume that his critic has said something quite different from what he actually has said and to argue at great length that this is impossible. The third step, as has already been pointed out, is to say that no public demand has made itself felt. This is often true enough, because officials have taken excellent care, as my noble friend has pointed out, that the public should not be in a position to express an opinion. If even this fails, the next step is to say that if patience is exercised it is probable that something still better will be evolved and, there-
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fore, it is best to wait. In those circumstances, it is only the most persistent critic that cares to go on. For all practical purposes, strongly entrenched officialdom can snap its fingers at all criticism. Something of this kind appears to be happening in this case. I hope that we shall hear to-day from the representatives of the Post Office and of the railways that they will abandon an attitude which is really little more than obstruction and will accept a reasonable reform with a good grace.
LORD TRENCHARD: My Lords, I would like to support the Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Newton, though I do not altogether agree with the statement of the noble Lord, Lord Monkswell, that Government Departments never initiate anything, when already we know that three Government Departments have adopted the 24-hour system. From a time point of view, I think it is most essential that we should keep as far as possible to the twenty-four hours. It is a development that has been found necessary in connection with flying and I hope it will be adopted universally.
LORD MOYNIHAN: My Lords, I venture to hope that the Government will not listen to the request of the noble Lord, Lord Newton. I think that no greater mistake can be made than to suppose that the people of this country desire to live under good laws. They desire only to live under laws which they make themselves, and the law which divides the day into two periods of twelve hours seems to me so consonant with the wishes of the people of this country that there is no desire whatever on their part for any change to take place. The period of twelve hours counted twice in the twenty-four is that which we all feel distinctly to be a proper and very necessary division of the day. The grievance that has been chiefly insisted upon by the noble Lord, Lord Newton, is concerned with the time-tables. I think I may make the claim—I hope it is not an arrogant one—that in my very brief life I have travelled more upon the railways than any other noble Lord who is present. I am not accustomed to consult my lady friends with regard to the times of arrival or departure of my trains, and I have never yet been in a

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position to confuse a.m. with p.m., nor do I think it is in the least likely that I shall ever make so grave a, mistake.
If we are to have a 24-hour day, I would ask your Lordships to consider what the more numerous divisions of the clock face may mean. Even if you took so large a clock as that attached to Big Ben, I think you would find great difficulty in distinguishing exactly to what hour the hour hand pointed, the figures would lie so close together. I think we should be replacing what is an unsubstantial grievance by a real difficulty in distinguishing the time. It is true that very high, perhaps the highest, scientific authority in this country, the Astronomer Royal, has on two occasions forcibly expressed himself as in agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Newton. I have every consideration for the opinion of my old friend Sir Frank Dyson, but I would like to point out that the language of the laboratory is not the language of the every day common room. We do not speak ordinarily in the language of the laboratory. We speak of the daisy and the primrose. We do not speak of ranunculus, which is qualified by some hideous epithet or another. And I think it would be a pity if we allowed the language of science to step in and replace the common every-day and much more attractive words that are in use.
I do not know whether your Lordships have recently been so happy as to consult your physicians. If you have, you will find on the prescription you received some sort of hieroglyph which looks as though a fly had dropped into the ink bottle, had managed to escape and deposit itself on the top left-hand corner of the prescription paper and there had suffered many seizures of epilepsy. That hieroglyph is really an invocation to the god Jupiter that he will bless the various ingredients of the prescription, which are written in Latin. I would remind your Lordships, if you are not familiar with the fact, that the names of drugs are written in Latin in order that your Lordships may not in the least understand what drugs you are taking and that psycho-therapy may be added to the benefit which you derive from the prescription.
But there is really a very profound physiological reason why the day should be divided into two parts. All nature
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consists of cycles. There is death and resurrection; there is ascent and decline; there is adolescence and the climacteric. And St. Paul expressed a profound truth when he said, "I die daily." In all matters of this kind there is a sort of rhythm in life. Whether it has to do with your pulse beats or the regularity of your heart or the frequency of respiration or whatnot I cannot say, but there is a feeling that there is a division of your day into two parts, one of increasing activity as the morning goes on reaching an altitude, and from then suffering a decline when a period of repose is due.
I feel myself that this division of the day into two parts is not only in consonance with the wishes of the people of this country but is a recognition of a profound biological truth that there are these two periods in each 24-hour day, a period of what should be activity and a period of what should be repose. I think it is the common sense of the people of this country as against the lack of common sense in the people of other countries which keeps them wishing to have the double cycle in the 24-hour day. I hope very much that the Government will stand firm upon this. We are told that we are in isolation so far as the nations are concerned. I hope we are. I hope that neither for the first time nor yet for the last time shall we have stubborn, infrangible British common sense opposed to the freakishness and vapourishness of some other nations on the Continent.
VISCOUNT CHURCHILL: My Lords, I did not intend to intervene in this debate, and should not have done so but for a word that fell from my noble friend, the noble Lord on my left (Lord Monks-well), who so often treats us to his views on railways. He did us the honour of coupling us, the railway officials, with the permanent officials in the Government Departments. In other words, we were pig-headed mug-wumps, or words to that effect. I must assure the noble Lord that he made one grave error when he said we were opposed to anything new. I happen to have, amongst the few things that under various Chancellors of the Exchequer have been left to me, two most treasured possessions in two grandfather clocks of about the year

