the Commission. If London is to remain a great city, if its people are to be able to move about as they should, a great expenditure will have to be incurred. A great proportion of it may be remunerative, but I hold that a new authority could raise money more cheaply for the great expenditure necessary to deal with this matter than the London County Council, and could apply it more efficiently. Such an authority could deal effectively with the nuisance caused by the irregular manner of pulling up the streets. There are streets in London which are more often "up" than "down." Noble Lords who have the misfortune to be in London in the autumn months know that at that time you have to be very well acquainted with the geography of London in order to get about. Even in Whitehall the roadway was up for a period of eighteen months. Surely there ought to be a central authority to look after these matters. At the present moment all sorts of authorities have power to pull up the streets, and, as far as I can make out, the law on the subject is itself very vague. Electric light companies have in many cases power to pull them up; they can be pulled up for sewers, hydraulic power, water mains, gas mains, telephones, telegraphs, street drains, lavatories the streets can be pulled up for any of these purposes without let or hindrance, and without any consideration of the importance it is to London that traffic should not be unduly interfered with. The carrying of London traffic has been described by Mr. John Burns as a gold mine, but, as far as I have been able to make out, most of the companies. engaged in carrying are doing badly. The London County Council are earning a comparatively small profit; the £10 shares of the London United Tramways, the biggest of the outside companies, stand at £6; the London General Omnibus Company deplore decreasing receipts this year, and their £100 shares stand at £71; the report of the London Road Car Company states that although they have carried more passengers they have earned less profits, and the £6 shares of this company stand at £2 10s.; and the shares of the Motor Omnibus Companies stand at a discount. When we come to the tube railways, they are even in a worse position, The £100 shares of of the Metropolitan Railway, which I suppose had to be over-capitalised originally, stand at £42 ; and the shares of the District Company have the misfortune to stand at only £14. The Central Railway Company shares stand at a discount, and the City and South London Railway shares at only £42. I quote these statistics to show that the carrying companies of London have not got that gold Outmine which is sometimes inferred. side privately-managed companies do not seem to be making much profit either. The point is, is the absence of coordination and in some cases an excess of competition on the whole good for the people of London? I maintain that it is not, and that it is high time that the traffic of London was controlled by a central expert body. I am convinced that if the recommendations of the Royal Commission were carried out a distinct im provement would be noticed in a few years, and the improved state of things would be a lasting credit to the Government responsible for the initiation of a traffic board. As to the question of improvements, which, of course, is the most important subject, we all know that there is a certain feeling as regards the London County Council. It may be deplored, but there it is. The outside county councils and the borough councils of London do not work harmoniously with the London County Council, and I believe that if a central body, such as a traffic board, were appointed, friction would be avoided and the means of locomotion and transit in London coordinated. *THE EARL OF GRANARD: I shall not follow the noble Lord into the various points he has raised, but will confine myself to the Question which stands on the Paper. I can assure the noble Lord that the Government are very fully alive to the magnitude of the whole question of London traffic, but they are at the same time desirous to move very cautiously in the matter. They are not very anxious to come to a definite decision without full consideration of the whole matter, and I feel sure your Lordships will agree with me that this is certainly the proper course to adopt. The traffic board recommended by the Royal Commission was to have very large powers indeed. It would be quite impossible to appoint such a board without legislation; and your Lordships are aware that the Government have, at the present moment, a great deal of legislation before them. I very much regret it, but I do not think it will be possible during the present session to give effect to the recommendation, or to bring in a Bill dealing with this subject at all. The House will remember that in his very able speech in seconding the Address Lord Chichester prophesied that a Bill of some sort would be brought in dealing with cheap trains for workmen. It is the intention of His Majesty's Government to deal with this question in the course of a few weeks. It is hoped that these cheap trains will be of great help to workmen. The noble Lord who raised this question has moved for certain Papers. He seems to think that there have been communications between the London County Council and the Board of Trade or other Government Department