£2,000 into my pocket." I said to my father: "Why into his pocket?" and I have been asking that question ever since. Thirty years ago I tried to start a movement among the Liberal Party in my own neighbourhood to get this value. There is no need to talk sentiment and temperance about it. The thing is business. Here is a lot of money we ought to have. In a strict business point of view we have a perfect right to say to these people: "At the end of the year we shall make you pay what you ought to have paid all along. You have got a licence which has a money value, and this nonsense has gone too far. Thank your stars that you have had a good pull out of it, but we are going to put an end to it. The nation has wakened up, it has got its senses, and it is going to have its own." That would be perfectly right. Supposing I have a licence worth £200 a year, from which I pay nothing except the ordinary licence duty, I am collecting £200 profit every year, and it is money which ought to be handed over to the nation. You give me fourteen years, that is £2,800. I have to pay compensation out of that. I am only being treated fairly, because not only am I getting the State's money, but I am getting the extra business through the other monopoly being done away with. It is quite plain. As a Member who has sat here some years I say let us be businesslike and introduce as little sentiment as possisible. I quite enjoyed the Chancellor of the Exchequer's speech. C'est magnifique mais ce n'est pas la guerre. I think the country wants to be businesslike. The second point is the last one I want to bring before the Government. May I beg of you to drop Sub-section 2 of Clause 2. That is the sub-section that provides that simply without anything further being said or done, at the end of the fourteen years period we shall come under the possibility of local option to the extent of prohibition. I am not going to discuss the question of proprohibition, but I am going to say to the Government that this clause is both unfair and unwise. It is unfair because it is inconsistent with all the claims that the Prime Minister has made on behalf of his Bill. He has said all through: We put before you a Bill which will give you a free hand at the end of fourteen years. There will be " I think he used the phrase—“ a tabula rasa, and then the nation will be able to do what it likes." I ask that we shall have a tabula rasa, without "local veto " or anything else written across it. Let me say to the Home Secretary, if you are going to prejudge anything, if you are going to pre-condition this problem in anything, you will have to put other things in besides this. There are many on this side of the House who, if this sort of thing is going on, will be inclined to insist that there shall be some kind of security for the publichouse keepers who survive the fourteen years. I am very strongly of opinion that one of the greatest means to temperance is not merely to diminish the number of public houses, and not merely to improve the quality of public-houses, but to improve the quality of publichouse keepers. My experience is that very much depends on the character and conduct of the publican himself. Therefore, it is a national interest that we shall attract to this trade, as long as it is going to continue, good men, men prepared to put a stake in it, men of substance and respectability, and therefore, I for one say that if you insist on keeping this clause I shall insist on other clauses, and I shall insist on some clause which will give some security to the publicans who survive the storm and stress of the fourteen years, that they shall have at any rate a certain time of security. But we are prepared to waive all that-I am speaking I know for others besides myself on the broad principle that there shall be a complete tabula rasa If you put in local veto to the extent of prohibition, you are prejudging the question in a most unfair manner. is not only unfair but unwise. I should have thought the Prime Minister would say: "Once bit, twice shy,"at any rate I should have thought" once bit, once .hy." I hope he does not listen too much to the syren voice of the hon. Member for Appleby. In the political history of this question-and I have been taking part in it for more years than I like to think of-the chief disaster has come not from the publicans, but from the extravagance and impossibility of those who call themselves temperance It reformers. I am not afraid to stand up for that. I remember very well the present Prime Minister's name along with that of Sir William Harcourt being associated with a Bill bringing in this principle. I tell you I do not think the country know that this is in the Bill. I am very much surprised that, as we schoolboys used to say, the Opposition has not rubbed it in. This is one of the best bits of business they could have had, because you have no idea of the storm of passion that will arise. I do not speak of the Welshman; I do not understand him. I do not speak of the Scotsman; he rules me, and I do not understand him. When I look at the Government I know it is a Scottish Government, and they ought to wear the kilt. They are either Scottish or sit for Scottish constituencies, and the numbers of refugees in that direction