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1747. Both of those clocks have the dials numbered to 24 o'clock, which shows we are not discussing any newly-discovered suggestion. But to keep to my point—namely, what the main line railway companies feel about this proposal. Undoubtedly, as my noble friend Lord Ban-bury has said, it would cost a certain amount of money, and involve alteration, which of courses is nothing in itself, and if the Government, the Post Office, and the country generally adopt the 24-hour system the railways will naturally fall into line, and, I hope, do all that they generally try to do to accommodate themselves to the convenience of the public who are their patrons. But until that is a fait accompli we naturally are not in a hurry to spend money and alter our time-tables, preferring to wait until the suggestion, if it is adopted, is in universal use.
THE UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOE WAR (LORD MARLEY): My Lords, I have to thank the noble Lord, Lord Newton, for his courtesy in writing to me beforehand to indicate the line he proposed to take in this debate. The discussion has produced a number of interesting speeches. In particular we have had speeches from all three members sitting on the Cross Benches at the present moment, and the particularly brilliant speech from the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, must have delighted your Lordships. I do not suppose that the rhythm of life would cease even if there were an alteration in the numbering of the hours after mid-day, and although he rather deprecates the use of Latin in prescriptions, I would remind him that he is using it every day when he uses a.m. and p.m. as applied to the hours.
It is interesting that the noble Lord, Lord Newton, should be taking a point of view rather different from that which he took in a debate in your Lordships' House in 1929. Then he said that he did not understand why the Government should be dragged into this question at all. He went on to say that it seemed to him a question which might very well be decided by the authorities themselves without dragging His Majesty's Government into the discussion. The Times, in a leader to-day, calls the noble Lord a robust optimist because he now believes that with an alteration in the Govern-
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ment he may be able to get something carried out which he was unable to obtain from the previous Administration. He evidently thinks that he is likely to get more help from the Socialist Government than he could get from the previous Government. It is true that the more advanced Departments do use the 24-hour system. The War Office, which is always in the van of progress, uses and has used for many years, the 24-hour system, and its younger sister, the Air Force, has had to come into line, and in civil aviation it is bound to be universal.
It is doubtful whether there is any real public demand for the change. The suggestion, however, that there was no public demand for what the noble Lord termed votes for "flappers" does not seem to have been founded on fact, for votes were very much used by "flappers" at the last General Election, and it may possibly be due to the use of that vote by the young and progressive women of this country that some help may be given to the noble Lord in his suggestion in connection with 24-hour time notation. I think perhaps he was unfortunate in his friends who were unable to quote the hour correctly in connection with the railway journeys which we have heard about. There is the point that perhaps this change would be less valuable in Great Britain than it is on the Continent. Nevertheless, there has been a widespread expression of opinion in your Lordships' House that some examination of this question ought to take place, and that the Government should in some way assist in the consideration of the problem. There have been, as has been pointed out by those who have taken part in this debate, some influential letters in The Times, and the leader in to-day's Times is one of great thoughtfulness, and must carry conviction to many that there is at least a case for inquiry. I am authorised to say on behalf of His Majesty's Government that careful and sympathetic consideration will be given by them to the whole question raised by the noble Lord, Lord Newton.
LORD NEWTON: My Lords, my first impulse is to congratulate my noble friend Lord Banbury upon the stalwart auxiliary whom he has secured upon the Cross Benches, but at the same time I confess I was quite unable to follow the

