asked the Secretary of State for War how many officials, established and non-established, including non-pensionable employés, were employed by his Department on 31st March, 1906, and on 30th June, 1909, respectively?

To reply fully to the question as it stands would involve enormous labour, and the compilation of statistics from all parts of the world. If the hon. and gallant Member would explain to me privately what is the object of his question I will see what I can do to help him in the matter.

asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether the Foreign Office had received information as to any act of cruelty committed in the Congo Free State since the establishment of the new régime; and, if so, could he inform the House as to the nature of the atrocity, its date, the place in which it occurred, and the name of the Belgian official responsible for it?

I see no object in giving special publicity to any isolated act of cruelty. It would have comparatively little importance unless it were an illustration of a system of oppression. The system which existed under the old régime of the Congo State is described in published Consular Reports. Whether, or to what extent, that system has been changed by the Belgian Government will appear from the next publication of Reports, which will be made in due course.

asked the President of the Board of Education, whether the Brymbo council school is at present being carried on in four separate premises, two of which are chapels and one a working men's institute; whether some of the buildings are three-quarters of a mile apart; for how long this state of things has continued; and what steps are the local education authority taking to put an end to it?

The facts are, I believe, substantially as stated by the Noble Lord, and the present state of things has continued since the beginning of 1908. The local education authority have obtained the Board's approval of a site for a new council school, and are understood to be ready to proceed with its erection as soon as the question of numbers has been definitely settled. The delay has been occasioned owing to the uncertainty as to the numbers for which the managers of the Church school will be able and willing to make permanent provision.

asked the President of the Board of Education, whether he is aware that, in May 1908, an inquiry was held with respect to the Brymbo Church of England school; whether that inquiry included the question whether the premises of that school could be used for the purposes of denominational education; what was the nature of the report of the inspector on that question; and what decision the Education Department have come to upon it?

The inquiry held by an officer of the Board in May, 1908, with reference to the administration of the Wrexham Parochial (Educational) Foundation included the question whether, upon the true construction of the Chancery Scheme, the school premises of the Foundation at Brymbo can be used for the purposes of denominational education. The Board, having taken legal opinion upon this question, expressed the opinion that the teachers of the school cannot, under the Chancery Scheme, teach to the children in the school the doctrines or tenets of the Church of England, or do more in the way of religious teaching or instruction than is provided in Clause 25 of the Scheme, but that the managers have, under Section 7 (6) of the Education Act, 1902, the control of the religious instruction (if any) to be given in the school, and can, under Clause 29 of the Scheme, allow the clergyman to enter and to give such religious instruction as they approve. This opinion has been challenged by the trustees, and the Board have now certified the case to the Attorney-General under the Charitable Trusts Acts with a view to obtaining a judicial decision.

When is the final decision on this matter likely to be reached, because it is very difficult for managers to take steps to rebuild the school, or do whatever is required, until they know exactly how they stand?

I am afraid that that is not in our hands. I cannot tell the Noble Lord. Perhaps he had better ask the Attorney-General.

asked the President of the Local Government Board if he received a communication, dated 20th September, 1909, from a person living at Dukinfield, Cheshire, in connection with the administration of the Public Health Acts in Dukinfield, about the state of the closets and ashpits of the houses, and whether he is aware that in consequence of the writer's name being divulged, he has received notice to quit; whether this is a distinct breach of faith; and whether he intends taking any action in the matter?

I have received the communication referred to. The writer states that he complained to the sanitary inspector of the town council of the sanitary condition of the row of houses in which he lives, that his letter was read to the sanitary committee, and that as a result of his name being thereby disclosed he has received notice to quit from the agent of the property. I am in communication with the town, council with regard to the matter.

asked the President of the Local Government Board whether he is aware that Lena Steward, recently engaged by the guardians of the Sherborne Union as a nurse, has been compelled to resign her position upon the advice of the medical attendant, G. R. Beckett, M.A., M.D., medical officer, Sherborne Union House, and who has been certified as unfit for such duties in future by H. Collier, L.R.C.P., L.R.C.S., of St. Paul's-terrace, Wolverhampton, and also certified as being unfit for future service as an infirmary nurse by H. Malet, M.D., senior physician, Wolverhampton and Staffordshire Hospital, and that this nurse has been engaged at the Wolverhampton-workhouse five years and eight months, at Wolstanton and Burslem workhouse one year, at Dudley workhouse two years, at Newton Abbot one year and two months, and at Rugby workhouse two years, or a total service of 11 years and 10 months, and completed 14 years' service at Sherborne workhouse by last December; that the Sherborne guardians have refused to recommend this nurse for pension in accordance with the Poor Law Officers' Superannuation Act, 1896, Sections (2) and (3); whether he has received an appeal on behalf of this nurse, and what was the nature of the appeal and also the reply, because up to the 10th of the month the applicant had received no reply; and what action he intends to take in the matter to give this nurse the benefit of the Act under which she has been working so long?

I would refer my hon. Friend to the answer which I gave to and identical question he put to me on this subject on Monday last. I am awaiting a reply to the letter which I sent to Miss-Steward, asking for her observations on the representations made by the guardians with regard to her appeal.

asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he is aware of the dilapidated condition of the vault at Greenwich containing the remains of Major-General Wolfe; and whether permission will be granted to the representative of the family to put it into a state of repair?

The Secretary of State finds on inquiry that the vault which contains General Wolfe's remains is not in a dilapidated condition, but in common with all the vaults under the church it was closed and bricked up many years ago, and is not accessible to visitors. In the church there is a tablet on the floor over the spot where the body lies, and also a mural tablet and a memorial window. The Secretary of State has no jurisdiction in the matter, but he has been informed by the authorities of the Church that they will be perfectly ready to entertain any reasonable proposal from General Wolfe's representatives for the renovation of the vault.

asked the Attorney-General for Ireland if his attention has been directed to the charge of conspiracy against trade union officers at Cork; if he is aware that the person upon whose alleged information the warrant was issued for arrest has denied on oath giving such information, and that the magistrate who is alleged to have issued the warrant has denied any knowledge of it; and, if he is aware of these facts, what action he intends to take in the matter?

My right hon. Friend is fully cognisant of the proceedings in this case. The information on which the warrant was issued was, as I understand, sworn by a District Inspector of the Royal Irish Constabulary. During the proceedings in the police court one of the witnesses for the Crown was cross-examined as to whether he had not made the information in question and, as the fact was, denied that he had sworn any information. His denial was confirmed by the magistrate who issued the warrant. There is nothing in the matter calling for any action on the part of my right hon. Friend.

asked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether he is aware that Scott's Shipbuilding and Engineering Company, Greenock, Government contractors, are violating the Fair Wage Clause by paying the labourers in their employ 4d. per hour instead of the customary rate in the dis- trict at 4½d.; and whether he will take steps to have the Fair Wage Clause complied with?

We wrote to the firm on the 21st September, and are still awaiting their reply.

asked the First Lord of the Admiralty whether he was aware that many of the employés in the new factory in Portsmouth Dockyard are working overtime, while at the same time other employés have received notice of discharge; and whether he will take steps to provide for a better distribution of the work by putting the yard on short time in order to obviate the discharge of workmen and an increase in the number of unemployed in Portsmouth?

My right hon. Friend the First Lord has already informed the hon. Member that the average number of men employed on overtime in the new factory is 25, and that they are engaged on the special and confidential work connected with the manufacture of an experimental torpedo tube which has to be completed by the end of October. This overtime, because of the very special character of the work, in no way affects the question of discharges in the yard. As a matter of fact the expenditure on wages at the present time at Portsmouth yard is considerably in excess of the proportion of the Wages Vote. The nature and conditions of the work upon which the yards are engaged make the hon. Member's suggestion as to short time impracticable.

asked the Secretary to the Treasury whether he was aware that Mrs. Catherine M'Mahon, of Corry's Lane, Kilkee, has been in receipt of a pension under The Old Age Pensions Act, 1908; whether he could say for what reason the same had been discontinued; and was it on the recommendation of Mr. Martyn, the pension officer of the district?

I understand that Mrs. M'Mahon was awarded a pension as from the 20th instant by the local pension committee, but that the pension officer has entered an appeal to the Local Government Board on the ground that no documentary evidence of age has been produced and that the census returns of 1841 show no traces of a Catherine in the claimant's family. The pension is not payable pending the award of the Local Government Board, with whom the final decision now rests.

Has the right hon. Gentleman taken into account the latest reports of the Committee on Public Accounts, and will he continue the pension until a decision has been given with regard to that?

I do not think that the Public Accounts Committee has dealt with this particular point. In any case, it would not be possible to pay the pension pending the decision by the Local Government Board. The question of refund might arise, and this very often would complicate matters.

Is documentary evidence necessary to establish a claim, or, in the absence of documentary evidence, would evidence of any other sort establish a claim?

I can quite conceive other evidence being sufficient to establish a claim, but primâ facie documentary evidence is the best.

asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he can state the income from abroad, so far as it is identified, for the year 1907–8, in the detailed form given on page 183 of the Report of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue for the year ended 31st March, 1908; and whether he can say when the Report of the Commissioners for the year to March last will be presented?

I beg to refer the hon. Member to pages 162–165 of the Inland Revenue Report for 1908–9, which was circulated on the 24th instant, and in which will be found detailed statistics with regard to income from abroad.

asked the Chief Secretary for Ireland whether the Estates Commissioners intend to divide all the untenanted land upon the Baggot estate, Ballygar, county Gal-way, amongst the tenants who are in possession of uneconomic holdings; and will the tenants get possession of the game?

May I ask the hon. Gentleman to postpone this question?

Can the Solicitor-General for Ireland say when he wants it postponed to? It has been postponed for a week.

If the hon. Member will say Thursday I will try to get the information.

asked why the publication of the list of book prizes is delayed by the Commissioners of Intermediate Education beyond the usual time?

further asked if the hon. and learned Gentleman can state the names of the Commissioners of Intermediate Education who attended the last three meetings of the Board, and giving the names for each meeting?

These two questions have been referred to the Commissioners of Intermediate Education, and the Assistant Commissioners inform me that they will be submitted to the Board at the earliest opportunity.

Having regard to the great urgency of this matter, will the hon. and learned Gentleman ask the Secretary to the Commissioners on what date the list of book prizes may be expected?