seems likely to increase. I am not a Celt and I do not pretend to speak for Wales or Scotland or Ireland, but I can peak for England. AN HON. MEMBER: Some of it. MR. HARWOOD: A good deal of it. I think I speak for as much of it as will rule the rest when I say that Englishmen have a rooted prejudice and conviction that every man shall be able to get a glass of beer, if he wants it with reasonable conditions. That is all. Therefore they will not allow any majority however great, to say to any minority however small," you shall not be able to get this thing." I feel strongly on this matter, and I want this Bill to go through, or a Bill to deal with this evil. I believe this is . really a busines Bill. I believe it has been misrepresented in the country by all these little side issues that have nothing to do with the principal substance of it, and I urge the Government to do everything they can to make its passage as easy as possible. *MR. RUFUS ISAACS (Reading): I approach the discussion on the Second Reading of this Bill after much thought and very anxious consideration. I am not a member of any temperance party. My views are those of a moderate, average person anxious to consider this Bill upon its merits, and actuated by a desire for temperance reform, but not lagging behind hon. Members on the other side in the wish to deal justly with those whose interests may be affected by the Bill. I am convinced nothing is further from the thoughts of the Government than to deal harshly, unjustly, tyrannically, oppressively or vindictively with those interests. In the short time I intend to occupy in my address to the House, I desire to direct its attention to the main points of debate, and I propose to lay the arguments before the House with such moderation as I think the subject demands, having regard to the important interests involved in the legislative proposals now before us. It has been said by lawyers on both sides of the House, and not with the least emphasis by my right hon. friends the Members for St. George's, Hanover Square, and the Kingston Division of Surrey that there is no doubt as to the law upon this subject. The general proposition of law, on which I am not going to say more than is necessary to formulate it merely for the sake of clearness, is that there was no right in law to the renewal of a licence before the Act of 1904, and under the law as it then stood, as was stated by a great authority, Lord Halsbury, a renewal is merely a new licence for a new year. With that definition upon that very eminent authority one may rest content, but I shall have to refer to it again, be. cause although the right hon. Gentleman the Member for St. George's, Hanover Square, agreed in that statement of the law I think I am justified in the observation which I will seek to make good, that the whole of his argument, all the propositions which he put forward in contravention of those for which we are arguing on this side, were based upon the notion that there is a property in that renewal. It is idle to assent to this proposition and then to say that there is a property in the licence. The right hon. Gentleman in support of his argument and in the attack he made upon the proposed scheme of compensation asserted that if in dealing with a house entitled under that scheme to £1,000 a year for fourteen years we only allowed £10,500, we were giving nothing for the capital-that is the licence-we were leaving that out of calculation. And then he instanced the case of a man who owned land worth £10,000, and producing £1,000 a year, then you capitalise the yearly income for fourteen years by paying him £10,500 at present, and at the end of the time he would still have the land. Yes, but that is based upon this misconception of the whole position-that your right to the renewal of the licence is a freehold. Does the right hon. Gentle man assert that it is? Then if it is not asserted the whole argument falls. As we understood during the debate on the Bill of 1904 when the present Leader of the Opposition was discussing this matter he refused in one sense to recognise a licence as property. He refused to recognise it in any sense as a freehold, although he ultimately created greater rights than licence-holders had ever hitherto possessed. If there is nothing in the nature of property in a licence other than is represented by the value of an expectancy containing elements of speculation as to whether the licence will be renewed for this year, the next year, or the succeeding years, how can my right hon. friend claim payment from capital which has already been bought by the fourteen years compensation? When the Leader of the Opposition introduced his Bill of 1904, what was his position His statements and contentions are not only an answer to a part of the argument used by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for St. George's, Hanover Square, but also meet one of the fundamental arguments urged by the other side. It is said that what we are seeking is to confiscate property. The word was used by the noble Lord the Member for Marylebone, after he had made excuses for those who outside this House indulged in language of that kind. The noble Lord himself used words of the same character and spoke as if