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argument of the noble Lord. I may be very dense, but I can see no more reason why it is advisable to divide a day of twenty-four hours into two periods than it is to divide an hour into two half-hours. With regard to what he said about the prescriptions which he and his fraternity prescribe for us, it seems to me that there is a strong resemblance between them and the English railway time-tables, which I find quite impossible on occasions to decipher myself.
What is more important perhaps is the statement made by the noble Lord, Lord Marley. He mentioned an inconsistency on my part, and I am quite ready to make the confession that when I first made a speech upon this particular subject I had not read the Report of the Committee of my noble friend Lord Stonehaven. After reading that Report I have come round to the opinion which I expressed this afternoon. The noble Lord, Lord Marley, has given me some sort of vague encouragement. He says it will be put forward for favourable consideration. I do not know that it matters much whether we divide in this House or not because nobody pays any attention to us, but at all events it is an indication of opinion. If the noble Lord would give me some sort of assurance that the Government will tell me, say "after a given day," to use the words of the Resolution, what the Government are prepared to do, I would not put the House to the trouble of a Division, but unless the Government do make some definite statement I think I should prefer to take the opinion of the House.
LORD MARLEY: My Lords, I can say that the Government are prepared to examine this question with sympathy.
LORD NEWTON: Yes, but how long are you going to take over it?
LORD MARLEY: Perhaps the noble Lord will put down a Question in six weeks' time if there has been no Report before then.
LORD NEWTON: On the understanding that I am at liberty to question the Government again on the subject I will not insist on a Division now. I ask leave to withdraw the Motion.
Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

"WITH THE DUBLIN BRIGADE (1917–1921)."
LORD BANBURY OF SOUTHAM LORD BANBURY OF SOUTHAM rose to ask His Majesty's Government whether their attention has been called to a book published in London by Peter Davies, Ltd., and written by a man named Charles Dalton, called "With the Dublin Brigade (1917–1921)," in which the author states that he was present and assisted in the murder of eleven English officers in their beds in Dublin on November 21, 1921, though he does not say that he fired any of the shots, and what action they propose to take; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I rise to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Paper and I think the simplest thing for me to do is to read to you what the man Dalton actually says In this book. He says:
"We had been engaged for the past three weeks locating the addresses of these Intelligence men. Many of them were officers of high rank. They had taken up their abode in private houses in quiet residential neighbourhoods, where they lived in great seclusion, many of them under assumed names and occupations. By one means and another we had got upon their track.
"At six o'clock I called to see a Volunteer who lived over a shop in Amiens Street. I had tea there with a girl with whom I had an appointment. She was a. country girl employed as a maid in a superior boarding-house in one of the fashionable streets on the south side of the City.
"I was very anxious to have a conversation with Rosie, but I waited until we had finished our tea. We had met her several times already, and she had been able to give us some valuable information.
"When I first met her she had let fall scraps of gossip about her boarders which had aroused my suspicion. They were 'English gentlemen' she thought. They 'looked like military officers,' though they did not wear uniform. They never went out during the day but 'always at night after Curfew.'
"They were 'quiet gentlemen,' she said, 'spending most of their time writing,' and when Rosie had to clean out their rooms she was bothered by the overflowing contents of the waste-paper baskets which she had to dispose of.
"She had, at my suggestion, brought me to these waste papers, and on looking through them and piecing them together … we had not been surprised to find notes relating to the movements of Volunteers and other data which were most interesting to us.