I understand that the Commissioners have fixed 22nd October, and no doubt the hon. Gentleman will get a reply then.

asked if the hon. and learned Gentleman can ascertain from the Commissioners of Intermediate Education the number of students who presented themselves for honours in each grade in the Modern Literary Course, divisions 1 and 2, in the years 1907, 1908, and 1909; the number and percentage of those who scored honours; the number and value of the exhibitions awarded; the percentage of those who presented themselves for honours who scored exhibitions; and the total marks which count for an exhibition scored by the students who were last on the exhibition lists in 1909?

I would refer the hon. Member to the reply given by my right hon. Friend the Attorney-General for Ireland to the question asked by the hon. Member for West Kerry on the 21st inst., which contains the fullest available statistics on the subject. I would point out that honours are not awarded in a course or courses, but only in certain subjects.

asked if the Commissioners of Intermediate Education awarded the exhibitions in the Modern Literary Course, Divisions 1 and 2, in the manner suggested by him some time ago; and whether the Commissioners have acted in conformity with their own rules, Nos. 41 and 42, in awarding exhibitions for 1908–9 and this year?

The rules regulating the awards of exhibitions in the year 1908–9 are those presented to Parliament in 1908. I am informed that in awarding the exhibitions the Commissioners of Intermediate Education acted in conformity with Rules 43 and 44 of those rules, which correspond to Nos. 41 and 42 of the rules for 1910 presented to Parlia- ment in May last. There has not been as yet, and will not be until next year, any award respecting the year 1909–10.

Can the Solicitor-General for Ireland say when the new Rules proposed to be introduced by the Commissioners next year will be laid before Parliament? Will it be before next May?

I am not in a position to say at present. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will put a question down?

asked whether his attention has been called to a resolution passed by the Belfast Trades Council condemning the action of the Prison Commissioners in tendering for contracts for the supply of brooms, brushes, etc., which they produce by prison labour, as against the paid labour of the ordinary manufacturer; and, if so, whether he will take steps to safeguard the interests of tax-paying tradesmen against this method of competition?

My right hon. Friend has not received any resolution condemning the action of the General Prisons Board in tendering for contracts for the supply of brooms and brushes nor have the Board tendered for such contracts at any time.

asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he has received any official information showing that the operations of the United States Beef Trust in restricting the importation of live cattle for slaughter and reshipping the hides of imported animals to the United States have affected the prices of raw hides in London; and whether the Leather Trust of America controls the exports of leather from that country, and has been established by the combination known as the Beef Trust?

There has been an undoubted tendency towards an increase in the price of hides, but I have no official information that this is attributable to the cause suggested by my hon. Friend. I understand that the United States Leather Company, which is a consolidation of a number of leather manufacturing firms of some years' standing, occupies a predominant position in the United States leather trade, but I can make no precise statement as to its business relations with the beef exporting firms.

asked whether the right hon. Gentleman has received any official information be the effect that the United States companies engaged in the beef tirade in the United Kingdom had lately issued £11,300,000 of new capital to be used in obtaining further control of the Argentine cattle and beef markets?

information has been received from His Majesty's Ambassador at Washington to the effect that the companies referred to have recently raised a large amount of new capital, but I have no official information which would enable me to confirm the statements made as to the exact amount or the purpose for which it is intended.

May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether it is possible to get official information?

I have given some attention to the subject, but I have no official information.

asked how many officials have already been appointed under the Labour Exchanges Act; and whether he will publish in the "London Gazette" the names of such officials?

No actual appointments have yet been made. I will consider in due course the suggestion in the latter part of the question.

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that communications have been sent from the Board of Trade signed by a gentleman describing himself as secretary to the Labour Exchanges Committee? Has he been permanently appointed?

A great mass of applications are coming in daily. Altogether nearly 4,000 have been received, and they are coming in at about the rate of 200 a day. I have had to organise a small staff for the simple purpose of docketting, filing, and answering the applicants, and getting information and material ready for the committee when it gets to work. It is the secretary of that small staff who has replied.

When does the right hon. Gentleman propose to have this committee set up?

I have already stated the names of the committee, and I understand they will get to work about the end of October. There is a great deal of preliminary work to be done in merely preparing material and classifying applications.

Will the right hon. Gentleman give any directions that preference should be shown to the officials of the present labour bureaux, such as the Polytechnic, who will be thrown out of work when the State bureaux come into operation?

Has any limit been fixed by the Board of Trade for receiving applications?

None as yet. With regard to the question of the hon. and learned Gentleman (Mr. Rawlinson), we will, of course, take existing interests into consideration as far as possible, having regard to getting the best men to do the work.

I presume the right hon. Gentleman will see that a fair complement of officials will be allotted to Ireland.

Yes; I am giving special attention to that matter.

Are we to understand that those appointed by the committee will have all the privileges of Civil servants?

I will not attempt, in answer to a supplementary question, to define the different classes of interests appointed. Only a small proportion will begin by ranking as Civil servants.

Will the authorities apportion the appointments between the different parts of the United Kingdom, so that Wales, for instance, may have her share?

asked whether David Talbot Woodruff, lately a prisoner in Maidstone Gaol, was entitled to be discharged on Saturday morning last, the 19th instant; whether, in the ordinary course, he would have been discharged at or about seven o'clock in the morning; under what authority and by whose order he was detained in prison until three o'clock in the afternoon of that day, when he was charged on a warrant with the murder of Mrs. Luard?

A prisoner is not entitled to his discharge till the end of the day on which his sentence expires. As a matter of convenience, prisoners are usually discharged early in the day, but circumstances often occur which make it desirable to detain a prisoner till a later hour. The fact that in Woodruff's case there was a warrant for his arrest on a charge of murder was a fully sufficient reason for detaining him till there was an opportunity of executing it. The prison authorities in this matter acted at the request of the police responsible for the execution of the warrant.

May I ask the hon. Gentleman if he has conveyed to the magistrates the general approval that is felt at their action in at once discharging this man from custody?

asked whether the First Lord of the Admiralty has any official information which would lead him to believe that the blue jackets in the forward part of Submarine C11 lived for several hours after the accident to that vessel on compressed air, and only lost consciousness and life as the oxygen was used up, and that they might possibly have escaped had they been supplied with submarine helmets?

There is no truth whatever in the statement which has been made containing the suggestion referred to in my hon. Friend's question. The formation of chlorine gas inside the vessel must have caused death very rapidly in the cases of the men not immediately drowned. The circumstances were such that helmets could not have been used.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department a question of which I have given private notice, whether he has any official information concerning the state of health of Mrs. Leigh and Miss Charlotte Marsh, prisoners in Winson Green, Birmingham, and whether it has been found necessary to administer food to those ladies by force, and, if so, under what authority that has been done?

I do not think that is the exact form of question of which private notice has been given to me, but I think probably my answer will cover the ground. The medical officer of Birmingham Prison reported that certain women prisoners have persistently refused to take food. The Prison Commissioners therefore, with the approval of the Home Secretary, instructed the medical officer to apply such ordinary medical treatment as was, in his opinion, necessary to prevent the risk of their committing suicide by starvation.

May I ask under what authority this action was taken or under what prison regulation this action was taken?

May I ask what was the kind of medical treatment administered, and was it by force?

Perhaps the hon. Member will put down a question. The authority was the general responsibility of the Prison Commissioners and the Home Office. There are no special regulations on this matter beyond the general necessity and the duty of those in charge of prisoners to prevent the prisoners committing the felony of suicide.

I also gave private notice of a question as to whether it was a fact that food had been administered to those ladies by force. The hon. Gentleman did not give any answer to that.

The treatment is the ordinary hospital treatment in such cases, and the ordinary treatment which is frequently applied to men and women—to contumacious or weak-minded persons. Nine women altogether were in such a condition as necessitated for their health this treatment. I gather that some of them at least found no necessity to persist in their resistance to food, and that the full hospital treatment was only employed in the case of one of the nine.

Can the hon. Gentleman say if the full operation is the food being pumped through the nostrils of these women or inserted by a tube down the throat? What has been the treatment?

I think the ordinary method is the second one.

The tube is inserted into the stomach and food pumped into it—horrible outrage, beastly outrage.

May I ask if the hon. Gentleman will convey the suggestion to the Home Secretary that he should make application to Spain or Russia in order to adopt the most brutal and up-to-date methods of barbarism?

Arising out of this same case, is the hon. Gentleman aware that a responsible firm of solicitors, acting for these ladies, applied for leave to interview them and obtain their own statement, and that the request has been refused, and on what ground it has been refused?

I am afraid I must have notice of that question.

Am I right in saying that whatever the treatment is it is due to the law of the land, and not to the Home Office or the Government?

It is entirely similar to the treatment usually applied.

The last man died who was treated in this way.

Before passing the Report stage of this Resolution, I should like to point out that under this Mineral Duty they are very seriously taxing industry. At the beginning of these proceedings the Chancellor of the Exchequer gave out that he did not wish to tax the enterprise of people who had developed minerals in this country. In the neighbourhood in which I live instead of there being a large number of dukes who are receiving royalties for their minerals, and of which we have heard a good deal in the House and in the country, there is a very large proportion of owners of land who have developed their own minerals and are working them at the present time. I will only mention one case, that I am sure will be of some interest to the House, and possibly to the Chancellor of the Exchequer; that is the case of Sir Alfred Hickman, who bought a mineral estate in Warwickshire and developed it. He has got a very large business there and a very nourishing business, all owing to his own enterprise. He bought the land owing to his enterprise; villages have been created, houses have been built and a large amount of employment has been given in a particular district in Warwickshire. There are other parts of that county in which proprietors have also developed their minerals in the same way. Under this Resolution, although owners of land have laid out large sums in developing minerals, they are now to be taxed as if they were only lessors of the minerals. I beg before the House passes this Resolution to point out as earnestly as I can that they are taxing industry, and surely that is not in the interests either of this country or of the working classes of this country.

I would remind the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Lloyd-George) of what he said when the deputation from the Mining Association waited upon him with regard to the Mineral Rights Duty It was perfectly clear what the right hon. Gentleman said at that time was that he did not intend to tax industry, that is the colliery proprietor, who has in many cases bought the coal, and that coal had become the capital of the company. Therefore, any tax that he puts on that capital must be a tax on the industry. On the occasion of the deputation, after alluding to the burdens which had been put on this industry, the right hon. Gentleman (Mr. Lloyd-George) said:—

"Therefore I fully recognise that we ought to avoid, in seeking contribution from the mineral wealth of this country, placing in our Bill any new burden upon colliery proprietors who risk their capital and have got to face all those difficulties. That I admit at once, and my object was to impose this share of the burden upon those who have not risked their capital, upon those whose sole share and interest in the mining interest is the receipt of either rent or royalty."

