Member of Acquisition of Land Committee, 1918.
Mr. Comyns Carr said:--The Land Question I believe to be the most
important subject in purely domestic politics to-day, as it was in 1914.
At that date we were embarking, under the especial leadership of one who
has now deserted us, upon a comprehensive campaign dealing with that
question in all its aspects. The present Government has filled a large
portion of the Statute Book with legislation bearing on the land; it is
not the quantity we have to complain of, but the quality. In 1914 we had
already achieved one signal victory in carrying against the House of
Lords the Land Clauses of the Budget of 1909-10, and although many of us
were never satisfied with the form which those clauses took, they were
valuable both as a step in the direction of land taxation and for the
machinery of valuation which they established. Mr. Lloyd George in his
present alliance with the Tories has sunk so low as not only to repeal
those clauses, but actually to refund to the landlords every penny which
they have paid in taxation under them.
The campaign which was inaugurated in 1913 did not deal with the
question of taxation only, and for my part, although I am an enthusiast
on this branch of the subject, I have never thought that other aspects
should be neglected. We put forward proposals for dealing with leases
both in town and country. The present Government has carried and
repealed again a series of statutes dealing with agriculture. Their
original policy was to offer to the farmer guaranteed prices for his
produce, if necessary at the expense of the tax-payer, and to the
labourer guaranteed wages, to be fixed and enforced by Wages Boards.
Before this policy was fully in operation it was repealed. The farmer
got some cash compensation for his losses; the labourer has got nothing
but voluntary Conciliation Boards, with no power to do more than pass
pious resolutions. There has, however, survived this welter of
contradictory legislation, a series of clauses which do confer upon the
tenant farmer a substantial part of the rights in his dealings with his
landlord for which we were agitating in 1914. The town lease-holder, on
the other hand, has got nothing, and it is one of the first duties of
the Liberal Party to provide him with security against the confiscation
of his improvements and goodwill, to give him reasonable security of
tenure, and to put an end once for all to the pestilent system of
building leases which extends all over London and to about half the
other towns of England. The evils of this system are especially to be
found in those older parts of our great cities where the original leases
are drawing to a close. In such cases a kind of blight appears to settle
on whole neighbourhoods, and no improvements can be carried out by
either party because the landlord cannot obtain possession, and the
tenant has not, and is unable to obtain, a sufficient length of term to
make it worth his while to risk his capital upon them.