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"She had also managed, to get hold of some photographs which were in the possession of these officers. They were of Volunteers who were being pursued by the Authorities, and who we had reason to suppose were on the list for summary execution.
"By now we knew all we needed to know about Rosie's boarders—their names, both their assumed names and their real ones, their appearance, habits, and the nature of their occupation. It had been decided that if we were to survive and our resistance to continue, the time had come to bring their activities to an end, and those of a number of other Secret Service men living secluded in the same way in other private houses in the same district."
Therefore, you will see, my Lords, that having got hold of a servant girl and she having found certain papers which were later pieced together, it was necessary to kill these people because they thought they were English officers. The book goes on:
"Rosie told me that evening that life in the boarding-house was just the same, but that two of her officers had moved to a flat in another street. I asked her had she heard the address. She had, and gave it to me.
"Bidding her good-bye, I hurried to the office used by us as Brigade Headquarters, and found several officers gathered there. I was aware of the arrangements made for the following morning,"—
that is the morning when these gentlemen were killed—
"and gave my information of the change of address of the two officers.
"I did not stay long as I had another appointment to keep. I went to Harcourt Street where I met a Volunteer Officer whom I had not been acquainted with hitherto. I was to accompany him and his men on the following morning. We made our arrangements about meeting.
"It was now near Curfew and I hurried home to the dispensary."
Then he gives an account of what he did at the dispensary and he goes on to say:
"We were awake and dressed by seven o'clock. We breakfasted on the same fare of tea and eggs. I noticed that the men were examining their revolvers, seeing that they were in working order.
"Outwardly we were calm and collected, even jesting with each other. But inwardly I felt that the others were as I was—palpitating with anxiety.
"Shortly after eight o'clock we left the house, as we had a long way to walk to the respective scenes of our operations. Crossing the City we saw but few people astir, save an occasional milkman making his rounds. It was a beautiful, clear morning.
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"Coming near Merrion Square we passed several groups of Volunteers with whom we exchanged glances of understanding.
"At Merrion Square I parted with my companions, and I walked on alone until I came to my destination. There I met the Volunteer Officer with whom I had spoken on the previous night. He had several men with him who were waiting round the corner. He looked at his watch and said it wanted five minutes to the appointed hour—nine o'clock.
"We had both received our orders. I told him what mine were: 'I am to get any papers in the house.'
"Those were the longest five minutes of my life. Or were they the shortest? I cannot tell, but they were tense and dreadful.
"Sharp at nine o'clock we walked up the steps of the house. Fortunately the door was open, while the caretaker was shaking the mats on the steps. One of our men held him up, and warned him to keep quiet. (He was blamed for complicity, the poor fellow, and got ten years' penal servitude.)
"We walked into a large hall which had two separate flights of stairs ascending from it. We divided into two parties, four in each, and as I went up one staircase with my companions I saw our other party swiftly mounting the other. The stairs were heavily carpeted and our footsteps made no sound.
"On the landing were two doors which I knew led to the rooms of two of the Secret Service men. Here we divided again, and knocked simultaneously at both doors.
"We identified the men we wanted. Each had a revolver at his hand, but our men were too quick for them.
"Shaking, I said to the officer of my party: 'Wait for me. I have to search for the papers.'
"'Wait be damned! Get out of here as quickly as you can.'
"I was only too glad to take his advice. The noise of the shots must have been heard in the neighbourhood. We hurried down the stairs together.
"In the hall three or four men were lined up against the wall some of our officers facing them. Knowing their fate I felt great pity for them. It was plain they knew it too. As I crossed the threshhold the volley was fired.
"In the street I parted from my companions, they going south."
The next few pages relate only to how he escaped. He ends by saying this:
"Then I heard a bell ringing in a nearby church. It was the Angelus. I remembered I had not been to Mass. I slipped out, and in the silence before the-altar, I thought over our morning's work and offered up a prayer for the fallen."
It is a pity that he did not do it the day before instead of an hour afterwards.
Then there is one other passage:—
"The evening following my interview with Mac I called.… to meet Rosie.
"This was the first time I had seen her since the Sunday morning of the shootings, and I was very anxious to know what had happened afterwards at the boarding house.
"The minute she saw me, she burst into tears. This greatly surprised and distressed me. Putting my arm around her, I asked her what was the matter. This only caused her to cry more convulsively, so that for a while she could not speak to me at all.
"'Oh, why did you shoot them?' she sobbed at last. 'I thought you only meant to kidnap them.'
" 'But Rosie,' said I, 'surely you know we are at war and that these men were shooting our fellows?'
"'I know,' she said, still crying, 'but it was dreadful.'
"After a while she managed to calm herself, and told me her story.
"'After the gentlemen were shot, we were all terribly upset. Military and detectives arrived at the house, and they questioned us for hours. They took lorry loads of papers away with them. I was so upset I did not leave the house for days. You see, I felt I had had a hand in it, and I couldn't bear my thoughts, and at last I felt I must speak to someone. So I went to a friend of mine, who was a priest, and I told him everything.'
"'Well, Rosie, what did he say to you?'
"'He was very nice to me. He told me I needn't blame myself at all. He said that ye were fighting with your backs to the wall. A defensive war, that is what he called it. He said the English had no right to be here at all. Our boys must defend themselves, he said, and a lot more which I did not understand. He was grand and kind to me.'
"'Only when I saw you it all came back to me again.'"
I do not think I need take up more time by attempting to describe the horrible facts that are admitted in this book.
Here is a book published in London, a cheap edition at 2s. 6d., by some people called Peter Davies, Ltd. I should like to know what steps the Government propose to take with regard to the publication of this sort of book, whether it is advisable that a book of this sort should be circulated, a book which apparently gives people to understand that the man in question, if he did not murder these unfortunate gentlemen, assisted in their murder, and was accessory to the fact both before and after, holding himself up as a sort of
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hero. Apparently his attitude has been endorsed by a priest.
I do not know, not being a lawyer, what powers the Government have, but I presume that, if this man ventures to come to England, he can be arrested, and I further presume that they have some powers over the publishers of the book. I do not know whether, the South of Ireland being still part of the Empire, the Government here have some influence with the powers there, and can induce them to take steps against a man who glories in having murdered defenceless gentlemen. I am sorry to see that the Liberal Benches are not very full, but I would remind noble Lords who sit there of what their great leader, Lord Palmerston, once said when be applied the phrase, "Civis Romanus sum," to Englishmen. If Lord Palmerston were here now, I am quite certain that action would have been taken.
THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (LORD PASSFIELD): My Lords. I must confess that I do not understand what object the noble Lord, Lord Banbury, had in giving this very large gratuitous advertisement to this publication of which he disapproves. I do not propose to go into the incidents described in the book in question. I will only point out that this is the story by a boy of his exploits at the time when he was seventeen years of age. I must also point out, since it happens to be a relevant fact, that they occurred in November, 1920, and not in November, 1921, as stated in the Motion. That is a small mistake, but it happens to be of great importance. I must remind your Lordships that in January, 1922, upon the establishment of the provisional Government in the Irish Free State, His Majesty granted a general amnesty in respect of offences committed in Ireland from political motives prior to the operation of the truce—that is to say, prior to July, 1921, which is some eight months after the incidents in question.
With your Lordships' permission, I will read the terms of that amnesty:—
"His Majesty the King has been pleased, at the moment when a provisional Irish Government is about to take office, to grant a general amnesty in respect of all offences committed in Ireland from political motives prior to the operation of the truce on July 11 last."