The right hon. Gentleman clearly draws a distinction in the people that he means to tax. He meant to tax the people who have received royalty, and that is the alteration which he has made in this Bill, but at the same time he is going to tax the people. As my hon. Friend (Mr. Newdegate) said just now, who have developed the minerals? They have spent money in purchasing the mineral, and the mineral has become part of the capital of the company. If you put a tax upon the mineral so purchased you distinctly put a tax on the industry itself, and that is what the right hon. Gentleman said he did not mean to do. I have risen to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, before the new mineral Clauses are taken, to give special consideration to these cases, because unless they are dealt with in a different manner he will certainly be taxing the colliery proprietors.

I think the Government will probably agree that the subject which can be raised on this Resolution is one of first-class importance, and ought to have a full discussion. For my part, if the Government can come to some arrangement by which it might be understood that the new mineral Clauses should tome on at a reasonable hour, I think it would be more convenient to take the discussion upon the Clauses than upon the Report of a money Resolution. If the right hon. Gentleman could see his way to defer Clause 15, he would probably minister to the convenience of the Committee. I would suggest that we conclude the discussion on the Report of the money Resolutions and defer to the more convenient season the full discussion of the principles involved in the proposals of the Government.

I think the right hon. Gentleman's request is a very reasonable one. These are very important matters, and I agree that it is desirable that they should be discussed on the actual Clauses rather than upon this stage, which is, after all, more or less formal. It is purely a Resolution to enable us to proceed. I am afraid that if we proceeded in the order in which the proposals appear on the Paper it might be inconvenient both for the Opposition and for the Government. It is desirable that all these Mineral Clauses should be discussed together, and at a convenient hour; therefore I assent at once to the right hon. Gentleman's suggestion that Clause 15 should be postponed. But I do not think that that would quite meet the right hon. Gentleman's view, because it would perhaps have the effect of bringing on the Mineral Clauses at a late hour to-night. Hence my suggestion is that we should postpone the Mineral Clauses. Clause 25 would then be first. That deals with an important point, but I do not think it should take the whole evening, therefore I suggest we should put the Mineral Clauses after the new Clauses. Several of these are, on the whole, agreed Clauses, being in the nature of concessions to the Opposition. I suggest therefore that we proceed with Clause 25 and the new Clauses tonight, and take the Mineral Clauses perhaps first to-morrow. But I am entirely in the hands of the Opposition with regard to that; I am only desirous of meeting their views.

I speak with some diffidence, as I have not the whole framework of the new Clauses in my mind; but I think the suggestion of the right hon. Gentleman, which I am sure is made in a conciliatory spirit, will be acceptable to all sides of the House.

When we discussed this question at an earlier stage of the Bill I intimated on behalf of the Government that our intention was to propose a new Clause dealing with the matter of the allocation of the amount between Imperial and local finance. Since then I have received quite a number of deputa- tions from the municipalities upon this very question, and we have come to the conclusion that this year it would be undesirable to add to this Bill any Clause dealing in detail with the apportionment, and, therefore, I put a new Clause upon the Paper, which will have the effect of apportioning the sum equally between Imperial and local finance, but hanging up the portion which shall be paid to the localities, and paying it over to a separate account to be dealt with next year. It is perfectly clear that, local and Imperial finance has got to be dealt with in a very thorough, and I should say, searching way, and I think it would be a mistake probably to anticipate the lines upon which that will be dealt with and on which we propose to legislate by incorporating in this Bill anything in the nature of a complete and detailed allocation of the funds. I have seen a good many gentlemen who are specially interested in the matter, and they are all strongly opposed to any attempt being made this year to define the lines of the actual apportionment, and they certainly favour the idea of rolling up the sum and postponing the financial allocation and leaving it to be dealt with at a future date.

I do not think that this will really make any serious difference in regard to localities because of any sum they could possibly receive now, it is so very late in the year. Assuming the Budget got through without difficulty or trouble, at the end of this month or the beginning of next month, the Land Taxes we anticipate to receive cannot possibly come to hand until possibly the very last week of the financial year, and, therefore, the mere postponing of the apportionment of the amount to the localites would be purely a question of a few weeks as between the last weeks of the present financial year and the first few weeks of the next. I therefore propose this Resolution with a view to moving later on the Clause which stands in my name on the Notice Paper.

The history of the proposal of the Government is that they intended to acquire all the results, great or small, of the Land Taxes and the Mineral Duties embodied in this Bill. There was then a protest made in various quarters, and, having regard to the situation created thereby, and being anxious to make friends with their enemies in the gates or their friends as the case may be, they proposed to hand over half the spoil to the local authorities. My own view—and I am not going to develop it at this moment—with regard to the Undeveloped Land Duties and the taxation upon ground rents, is that, so far as those taxes should be levied they should be levied in the interests, and solely in the interests, of the locality. The only possible justification for these taxes is that here is real property which is benefiting by the local rates and not paying its contribution to that particular area. I do not say that that is right or wrong, but, at any rate, it is an arguable proposition. If it is decided that there is real property which escapes its full share of the rates it may be quite proper that that property should be made subject to the rates, and have its burdens increased in proportion to its gains. That principle is quite simple, although its application may not be easy. But that was not the principle upon which the Government started. I do not really see how the Government are going to join together in holy matrimony these two principles which are really so profoundly opposite.

4.0 P.M.

The general community seem to have no special concern in this matter. You take local property, and tax it for the benefit of a part of the community which has nothing to do with the locality in which the property exists. In consequence of opposition the Government propose to hand over half to local authorities. Having made that concession in the course of our discussions in Committee, the Government are face to face with the necessity of bringing before this House concrete proposals for carrying these general principles or want of principles into effect. I waited anxiously to see how they were going to carry them out, and they have saved themselves a great deal of trouble by not carrying them out at all. They have hung up the whole business, and they propose to allow these funds to accumulate until they or their successors can find a principle of division upon which they can hand over the lump sum to local authorities. I do not think that is a procedure we ought to accept for a moment, but if the Government say the matter is so difficult and complicated that, at this period of the year, in view of the considerable and the immense complexity of the questions we have still to discuss, they really cannot face it, if that is an appeal ad misericordium, that has my hearty sympathy. I think they ought to tell us what are the general views, and the broad principles upon which they propose to act when they have an opportunity of bringing in their legislation. This money which is going to be collected from undeveloped ground near London, Manchester, Leeds, Glasgow, and the great cities of this country, is to be allocated in some fashion among the three Kingdoms. The whole of this money, on the confession of the Government, is to be derived from the industrial activity of the community in certain portions of England and Scotland. Is it to be distributed at large over England, Scotland, and Ireland, and over parts of the country which have nothing whatever directly to do with this commercial and industrial activity? Are the ground rents of London to be handed over to the peasants of Connemara? I am entirely in favour of the British taxpayers considering the necessities of the less fortunate portions of the Kingdom, and I am in favour of dealing with them in a generous spirit. I think the Governments with which I have been connected have shown themselves not oblivious of that principle. That, however, is different to saying that quite irrespective of the needs of a particular part of the country you are going automatically to take the property of that part and hand it over to another part of the country. Whatever may be the needs of London, you are going to take the taxes on undeveloped land in London and hand them over to agricultural districts which have nothing to do with undeveloped land. I understand the Government think they are going to derive great profit from the coalfields of England and Scotland. There are large parts of England where there are no coalfields. Is the enterprise of the industry which you are going to tax in the great mineral fields of England and Scotland going to be handed over upon some wholly unknown principle to a part of the country which has no more to do with that particular development than the people living in Argentina or the islands in the Pacific. On what principle is that to be done? I understand that under this proposal every part of the country contributes to the Exchequer, and out of the fund the Exchequer gives assistance to the distant parts of the country especially in need. In the case of a tax raised in a particular part of the country on the ground that the social forces in that part of the country have made an increment in value which the owners have no title to, I cannot see on what principle you are going to distribute that tax outside the area in which it had its origin. You cannot do it. It is impossible that we should part from this Resolution without the Government giving us some vague intimation as to how they mean to distribute this money. This money, if it belongs to anybody, belongs to London, Leeds, Glasgow, Edinburgh and the great coalfields of Yorkshire and Wales, and I would like to know on what principle the Government are going to hand over the proceeds of this tax to other parts of the country. Is it to be a distribution according to rateable value? Is it to be in proportion to population or in proportion to the burden of the rates? There must be some principle, and the Government must have thought it over. The Chancellor of the Exchequer told us he has been occupied in receiving a large number of deputations from various authorities upon the subject of the distribution of this money. I am not in the secrets of the Government, and I do not know what the deputations said to him or what he said to them. I do not think reports have appeared in the Press upon this point, and I should be very much interested if the right hon. Gentleman would give us some account of what transpired on this question. Were there deputations from local authorities which have nothing whatever to do with undeveloped land or minerals, and did they come and say, "Do not let them get hold of this money. We are quite as much in need of it as they are. We have had nothing to do with producing the money which you are going to distribute, but remember, if we have given very little, we are very eager to get some of it ourselves. Do not forget us when you are distributing largesses throughout the country." I suppose there have been other deputations from the great towns. I do not know whether Glasgow has sent a deputation to the right hon. Gentleman, but I know Glasgow held the view—it was the originator of the view—that municipalities have a right to all this money. Is Glasgow still of that opinion, or is it content that half of the tax on undeveloped land should go to the Exchequer and to see the other half whittled away among communities, north, south, east and west, which have no more, and, indeed, much less, to do with the development of Glasgow than the commercial undertakings of Canada, United States, the East, West Indies, and so forth? I do not know what view Glasgow may take, but I shall be greatly surprised if they would be content to see half whittled away amongst its neighbours when it thinks it has an equitable and genuine title to the whole. If the Government say the difficulties are so great and the complexities so prodigious that it is impossible for them to present a considered scheme we may possibly accept the excuse, but we ought to be given clearly to understand on what general principle the distribution is to be made. Simply to collect the money at random without knowing how it is to be used seems to me contrary to every principle of sound finance, and inconsistent not merely with the canons of constitutional finance, but with wise and prudent statesmanship. As it is, the Government are holding in their hands a kind of bribe to give, when the occasion serves them, to the more deserving constituencies, and we know their view of which are the more deserving constituencies. I do not accuse the Government of that policy, because I have not an idea of what their policy is, but so long as they refuse to give us an idea of their policy they ought not too severely to criticise the position if an unkind construction is put on their silence and they are asked in a somewhat sceptical spirit for the information which the right hon. Gentleman seems so anxious to with-bold, and which I venture to say this Committee must have in its possession before it finally decides upon the wisdom or unwisdom, upon the justice or injustice, of a policy which is as novel in form as it is novel in substance. For these reasons, unless the right hon. Gentleman can give us some fuller information of his views than can be elicited either from the speech he has just delivered or the answers he has given to the deputations to which he has referred, I shall certainly oppose the Resolution.