on the subject of London traffic, but I have made inquiries at the Board of Trade and the Home Office and have been informed that no correspondence of any kind has passed between either of those offices and the County Council. I am afraid that there are, therefore, no Papers to present. LORD RIBBLESDALE: My Lords, I am glad to hear that the question of cheap trains is to be dealt with, but I would remind the House that London traffic is not entirely a matter of cheap trains. There is a great deal of vehicular traffic, and there are a great number of people who want to get about their business. I have risen to intervene in this debate because I desire to know how long the present chaotic condition of things, by which the every-day life of the Metropolis is more or less strangled by the choking up of the great arteries of traffic, is to continue. I am very dissatisfied with the answer which has been given on behalf of the Government, but I am not altogether surprised at it. We are well accustomed to the platonic liveliness of every Govern ment in regard to the recommendations of a Royal Commission which advocates very large changes. Governments are always very fully alive" to the importance of the subject, and so on; but the House is The Earl of Granard. 66 always appealed to as to the wisdom of When the Royal Commission finally produced the eighth volume the Report was referred to in a well-written, well-considered, article in The Times, in which the following passage occurred "It is not to be wondered at that the Traffic Commission's Report has been publicly ac cepted as the standard text-book in France, Germany, and America on urban traffic." That appears to be the whole unction which the Commissioners are ever likely to be able to lay to their bosoms. As I say, I do not refer to myself at all in the matter. I belong to the leisured class, but most of those who served on that Commission were extremely hard-working people, who gave up their time to the work in hand. I have only to instance the noble and learned Lord on the Woolsack, Sir George Gibb, Sir John WolfeBarry, Sir Felix Schuster. I wonder very much whether you will ever get gentlemen of that kind to undertake such work and give their time and experience when the Government takes a line such as has been announced. It is invariably the same with all Royal Commissions. If the Commission's Report is a little one, it is said, "Oh, it is so little we will not do anything;" but, if their Report is a bulky one, it is then said, "It is so great that we cannot do anything." The noble Earl Lord Onslow went a little into the circumstances which led to the appointment of this Royal Commission. I do not like to place myself in any disagreement with the Lord Chairman about Committee work, but what really happened was this. It was in 1901 that all the tube railway Bills were suspended and referred to a Joint Committee presided over by Lord Plymouth. Then Lord Onslow said that in 1902 nothing was done except that one or two Bills were passed by Lord Rayleigh's Committee. What really happened was that in that year thirty-two Bills came before Parliament dealing with 109 miles of railway. Those were referred to two Committees, one of which was presided over by Lord Plymouth and the other by myself. The result was that three and a half miles out of the 109 miles were sanctioned in London and six outside; but when our Bills went down to Sir Lewis McIver's Commons Committee the whole thing was a fiasco, and that led to the appointment of the Royal Commission. I now come to Lord Leigh's reference to the attitude of the London County Council in this matter. I have had a Question on the Paper very similar to Lord Leigh's for I do not know how many months. It was on the Paper during the whole of the autumn session, when our time was taken up by other matters. It has been on during the few days of this session, and in it I ask whether the attitude of the London County Council had anything to do with the answer which was given in another place when very much the same question was asked by Sir J. Dickson-Poynder. I shall come to that presently. It was owing to the action of the London County Council that the Royal Commission was appointed. I was a member of the London County Council at the time when the question was debated in the Council. The Council referred the whole matter to a special Committee of their Parliamentary, Finance, and Highways Committees, and after grave deliberation this body asked the Board of Trade-that is His Majesty's Government to appoint a Royal Commission. The Commission was duly appointed, and, as I have said, the Commissioners deliberated for three and a half years, and published a Report in eight volumes which secured the not always very easily obtained approval of The Times. But nothing is done. As Lord Onslow has stated, all tube railway and locomotion activities are hung up. It is said, "There is going to be a new complexion given to all these things. It is 100 to one that we shall have this traffic board, and we must reconsider our operations in every possible way." Sir J. Dickson-Poynder, who is intimately connected with the housing question, and who was Chairman of the Housing Committee under the London County Council before he went to serve his Queen in South Africa, where he behaved with great distinction, has