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That is to say, from July 11, 1921.
"The release of prisoners to whom the amnesty applies will begin forthwith. It is His Majesty's confident hope that this act of oblivion will aid powerfully in establishing relations of friendship and good will between the peoples of Great Britain and Ireland."
The terms of this amnesty express very definitely His Majesty's proclaimed desire that the unhappy events to which the noble Lord has referred, and others like them, should be consigned to oblivion. Since then the controversies and ugly incidents of the years preceding the establishment of the Irish Free State have been replaced by happier relations and by a spirit of good will. I cannot feel that any useful purpose would be served by reviving now the bitter memories of past events, and I venture to believe that, on further reflection, the noble Lord may think fit to withdraw his Motion for Papers. There are, in fact, no Papers whatever.
THE MARQUESS OF LONDONDERRY: My Lords, I think your Lordships will have been very much struck by the speech delivered by the noble Lord who sits behind me, and whilst I am quite sure that the noble Lord who has responded for the Government has probably exactly the same feelings of horror and indignation as exist in our minds, he did not tell us so in the speech which he has just delivered. He certainly has stated, quite correctly, that an amnesty was granted, and there is no need for me to go further into that matter, since the noble Lord has read its terms. I should have thought, however, that your Lordships would form a further opinion on the proceedings to which my noble friend behind me has drawn attention— namely, that the publication of a book in which the writer appears to glory in the deeds which were perpetuated on the date mentioned, calls for some remark. I do not know what the powers of His Majesty's Government are, but I know quite well that they have some jurisdiction over publications that are produced for sale in this country, and I should have thought that it would be possible for them, if their powers are not adequate for the destruction of a book of this description, to have made some remonstrance to the Free State
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Government with a view to putting an end to the publication of books of this description.
LORD DANESFORT: My Lords, it is obvious from what Lord Passfield has said with regard to the amnesty (assuming, as of course I do, that he has accurately stated it) that no prosecution of this infamous criminal—infamous according to his own confession—can take place, but to my mind that does not justify the reproduction in this country of this infamous book, extracts1 from which have been read. Can anything be more pernicious, degrading and criminal than that a self-confessed criminal should publish in this country a justification of one of the basest murders that have ever taken place in Southern Ireland? Do not let us forget that the murder occurred in November, 1920, and was one of those scoundrelly actions of murder and outrage which, I am sorry to say, led up to the appalling surrender to crime in June, 1921.
It is repulsive to go into these old stories, but every one knows that the Government of this; country about November, 1920, or thereabouts, through the mouth of the Prime Minister, declared that nothing would induce them to surrender to the deliberate campaign of outrage and murder which was then going on in Ireland. Just after this atrocious event took place, and the result was, in June, 1921, the surrender of all that we held most sacred in Ireland. That being so, is it decent, is it right, that this scoundrelly criminal should be allowed to produce in this country a book in which he glories in the crime of himself and those other equally infamous ruffians like himself?—not only glories in it but recalls to the minds of the British people what he thinks are the admirable effects of those crimes. To my mind it is a direct incitement to violent crime, if the persons who commit it think that by those methods they are going to get the results for which they ask. I think it would be unfortunate that in. India persons there conspiring against our Government should have an opportunity of reading a book like this, in which an atrocious crime is confessed, with the result that the British Government surrendered. Therefore I beg the Government to consider whether it is a decent