The speech just delivered by the right hon. Gentleman is very interesting, very significant, and I am not sure it is not very topical. I think it represents a great advance on the position he has hitherto taken up with regard to the Land Taxes. The right hon. Gentleman says that if taxes of this kind are to be levied on the locality on the ground that they represent an increment attributable to the expenditure of rates, then, so long as they go to the locality, there is a principle, but, so long as they go to Imperial purposes, it is theft. I am very glad to recognise this great advance in the position of the right hon. Gentleman on taxation of the kind I have suggested in this Bill. It is really not contrary or abhorrent to principle, and it does not infringe the Ten Commandments. It is purely a question of the purpose to which you apply it.

He never said anything of the kind.

It was the whole burden of his song.

Apply it to main drains, and it is a great and holy principle. Apply it to the defences of the country, and it is sheer theft and robbery. Now we know exactly what the position of the right hon. Gentleman is.

Nobody knows it, or is likely to know it, from the right hon. Gentleman's version of what I said. I am ready to submit to any version of my views, providing I am not regarded as responsible for it.

I have only been unfortunate enough to quote the words of the right hon. Gentleman. He said, "There, at any rate, is a principle."

"Whether right or wrong."

Then he thinks it is a wrong principle.

What I said was that if anybody will look back at all the Reports of the Commission dealing with the taxation of ground values he will see that the argument always turns on this: Do these lands pay, or do they not pay, their just proportion to the rates of the locality? If you think they do not, I perfectly understand an agitation for making them pay their just proportion, and that is a principle, right or wrong. The allegation is that they gain by the rates, and they should contribute to the rates. That breaks down, however, when you leave the rating area and come to the Imperial area.

The question is not only whether there was an agitation, but whether, in the opinion of the right hon. Gentleman, it was a just agitation. I understood this was a principle he would appreciate.

I do appreciate it.

Then the appreciation of the principle by the right hon. Gentleman represents a very distinct advance upon his first position. His first position was one of unmitigated condemnation. His second position is that of appreciation. His third position will be that of admiration and complete support, and I am perfectly certain it will be one of absorption when he comes to the position of having to apply the money. I am very glad the right hon. Gentleman takes this appreciating view of this taxation. The right hon. Gentleman says that if this money was spent in the locality he would appreciate it. He takes Glasgow and asks, What would you think of Glasgow spending all this money improving the value of land and then for the produce of this taxation to go to Connemara instead of Glasgow? What are the facts? The land being appreciated in value is not entirely within the boundaries of Glasgow. It is outside the boundaries of Glasgow.

It is not in Connemara.

As far as Glasgow is concerned, I suppose it would be all the same to them so long as their rates are not reduced? Take London. Land in a great area outside London—10, 15, and 20 miles—is appreciated in value; but, if you apply 20 per cent. of the whole sum of money which is due to that appreciation to the parishes where it is raised, London does not get a penny. It is simply spent in small areas outside, where, very often, there is no population. It is the purely villa residents outside London who get it. London, with its teeming population, would get nothing if it had not been for the principle we lay down here that the fund is a national one and not purely a local one. Take the great cities of Lancashire—Liverpool and Manchester. The appreciation in the value of land is not entirely within the boundaries of Liverpool; it is outside, but it is entirely due to the trade and industry of Liverpool. Yet the right hon. Gentleman says that Liverpool has no right to a penny of that increment created by the trade, the enterprise, and the industry of Liverpool.

I did not say that.

Still, he says they have just as much right to it as people who live in the islands of the Pacific.

I really object to the right hon. Gentleman attributing to me arguments I never thought of using.

Was it not the argument of the right hon. Gentleman that, if increment was created by the ex- penditure of rates within an area, the money ought to be spent in that area? If that is not his argument I really do not know what his argument was. I say the increment is outside and the expenditure within, and the reason we nationalise this fund is because by doing so the people who create the increment get their share of it. The only way they can get their fair share of it is by nationalising the fund. I think the right hon. Gentleman really sees that.

I do not see it; I think it is absurd.

It is a fact. The right hon. Gentleman thinks it is absurd, and it is therefore necessary I should repeat it. I say, taking any great city, the increment in land is very largely outside its boundaries, and, if you spend the money in the district where the increment is raised, the people who create the increment do not get the benefit. Where is the absurdity of that? It is in accordance with the whole facts of the case. The right hon. Gentleman says you ought to lay down the general principles, and he asks if people who are just as much interested as those in the Argentine Pacific are to get anything? It is a curious sort of unionism that people who live in the remotest districts of the United Kingdom have absolutely no concern in the prosperity of great towns which may be some miles from them. I thought we were one community. I thought we had a general interest in the same common prosperity. I thought, if one part of the community withered, the whole of the rest of the body politic suffered. I do not take the same view as the right hon. Gentleman that rural districts have no kind of concern in our great thriving centres of population. The right hon. Gentleman invites me to lay down principles at the present moment, but I ask him, with all respect: Has he ever contemplated or realised the difficulties of dealing with the problem of local and Imperial finance? I met one deputation which had a clear and definite suggestion to make, namely, that it should be on the basis of rateable value. That deputation represented a very large body of municipal opinion. But then another section objected to the principle of rateable value: that was the agricultural section. It has been strongly urged that the Government should give the municipalities time to formulate their own proposals and to come to some understanding among themselves as to what they prefer. I think that is a very wise sugges- tion. But the right hon. Gentleman says it is unreasonable, and, while the municipalities are considering what conclusion they should come to, he wants to bind the Committee in such a way that it will be quite impossible for them to depart from a particular line of policy. Is that a wise suggestion? Would it not be infinitely better to wait until the municipalities have made up their minds and sent in their suggestions, so that the Government may consider them and make up their minds? That, at any rate, is our proposal, and I think it is a fairly reasonable one.

The right hon. Gentleman has misrepresented me, and appears to be thoroughly determined that no interpolation of mine shall put him right as to what are really my views. Perhaps he will allow me to say one word upon a point which I raised in my first speech. I was dealing with the question originally raised at Glasgow with regard to ground values. I said it was a question of rating, and everybody knows that it was fought out on that ground before the Royal Commission. The allegation was that property was to benefit by the rates of a locality while it had not contributed to those rates. I think it will be admitted that that is a fair summary of the argument, and that argument cubs directly across this plan of distributing the money. Half the money is to go to Glasgow and half is to go to places which are in no way directly concerned with Glasgow, its trade, or development. The right hon. Gentleman says, "It is an absurd view for the Leader of the Opposition to put forward. Does not everybody know that the land immediately around Glasgow outside the borough has gained in value by the activity of Glasgow, and why should not some of that money be given to the municipality or locality where it has accrued?" That is perfectly possible, but it does not touch the real gravamen of my case. It is not with regard to those districts just outside the municipal area, where everything except the mere drawing of a boundary belongs to the commercial system, but I raise the point with regard to those parts of the country which have nothing whatever to do with the commercial system of Glasgow, and I ask on what principle you are going to distribute Glasgow funds among them? I ask the right hon. Gentleman to explain that, but he has given no explanation. He put forward this representation with regard to areas just outside municipal boundaries that, after all, are we not one community, do we not all perish or flourish together, and do not we, therefore, owe some assistance to those parts of the United Kingdom which are specially needy? But I specially said in my speech that some contribution might properly be made from the Central Exchequer in these cases, but it should not be given automatically. It should not be part of a particular plan. It should be contributed in proportion to the national power of giving and to the needs of the locality for which the money is required. It ought not to be given as an automatic result of the manipulation of local taxes. That point has not been touched by the right hon. Gentleman. I speak now as a Member of a body which ought to look at these things as statesmen endeavouring to have some principle with regard to the expenditure of money which they are collecting. But the Government have no principle. They are collecting the money, but they avow they have no principle. I think that is utterly unstatesmanlike, quite unprecedented, and extremely dangerous.

I propose to deal with two points which have been entirely left out in the speeches delivered by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The right hon. Gentleman has only dealt, in fact, with one-half of the question. We have to remember that a great deal more than one-half the sum which will accrue at once will not come through the tax about which the right hon. Gentleman has just had an encounter with the Leader of the Opposition. It will come from the Mineral Rights Tax. In passing I would only remind the right hon. Gentleman it is remarkable that at the moment he decided to give a part of the Mineral Rights Duty to the local authority he took the opportunity of altering a tax which was to bring in £175,000 so as to make it yield £350,000, thereby ensuring that he lost nothing by the transaction. But why this particular tax should be allocated in this particular way I cannot understand, especially as the arguments that are brought forward with regard to the other taxes apply almost inversely to the Mineral Rights Duty. The action of the community in making roads and drainage and in encouraging building, as well as providing all the accessories which increase the value of land, are really decrement as far as minerals are concerned, and, therefore, the Mineral Rights Duty is almost opposed to the other duties. I think we ought to have some explanation why this particular duty is seized upon, and why half of it is given to the local authorities. Of course a large proportion of the district would have nothing whatever to do with the minerals. So far as the whole amount is concerned, I was rather interested to see the other day that, in the Grand Committee upstairs, the right hon. Gentleman made a passionate appeal not to throw the sum of £600,000 into the melting pot of local rates with reference to road improvements. Yet he is now proposing to allot a smaller sum of money as a reward to the local authorities for not opposing the new taxes he is putting on this year. Whether it is right or not, I think we should have some explanation why this particular duty has been divided. There is another point on which I should like an explanation. When the Prime Minister occupied the position of Chancellor of the Exchequer, he was specially strong against this principle of allotting portions of taxes to local authorities. He said the matter should be dealt with on a large scale, and he took the first step for abolishing this when he granted a sum out of the Consolidated Fund in lieu of various contributions from the Estate and other duties. That was to be the principle on which the Government were to proceed, namely, that they were not, in future, going to allot a portion of taxes to the relief of local rates. But no sooner had they established that principle than they began to whittle it away as fast as they could. Last year they gave a certain portion of the Licence Duties to the local authorities, and this year they propose with reference to four or five new taxes to divide them between the local authorities and the State, and, at the same time, they give no indication of the manner in which these taxes are to be applied. I think we are justified in remembering the very strong language the Prime Minister used when he was laying down this principle, and in asking for some explanation of the reasons why the Government are departing from that principle.