always held that this traffic question is intimately bound up with the housing question. Wishing to know if anything was going to be done in regard to the question of traffic as a means of helping towards the solution of the housing problem, Sir John raised the question recently in another place, and in the answer which was there given by the Government the House of Commons was told very much the same as your Lordships have been told this evening that nothing was going to be done"all the more owing to the transitional stage which the problem has reached." I do not know exactly what that means. What does a transitional stage mean? Dealing with traffic is a progressive science, and if we are going to wait we shall wait for ever. Meanwhile London traffic does not wait. It goes on, and the Prime Minister, even with the magnificent majority which he commands in the other House, can no more stop it than King Canute could stop the sea at Dover. be done, and you have got these eight Traffic goes on; something will have to volumes telling you what can be done. Now I come to the reason why the whole thing is hung up. We have been there has been no correspondence, but I told by Lord Granard this evening that who introduced this question has put his am perfectly sure that the noble Lord finger on the right spot, and that the real obstruction to anything being done in the direction of the recommendations of the Commission is the attitude of the Progressive London County Council. I believe that His Majesty's Government are afraid of the London County Council on this particular point. I do not know that I can put it in any other way. The President of the Board of Trade I have not the honour of knowing, but from reading some of the observations which he makes from time to time in reference to your Lordships' House he appears to be somewhat emotional. Mr. John Burns I have the honour of knowing as a col- and others who served on that laborious league on the London County Council. I Commission. It was the most fascinating know his vigorous, masterful ascendency, inquiry that can be imagined. No one and having read Mr. Lloyd-George's has any idea until he enters upon the hysterical views about your Lordships' subject what a vast amount of ground it House I can easily believe that Mr. John covers, and how intensely fascinating it Burns's masterful ascendency has been a is in every aspect; and I must say that little too much for the President of the it engrossed my attention to the neglect Board of Trade. of my other duties for a considerable time. I think Lord Leigh is perfectly right. It is matter of common knowledge-I This particular Motion is directed to know it myself from conversation with one of the specific recommendations of members of that body-that the London the Royal Commission, and to one of County Council will not brook the idea them only the recommendation that of any other central authority controlling there ought to be a traffic board, not locomotion, and so nothing had been merely for London, but for the large area done. I am inclined to think that Mr. surrounding London which must not be John Burns has not only exercised his forgotten. But throughout this debate influence over Mr. Lloyd-George but over there seems to be a misapprehension in the rest of his colleagues in the Govern- regard to the duties which we propose to ment. I am afraid that we shall get attribute to the traffic board. We did nothing more than was contained in the not propose that it should have any power official reply on behalf of the Government over any one. I do not mean to say to-day, but I was rather surprised to that there was not to be power to sit hear Lord Granard say he "understood" as arbitrators in cases of dispute between that the Report of the Commission con- different municipalities. There may have tained a great many recommendations. been some little power-I cannot tax my Surely Lord Granard, as representing memory-in regard to the pulling up of the Government Department concerned, streets. There may or there may not knows something about the Report. have been such power; but, broadly Surely the Local Government Board speaking, the traffic board was not deknow exactly what the recommendations involve. The noble Earl spoke as though he expected inspiration from Lord Leigh and from Lord Montagu of Beaulieu. He surely must know what is proposed. I have, however, nothing more to say. I repeat that public convenience is being sacrificed, and that it is not likely that you will get able men to give the time and experience which the members of this Commission gave to this question unless some little regard is paid to their recommendations. *THE LORD CHANCELLOR (Lord LOREBURN): My Lords, I hope your Lordships will allow me to say a few words on this subject in the character of a Royal Commissioner. It is quite true, as my noble friend who served with me on that Commission has said, that the Royal Commission consisted of men as to many of whom it could not be claimed that they were men of leisure. I certainly have never in my life aspired to be a man of leisure, and the same can be said of others like Sir J. Wolfe-Barry, Sir Felix Schuster, Sir Francis Hopwood, Lord Ribblesdale. signed for any such purpose. It was not to supersede the authority of the London County Council or of any other municipal body