property was being taken away to which there was a legal right. Nothing can be more clearly demonstrated than the fact that when the Bill of 1904 was introduced by the Leader of the Opposition he made it perfectly clear that the system under which the licences had been granted was utterly irrational, and he pointed out that he was recognising no such thing as a legal right to the renewal of a licence. Hon. Gentlemen opposite, and right hon. Gentlemen sitting on 66 am licences entirely to leave out of consideration that the Act of 1904 did two things. First it provided for a scheme of compensation. "Yes," it may be said, "because you were taking away property." I aware that if you take land you must pay for it. That is quite true, but what is forgotten is that the person whose land is taken away, is compensated by the State or public authority or company acquiring the land out of its own funds, but by the Act of 1904, the compensation is paid by the trade itself, and if we on this side are confiscators and spoliators what is to be said of the supporters of the Act of 1904 What the Leader of the Opposition did was to say to the trade You shall give up your and give up the interest which you say you have in them." I would remind the Leader of the Opposition went even right hon. Gentleman opposite that the further than our proposals, because he said, "Before you get that compensation, before I provide the right to pay yourselves for the reduction of your property, you must bring in the ante-1869 beerhouses to the number of 23,000 and throw them into the same category and place them on the same basis as other licences." Hon. Members are quite aware what the difference was in regard to those licences, and what a privileged preferential position they occupied. Those licences were the apple of the eye of the men who had them because their renewal could not be refused except on certain specified grounds and it was because these beer-houses had that valuable privilege that they were differentiated from other licenses in respect of which renewal could be refused without any grounds of misconduct. We must remember this distinction when we are accused of spoliation, confiscation, and hear all the other harsh things which are said oftener outside the House than within. Let us remind the trade of what took place in 1904. That Act is really the best argument that we have for the Bill we are now proposing. Of course I do not expect hon. Gentleman opposite to agres with me, but I shall give my reasons. What actually happened in 1904? It is argued now not very confidently by the right hon. Gentleman opposite that the reduction of licences is not a step in the path of temperance. *MR. LYTTELTON: I said no such the front Opposition Bench, seem thing. VOL. CLXXXVII. [FOURTH SERIES.] 3 S *MR. RUFUS ISAACS: I will not for Spen Valley quoted the instance of pursue the point if the right hon. eighty-two companies with a share Gentleman says I misunderstood him. and debenture capital amounting to The Leader of the Opposition put forward £74,912,000, all of which came into the Bill of 1904 because he said that a his third category of bad companies, reduction of licences would make for some with very small reserves and others temperance. Lord Lansdowne, in the with no reserve at all. That seems to me House of Lords, said the same thing, and to be an argument in favour of extending I have a quotation from his Lordship's the time of compensation, because the speech here, but I will not trouble the situation created by this Bill would thus House with it. I think when we hear be eased to those who may not be in from hon. Members opposite the argument the position to make the necessary that a reduction of licences is not a step financial arrangements within the period in the direction of temperance we are limited. It might also enable those entitled to ask them why was the Act of affected to face the situation without 1904 introduced? What we have to show any risk of financial crisis I only put now is why we are introducing this Bill. that forward as my own view as the Under the present Act there is no result of the consideration which I have uniform system of reduction nor a com- been able to give to the matter, and pulsory levying of the maximum. It because I am very anxious that this House depends entirely upon the will of the should deal rather liberally and even authorities as to how much will be spent generously with the interests affected by in a particular year. In the next place the Bill. If by this course the passage by the decision of Mr. Justice Kennedy of the Bill here and elsewhere can be progress is most seriously retarded in- secured, we shall not have done a bad asmuch as the compensation to be paid is day's work for temperance even if we have an effective obstacle to the reduction of to give more than some hon. Members any number of houses during succeeding think strictly necessary. The hon. Member years. What the Government say in this for Blackburn says that if you extend the Bill is "We will introduce compulsory time-limit you will take the heart out of reduction over a period of years, the measure. and we will have a system of compensation which we think is fair and equitable." That is the real point, and to