The right hon. Gentleman gave two reasons for this Resolution. First, he said, it often occurred that the tax was raised on land, the value of which had improved, not owing to the exertion of the people living in the locality, but through the exertion of people living in neighbouring towns, and he proceeded to give examples showing how in his opinion that arose. The second reason was that the local authorities were not unanimous in their opinion as to how the money should be divided. Some were in favour of rateable value and some had other ideas, and he, therefore, thought it better to wait until they were able to come to an agreement among themselves. I propose to deal with both of those arguments. I will take first the point as to unearned increment value. May I say, however, that I do not see how that touches the Mineral Rights Duties, which are by far the larger part of the tax. The right hon. Gentleman appears to have left that out of his calculation. I do not know the nearest point to London at which the question of mineral rights could arise, but surely the right hon. Gentleman is not going to say that any income from those mineral rights ought to be divided among the people of Hoxton, or of any part of London. There may be something to be said on the question of increment value possibly. The right hon. Gentleman said the increment value near the big towns accrues owing to the exertions of the inhabitants of those big towns, and he argues that the money accruing from that increment value should go to places outside. But let me take the case of Croydon. That is a town about eight or nine miles from London Bridge. We know there has been a great rise in the value of land at Croydon, partly owing, I believe, to the action of the railway companies. At any rate, there has been a considerable rise, and I would ask how the inhabitants of Croydon would like it if the money raised by the increase of value of land in Croydon was handed over to the inhabitants of West Ham? It seems perfectly indefensible, because the inhabitants of West Ham had nothing whatever to do with the rise in the value of land in Croydon. The people in the City of London may have had something to do with this, because so many of them live at Croydon was handed over to the inhabi-but I do not fancy that the right hon. Gentleman proposes to endow the City of London, seeing that that is not a part which meets very much with his approval. But take the case of Liverpool. There are towns and villages round about Liverpool where there has been a considerable increase in the value of the land. I can only imagine that the reason for the proposal of the right hon. Gentleman to distribute the money in the way he suggests is that he wishes to dole out his bounty, and that this is the easiest way to do so. But there is nothing in the Bill which suggests mat there is to be anything in the nature of a radius; there is nothing to provide that the money arising from the increment value within 20 miles of London is to go to London, or that that created within 20 miles of Liverpool is to go to Liverpool. There is nothing, in fact, in the Resolution which would prevent this money arising from the increase of land in Croydon being handed over to the Carnarvon Boroughs. So far as I can see there is absolutely nothing to prevent that.

Has it never occurred to the hon. Baronet that there may be an increment in the Carnarvon Boroughs, as there really is, and that the people of Croydon would get the same benefit?

Would not the Carnarvon Boroughs get the same allotment? I think they might take both. Is the increment for the Carnarvon Boroughs to go to Croydon and that of Croydon to Carnarvon Boroughs? With regard to the other part of the question, and that is the possibility that the authorities have not made up their minds as to how this ought to be divided, I think that is very likely. The right hon. Gentleman says one set want rateable value, but the country constituencies do not want rateable value. I can quite understand that. This is a new tax, and all the local authorities want to get as much as they can. They have not agreed as to how they should share in the plunder given them by the Government, but have not the Government made up their minds, and, when they introduced this tax, had they not made up their minds? I should not wonder if they had not, because this was only a modification of the Budget made at the last moment in order to propitiate local authorities. Therefore, Parliament is asked to vote money without having the views of the local authorities who are to have the money as to how the amount is to be divided amongst them. That is to be decided by the right hon. Gentleman hereafter without any Parliamentary advice. The manner in which the money is to be divided seems to me to be a difficult question. We are, after all, quarrelling over a very small sum, because, when you pay the cost of collection, there will be very little left to divide. I think the Resolution says that the local authorities are to have a sum equal to one-half of the proceeds of the duties levied in respect of land values, etc. Is that to be the net proceeds or the gross proceeds? Because it is a very important difference if the sum is to be the net proceeds. An hon. Friend below me says that the word "net" is in the Clause, but in the Resolution which we are discussing it says nothing about net, and perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will tell us. It is, as I have said, a very important question, because if it is net there will be very little to be divided amongst the municipalities, because the whole amount would only come to £675,000, and in the second, third, and fourth years the cost of collection will be something like £600,000. I should therefore like to be informed whether the word "net" is to be introduced or whether it is to be the gross amount. If the word "net" is in the Clause I think the Resolution and the Clause ought to coincide.

We have listened to two speeches from the Chancellor of the Exchequer and to two speeches from the Leader of the Opposition with great interest, and I am bound to say that the Chancellor of the Exchequer in his version of the speech of the Leader of the Opposition gave us little less than a travesty of the right hon. Gentleman's speech, and in both his own speeches the Chancellor of the Exchequer has entirely failed to give us the slightest indication as to what the general principles are on which he proposes to divide the money raised under this Clause among the municipalities if it is agreed to. As I understand it, the whole effect of the speech of the Leader of the Opposition was an argument and an appeal that the Committee here were entitled to know not perhaps the whole details of how this money was to be divided, but the general principles of the basis of the division. To the argument there has been no reply, and to the appeal the Chancellor of the Exchequer has turned a deaf ear. It is not really the demand of the Leader of the Opposition, but it will be the demand of the whole country. The Government are going to mix up these four or five taxes imposed upon the country, and half of the proceeds of those taxes is to be carried to a certain account, but we are not told when we ask the authors of the taxation the general principles upon which half of the proceeds of it is to be divided. The Chancellor of the Exchequer referred just now to the case of Glasgow, and he put his case in this way: He said there are outside the municipal boundaries of Glasgow very considerable areas of land which are considerably affected by the enterprise and expenditure of the municipality of Glasgow, and he said with a great deal of force—and if that were the only argument there would be very little reply to it—he said, "Why should Glasgow be precluded from claiming the increment from the proportion of the tax which arises from the belt outside its own municipal area?" But what the Chancellor of the Exchequer did not tell the Committee just now, and what constitutes a complete reply to the whole of that line of argument, is this: That Glasgow, backed by other municipalities, came forward with a, proposal and a demand that their areas and their municipal boundaries should be extended and that they should have the right to include in them the whole of the land round about their borders, so that they might deal with it as a whole; and, of course, if that demand had been conceded it is quite clear that, on a basis in proportion to the amount of money contributed, they would participate in the whole of the benefit which their enterprise and their expenditure had brought about. I consider that is a complete answer to the whole of the argument of the Chancellor of the Exchequer en that point.

If the right hon. Gentleman had given us the additional reason which I am going to suggest—if he had said the Government are going to bring in a Bill under which the whole of the municipalities of the kingdom will have power to enlarge their municipal boundaries and their own area's, so as to include all land that is beneficially affected, some sort of case would be made to postpone for 12 months the allocation of these monies, because we should then have time to arrive at a just and reasonable basis upon which the division could be calculated. But the Chancellor of the Exchequer has given us no such assurance. He has not held out a word or a hint of anything of the sort, but he has left us without the slightest knowledge or intimation as to the general principles on which this money is to be divided. I shall submit to you, Sir, before I sit down, a point of Order, and it is this: If we are asked under this Resolution, and under the Clause which carries it out and the other clauses referred to, to lay a burden of taxation upon the people or certain classes of people, is it in order to levy half of that taxation entirely without any object to which it is to be applied? I am not submitting the point now, but I shall submit that to your decision before I sit down. The point I raise is this—that in the reference of this question to the Committee there is no object assigned for which half of this taxation is to be used, and, no object being defined or stated to the Committee. I contend that it is illegal to levy it.

Perhaps I may be allowed whilst I am addressing the Committee to say a few words upon the principle of this tax. Here is the Chancellor of the Exchequer saying to a number of people who are landlords, "You are robbers; you have been taking for years, and you are now taking monies which belong to somebody else; monies which have been earned by the State or the municipalities, and you are taking them"; he does not, however, bring in a Bill to stop that robbery—nothing of the sort—but he says, "The State will come in and take part of the proceeds of your robbery—part of the swag"; and the idea is that the municipalities may object to that, and have brought forward Bills which are inconsistent with it; but the Chancellor of the Exchequer says further he is going to square the let by giving them a bit of the plunder. If that is the principle of the taxation upon which the country is to proceed—if that is the principle of the Liberal party—then God help, the country.

With reference to the attack made by the right hon. Gentleman on the Leader of the Opposition in regard to the Bills that were brought forward and the agitation that took place to alter the basis of rating, so that the basis for the division of rating might be more in proportion to the site valuation, there were a considerable number of Members on both sides of the House who were in favour of that proposal. I was one of those who were in favour of it, and I seconded the Bill in 1903 which was brought in to that effect. But I wart to take this opportunity of pointing out that the principles at the bottom of that Bill were altogether and in every respect inconsistent with the taxation now proposed and which is dealt with in the financial Resolution now before the Committee. The principle at the bottom of that Bill was this: That when a municipality was obliged to raise certain sums for its own purposes and lay a rate upon its citizens, that rate should be proportioned, not as it is to-day to the enterprise of individuals in building upon the land, but should be in proportion to the opportunity which the City afforded them. That was the only principle, and the right hon. Gentleman now accuses the Leader of the Opposition of appreciating it. For my part I hope the Leader of the Opposition does appreciate it, because, as far as I am concerned, with many others, I believe that is the correct basis on which the rating of all municipal areas should be arrived at. But that does not prevent us from now pointing out, that in effect that is the very taxation which is included in the clauses of this Bill, and which is to be divided, and that these principles are entirely inconsistent with the principle which we bad at heart, and which we have at heart now—namely, the principle that the municipality shall be entitled to charge its citizens in proportion to the benefits it confers upon them.

The principles of this Bill involve that the State is to interfere, and the State is to take a different account of the tax in a different kind of way which would make it impossible in the future for the municipalities to carry out what they have had at heart so long and in order to quiet these municipalities and prevent them from interference here is the bribe offered by the Chancellor of the Exchequr, who says, "Have a bit of this plunder which we are taking from the landlords." I can only say that I look upon that policy embodied in this Resolution as being one of the most unjust and unfair that has ever been submitted to the Committee or to this House. We are asked to say: "Here is the plunder which the State is going to get. True, for a year or two it is not going to be much, because the expenditure is going to be enormous; there are not going to be any proceeds for many years to come, but there are going to be proceeds in future years, and the municipalities are to be bribed by this bit of money in the future which they are to get, and they are not to have the principal of which they have been defrauded for years past, by taking those houses round about and rating them in a proper manner. There are some of us on this side of the House as well as on the other who look upon the whole of these taxes as not merely unjust and impolitic, but as causing confusion, difficulty, annoyance and expense, which are wholly unnecessary, when the subject might have been dealt with in an equitable manner without causing any of this tremendous expense and upon a reasonable and proper footing. I reiterate the demand which the Committee was entitled to make for some explanation of the general principles on which this money is intended to be divided, and I put this point of Order: Are we as a Committee in order in allowing these taxes when we are distinctly told in the Resolution that half of the taxes are not going to be used when there is no defined object laid before Parliament to which they shall be applied, and when even the general principles under which they are to be dealt with are withheld from us?