within the metropolitan area. We well knew, of course, that there could be no improvement in the condition of London traffic without expenditure out of the rates, and we were not so rash as to suggest that any authority but an elected body could impose any burden whatever upon the rates. The main object of this board, in the view of the Commissioners, was that it should be advisory; that it should report from time to time upon the infinitely difficult and complex problem of London traffic; that it should give its assistance and advice to Committees of both Houses of Parliament, sitting together, as we hope they would, for the consideration of private Bills affecting this problem; that it should examine these private Bills, not with any power to reject them or to pass them into law, but simply to advise the promoters how best to get their schemes fairly considered and in harmony with other schemes, and to suggest to the Parliamentary Committees the course they should adopt in regard to those Middlesex, Essex, Kent, Surrey, and Bills. Hertfordshire, and numbers of subordinate parish authorities; and it was for that reason that the Commissioners recommended an advisory board rather than a board with executive powers. The traffic of London-I speak not only of the overground but also of the underground traffic-has got into its present tangle because the streets, until quite recently, have been laid out haphazardly, and because the tramways and railways, and even the tubes until lately, have been laid out in the same fashion; and until there is an authoritative, wellinformed, and instructed body to keep before the Committees of Parliament the real bearing of the different proposals laid before them affecting London traffic London will never get the means and facilities for traffic which it ought to possess. Many of your Lordships are familiar with the great city of Paris. It is a curious thing that 114 years ago the French in Paris appreciated the necessity of what I may call co-ordination between different projects for the improvement of the streets; and in the year 1793, in the very storm of the Revolution and at a time when men's heads were falling from their shoulders without either notice or interest, a committee laid down the finest and most elaborate schemes for the reconstruction of the streets. Those plans were worked upon till 1859, when Baron Haussmann made some amendments, and they were followed until completed only as recently as 1890 or thereabouts, nearly 100 years after their commencement. The result is seen in the broad and well-laid-out streets of that magnificent metropolis, arranged on a harmonious plan, and giving proper facilities for traffic. In London, on the other hand, things have been done without adequate supervision. When new streets are being erected there are not sufficient powers to see that what are likely to be main thoroughfares shall be of the adequate width, which ought to be at least 100 feet. Instead of that, the thing, so to speak, is left to mere chance. That is so even now, though I do not say it is so bad as it was. The Royal Commission, therefore, suggested the appointment of an advisory board. Properly to regulate the traffic of London it is necessary to extend the control for fifteen miles from Charing Cross in all directions. In that area there are, in addition to the London County Council, the county councils of Blame has been put upon the Government that they have not set up this traffic board. I am rather an enthusiast on the subject, having bestowed so much time and trouble upon it; but if it is to be done by legislation I am sure Lordships will have some sympathy even with your adversaries on account of the handful of legislation we already have to deal with. Speaking for myself, I do not think it is essential that the traffic board should consist of two or three, or four or five, persons absolutely nominated for the purpose with no other work. I think such a board might consist of nominated representatives of the Home Office, the Board of Trade, and the Local Government Board, who should be directed to cooperate and devote a large part of their time to the work, and to whom the Committees of Parliament could, if they liked, look for advice and guidance. The Royal Commission had evidence that the solution of the housing difficulty in London depends upon the solution of the traffic difficulty. Mr. Charles Booth told us that it was the only way in which the housing question could be settled. I will not go so far as to say that; but I am quite certain that it cannot be effectively settled without a very large extension of locomotive facilities in London. We had most interesting evidence on that point, and came to a unanimous decision in regard to that part of our Report. Taking London as a circle, over-crowding on the basis of two in a room is less at the circumference, but at the centre so enormous is it that it is a disgrace to our civilisation. Indeed, unless we put our hands to this work for the purpose of finding a remedy we have no longer a right to call ourselves a really civilised people, such are the infamous conditions resulting from overcrowding. The method of relief seems to be indicated by a further fact-namely, that it is impossible in the central parts of London to get land for workmen's dwellings upon economic terms. Take the |