me the question in controversy always narrows itself to this is the proposed compensation a fair and equitable compensation? Presumably there would be no controversy, no dispute in regard to the proposition that provided you give sufficient and adequate compensation, you should be entitled to reduce the number of licences. The only question which arises is, what is a fair and equitable basis of compensation. I agree it is a difficult subject, and it is one which cannot be decided by a dictum of any Member of the Government, and it cannot be disposed of in a few words. It is a matter which we shall have to discuss very much in Committee. Speaking for myself, and not omitting from consideration the figures presented to the House by the hon. Member for Spen Valley and others, I may say that I am not satisfied that the period of fourteen years is a fair and just compensation. I am rather inclined to the view that a time-limit of fourteen years will not prove sufficient. The hon. Member I do not believe the heart is so weak that by extending the timelimit 50 per cent. you will make it cease to beat. However, this is a point we shall have to consider in Committee. I fully recognise that we are dealing with the Second Reading and not the Committee stage. In reference to compensation the great question is how you are to arrive at an equitable basis of calculation. The right hon. Gentleman opposite seemed rather puzzled as to how the hon. Member for Spen Valley got at his figure of £1,050. That is arrived at in this way. Suppose you take premises which would make the difference calculated under the Act £100 a year. You have to take them subject to compensation for fourteen years under the present time-limit. Now that would give at 4 per cent. £1,829, if you take it for the fourteen years adding interest as paid year by year. If you pay the compensation at once you arrive at £1,050, the figure given by the hon. Member for Spen Valley, which is really ten and a half years purchase at £100 a year. That is the fourteen years time-limit calculated at £100 a year, but paid at once may under the Bill with the compensa- instead of over a period of fourteen years. That is the explanation of the figure at which the hon. Member for Spen Valley arrived. Much has been said about the system of calculating compensation upon the assessment of the licensed house. There is a letter this morning in an organ not favour able to the views we are putting forward on this side of the House-I mean the Standard. It is written by Messrs.. Orgill & Marks, a firm of valuers In that who occupy a high position. letter they deal only with the figures for London under the quinquennial valuation of the London County Council, because no other figures were at hand and they controverted very strongly the view put forward by the hon. Member for Spen Valley that the houses were rated at a ridiculously and even a dishonestly low figure. I am They tell us that is not the case. dealing with the London figures which are the figures they give. They say that during the last ten years the assessment of public houses in London has increased by 55 per cent., and further they tell us that licensed premises are now according to this calculation assessed at three times the value of the premises unlicensed. At the annual rateable value it works out that 6,868 houses produce an average annual rateable value of £217 for a points, namely, the first, as licensed house. Taking these premises unlicensed and according to Schedule A, the value would be £72, and, therefore, the compensation would be calculated on which I desire to words is the monopoly value. at an annual rate of £145, which at ten has been said in criticism of that and a half years purchase would give an average of £1,522 per house. One phrase. I would remind hon. Members on the opposite side of the House that would have thought that this amount would represent very fair compensation we are not the inventors of it. The for houses assessed as licensed premises originators of it were to be found on the at £217. May I remind the House also Treasury Bench as it was in 1904. They of what seems to have been forgotten in coined the phrase "monopoly value," the discussion on the comparison of the and they defined to some extent what -compensation paid under the Act of it meant. We were told, I think by the 1904, and that proposed to be paid Prime Minister, that we shall have to I hope he will. under this Bill? Under the Act of define what it means. 1904 there is only one compensation For myself I am anxious that it should amount, and from that the publicans be made clear, and I do not know whether We have I have quite apprehended what is inbeen discusssing in the debate the com- tended by the Bill in stipulating for the payment of the monopoly value. pensation to be paid to the owner; there is a separate provision in the As I follow it, what it means is not the Bill for compensation to be paid over taking over by compensation or in any and above that, to the publican. We other way the goodwill. What is inin mind when tended is to charge the person receiving have to bear this comparing the compensation payable a licence something like its value share has to be carved out. property second, The only a 3 S 2 |