We are dealing at present with the Resolution as a Resolution, and, as the hon. Member is aware, the Resolution is always in very general terms, and the purposes are carried out by Act of Parliament. But he will find here that "half the proceeds of the duty are to be divided between England, Scotland and Ireland in such manner and paid into such separate account for the benefit of such local authorities as Parliament may determine." What will follow necessarily will be a Bill, and the Bill will, of course, determine that in the usual way.

Shall we be in order in submitting that point of Order to you later when the Clause comes up?

The hon. Member may take the opportunity of submitting the point of Order to Mr. Speaker on the Report stage.

We are at a great disadvantage in debating this. We do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman means proceeds or net proceeds. Will he tell us that?

It is all on the Paper.

No. The Resolution says "proceeds," the Clause says "net proceeds." Which does the right hon. Gentleman mean?

The Resolution is simply a sort of general authorisation; and you must take the Clause.

That means that the cost of valuation will be deducted.

No, it does not at all.

No doubt the inquiries which have been held and the demands which have been made by the Scottish municipalities have been that the increment on building land should go into the local exchequer. That has been the general proposition up to now, and there might be something to be said in favour of the tax upon building lands going to the local exchequer and the tax on mineral values going into the Imperial Exchequer. But, at any rate, the local exchequer is to get half the Mineral Tax, and that will go some way to compensate for the loss of what they had anticipated in the matter of getting the whole of the building value. I have been associated with many of these inquiries and with some endeavours to deal with this question of building value, and although it is undoubted that we have always had the local ideal before us, the difficulties in the way of carrying it out have been very great, and these difficulties were brought out in the latest inquiry on the subject of the Scottish Land Values Bill. It was proposed there that this tax could be applicable only to urban areas, but it was soon found out that many county divisions are really indistinguishable from urban areas, and that it would be impossible to put this tax upon our urban areas and refuse it to what is nominally a rural area. Take a great mining district, like parts of Fife or Lanarkshire. It will be practically impossible to levy this tax in the urban districts alone. You must go over the whole area, and if you come to that I think there is a great deal to be said in favour of the scheme which has been adopted by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. There are far fewer difficulties in the way of collection. Many local authorities have been very much impressed by the delicacy of the undertaking of collecting these Land Taxes locally, and there are many officials who have never looked upon the project with great favour on that account alone. The tax is much better levied by the central authority. In the matter of distribution there is, I admit, still a great deal to be said, and I think it is wise to postpone the final settlement of how this could be done. It is not only a question of the views of different local authorities, although I am not at all sure that the poorer parts of the country might not participate in the advantages of its distribution as well as the richer part. I think there is a good deal to be said for that, but I am not a warm supporter of subventions to the local authorities when they can be avoided. Until we have a revision of the incidence of local taxation it is absolutely impossible to avoid it, and why we have separate projects of this kind, which do not always hang together with our general legislation or with our system of finance, is that at present one Government has found time to inquire into the subject of local taxation, but no Government has ever yet found time to deal with it, and the sooner we deal with it the better it will be for national and local finance. There are certain services which can be far better carried on by the State than by the local authority, and I would much rather see the money used to carry out services which can be better carried out by the central authority than in giving subventions in aid of those services which are less efficiently administered by the local authority. I by no means say all services can be better carried out by the central authority, but there are some, and that may possibly be one way out of the difficulty. This Resolution, which gives half of these new taxes to the local authority, will be much better received by the country, and is, I think, in itself sounder than the original proposal, that the whole of the tax should go into the National Exchequer. Having had a great deal of experience both of inquiries and of local administration, I have come round to think that the proposal of the Chancellor of the Exchequer with respect to the levy of this tax is the best that has yet been made, and I think, in respect to the distribution of it, he is doing wisely in asking for time to consider the matter, and I think the country will support him in doing it.

In view of the great anxiety which is felt by local authorities as to the details of the proposal, I should like to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he can possibly give us a little more information than he has yet seen fit to offer. In the first place, there is a discrepancy between the proposal as it appears in the Resolution and in the new Clause which appears on the Order Paper. The Resolution states that: "This sum shall be divided between England, Scotland, and Ireland in such manner and paid into such separate accounts for the benefit of such local authorities as Parliament may determine."

That suggests that the money derived from England, Scotland, and Ireland will be separately ear-marked and separately paid into accounts for the benefit of those three different countries, and I should like to know, in view of the fact that there is no mention of that in the Clause at all, whether there is any idea of ear-marking the contribution of the three separate countries in the way that is suggested by the Resolution. I think we might have a little more information as to whether the yield is to be net or gross. I could not quite understand the motives of the right hon. Gentleman in giving such a very cryptic answer to the hon. and gallant Gentleman (Mr. Pretyman). The right hon. Gentleman apparently said it was not going to be as in the Resolution, and that we must go by the Clause. Apparently, from the Clause, it is going to be half the net proceeds. That is a very serious matter to local authorities, and I should like to draw the attention of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to an answer which was given by the Financal Secretary to the Treasury to the hon. Member (Mr. Lane-Fox) on 18th August. The hon. Member asked what is the estimated net amount that the local authorities will receive from Land Taxes this year and next year? The Financial Secretary answered:—

"It is anticipated that the yield of the new Land Taxes in the current financial year will amount to £675,000, of which one-half will be handed over to the local authority. My right hon. Friend estimates that the tax will yield next year one million, of which the local authorities will receive the same proportion."

These figures, of course, are gross figures, and it means that the right hon. Gentleman has changed his mind if he is now going to deduct the cost of valuation.

No. I said, "No" to the question put by the hon. and gallant Gentleman (Mr. Pretyman).

I am very much relieved to hear the right hon. Gentleman's answer. It was very ambiguous. It would have been very unjust to expect the ratepayer to pay a very large sum towards the valuation for several years to come.

It simply means the cost of collection which does not amount to much one way or the other.

Then are we going to have a new Bill next year to carry this out, because if it is going to be left to a future Session I think it will be a great disappointment to local authorities who are counting on a return during the present financial year? I think the right hon. Gentleman is very wise not to give us details of the allocation, because local authorities are still in some cases in the fortunate position of enjoying holidays, and it has been quite impossible for them to put before him the opinion which they have every right to form on this matter. The right hon. Gentleman mentioned as one proposal that the money should be divided according to rateable value. I think that was the proposal of the Association of Municipal Corporations. I should like briefly to state an alternative proposal, which, I believe, will shortly be put before the right hon. Gentleman by the London County Council, and which would meet some of the criticisms made by him.

The views of the county council, I think, were represented before.

I think not. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had a deputation from the London County Council alone, and he asked that they should give him a memorandum of their proposals as to allocation. The proposals which they have formulated are very different from that with respect to rateable value.

Have they been sent along?

They have either been sent along or will be shortly. I think it is important that they should be considered, for rateable value will cause great injustice in the allocation, and will give subventions to some authorities which are least in need of them. In addition to that, rateable value—as put forward by the deputation to which the right hon. Gentleman referred—will also apply to the Mineral Rights Duty. Obviously, the proceeds from the Mineral Rights Duty are in no sense due to local enterprise, and I think it would be most unjust that rateable value should come in at all in that case if rateable value is to be taken as the standard of the amount of work done by the local community in increasing values. The London County Council's proposal is to leave out the Mineral Rights Duty altogether, and to leave that tax to be divided, as the right hon. Gentleman may think fit, over the whole country. While my hon. Friends and I do not offer any opinion on that, we feel strongly that in the case of those revenues which are derived to a large extent by the enterprise of the local community, there ought to be a combination of two principles, namely, that existing local areas should not be accepted, but that zones should be created round large towns to bring in those parts of the country which share in the prosperity of the central town, and that the funds should be allocated to those zones and the towns surrounded by the zones according to the amount of money raised in the zones. That is the suggestion of the London County Council, and, as between the outer part and the inner part of the zone, the basis of rateable value should be accepted. I think that would be a far fairer basis than rateable value, because it would ensure better treatment to the outlying districts who share in the prosperity of the commercial area without, perhaps, having contributed very much to its creation. At the same time, they would not get money to which they were not fairly entitled. I think the alternative proposal put forward by the Chancellor of the Exchequer is in many ways unsatisfactory. I would ask the right hon. Gentleman to tell us whether he is going to earmark the proceeds of the taxes in England, Ireland, and Scotland, and also whether he hopes to carry a new Bill this Session to allocate the funds so that the local authorities should get the benefit in the present financial year?

I desire to support the Resolution proposed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I do so on behalf of the agricultural community, and particularly the one I have the honour to represent. When the Chancellor of the Exchequer made his Budget speech he gave a list of the objects for which he was seeking money and expanding the revenue. He mentioned that one of the objects to be dealt with next year was a general revision of the relations between local and Imperial taxation. This is something which has been promised to us by many of his predecessors, and I venture to think that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has brought its realisation nearer than any of them. This Resolution and the Clause which is to be based upon it make it certain that this reallocation of the burden will be seriously tackled next year. It is gratifying to learn from the hon. Member for the West Derby Division of Liverpool (Mr. Watson Rutherford) that he admits that in these new taxes there is to be found an expanding revenue—a revenue which will grow in succeeding years. That is a proposition which has been often raised on this side of the House, and which has been denied on the other side with equal force. When the Chancellor of the Exchequer desires to help to remove the grievous burden under which the ratepayers have been suffering so long, he is always handicapped by the want of money. If he has a surplus there are many advocates for the removal of different taxes, and it is only by some means like this of earmarking a sum which will go to the realisation of this purpose that any real progress will be made. I am myself an advocate of removing certain services from the domain of the local ratepayer and putting them on the Imperial Exchequer. There is nothing inconsistent with that in the allocation of these particular taxes to that plan, but it is absolutely impossible with the time at his disposal that the Chancellor of the Exchequer should undertake the whole of the work this year. We have already got these taxes, and we hope for the realisation of a larger plan next year. This small sum is only a nucleus which is to be distributed among the local authorities, but it is a guarantee that we are at last to get what we have so long advocated. There seem to be no taxes out of which the nucleus could better be found than these land taxes. The Leader of the Opposition said that if there was any justification for these taxes it was that they were levied on property which had in the past escaped rates. I would point out that they are also levied on property which has escaped Imperial taxation. The division, therefore, of the proceeds of these taxes between the Imperial Exchequer, on the one hand, and the relief, on the other hand, of the local ratepayers as a whole, and in particular of the grievous burden on the agricultural ratepayers, is to my mind one of the most hopeful of the various projects which the Government have proposed.