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thing to allow the publication in this country of such a book, and if they do not, and I doubt if any right-minded person could think it is decent, I trust that they will take steps to prevent the further publication here of such a book.
LORD BANBURY OF SOUTHAM: My Lords, I made two suggestions in the remarks which I ventured to address to the House a few moments ago. I said that not being a lawyer I was not aware whether the Government had power to take proceedings. I understand from what the noble Lord opposite has said that owing to these events having occurred before the amnesty was granted, which gave an amnesty to political offenders—this is the first time I have heard murder called a political offence—they can do nothing. My second suggestion was as to the taking of steps to prevent the publication of a book of this sort. Do they consider it right that a book of this sort,
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which contains reminiscences and statements regarding murders by a man who evidently thinks he is a wonderful man, and doing the right thing, and which he says a priest of the Christian religion seemed to excuse—do they think it is right to encourage the publication in this country of the cheap edition of a book of this sort? I have not very much opinion of the Government, and I have certainly had less in the last few moments. I shall not withdraw my Motion, but if there are no Papers or the Government refuse to produce them I shall not trouble the House with a Division.
THE LORD CHANCELLOR: I understand that Lord Passfield has stated that there are no Papers.
On Question, Motion for Papers negatived.
House adjourned at eighteen minutes past five o'clock.

PORTSMOUTH CORPORATION BILL.
Brought from the Commons; read 1a, and referred to the Examiners.
The LORD CHANCELLOR The LORD CHANCELLOR acquainted the House, that the Clerk of the Parliaments had laid upon the Table the Certificates from the Examiners that the further Standing Orders applicable to the following Bills have been complied with:

London County Council (Vauxhall Cross Improvement),

London Electric, Metropolitan District, and City and South London Railway Companies.

The same were ordered to lie on the Table.

LOWER AVON NAVIGATION BILL. [H.L.]
Report from the Select Committee, That it is not expedient to proceed further with the Bill: Read and ordered to lie on the Table.
DAGENHAM URBAN DISTRICT COUNCIL BILL. [H.L.]
The King's Consent signified, and Bill reported from the Select Committee, with Amendments.
TAUNTON CORPORATION BILL.
Report from His Majesty's Attorney-General received, and ordered to lie on the Table.

STANDING ORDERS COMMITTEE.
Report from, That the Standing Orders not complied with in respect of the Petition for the
London Electric, Metropolitan District, and Central London Railway Companies (Works) Bill
ought to be dispensed with, and leave given to introduce the Bill:
Read, and agreed to.

LONDON ELECTRIC, METROPOLI TAN DISTRICT, AND CENTRAL LONDON RAILWAY COMPANIES (WORKS) BILL. [H.L.]
Presented (pursuant to leave given this day); read 1a, and referred to the Examiners.
GUILDFORD GAS AND CRANLEIGH ELECTRICITY BILL.
  MID SOUTHERN DISTRICT UTILITY BILL.
  Reported, without amendment.
DONCASTER CORPORATION BILL. [H.L.]
Reported, with Amendments.
TROWBRIDGE, MELKSHAM AND DISTRICT WATER BOARD BILL. [H.L.]
Reported, with Amendments.
PUBLIC OFFICES (SITES) AMEND MENT BILL.
Message from the Commons, That they have appointed a Committee to consist of four members to join with a Committee of this House to consider the said Bill, and request this House to appoint an equal number of Lords to be joined with the members of their House.