So far as I am personally concerned—and I believe most of my colleagues will agree with me—I think the Resolution gives power to levy a tax which is very moderate indeed. I should have liked to have seen the Chancellor of the Exchequer going much farther and levying a tax equal in all cases to the rates of the district where such tax may be levied. Indeed, I would be in favour of undeveloped land being subject to all the municipal rates rather than that this alternative of the Chancellor of the Exchequer should be put in operation. It would be much more costly to the owner, because in many cases it would be equal to 8s. or 9s. instead of 1s., which will be the amount in most cases. I disagree with the position taken up by the Leader of the Opposition who, if I understood him rightly, maintained that the proceeds should go to the locality from whence the values were derived. Apart from the reasons given by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, which, I think, were very sound, there are other considerations which, I think, ought to weigh in favour of the Chancellor of the Exchequer's view. Take, for instance, the case of waterworks. These are rated where they happen to be situated. It is a most grievous anomaly that because a large municipality has to go to some far away part and expend vast sums of money in the construction of waterworks, the immediate district should be able to levy rates on these works for all time to come. The same principle holds good with respect to railways and docks. It is not fair in such cases that the full rating values should always go to the locality where the works happen to be situated. I think it is only fair that these values should go into a central fund to be disbursed therefrom. I should like to put before the Chancellor of the Exchequer another view, and that is whether or not in determining how these central funds, which are to come into the Exchequer, shall be distributed, he will not consider the ear-marking of those funds for separate and distinct purposes. So long as the State gives subventions in relief of local rates without determining how the money shall be spent, it merely goes to relieve the burdens of the owners. But everybody knows that in every locality there are matters that need redressing that cannot possibly be undertaken because these localities have spent as much out of the local rates as they can afford, and, therefore, the work is not being done as it ought to be done. Sanitation and various other services that ought to have public money spent on them are not being looked after as they should be looked after in many places. If the Chancellor of the Exchequer would consent to earmark this money in such a way as to secure that it shall be spent on new objects of public utility so as to ensure that the public shall get extra services for that money, then the objection to subventions to localities would entirely disappear. As has been pointed out in the Minority Report of the Royal Commission on Poor Laws, those subventions that have been given to localities for different purposes, and have been subjected to efficient administration, have justified the action of the State in giving them. Take the subvention to the police. The fact of having given that money gives the State a distinct right to lay down that it shall be efficiently spent. It gives it the right of inspection and the right of seeing that the money has not been improperly dealt with. That is the line on which all subventions from the State to the municipalities and localities should go. Without such ear-marking there is grave risk that the money given by the State will go to the relief of property, and not to amend those services which people have a desire to have amended, and which ought to be amended for the good of the country. I trust the Chancellor of the Exchequer will consider this point.

The hon. Member who has just sat down regrets that the proposals of the Chancellor of the Exchequer were not those which he would have made. He would, for instance, have dealt with undeveloped land by local taxation, and the 1s. which the Chancellor of the Exchequer expects to get would under his proposals probably be 8s., 10s., or 12s. But he need not despair of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The right hon. Gentleman has a very receptive mind, and perhaps that may come. But I would direct the attention of the Chancellor of the Exchequer to one or two points which refer to my own Constituency and the county in which it is. When the Chancellor of the Exchequer first introduced this taxation of land values and the Mineral Tax he was going to apply the proceeds of this to national purposes. He was going to tax the undeveloped minerals or the raw material. He changed his mind, probably influenced by arguments in this House, probably by second considerations, and probably by the representations of deputations. At any rate, he has now come to a position when he is going to return the municipalities half the proceeds out of the Mineral Tax. I remember when the Chancellor of the Exchequer introduced his Budget he was very strongly, for instance, concerned at the necessity of placing a tax on undeveloped minerals, and he put it on the ground that the workmen and manufacturers were handicapped by it. The Chancellor of the Exchequer pointed out to this House that trade and industry were handicapped by these royalties, but the landlord got out of these royalties more than his due, and he ought to return something to the State to make up for the fact that the manufacturer and the workman did, as it was termed, their duty. The position now is that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has transferred the tax on undeveloped minerals to wayleaves and royalties, forgetting, I am afraid, that there are a great many proprietors who have bought out their wayleaves and royalties, for which they have compounded, as it were, with the landlord And now the Chancellor of the Exchequer proposes to tax proprietors who have commuted their royalties and their wayleaves. As an example of what has happened, I may refer to the case of the cement works at Northfleet, in my own Constituency. Here you have nothing contributed by the municipality, nothing contributed by anyone to the support of the population, but you have capital itself, which has made the place what it is. It was the purchase of the land and it was the development of the industry by the capital which was expended on the purchase of chalk land which has built up around those cement works a very large and prosperous community. The community owes everything to capital and to the initiative of the capitalists. Suppose the proprietors of those cement works bought their land from the surrounding owners, is it a fair and just thing to tax those proprietors who have compounded with the owners for their royalties and their wayleaves? Is it a fair thing to tax them and give the proceeds of that tax to other portions of Kent or other portions of the Kingdom? No one outside has contributed to the success of that great industry at North-fleet—and there are other industries of the same kind in other parts of the Constituency—except the capital which was spent on it and the energy behind the capital. The Chancellor of the Exchequer may say that that is not what he intended—that he intended by this tax on royalties and wayleaves to get at the chalk land, and the owner of the clay land for making bricks, and the owner of coal land for the production of coal, and that it was his object to compel them to pay, from his standpoint, what was due to the State. But the proceeds of this tax from the cement works at Northfleet will go to relieve the burden of other towns in Kent and other towns in other counties of the Kingdom who may be backward, non-progressive, and uneconomical in their expenditure or lax in fulfilling their municipal duties. Allusion has been made to municipalities in Essex, Kent, and elsewhere who were not doing their duty thoroughly. Why should other places, such as North-fleet, be obliged to pay for the non-progressiveness of other municipalities in their county or in other parts of the Kingdom? Yet, that is what the Chancellor of the Exchequer proposes. He proposes to tax these proprietors who have already compounded, who have already secured their royalties and wayleaves by purchasing the clay and the chalk, and to tax them again, although they have paid for their royalties and wayleaves by giving a lump sum. It is most preposterous, for instance, to tax the owner or proprietor who has paid for clay land for the making of bricks. He has paid the tax already. He has bought these wayleaves and royalties, so that the Chancellor of the Exchequer is proposing a tax which in the circumstances is eminently unfair, and is all the more unfair—

I would remind the hon. Member that this is not a question of taxation. This is a question of the distribution of the proceeds of taxation, and he should confine himself to that.

I apologise. My object was to show that the Chancellor of the Exchequer was imposing a very heavy and very unjust taxation upon this industrial community, and that he was taking the proceeds and applying them to the needs or necessities of municipalities elsewhere which had no possible claim at all upon the proceeds of that tax. I think if the right hon. Gentleman makes inquiries into the case that I have presented on behalf of these proprietors, he will see how unjust it is to give the proceeds of a tax which they have bought out to relieving the needs of other municipalities throughout the United Kingdom.

I have just one or two observations to make in reference to the discussion, which has been a very interesting one. I do not propose to follow the hon. Member for Gravesend (Sir Gilbert Parker) in his examination of the problems of taxation, but I may say that the hon. Member's argument is based on an error of a very common character. The facts in regard to his immediate Constituency are very like the facts in relation to almost every constituency of the country. I do not think he could point to a single constituency where he would not get at any rate some portion of Increment Duty of undeveloped land, and I should say mineral rights. I daresay if he looked at the balance-sheet of the Northfleet Company he would find that it comes out very well. I should be very much surprised if they were contributing more in proportion than the vast majority of the constituencies of the country. The hon. Member for Croydon suggested that his constituency was taxed much more than my own Constituency, but I should not be surprised if he found that there is a very much larger increase in my Constituency than he probably thinks, and I believe that is the case in the vast majority of constituencies. The real argument is a national rather than a local one. The hon. Member said I had probably changed my mind on this problem. That is not the case at all. I pointed out in my Budget speech that in my judgment a part of the proceeds of the taxation which I was then proposing to submit to the judgment of the House of Commons should undoubtedly be allocated to the relief of local taxation. Municipalities, it is true, requested that we should earmark part of this money, and that we should give not merely a Parliamentary pledge, but a statutory pledge as to the division of the sum. Several very practical suggestions have been made which I think ought to be taken into account. The hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds (Mr. Walter Guinness) made a very practical speech, indicating that he had devoted a good deal of time to the consideration of the subject. I noted that he approved of the action of the Government in hanging up the fund, and he declined prematurely to make up his mind as to the method of apportionment between the local authorities. He took that course after a careful examination of the problem. He told the Committee that the local authorities had not had time to examine the subject, that they had been away upon their holidays, that the Government had brought forward a totally different proposal, and that the municipalities had all been invited to consider the matter, but they had not yet finally made up their minds as to the best course to take. The London County Council has only quite recently given a reply.

Three weeks ago.

Only three weeks ago! At any rate, I invited them to do so about a couple of months ago. I am not complaining, because I think it is a very important problem, and that the county council acted wisely in considering their answer for, at any rate, two or three months before sending it. I think they stand, I will not say alone, but almost alone; other great municipalities have not yet come to a conclusion. I think we have had one or two instances in which definite suggestions have been made. We have had the suggestion from the Association of Corporations, a very powerful body, whose spokesmen are exceedingly able men, but they only represent one section of the municipalities of the kingdom, and I do not think the Government are entitled to accept their view as being that of the whole of the municipalities. I am not sure that the agricultural counties were represented.

I believe the agricultural counties were represented, and that is one of the chief reasons why the London County Council put forward an alternative proposal. At the time the Municipal Corporations Association proposed the basis of rateable value, the agricultural land was not exempted from the Land Tax. Since then there has been a considerable change in the basis of taxation, and therefore there is a still weaker case in favour of what was put forward by the deputation to which the right hon. Gentleman referred.

I would like the Committee to realise what it is they are doing. They are practically depriving the agricultural counties of a very considerable part of the money that will be raised by this tax. It is a suggestion which has been pressed on the Government in the course of this Debate that we should spend the money actually on the locality where the money is obtained. What are the suggestions that have been put before His Majesty's Government? There are at least five. One is that the money should be spent in the locality where it is raised. The second suggestion is put forward by the Association of Municipal Corporations, that the money should be spent according to rateable value. The third is that it should be spent in proportion to population. The fourth suggestion is an ingenious one made by the London County Council, that we should declare zones, and distribute the money raised in those zones in proportion to the rateable value of the various districts within those areas. That is an extremely ingenious suggestion, and it struck me as a very practical one which deserves very careful consideration. The fifth suggestion is the one to which I may say I am very disposed to give favourable consideration myself, namely, that the money should be spent for some specific purpose of the Act, and should be spent locally. That was very largely the method adopted in 1890. At that time the whisky money was given to the localities, a very considerable number of which spent it on secondary and technical education. In my own locality it was used exclusively in building schools. I think if that money had gone into the rates it would have been lost. It has been allocated to purposes connected with education, and children can be sent to secondary schools, where they receive admirable instruction at a £3 fee. I do not believe there are half a dozen towns in England where you get such an excellent system of secondary education at so cheap a price, and the fees are so low that artisans are able to send their children. That is purely due to the fact that the money, instead of being flung into the morass of the rates, has been definitely allocated to a specific local purpose. I earnestly urge the municipalities, when they come to deal with the problem, to consider that which seems to me to be the most fruitful suggestion for spending the money. These are the five suggestions which the municipalities have to consider, and which I believe they are considering. I earnestly urge the Committee not, merely for the sake of a temporary party advantage—I say this without any offence—to rush the Government into a definite allocation of the fund before the municipalities have had full time to consider the matter. I do most earnestly press that upon the Committee. It is all the same to me whether the money is allocated according to rateable value, or it is ear-marked in some other way. There would be no Parliamentary difficulty about it. If I had put into the Clause the words "according to rateable value," it would have been debated; those who are opposed to rateable value would have expressed their opinion, there would have been a Division, and there would have been an end of it.

A mechanical majority.

Mechanical majority? I think the Noble Lord has acted in a mechanical majority, and I have very little doubt if he be in that majority again that he will be a mechanician, and then he will know how to appreciate the value of a mechanical majority. We may have to remind him of this in future, but we will not be premature. I think the Noble Lord is one of those who is really interested in this matter. I think he was one of those who brought the matter to the attention of the House a year or two ago, and I am not sure whether or not I had the honour of replying to him, but I take it generally that he would now rather allow the municipalities time to consider before coming to a conclusion on this subject. Of course, it is a matter for the Committee to decide, but I think we ought to give ear to the municipalities and learn what they have got to say. We ought not to force them to come to a premature decision upon the question. What happened in 1890? I remember perfectly well the Government changed its mind in the course of the proceedings. It was the best thing that ever happened to the country that the Government did change its mind. You may say: "Here you are making one set of proposals in May, and in June changing your mind and making another set of proposals." I do not complain of that. It is rather what the Opposition would say. It is one of their stock criticisms; we all do it in our turn; it is part of the machinery, or one of the weapons. At the same time I would urge the Committee to allow time for the consideration of this matter rather than force a decision of the problem. They probably think that they ought to decide it themselves, but it does not matter whether we decide it or they decide it, and I think we will come to a wise decision if, first of all, we have heard what the municipalities have got to say on the problem. That is all I urge upon the Committee at the present moment.

I would not have intervened but for the speech of the hon. Member for Bury St. Edmunds and the answer of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I was alluding to my hon. Friend's speech as to the opinion of the London County Council. Throughout the whole of his speech the right hon. Gentleman spoke of the opinion of the municipalities and the attention that should be paid to it. I must ask him to pay some attention to the county councils. I presume he does not mean to leave them out of his calculation.

The hon. Gentleman should have paid some attention to his hon. Friend's speech before addressing me. The first association which came before me was an association representing the county councils. They are responsible for the first suggestion which I mentioned in my list.

The right hon. Gentleman used the word municipalities throughout. I paid attention to the speech of my hon. Friend below me, and he alluded to the opinion of the county councils as to these mineral taxes, and said, I think, that he was speaking for the county councils, and that the mineral wealth was not due to the industry of the community in which that wealth existed. If the tax is to be allocated on that basis it will be extremely unfair to a great many mineral districts. Take the County Council of Durham: if you are going to rate the industry on which its increased rates are paid, surely it is light you should pay some attention to that county council. The County Council of Durham depends for its rates on the mineral interest, and ought to have the first claim in the allocation of these duties. I ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer to give some weight to the opinion of the County Council of Durham and other mineral districts as well as to London or any municipality.

I wish to put a specific question to the Chancellor of the Exchequer which may be of some importance. I think that he is perfectly right in inviting the decision of the various authorities affected, or likely to be affected, in the allocation of these taxes, and that a certain amount of time might be given to enable them to lay their opinions before the Government. At the same time, so far as I can recollect a ruling of Mr. Speaker Peel, in 1890, as to the necessity of allocating the money which was liaised then by Mr. Goschen in his Budget for the purpose of extinguishing certain licences, the decision was that that money must be appropriated during the actual Session the Resolution was passed. In view of that it seems to me it would be extremely imprudent that we should leave this question open until too late a period, and that some decision should not be arrived at with regard to the allocation of this money within a reasonable time before the close of the present Session. I myself do not expect that this Session will last for ever, and it seems to me this is a point of importance. If my interpretation of Mr. Speaker Peel's ruling is correct, it will be incumbent on the Government definitely to allocate this money to the various objects which are considered wisest to allocate it to before this Session comes to an end, and it is obvious that the time during which these matters can be considered is a limited time.

I think that the difficulty which we are now in as to the allocation of this money arises from what I would call the "hand-to-mouth" legislation which has been indulged in by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in this sort of way. It seems to me this allocation of half of these taxes to the local authorities is, as a matter of fact, nothing but an elaborate sham. It is not really an allo- cation of these particular taxes at all. After all, if it is an allocation of these taxes, the justification of it is, as my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition pointed out, that the municipalities have done something in creating these taxes. That is the only justification. I maintain, as a matter of fact, if you are going to spread the proceeds over the whole of the country, you might just as well take this sum of money from any other tax you like—say, the Income Tax or the Death Duties—and devote it to the relief of local taxation. Or if that is really what has to be done, it would have been much better to have done that honestly when the question of local taxation was before us. The natural solution is to say that, as we cannot allocate this money, we will not raise the tax. That is the logical position. It seems to me obvious, from the position which the Government have taken up, there will be very great difficulty, by which the agricultural community will suffer. The other municipalities will say that this money is earmarked, and that it comes from property in which they have a special interest, and that, therefore, in any division they would claim to have a preponderating right over the agricultural community which has directly no connection with these taxes. Therefore those municipalities will be in a better position in coming to the Chancellor of the Exchequer or any Government of the day than they would have been in if a particular sum had been allocated for the relief of local taxation when that particular question was being dealt with.

It seems to me that so far from having the effect the hon. Member for Cambridgeshire supposed, that of relieving agriculture, which we have all wanted for so long, it will have exactly the reverse, because the agricultural communities will not be able to speak with the same authority or voice to the Chancellor of the Exchequer as the other municipalities will. That seems to be a very great drawback, and it is the result of this second thoughts policy of devoting this Land Tax money to municipalities. It is either a fact or a sham. Either these taxes belong to the municipalities, and shall therefore go to those municipalities where they are raised, or it is a sham, and, as a matter of fact, this allocation means nothing, and you might as well take the money from any other tax and distribute it equally. I think the result will be to delay indefinitely the relief to agriculture, and to tie the hands of the agricultural interest when they are trying to get their fair share, and to tie the hands of any Government who really wish to give that special relief to the agricultural community from local taxation which the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Prime Minister have on various occasions admitted it deserved.

There are two things I wish very respectfully to place before my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer. In the very interesting speech which he has just delivered he seemed to me to mix up two question which I venture to hint to him he should treat as entirely separate. The two questions are, first the areas which will get the money, and, second, the purposes to which the money will be devoted. I venture to think that what we are all interested in, what everybody in the House is interested in, is the first question, namely, the areas which will get the money. I do not think there will be any dispute as to the purposes to which the money will be devoted. [An HON. MEMBER indicated dissent.] There cannot be a dispute without two sides, and I should agree with anything my hon. Friend suggests in the way of expenditure, so that there would not be any dispute. I do think the important matter is in what area this money will go? I will, therefore, hint that those two points should be kept entirely separate, and that the right hon. Gentleman will find that the House and country are most interested in the question of how the money shall be distributed within the areas. The other hint which I venture to give to my right hon. Friend is not to listen too much to the views of the local authorities. We may hear what they have got to say, although I know before they open their mouths what they will say. Every local authority will say "Give us the whole of the funds," or, if not the whole of it, give us as much as you can. The local authorities are all cormorants. They remember nothing but that they have got a stomach, and they want to get it well filled. They look at it from one standpoint, the standpoint of Little Peddlington, that is, to give them all they can get. I venture respectfully to say the duty will rest on this House, on Parliament, and, most of all, upon the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Government to settle this matter fairly. I am sure my right hon. Friend will remember that these land taxes have almost been converted in the way they have been treated in the Budget into urban taxes. They do not press as heavily on agricultural communities, and the agricultural communities have got one or two pieces of fat already. I believe that they will score very heavily under this concession made under Schedule A over the Income Tax, and they are getting half their rates paid at present at the expense of the houses and the towns.

They are not getting half the general rate paid. It is only half a sanitary rate.

I did not say half the general rate. I am sorry my hon. Friend is so touchy on this sore point. Does he not remember he was in the House when we were discussing the Agricultural Rating Bill, and surely it did some good, and it was something for the agricultural districts and for land. Land has had its turn, and I say the poorer urban districts ought to have their turn now. I would remind my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer that no one put the case of the towns more eloquently than he did in a speech he made in 1900. I wish he would read that speech again, although I know he is very busy at the present time. He promised when the taxes on land came in that those municipalities which were oppressed would receive great relief. All relief has been cut down to about half of the whole tax, although I think we ought to have all those taxes raised in the various localities. I do ask, especially from the standpoint of London, that he should see that the great municipalities where there is a large poor population, and where there are many public services to be discharged, shall have their claims remembered. I ask especially that he should remember the claims of London, for I must say that London has been unfairly treated in many past arrangements. I hope my right hon. Friend will not allow himself to be drawn into any allocation of the funds which will not do full justice to the municipalities.